Tag: Oral Session 1 M

Refinement of Poetics

Presenter(s): Dakota Kelsey

Oral Session 1 M

Since joining the Walter and Nancy Kidd Creative Writing Workshops in the fall term of 2018 my creative writing work has improved. My exposure to a curriculum of focused workshopping and powerful craft essays has refined my execution and understating of both poetic forms and structure. I have developed a stronger personal taste for and perception of the craft of poetry and wish to share it with the creative community. I am grateful for my time in the program and how it has shaped my understanding of writing. I hope to use my newly refined skills to show both appreciation for the program and how important it is to constantly strive for improvement of an artistic craft.

“Bannabees,” Bananas, and Sweet Potatoes: Claude McKay’s Songs of Jamaica and Traditional Jamaican Foodways as a Nationalist Expression

Presenter(s): Sarah Hovet

Faculty Mentor(s): Corbett Upton

Oral Session 1 M 

Jamaican poet Claude McKay is largely anthologized for a handful of poems he contributed to the Harlem Renaissance, but his early work authored in Jamaica has long been dismissed for a variety of racist and xenophobic reasons.This overlooked material includes his first two poetry collections, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads, both authored in Jamaica before he moved to New York. Even his friend, benefactor, and mentor Walter Jekyll characterized Songs of Jamaica as “naive” in his introduction to McKay’s complete poems. However, these two collections, which mix traditional English forms with Jamaican peasant dialect, constitute vital parts of McKay’s oeuvre. Songs of Jamaica in particular exhibits a mastery of Jamaican peasant dialect in combination with extensive allusions to traditional folkways in order to make an anticolonialist, nationalist assertion about Jamaica, the country McKay so loved. I will analyze the role of Jamaican peasant dialect and foodways in making this nationalist assertion in order to advance my claim that McKay’s early poetry is at least as sophisticated and versatile as his subsequent collections authored in the States. By turns, McKay praises native Jamaican crops such as the banana, sweet potato, and Bonavist bean for their gustatory, nutritional, and economic superiority to crops imported by colonialism.

Ken Kaneki Outside of the Panels: Manga as a Bridge into the Hyperreal

Presenter(s): Mary Green

Faculty Mentor(s): Tera Reid-Olds & Pearl Lee

Oral Session 1 M 

Hyperreality, in short, is the indistiction between reality and a simulated reality, according to postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard. Protagonist Ken Kaneki of Sui Ishida’s Japanese manga, Tokyo Ghoul, is a young man trapped in a body that is not distinctly human or nonhuman. His liminality, and perhaps more importantly his popularity among fans, provides a convenient allegory for the manga’s presence within hyperreality. As canonical manga comes out, exponentially more Ken Kaneki related material is being produced as fanfiction (fan-produced content based on established characters and narratives) on the internet, a massive platform of the hyperreal. By exploring texts by famed comics theorists Scott McCloud and Charles Hatfield, along with contemporary cultural theorist Azuma Hiroki, and applying their research to Ken Kaneki’s character, I argue that the elements that make manga unique as a form are what allow for manga to be an easy bridge into hyperreality. It is through Tokyo Ghoul’s simultaneous use of abstraction, simulacrum, various panel transitions, mimesis, and coded texts and images that the life and subjectivity of Ken Kaneki is spawned and sustained within the hyperreal.

Violence to Women in Superhero Comics

Violence to Women in Superhero Comics

Sarah Faulkner

Faculty Mentor(s): Katherine Kelp-Stebbins

Oral Session 1 M 

Since the first issue of Action Comics, violence has been a staple in superhero comics. The violence in these comics is normalized and often forgettable, especially when the violence is done to women, with a few exceptions designed to highlight behavior. This project explores male violence toward women within the superhero narrative using feminist theory and female- authored responses to the content and comic book culture, as well as a comparison to the circumstances when a woman in superhero comics resorts to violence. In order to understand cultural female representation within graphic narratives, this project analyzes visual and verbal cues that identify the intended audience, what constitutes as violence in comics, the targets of violence, and under what circumstances violence against women is acceptable. The violence comes through language, predatory behavior, sexual assault, rape, and murder. These actions put into media desensitizes viewers of the material, either with frequency or the setting up of the character. The violence towards women in superhero comics serves as an excuse to have an action sequence to move along the hero’s development, plot, or to critique a the medium, which normalizes the violence and ignores the woman. This reflects ingrained views of how women are treated.

The Rise in Popularity of Reggaetón: How Has Whiteness and U.S. Culture Commodified the Latin Sound?

Presenter(s): Ana Daza

Faculty Mentor(s): Laura Pulido & Brian Klopotek

Oral Session 1 M

This research explores whether the release of the song “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, featuring Justin Bieber, ignited an increase of popularity in reggaetón, a music genre with origins in the Caribbean and U.S. hip-hop. Through a cultural comparative study, the research studies the history of both rap/hip-hop and Latin music as sounds that have been commodified by and for the white listener. The research implements several literature sources, such as George Lipsitz and bell-hooks, as well as data analysis provided by Google Trends and BuzzAngle Music reports. A historical comparison of the older reggaetón genre to today’s music shows a distinct change in sound that plainly targets white U.S. audiences. Similarly to hip-hop, and Latin music overall, reggaetón musicians have capitalized their commodification by appealing to certain standards set under a white gaze (e.g., more of a pop/U.S. trap influence, certain fashion trends, specific personas displayed in music videos and performances). It’s important to also acknowledge that, perhaps, reggaetón and Latin music have simply become more popular due to the high population of Latinx in the U.S. However, these peoples and their cultural expressions have been in the U.S. for a very long time, and only in the last two years has this genre become as popular as it is now. I hope to conclude my research by reinforcing how important cultural expression is for people of color and minorities and why it’s ultimately problematic for these to become commodified for capitalistic profit.