The American Literature Pillow Fort

[Mattie Roh]

20th and 21st century American drama is my jam. David Mamet is my main author of interest within this field; my one PhD acceptance, UT Austin, has his complete papers in their humanities library, which is just... tremendous. Suzan Lori-Parks, Tony Kushner, and Eugene O'Neill are some other favorites. (I highly recommend Parks' TopDog/UnderDog to everyone here; a tremendous play on race and American history. Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright were the leads when the play was first performed, which is also cool.)

 

The main research project I (briefly) outlined in my SOP is how American playwrights like Mamet and Parks stage a fragmented epistemology. This ties into the figure of the confidence artist, which is replete in Mamet's body of work and a main theme in TopDog/Underdog. I'm interested in how plays involving confidence games, ones that usually have "twist" or "reveal" endings, usurp traditional epistemological expectations. I have an inkling that this will involve reader/audience response theory, particularly with regard to horizon of expectations. 

 

Though I don't consider myself strictly an Americanist, I'm interesting in American drama as well. Specifically, I'm interested in the rise of the professional and how the portrayal of occupation differs between novelists and playwrights (Mary E. Wilkins's The Portion of Labor vs. Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty, for example). Funnily enough, I was gearing up to direct Mamet's Race this spring for a community theatre but was unable to cast it (I live in an area with few minorities). Do you consider Race to involve a type of con game?

[pannpann]

My heart beats for 1950s literature and cultural studies. War and postwar culture are just so fascinating, and I've only just begun scraping the surface. I wrote a thesis in undergrad on the role of WWII in JD Salinger's fiction. I'm especially interested in discussing the why certain authors/texts are written off by academia as too middle brow to be taken seriously (Salinger, Shirley Jackson, Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut) and what those exclusions say about the society that forms them. I am also very big into the Beats, especially the female perspective of an ultimately patriarchal artistic community (if you haven't read How I Became Hettie Jones you are doing yourself  a disservice.) 

[SilasWegg]

I'm so glad the Americanists on GC have united. I thought the medievalists were going to run us out of town!

 

So, right now I'm working on Melville's stories in Putnam's Monthly. I'm trying to argue that Melville's mid-career shift to periodical writing is a result of both marketplace demands and massive changes in the mid-century social order. I spend a lot of time reading in the actual periodicals, studying correspondence between Melville and his publishers, looking at lots of social theory on antebellum culture. I'm also putting together a historical note for an autobiography written by an enslaved Virginian. Hopefully, if we can get it together, it will be published (along with a digital edition of the text) on this great web publication called British Virginia. As far as critical stuff, I'm interested in narrative theory and theory on racialization... especially IRT antebellum writing.

 

I'm not entirely stuck in the early nineteenth-century though! I've done lots of work on the Objectivists (Louis Zukosky and George Oppen) and I'm really into Black Mountain writers, especially Robert Duncan, and that whole thing. My spanish is good and I've been working on translations of Cesar Aira and Cesar Vallejo. Though these writers are South American, I see no reason to exclude them from Americanist Studies!

[squankabonk]

I just read Sanctuary for the first time...

 

 

Currently writing my MA thesis on Faulkner and film. In theory, I'm finishing a chapter on Sanctuary this week. My mind is getting to be quite warped.

 

More generally, I like reading book reviews, probably too much. My research focuses on how novels/films get discussed in popular discourses. Super interested in how both novelists and popular reviewers negotiated the advent of film. 

 

This thread is cool and good.

[silenus_thescribe]

Though I don't consider myself strictly an Americanist, I'm interesting in American drama as well. Specifically, I'm interested in the rise of the professional and how the portrayal of occupation differs between novelists and playwrights (Mary E. Wilkins's The Portion of Labor vs. Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty, for example). Funnily enough, I was gearing up to direct Mamet's Race this spring for a community theatre but was unable to cast it (I live in an area with few minorities). Do you consider Race to involve a type of con game?

 

Not strictly speaking, but it does involve the mindset of a con artist, as many of Mamet's plays do. As James Spader said when he was being interviewed for the Broadway debut of that play, Race exists in "the world Mamet writes about in his plays", where things are viewed through "the prism of hustlers and con-men". My undergrad thesis is on how Mamet depicts the transition from childhood to adulthood as a sort of initiation into this world, so I agree with Spader in that the mindset of the con artist is there, even if there isn't a traditionally understood confidence game, in the way there is in films of Mamet's like House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner.

 

That's a shame you didn't get to cast your play! I think it's a good one, and very misunderstood, at that. I was lucky to catch the Pacific Northwest debut of it back in 2012, where it was given a fine showing.

[butalas]

I'm so glad the Americanists on GC have united. I thought the medievalists were going to run us out of town!

 

So, right now I'm working on Melville's stories in Putnam's Monthly. I'm trying to argue that Melville's mid-career shift to periodical writing is a result of both marketplace demands and massive changes in the mid-century social order. I spend a lot of time reading in the actual periodicals, studying correspondence between Melville and his publishers, looking at lots of social theory on antebellum culture. I'm also putting together a historical note for an autobiography written by an enslaved Virginian. Hopefully, if we can get it together, it will be published (along with a digital edition of the text) on this great web publication called British Virginia. As far as critical stuff, I'm interested in narrative theory and theory on racialization... especially IRT antebellum writing.

 

I'm not entirely stuck in the early nineteenth-century though! I've done lots of work on the Objectivists (Louis Zukosky and George Oppen) and I'm really into Black Mountain writers, especially Robert Duncan, and that whole thing. My spanish is good and I've been working on translations of Cesar Aira and Cesar Vallejo. Though these writers are South American, I see no reason to exclude them from Americanist Studies!

 

 

Hey this sounds super interesting! What are you looking at specifically in terms of social theory on antebellum culture?

[Mattie Roh]

Not strictly speaking, but it does involve the mindset of a con artist, as many of Mamet's plays do. As James Spader said when he was being interviewed for the Broadway debut of that play, Race exists in "the world Mamet writes about in his plays", where things are viewed through "the prism of hustlers and con-men". My undergrad thesis is on how Mamet depicts the transition from childhood to adulthood as a sort of initiation into this world, so I agree with Spader in that the mindset of the con artist is there, even if there isn't a traditionally understood confidence game, in the way there is in films of Mamet's like House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner.

 

That's a shame you didn't get to cast your play! I think it's a good one, and very misunderstood, at that. I was lucky to catch the Pacific Northwest debut of it back in 2012, where it was given a fine showing.

 

Ahhh! I'm so jealous. Thanks for the link -- I tend to forget about actual videos when doing research. I, too, agree that the play is misunderstood. I think it is viewed rather simplistically by most people ("Oh, Mamet's just trying to rile us up...").

[SilasWegg]

Hey this sounds super interesting! What are you looking at specifically in terms of social theory on antebellum culture?

 

Right now I'm putting together an introductory thesis chapter with a brief review of lit so this is on my mind a lot right now. I've been looking at (in no particular order) Michael Warner's Letters of the Republic, Carolyn Karchner's Shadow Over the Promised Land, Robert Levine's Dislocating Race and Nation, Michael Paul Rogin's Subversive Genealogy, Meredith McGill's Culture of Reprinting, Russel Resing's Closure and Crisis in the American Social Text, George Dekker's American Historical Romance.

 

Some of this might not be considered purely theoretical, especially compared to the European philosophers that dominate theoretical conversations. A lot of it is based in historical studies, textual analysis, and examinations of marketplace issues.

 

As far as my own studies of antebellum culture, lately I've been studying prisons, reformatories, and charitable institutions in NYC in the 1840s and 1850s.

[silenus_thescribe]

I, too, agree that the play is misunderstood. I think it is viewed rather simplistically by most people ("Oh, Mamet's just trying to rile us up...").

 

Race is quite similar to Oleanna in the way critics misunderstand it, I think. (Been meaning to write a paper about this.) Too often critics focus on the specific standpoints of the various characters and assume Mamet is taking one side. For instance, lots of those who view Oleanna negatively assume that Mamet is taking John (the professor's) side. To me, both Race and Oleanna are about the overall structure of the respective conversations (sexual and racial politics, respectively), rather than the particular views expressed by the characters in the plays.

 

A big part of what feeds what in my view are the misreadings of these plays is Mamet's admittedly bonkers take on politics, which is super heavy-handed and rhetorical. His book on politics, The Secret Knowledge, is pretty bad. Unfortunately people have taken his becoming more outspoken about politics in tandem with his most recent work, and assume that those plays are merely polemic functions of his political worldview, which is, I think, a wrong move. 

[Mattie Roh]

Race is quite similar to Oleanna in the way critics misunderstand it, I think. (Been meaning to write a paper about this.) Too often critics focus on the specific standpoints of the various characters and assume Mamet is taking one side. For instance, lots of those who view Oleanna negatively assume that Mamet is taking John (the professor's) side. To me, both Race and Oleanna are about the overall structure of the respective conversations (sexual and racial politics, respectively), rather than the particular views expressed by the characters in the plays.

 

A big part of what feeds what in my view are the misreadings of these plays is Mamet's admittedly bonkers take on politics, which is super heavy-handed and rhetorical. His book on politics, The Secret Knowledge, is pretty bad. Unfortunately people have taken his becoming more outspoken about politics in tandem with his most recent work, and assume that those plays are merely polemic functions of his political worldview, which is, I think, a wrong move. 

 

I completely agree. I think one can strongly disagree with Mamet's politics and still enjoy his plays because they are set up exactly as you say -- as conversations that show both sides to an issue.

 

So nice to have a discussion with another drama scholar! But I've hijacked this thread long enough so I'll stop now.

[ToldAgain]

My people! I am into anything from 19th c. onward, and do research on war culture and the evolution of utopian literature.

 

Currently making a decision between attending the University of Kentucky or Missouri for my MA and having a heck of a time.

[BLeonard]

Americanist here, focusing on early American literature and 20th century/contemporary lit, with a subspecialty in "genre fiction." I've done a lot of work as an undergrad trying to bring together canonical works with works considered less so -- connecting Faulkner to Lovecraft, for example. I was recently accepted into a PhD program, and am still trying to figure out what my next move is. 

[NowMoreSerious]

Americanist here, focusing on early American literature and 20th century/contemporary lit, with a subspecialty in "genre fiction." I've done a lot of work as an undergrad trying to bring together canonical works with works considered less so -- connecting Faulkner to Lovecraft, for example. I was recently accepted into a PhD program, and am still trying to figure out what my next move is. 

 

That's interesting.  So do you sort of "hop" over the 19th century?

 

Also, congrats on the Ph.D. acceptance.  Your next move obviously might depend on where you got in.   

[Dr. Old Bill]

Americanist here, focusing on early American literature and 20th century/contemporary lit, with a subspecialty in "genre fiction." I've done a lot of work as an undergrad trying to bring together canonical works with works considered less so -- connecting Faulkner to Lovecraft, for example. I was recently accepted into a PhD program, and am still trying to figure out what my next move is. 

 

That sounds very interesting! I mentioned elsewhere on GC a few months ago that I see some strong parallels between Flannery O'Connor's short stories and Stephen King's. It sounds crazy, but I see a lot of stylistic similarities, despite one being largely canonical, and the other decidedly not.

 

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for a lot of 20th century American literature. I'll never be an Americanist, but Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, James, O'Connor etc. have long made inroads on my intellectual life.

[BLeonard]

That's interesting.  So do you sort of "hop" over the 19th century?

 

Also, congrats on the Ph.D. acceptance.  Your next move obviously might depend on where you got in.   

 

Thank you! I have studied the 19th century -- Hawthorne, Poe, Melville -- but I'm more centered around authors of the period rather than being able to consider the overarching period as a whole. However, I am really fascinated by Civil War literature.

 

That sounds very interesting! I mentioned elsewhere on GC a few months ago that I see some strong parallels between Flannery O'Connor's short stories and Stephen King's. It sounds crazy, but I see a lot of stylistic similarities, despite one being largely canonical, and the other decidedly not.

 

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for a lot of 20th century American literature. I'll never be an Americanist, but Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, James, O'Connor etc. have long made inroads on my intellectual life.

 

My ongoing argument/thought about King is that while he's a fantastic storyteller and composer of horror/supernatural fiction, particularly in the short story form, his place in the "canon" is important in a different way. I think he functions as a regional writer -- much like O'Connor -- and he also should be considered as someone who's able to capture working class life in the late 20th/early 21st century better than most. I think much how we read Dickens less for the story and more for his portrayal of Victorian England, King will be looked at as someone who was able to capture what it was like to be alive in that historical moment. (Crime fiction does this as well.)

[SilasWegg]

Anybody going to MELcamp?

[silenus_thescribe]

Anybody going to MELcamp?

 

I'm not familiar. This a conference, I presume?

 

On a related note: anyone know of good conferences for 20th/21st century American? There are some I know of, Post-45 being one of them, but otherwise I'm mostly in the dark.

[echo449]

This is one a professor at my current institution recomends for graduate students especially: http://louisville.edu/english/Calendar/the-louisville-conference-on-literature-and-culture-since-1900