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Theorist Quote

The borderlands dividing racial, ethnic, and national identities and communities constitute ethnosexual frontiers, erotic intersections that are heavily patrolled, policed, and protected, yet regularly are penetrated by individuals forging sexual links with ethnic "others." Normative heterosexuality is a central component of racial, ethnic, and nationalist ideologies; both adherence to and deviation from approved sexual identities and behaviors define and reinforce racial, ethnic, and nationalist regimes.

Nagel, Joane. “Ethnicity and Sexuality.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 26, Annual Reviews, 2000, pp. 107–33, http://www.jstor.org/stable/223439.

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Thesis:
In Nella Larsen's Passing, ethnicity is portrayed as a social agreement rather than a biological fact. For people able to "pass" it is their behaviour and their relationships which define their experiences of race. This exposes the fragility of race and whiteness in particular.

Theorist Quote:
"We thus define ethnicity to include all groups that feel themselves different from others, or are felt to be different by the others, where the difference is based on culture, physical appearance, or ancestry, depending on the context" (pg. 5)

Kaplan, D. H., and S. R. Holloway. 1998 . Segregation in Cities. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers.

Passage from Passing:
"Dorothy was there. We got talking. In less than five minutes. I knew she was ‘fay.’ Not from anything she did or said or anything in her appearance. Just— just something. A thing that couldn’t be registered.”

“Yes, I understand ‘pass’ all the time.” what you mean. Yet lots of people 'pass' all the time"

“Not on our side, Hugh. It’s easy for a Negro to ‘pass’ for white. But I don’t think it would be so simple for a white person to ‘pass’ for coloured.”

“Never thought of that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Why should you?”

Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing, Profile Books, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/warw/detail.action?docID=1743541.

Another Text (Quicksand):
"Negro society, she had learned, was as complicated and as rigid in its ramifications as the highest strata of white society. If you couldn’t prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn’t 'belong.' You could be queer, or even attractive, or bad, or brilliant, or even love beauty and such nonsense if you were a Rankin, or a Leslie, or a Scoville; in other words, if you had a family. But if you were just plain Helga Crane, of whom nobody had ever heard, it was presumptuous of you to be anything but inconspicuous and conformable.

Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing, Profile Books, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/warw/detail.action?docID=1743541.

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1) Thesis Statement (Keyword - Sexuality)

Clare and Irene seemingly share a mutual affection and desire in their non-heteronormative relationship. However, racial elements are interwoven within this with projection of their own identities as African-American women. Clare figures Irene’s physicality as a medium through which she can repossess and love her own body; the damage inflicted upon her self-image as an African-American woman through her husband’s racial denigration is healed, in part, through the affection she feels for another black woman. Similarly, Irene seems to project her own racialized beauty standards onto her husband, convincing herself that he finds Clare’s lighter skin tone attractive; this presents both Irene’s discomfort with her own appearance as well as her unrealised attraction to Clare.

2) Quotes from text

"Clare had come softly into the room without knocking and, before Irene could greet her, had dropped a kiss on her dark curls… Redfield had a sudden inexplicable onrush of affectionate feeling. Reaching out, she grasped Clare’s two hands in her own and cried with something like awe in her voice: “Dear God! But aren’t you lovely Clare!”" - Part 2, Chapter 2

"Well, what of it? If sex isn’t a joke, what is it? And what is a joke? …The sooner and the more he learns about sex, the better for him. And most certainly if he learns that it’s a grand joke, the greatest in the world. It’ll keep him from lots of disappointments later on." - Part 2, Chapter 1

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1)     100-word thesis statement in which you articulate the relation you’re making between your key word and Passing

Irene finds herself angry at Claire's desire "not only to have her cake and eat it, but to nibble on the cake of others," irritated at the irony of Claire's apparent lack of loyalty to her black roots; ironic due to her own nearly identical situation. Therefore the topic of femininity becomes complex as Irene almost turns Claire into an enemy in her mind, refusing to accept the way that she displays her race or identifies with it. The reader would expect the two women to bond over their experiences, especially when considering the obscurity and difficulty of their respective situations, but this isn't the case. Femininity, often associated with female friendship and 'sisterhood' - defined by Marriam-Webster as "the solidarity of women based on shared conditions, experiences, or concerns," therefore becomes significantly more difficult to define.

2)     short quote from a theorist which you draw on to define your key word critically

“The desire to "be a woman," that is, a desire to live up to the norms of femininity in a particular symbolic order. Femininity is posited as desirable and as something that "women" should approximate; wanting to "be a woman" is coded as positive. The forced identification with blackness, however, is not linked with a desire to live up to norms of blackness. Rather, black identified subjects, in order to sustain a nonmarginal existence, are compelled and encouraged to privilege and thus "desire-to-be white," that is, to live up to attributes associated with whiteness.”

ROTTENBERG, CATHERINE. “‘Passing’: Race, Identification, and Desire.” Criticism, vol. 45, no. 4, Wayne State University Press, 2003, pp. 435–52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23126398.

&

"The sixth chapter focuses on Nella Larsen’s first novel, Quicksand (1928). The chapter argues that Quicksand exemplifies the changed status of “the individual” in black women’s pragmatism during the Harlem Renaissance. Yet interestingly, the work also ends with the destruction of individualism, with the protagonist Helga Crane winding up trapped in an archaic version of the black maternal archetype. Her fate is the culmination of her mobility through different communities and her search for creative democratic experience and personal happiness. Paradoxically, her migrations convince her that happiness is impossible, but this grim assessment is not a mere resignation to personal limitations. Rather, her conclusion is based on her first-hand experiences with the suffocating and visceral impact that racism produces on an African American woman trying to navigate gendered social expectations."

Phipps G. (2018) Breaking Down Creative Democracy: The Cycle of Experience and Truth in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. In: Narratives of African American Women's Literary Pragmatism and Creative Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1007/978-3-030-01854-2_6

3)     a short passage from Passing you feel speaks to the link you’re making

“Her lips, painted a brilliant geranium red, were sweet and sensitive and a little obstinate. A tempting mouth. The face across the forehead and cheeks was a trifle too wide, but the ivory skin had a peculiar soft luster. And the eyes were magnificent! Dark, sometimes absolutely black, always luminous, and set in long, black lashes. Arresting eyes, slow and mesmeric, and with, for all their warmth, something withdrawn and secret about them. Ah! Surely! They were Negro eyes! Mysterious and concealing. And set in that ivory face under that bright hair, there was about them something exotic. Yes, Clare Kendry’s loveliness was absolute, beyond challenge, thanks to those eyes which her grandmother and later her mother and father had given her.” (225)

Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing, Profile Books, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/warw/detail.action?docID=1743541

4)     1 example from the ‘At least three’ section of your assessment document – so a video/audio/image, an excerpt from another piece of writing by Larsen, or media from the text’s historical period. Remember, this must help you articulate an aspect of your argument.

Thinking In Colour, 16:00 10/05/2021, BBC Radio 4, 30 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/18392E17?bcast=134438415 (Accessed 18 Nov 2021)

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Ethnicity is crucial to Passing by Nella Larson as it is with this lens we are able to explore and navigate the lives of the biracial women as they differentiate between the inherent and performative roles that race plays. Ethnicity shapes the identities of the characters in the novel but yet, is somehow and shifted and moulded according to the experience of the character. Notions of privilege and how much it is able to intertwine and also conflict and reject ethnicity is also explored as Larsen shows how race becomes both an active and passive tool in the world.

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DENNIS, HELEN M. "New Essays on Cather's My Antonia / Willa Cather: Queering America." Journal of American Studies, vol. 35, 2001, pp. 177-179. ProQuest, http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/scholarly-journals/new-essays-on-cathers-my-antonia-willa-cather/docview/195672596/se-2?accountid=14888.

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Project Muse: Melissa J. Homestead, ‘Willa Cather’s Letters in the Archive’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Volume 40, No. 1, (2021, The University of Tulsa), pp. 95-118.

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Lambert, Deborah., 'The defeat of a hero: astronomy and sexuality in ‘My Antonia’', American Literature, 53 (1982), 676-690 https://www.proquest.com/pq1lit/docview/2152481568/DB8E5723B8414177PQ/2?accountid=14888

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Herring, Scott. "Queering Modernism." The Cambridge Companion to the American Modernist Novel. Edited by Joshua L. Miller. Cambridge University Press, 2015. http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/books/queering-modernism/docview/2137995995/se-2?accountid=14888.

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By Sharon O'Brien. "My Willa Cather: How Writing Her Story Shaped My Own: My Willa Cather." New York Times (1923-), Feb 20, 1994, pp. 3. ProQuest, http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/historical-newspapers/my-willa-cather-how-writing-her-story-shaped-own/docview/109306028/se-2?accountid=14888.

HODARA, SUSAN. "Exploring Gender as Disguise and Identity: Mapplethorpe and Warhol on the Performative Aspects of Sexuality and Expression." New York Times (1923-), Dec 27, 2015, pp. 1. ProQuest, http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/historical-newspapers/exploring-gender-as-disguise-identity/docview/2074977178/se-2?accountid=14888.

A Good Read, Elaine Showalter & Romesh Gunesekera, 00:30 07/02/2017, BBC Radio 4 Extra, 30 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/002012CA?bcast=123475972 (Accessed 05 Nov 2021)

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Goldman, Anne E. “Rereading My Ántonia.” The Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather, edited by Marilee Lindemann, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 159–174. Cambridge Companions to Literature.

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Queer American Ladies and Friends: Tropes of Lesbian Relationality in American Literature, 1890–1940

Solomon, Melissa.  Duke University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2005. 3231793.

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definition of Modernism - Naomi, Lily, Dominika and Alliyat 

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definition of Modernism - Naomi, Lily, Dominika and Alliyat 

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In his book All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman refers to different formulations of ‘modern’. ‘Modernity’ as a “body of experience... of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish.” (Berman, 15) Modern as an environment, and Modernisation as a series of social processes that bring modern life into being. He then argues that ‘modernism’ is a series of “visions and values” (Berman, 16) that people have developed whilst experiencing modernity, the modern and modernisation. In a sense, modernism is the aesthetic response to the process of modernisation and experience of modernity.

So, Modernism was a cultural and social movement that grappled with the developments and experiences of the modern world. In this way, ecological modernism tried to understand and explore modernity’s relationship with nature. It does this, however, mostly through the focus on the relationship the individual has to their (often rapidly changing in the context of modernity) environment or surroundings which did not necessarily have to be predominantly rural or dealing with non-human nature. Perhaps a better term or definition, then, would be environmental modernism. Modernism’s exploration of ecology was not inherently focused on non-human nature nor humanity’s relationship with this explicitly; it has been argued that modernists observed and acknowledged nature but failed to understand the full and sometimes negative effects of modernization on non-human nature. Modernist works often presented a positive image of nature in the modern world, with a focus on industrialisation, toxicity and the theme of regeneration through pollution (reminding us of the distance between the present and modernist thinking). While these themes had not previously been deemed aesthetically pleasing, they were characteristic of ecological modernist work, demonstrating how modernism revaluated what natural ‘beauty’ involves. This suggests modernity’s celebration, acceptance and exploration of the new.

Schuster, Joshua. “Introduction”. The Ecology of Modernism: American Environments and Avant-Garde Poetics. University of Alabama Press. 2015. Pp.1-21 https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/warw/detail.action?docID=2130651

Kalaidjian, Andrew. “Introduction.” Exhausted Ecologies: Modernism and Environmental Recovery, Cambridge University Press. 2021. Pp.1-36 https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1017/9781108775212

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Definition

Modernist texts focus less on a complex and fast-moving plot and more on the inner reality of individual experience and the thorough examination of one’s consciousness, and usually involve a “deliberate and radical break” from traditional forms of art and culture. If one were to focus on the United States, writers of this period assimilate to the ‘Lost Generation’ group, of which agree on the disillusionment of American culture and literary status-quo, post-war. Shaking faiths in multiple foundations of beliefs in Western civilisation spurred new forms and styles and literature, and these empathy-driven texts gave rise to a number of devices which enable a slow and deliberate exploration of a character’s psychology including interior monologue, stream-of-consciousness narration, temporal fragmentation, breaking continuity, violating syntax and sentence structure and shifting character focalisation. Modernist literature’s commitment to inner reality and thought patterns enables its representation of a rich variety of perspectives, which compliment rather than diminish each other. Through its self-reflection, modernism represents a variety of approaches to the modern world and realises a bringing outward of interiority through various modes of stylistic and linguistic representation. Furthermore, a new thought was the ability to criticise and, according to Rabaté, “modernism inherits from the Enlightenment the wish to found each discipline by criticising it, in a critique that does not come from outside but from inside”.

Hammond, Meghan Marie. Empathy and the Psychology Of Literary Modernism. Edinburgh Scholarship Online, 2014.

Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey Harpham. A glossary of literary terms. Cengage Learning, 2014.

Rabaté, Jean-Michel. A Handbook of Modernism Studies. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.

Example: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Modernist texts shift away from a fast-moving plot in favour of a deep character study, and Heart of Darkness does this very well. Further to this, it adheres to many other elements of modernist texts, such as the discussion of new or forbidden subjects and the way in which themes and meanings are conveyed implicitly and through untraditional symbols (for example, the way one normally associates light and dark with meaning have been reversed in Heart of Darkness). As for the psychological perspective, the story is told from the lens of someone who searches for meaning in their life and is partly autobiographical. We could then apply Freud's theory of mending through storytelling, which suggests that going back into one's past and into their unconscious allows them to discover the reasons behind human nature and behaviour.

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Definition of Modernism - Emilie, Lucy, Chloe. 

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Definition of Modernism - Emilie, Lucy, Chloe. 

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Modernism is a literary concept that was at its most popular during the 1920s and 1930s. Some influential modernist authors include Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Elliott and Gertrude Stein. Their literature was influenced by philosophers such as Nietzsche, Descartes and Bertrand Russell to name a few. Modernism can also be defined by an abstract style of writing that includes literary techniques such as the use of interior monologue, stream of consciousness and absurdism. A piece of literature that exemplifies this particular style of modernism is James Joyce’s Ulysses from 1922 which is a very famous example of the use of stream of consciousness.

Although one might think that modernism begins in the early twentieth century, its roots can be traced back to the nineteenth, in which the beginnings of modernism can be seen in all art forms, including poetry and music. Modernism in a literary sense also gave way to other literary movements, such as Pound's Imagism, which in turn inspired many writers, artists and thinkers. In this way, modernism is a general term rather than a specific one. It has its roots in other literary movements, one of the most prominent being futurism, an Italian notion which had a significant impact on English culture in the 1910s, offering an alliance of all different art forms in an attempt to look forwards to an increasingly industrialised world.

Texts used:

Rabaté, Jean-Michel. A Handbook of Modernism Studies (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2013), pp. 1-13.

Ayers, David. Modernism: A Short Introduction. (John Wiley & Sons, 2007.) pp. x-xii