Engl. 772-01 Literary Period

Contemporary American

Research Links

Absurdism/Existentialism
Feminism
Multi-culturalism
Postmodernism
Selected Authors
Selected Dramatists

Absurdism and Existentialism

Absurdism--definition from Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms

Introduction to Absurd Drama--selection from Martin Esslin's classic study.

The Theatre of the Absurd: The West and the East--Absurdism, in the context of the Cold War era.

A Cry toward the Absurd: Existentialism--another short introduction to some key ideas and representatives.

Some Main Points from Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotions: Lecture Outline--very helpful summary of Sartre's key points; a link is also provided to the full lecture.

Existentialism is a Humanism--classic essay by Jean Paul Sartre (translation).

Feminism

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex--major selections from this feminist classic. See especially Beauvoir's Introduction: Woman as Other.

Kate Millett, "Theory of Sexual Politics"--Chapter 2 of Sexual Politics.

Betty Friedan, "The Problem that Has No Name" --Chapter 1 of The Feminine Mystique. See also Friedan's "The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud"--Chapter 5 of The Feminine Mystique.

The Laugh of Medusa--selections from Cixous' essay. See also a selection from Cixous' Sorties.

Luce Irigaray--summary of some of her key ideas.

From Irigaray"s "This Sex Which Is Not One" (1977) and from Cixous' "The Laugh of the Medusa"--selections from two classic essays.

Butler I: On Gender and Sex and Butler II: On Performativity --Felluga's site with good summaries of Butler's theories of gender as "performance."

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble--short biography and summary of her key ideas. See also this summary of some of Butler's ideas.

Smelik's Carousel of Genders--essay on post-modern gender performance in pop culture (Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc.)

Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" --long selection from Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Here are links to essays by and about Haraway.

Feminist Approaches to the Literary and Cultural Representation of Women --good historical overview of the development of feminist theory.

Gender on the Borderlands: Re-textualizing the Classics --scholarly article on Chicana lesbianism and related issues.

Race and Multi-culturalism

"In the Realm of the Imagination": Afro-American Literature and the American Canon --Yarborough's scholarly article.

Reframing the Multiculturalism Debates and Remapping American Studies --Shelley Fisher Fishkin's scholarly article.

What Was Jim Crow? --history of racial segregation in America, late 19th century to beginning of Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. See also Remembering Jim Crow --helpful introductions to a collection of oral histories. Another good site, produced by PBS: The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.

Black (African-American) Literary Criticism --good summary of key points.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., from "A Myth of Origins: Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey" --important scholarly article.

Bell Hooks, "Postmodern Blackness" --essay.

Gloria Anzaldúa, from Borderlands/La Frontera --important development of the "border" concept.

Borderland Voices in Anzaldua's Borderland/La Frontera --very helpful discussion/explanation of key Anzaldua concepts.

Metaphors of a Mestiza Consciousness: Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera --scholarly article.

Edward Said, from Orientalism --on Asian stereotypes.

Trinh T. Minh-ha, from "Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism" --post-colonial essay.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, from "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses" --on the dangers of imposing our values on other cultures.

Studies in American Indian Literature: Indexes --back issues, many links to scholarly articles.

Postmodernism

Some Attributes of Post-modernist Literature (Brock U) --helpful list of concepts.

Metafiction (Emory U) --introductory summary.

The ABCs of Reality Construction --writer's introduction to strategies of metafiction.

PoMo Table --contrasts modern and postmodern.

Postmodernism (Klages)--summary of key ideas.

Hutcheon I: On Postmodernity; Hutcheon II: On Parody ; Jameson II: On Pastiche; Baudrillard II: On Simulation --Felluga's site with excellent summaries of some key Pomo concepts.

Theorizing--Feminism and Postmodernity: A Conversation with Linda Hutcheon --helpful comments from a major PoMo theorist.

"Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern" by Linda Hutcheon --essay.

Historiographic Metafiction --outline summary of Hutcheon's ideas.

A Critique of Baudrillard --good student paper on Baudrillard's "simulacrum" theory on the "disappearance of the real."

Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (selection). Alternate source: Simulacra . . . (selection).

Baudrillard's "Disneyworld Company" --Baudrillard on our theme park world.

Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition--Chapters 1-5.

Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism --two sections from chapter 1. Here is another copy of Jameson's "Cultural Logic . . .", with illustrations.

Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" --long selection.

Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto" --detailed summary of Haraway's argument. Another summary: Cyborg . . ..

Bell Hooks, "Postmodern Blackness"--essay.

Michel Foucault, The Archæology of Knowledge--Chapter 1.

Smells like Avant-Pop: An Introduction, of Sorts --unorthodox paper explaining "avant-pop."

Selected Authors

Acker, Kathy

Acker, Kathy | INTRODUCTION --biography/commentary.
Kathy Acker: Stiletto Feature --Acker comments on her writing and life.
A Conversation with Kathy Acker --interview.
Theoretical Grrrl: The Legacy of Kathy Acker --commentary on Acker's writings and life.
A French Feminist Response to Kathy Acker's 'Dead Doll Humility,' Written in the Phallocentric Tradition --good graduate student paper.
Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Post-Modern Fiction --book review; defines cyberpunk.
The Language of the Body --e-text of Acker story.
'The Hideous Monster and the Beaver': Sadomasochistic Language in Blood and Guts in High School --scholarly article.
Incest and Innocence: Janey's Youth in Acker's Blood and Guts in High School --scholarly article.
'I Can't Get Sexual Genders Straight': Kathy Acker's Writing of Bodies and Pleasures --scholarly article.
'But who is any longer interested in the possible?': Kathy Acker in Hell Failing Fuck You --scholarly article.

Anaya, Rudolpho

Message from the Inca --e-text of Anaya story, plus good introduction to Anaya's writing by Michele Bottalico.

Anzaldúa, Gloria

Gloria Anzaldúa, from Borderlands/La Frontera --important development of the "border" concept.
Borderland Voices in Anzaldua's Borderland/La Frontera --very helpful discussion/explanation of key Anzaldua concepts.
Gloria Anzaldua's Queer Mestisaje --scholarly article.
Metaphors of a Mestiza Consciousness: Anzaldua's 'Borderlands/La Frontera' --scholarly article.

Ashbery, John

Ashbery links --to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.
'The tension is in the concept': John Ashbery's Surrealism --scholarly article.

Baraka, Amiri

Baraka Links --to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.

Barth, John

Study Questions: Barth
Barth's "Menelaiad"--helpful diagram.
Reading John Barth--another essay on Barth as post-modernist.
Intertextuality and Self-referentiality in Lost in the Funhouse--student paper
Self-Knowledge and Self-Conception: The Therapy of Autobiography in John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse --scholarly article.
Done with Mirrors: Restoring the Authority Lost in John Barth's Funhouse--Worthington's scholarly article.
The Common Quest for the Alternative Model of the Individual in Haraway and Barth--Haraway's ideas applied to Barth's "Petition."

Barthelme, Donald

Barthelme--many links
Some Concepts Helpful (or at least harmless) in Reading Donald Barthelme --amusing and helpful.
Donald Barthelme: A Study of the Short Fiction --book review; summarizes common approaches to Barthelme's fiction.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

Brooks' Links --to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.

Coover, Robert

Short biography.
Study questions: Phantom of the Movie Palace
The End of Books --Coover essay on the future of hypertext writing.
This Collapsing of Boundaries: Fiction and Reality in Robert Coover’s “The Phantom of the Movie Palace” and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. --good student essay.
Books of the Times --book review of the Coover collection that includes "Phantom of the Movie Palace."
Splice Memory --book review of the Coover collection that includes "Phantom of the Movie Palace."
Postmodernism as a Problematics of the Suspension of Difference: Robert Coover’s 'The Phantom of the Movie Palace' --scholarly paper.

DeLillo, Don

Don DeLillo's White Noise: The Natural Language of the Species --scholarly article.

Ellison, Ralph

Ellison links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.

Ginsberg, Allen

Ginsberg links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.
From The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later --several reminisces about Ginsberg and 'Howl.'
Homoerotic Romanticism and the Poetry of Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and Allen Ginsberg--scholarly paper.
Allen Ginsberg's FBI File--interesting article.
'I'm Not His Father': Lionel Trilling, Allen Ginsberg, and the Contours of Literary Modernism --scholarly article.
Allen Ginsberg and Mary Jane --articl on Ginsberg's attitude towards marijuana.

Johnson, Joyce

No Girls Allowed: Women Poets and the Beat Generation --scholarly article.
More than Minor Characters: Women of the Beat --links to several essays.

Kerouac, Jack

Beating Time: Configurations of Temporality in Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' --scholarly article.
The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs --book review; good intro. to beat spiritual concerns.
Kerouac's 'The Subterraneans': A Study of "Romantic Primitivism --scholarly article.

Kingston, Maxine Hong

Cultural Politics and Chinese-American Female Subjectivity: Rethinking Kingston's Woman Warrior --scholarly article.
Authorizing Female Voice and Experience: Ghosts and Spirits in Kingston's 'The Woman Warrior' and Allende's 'The House of the Spirits' --scholarly article.
Engendering Genre: Gender and Nationalism in 'China Men' and 'The Woman Warrior' --scholarly article.

Lee, Chang-Rae

Reading Contests and Contesting Reading: Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker and Ethnic New York --scholarly article.
'Just Another Ethnic Pol': Literary Citizenship in Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker --scholarly article.

Lee, Li-Young

Inheritance and Invention in Li-Young Lee's Poetry --scholarly article.
The Politics of Ethnic Authorship: Li-YOung Lee, Emerson, and WHitman at the Banquet Table --scholarly article.
Beyond Lot's Wife: The Immigration Poems of Marilyn Chin, Garrett Hongo, Li-Young Lee, and David Mura --scholarly article.

LeGuin, Ursula

Schroedinger's cat --explanation of the "thought experiment."
Schrödinger's Cat: An Episode of Paralleled Realities --student essay.

Levertov, Denise

Levertov links --to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.
Presence, Silence and the Holy in Denise Levertov's Poems --scholarly article.
Denise Levertov Sings 'the unheard music of that vanished lyre' --scholarly article.

Lowell, Robert

Lowell links --to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.

Matrix, The

Demons, Saviors, and Simulacra in The Matrix --critical essay.
Simulacra and Simulation: Baudrillard and The Matrix --critical essay. See links in left column to many other responses to this movie.
The Matrix and Jean Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulations' --critical essay.
High on Technology — Low on Memory: Cultural Crisis in Dark City and The Matrix --scholarly article.

Morrison, Toni

Morrison links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.

Mukherjee, Bharati

The Technological Hybrid as Post-American: Cross-Cultural Genetics in 'Jasmine' --scholarly article.

O'Connor, Flannery

Coat --e-text of early O'Connor story first published in 1996.
Study Questions: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find".
O'Connor's Comments on "Good Man".
Chapter 8: Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge--commentary on eight O'Connor stories.
Good Country People: Nihilist Hypocrites --helpful student essay.
Placing Violence, Embodying Grace: Flannery O'Connor's 'Displaced Person' --scholarly article.
Anagogical Vision and Comedic Form in Flannery O'Connor: The Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable --scholarly article on "Enduring Chill."
Flannery O'Connor's Misfit and the Mystery of Evil --scholarly article.
'One of my babies': The Misfit and the Grandmother - in Flannery O'Connor's Short Story 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find' --scholarly article.
The Function of Signature in 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find' --scholarly article.
O'Connor's Mrs. May and Oates's Connie: An Unlikely Pair of Religious Initiates --scholarly article.
'For Christ's Sake Fix Him': Use of the Child in Two Stories by Flannery O'Connor --scholarly article.
'Erasing Angel': The Lucifer-Trickster Figure in Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction --scholarly article.

Olsen, Tillie

Flowing against the Traditional Stream: Consciousness in Tillie Olsen's 'Tell Me a Riddle' --scholarly article.
Tillie Olsen's 'Tell Me a Riddle': The Dialectics of Silence --scholarly article.

Paley, Grace

Grace Paley's Faith: The Journey Homeward, the Journey Forward"--scholarly article.
Faith and the 'Black thing': Political Action and Self-questioning in Grace Paley's Short Fiction --scholarly article.

Plath, Sylvia

Plath links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.
More Plath links--to poems and scholarly articles.
Sylvia Plath--paintings on which a number of Plath's poems were based.
The Monster in Plath's 'Mirror' --scholarly article.
The Doxies of Daughterhood: Plath, Cixous, and the Father--scholarly article.
The Death Throes of Romanticism: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath--scholarly article by Joyce Carol Oates.
Ted Hughes and the Corpus of Sylvia Plath--scholarly article.
The Monster in Plath’s 'Mirror'--scholarly article.
Sylvia Plath's Transformations of Modernist Paintings --scholarly article.
Trapped in Language: Aspects of Ambiguity and Intertextuality in Selected Poetry and Prose by Sylvia Plath --scholarly article.
'Two Sweet Ladies': Sexton and Plath's Friendship and Mutual Influence --scholarly article.
Plath, Domesticity, and the Art of Advertising --scholarly article.
'I / Have a self to recover': The Restored Ariel --scholarly article.

Pynchon, Thomas

Pynchon Notes--articles available in the back issues of this scholarly journal.
The Crying of Lot 49--succinct summary of key issues in this novel.
Another Face of Entropy: Particles Self-organize to Make Room for Randomness--another take on Pynchon's "entropy" idea.
Ekphrasis, Escape, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 --scholarly article on Pynchon's use of the Remedios Varo painting. View Varo triptych discussed in the article: Toward the Tower (picture on left side); Embroidering the Earth's Mantle (center picture); The Escape (picture on right side).
Other than Postmodern?--Foucault, Pynchon, Hybridity, Ethics--scholarly article with some references to Lot 49.
CON-TEXT: Pynchon's Use of Parody--scholarly article.
Pynchon's Early Labyrinths --scholarly article.
Assembling Postmodernism: Experience, Meaning, and the Space In-between --scholarly article.
The "scanty plot": Orwell, Pynchon, and the Poetics of Paranoia --scholarly article.
Post-Oedipal Masses: Holding On to Our Paranoia --book review.

Rich, Adrienne

Rich links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.
More Rich links--to poems and scholarly articles.
Framing Water: Historical Knowledge in Elizabeth Bishop and Adrienne Rich --scholarly article.
Adrienne Rich: 'I happen to think poetry makes a huge difference.' --scholarly article.

Roethke, Theodore

Roethke links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.

Silko, Leslie Marmon

Leslie Marmon Silko--biography.
A Laguna Woman --biography; tradition of storytelling.
Rewriting Ethnography: The Embedded Texts in Leslie Silko's Ceremony --scholarly article.
CORE Ceremony: Index of Some Local Resources --links to helpful maps and photos relating to Silko's novel.
The Feminine Landscape in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony --scholarly article.
The Kaupata Motif in Silko's Ceremony: A Study of a Literary Homology --scholarly article.
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and the Effects of White Contact on Pueblo Myth and Ritual --scholarly article.
Writing Nature: Silko and Native Americans as Nature Writers --scholarly article.
Surviving What Haunts You: The Art of Invisibility in 'Ceremony,' 'The Ghost Writer,' and 'Beloved' --scholarly article.
The Ethnic Implications of Stories, Spirits, and the Land in Native American Pueblo and Aztlan Writing --scholarly article.
Ceremonies That Defeat Despair: 'things which don’t shift and grow are dead things' A Reading of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony--scholarly article.

Snyder, Gary

Snyder links--to study aids, scholarly articles, biographical information.
More Snyder links--to poems and scholarly articles.
Gary Snyer, Dôgen, and 'The Canyon Wren'; see also Response to 'Gary Snyder, Dôgen, and The Canyon Wren' --scholarly article.

Viramontes, Helena María

Hungry Women: Borderlands Mythos in Two Stories by Helena Maria Viramontes --scholarly article.
From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue In Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros --scholarly article.
La Llorona dines at the Cariboo Cafe: structure and legend in the work of Helena Maria Viramontes --scholarly article.
Multiple Articulations of Exile in US Latina Literature: Confronting Exilic Absence and Trauma --scholarly article.

Vizenor, Gerald

"Almost Browne" and "Trickster Photography"--online texts.
Study questions: Feral Lasers
Review of Landfill Meditations: Crossblood Stories--postmodern satire in the "Almost Browne" stories.
Postmodern Bears in the Texts of Gerald Vizenor--scholarly article.
Doubling in Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart: The Pilgrimage Strategy or Bunyan Revisited--scholarly article.
Chance and Ritual: The Gambler in the Texts of Gerald Vizenor--scholarly article on Bearheart and other fictions.
Text as Trickster: Postmodern Language Games in Gerald Vizenor's 'Bearheart' --scholarly article.
'Bad Breath': Gerald Vizenor's Lacanian Fable --scholarly article.
Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition-- book review; good intro. to Vizenor's strategies and themes.
Native American Trickster Tales--traditional trickster tales and links to many articles on tricksters.
Crossbloods and Postindians: Terminological Redefinition in the Work of Gerald Vizenor --student paper.

Vonnegut, Kurt

Harrison Bergeron --e-text of Vonnegut's short story.
The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' --scholarly article.

Selected Dramatists -- go to my American Drama web page.

Return to Nichols Home Page

Background graphics by: