May 2009

I enjoyed every talk I went to and learned a lot from them. The program from old conferences are available online.

I want to get a copy of Marcus Librizzi’s paper on “The Yellow Wallpaper” as ghost story. I think that adding that in as a section, perhaps even presenting the same story with three different introductions (psychological, gothic, and feminist) would be an interesting way to get introductory students to see literature as more involved than they might have thought othterwise.

I also thought Marcus’ talk would give me some good ideas for my SCMLA paper on the gothic in Sookie Stackhouse.

Peter Betjemann did a great job on introducing three different ways of looking at Gilman’s works. I was a little intimidated, honestly.

However, there could easily be a fourth (fifth, and sixth) way to introduce Gilman. I don’t think I have a handle on Peter’s approaches, though I have asked for a copy of his paper, so maybe I will be able to do that.

I appreciated his reference to Wm Carlos Wms on labeling, “use the old words.”

Jessica Lang did a great talk on third generation Holocaust texts. Her paper dealt with The Lost. Some interesting thoughts:
transmission of information becomes less full with each generation
third generation only has an indirect relation to the original experiences
quest for individuals of a lost family is different from the lost families
survival testimony is often not eyewitness
stories are based not on factual accounts but on absence

Laura Henigman presented a great talk on Abigail Bailey’s narrative on marriage. Bailey’s work focused on four years of her marriage, 1788-1792. The Bailey marriage ended sometime after Asa Bailey slept with his sixteen year old daughter.

Henigman described it as a captivity narrative (which lent itself to my thought on the mental asylum patients’ work as captivity narrative). She also discussed the legal system’s response to Asa Bailey’s transgressions. Incest was not a legal issue at the time and it would have been seen only as aggravated adultery. (Which does not grant Phoebe any status within the system except as scarlet woman.)

She also discussed how testimony of a daughter against her father would have been a dramatic inversion of family power. Phoebe, in fact, refused to testify.

Those were the Sunday talks I heard. One of the ones I wanted to hear, on two asylum narratives by Mary Wood, was not presented.

This is not a complete list. I would appreciate any recommendations of particularly teachable works of literature that would fit within a unit on 19th century madness, particularly works of American fiction.

Alcott, Louisa May Work: A Story of Experience 1873 includes a family who finds out insanity is in their genes and their individual responses
Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre 1847
Browning, Robert “Porphyria’s Lover” 1836
Carroll, Lewis Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 1862
Chopin, Kate The Awakening 1899
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness 1899
Dickens, Charles The Pickwick Papers 1836-7
Dickinson, Emily “Much madness is divinest sense” 1862?
Dostoevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment 1866
Dostoevsky, Fyodor The Double 1846
Flaubert, Gustave Memoirs of a Madman 1838
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins “The Yellow Wall-paper” 1892
Gogol, Nikolai “Diary of a Madman” 1835 diary entries follow the narrator into insanity
Hawthorne, Nathaniel “Young Goodman Brown” 1835
Kesey, Ken One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1962
Melville, Herman Moby Dick 1851
Poe, Edgar Allan “The Cask of Amontillado” 1846
Poe, Edgar Allan “The Fall of the House of Usher” 1839
Poe, Edgar Allan “The Tell Tale Heart” 1843
Scott, Sir Walter The Bride of Lammermoor, the story of a woman who goes mad when her man betrays her, 1819
Stevenson, Robert Louis Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1886
Whitman, Walt “Bervance” a man considers consigning his son to a lunatic asylum because of homosexuality 1841
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890

This is a list of art works which are related to madness or insanity or lunacy. If you are presenting a unit on mental illness, these would offer interesting counterpoints.

Blakelock, Ralph Albert. “Moonlight Sonata” 1892 an early painting, Blakelock spent many years in an asylum, still painting
Charcot, Jean Martin Photographs of Hysterical Women 1887-8
Cranach, Lucas “The Melancholy” 1588
Degas, Edgar “Melancholy” 1874
Durer, Albrecht “Melancholy” 1514
Eakins, Thomas “Retrospection” 1880 Possibly modeled on a sketch of an insane patient in a manuscript belonging to John Kearsley Mitchell that Eakins borrowed around that time.

Fetti, Domenico “Melancholy” 1622 This is the painting pictured above.
Goya, Francisco “Yard with Lunatics” 1793-4
Hogarth, William “The Interior of Bedlam” from The Rake’s Progress 1763
Munch, Edvard “Melancholy” 1896 (woodcut) Man staring off into a landscape
Munch, Edvard “Melancholy” 1899 (oil) Woman sitting in her house
Pinel, Phillippe “Releasing Lunatics from Their Chains at the Bicetre Asylum in Paris” 1793
Pinel, Phillippe “Releasing Lunatics from their Chains at the Salpetriere Asylum in Paris in 1795”
Repin, Ilya Yefimovich “Poprishchin” 1882 painting of the main character from Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman.” This work was the first to follow a madman through their diary.
Richer, Paul drawing series of mental patients in Salpetriere
Rosenthal, Toby Edward “Elaine” Elaine went mad from love and died. This is her bier. 1874
Vedder, Elihu (1836-1923) “The Lost Mind” a woman barefoot in the wilderness. Below is a photo of that painting by peterjr1961 off of flikr.

Collection of art through the ages which pictured insanity is on the blog Psychology and Practices for a Better World in Images of Madness.

I enjoyed this conference. It was not as large as I expected and a lot of the topics were not of interest to me. However, the panels I attended were very interesting. Most of them were, in fact, fascinating. Excellent topics done in a thought-provoking manner.

I gave my presentation and, somewhere along the way, I had lost sight of the session topic, which was Teaching Gilman. However, I did have a good fifteen minute presentation with some new information on Gilman that no one else has come up with and I also had a good handout of materials for teaching insanity. I’ll post those here later.

My presentation was small. There were six people in the room besides the panel. Since it was Sunday afternoon and the last panel of a four day conference, I was actually pleased with the number attending.

After the talks, I had three people ask me positive questions, which I was able to answer without difficulty (always good, that).

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and, unlike others, I left that one with loads of ideas of articles to write, other conference papers to pursue, and other ways to teach things I already teach. I have to say it was one of the most useful conferences I have attended recently.

I went to a panel on teaching 19th century literature in the 21st century. It was fascinating. Found all these wonderful ideas: primary document discussions (x2), podcasts of poetry, second life on the House of the Seven Gables, and websites on place and text… The one I can’t imagine doing anytime soon unless I end up at U1 or SLAC is the scholarly text editions. In that case, I might get to do that. But regardless, the ideas were good.

I also went to a panel on women and ghosts. Got some interesting ideas on the double and gothic literature. Made me think of Sookie. Who would be Sookie’s double? And I wondered about Claudine. She’s the strong woman, the woman able to do things, and then, when she fades into the cult of domesticity- pregnant and knitting baby outfits, she is murdered. It’s an idea to think about. Sex leads to murder in one of those books (the orgies one). And she goes to Nashville to save Bill because of love and he’s there because of love… It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know how gothic it is. I need to do more background reading on gothic.

There’s a reception with free alcohol. I’m not there. Instead I’m in the lobby web surfing. I’ll probably go get something to eat soon. Do I go for real Boston food or California Pizza Kitchen? (It’s two blocks away.)

Size
It’s a smaller conference than I expected. Most of the people attending are presenting. Which makes sense, I guess. If I weren’t presenting, I wouldn’t be here. That’s somewhat because it is so far away, but Texans tend to travel more than Northeasterners. So even though it’s closer for a lot of people, I am not totally surprised there are not many people here.

Newspaper Poetry session
I went to a really good conference session last night and came away with all these ideas about things I should study. It was very interesting. All five panelists talked about newspaper poetry. And, believe it or not, it was closely related to the first chapter of my dissertation.

Maybe what I am most interested in is genre. Which I already knew. But how does that translate into papers in other places?

Part of the issue that was discussed, not so much by the panelists as by the audience, was the genre of newspaper poetry. What does that mean?

It is certainly an area that has been disregarded.

William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams apparently wrote quite a bit of poetry for his Patterson, New Jersey paper, but did not include those in a published comprehensive list of his poetry that he and his sister put together.

I have to say that I like William Carlos Williams more this year than I have ever liked him before. I didn’t like the story or the poem that most anthologies include and I had never had reason to read anything else of his.

But this semester we had his poem about Engine Number 5, along with a painting done by a friend, and I really liked it.

Then one of the speakers talked of WmCWms’ poetry in the paper, interesting poetry about events important to Patterson, NJ. And I was fascinated. Maybe I have developed a love for the occasional poem or, more likely, I have always had it and I am becoming more enthralled as I age.

I am giving a presentation in two days and my paper is 3x too long. What do I cut? What do I cut? Do I drop the historical information? Do I just go for a minimal discussion of the background and launch into the meat of the matter?

I really need to decide this soon. Anyone have any ideas?

Some incredibly careful thought went into this post, which features art dealing with madness throughout the ages. I especially liked/disliked Breughel. The marginalia was interesting. And I appreciated being recalled to The Wild Man.

I am referencing the post in my presentation in Boston on Sunday.

Directions: Below there are lists of celebrities and the products they endorse. Number their endorsements from most believable to least believable. Your group must come to an agreement.

Bill Cosby
Coca Cola
Jell-O
Del Monte
Ford
Kodak

50 Cents
Lifestyle condoms
Bulletproof, the game for PS2
Blood on the Sands, comic book

Ellen Degeneres
Cover Girl makeup
America Express card

Michael Jordan
Nike equipment
Gatorade sports drink
Hanes underwear
McDonald’s
Chevrolet

Peyton Manning
Sony
MasterCard
DirecTV
Gatorade

Jessica Simpson
Hair Do product
Tarrant Apparel jeans
Proactiv acne products

Tiger Woods
Nike equipment
Titleist golf balls
Gatorade sports drink
Gillette razors
American Express card
Buick

This is what I took with me to the interview yesterday. I did the talk, instead of the activity or the film clip. But I had this activity on the handout and I told them where to go to watch the film clip.