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Eyes on Media, Technology, and Love at the Winter Graduate Student Colloquium
2009 Winter Graduate Student Colloquium Presenters Emily Hooper, Paul McCormick, and Lauren Clark
(left to right)
(left to right)
The English Department's Winter Graduate Student Colloquium featured papers focusing on the influence of media on art and society, and on the institution of slavery’s influence on familial love. The Colloquium started with an examination of the influence of film on literary representation techniques, transitioning to the arguments that techno-enthusiasts make for the possibility of a techno-utopia, and concluding with an interrogation of how the institution of slavery leads to the loss of boundaries between self and other.
PhD student Paul McCormick began the colloquium with his paper, "Soft-focus Unreliability and the Media Ecology of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'Jazz Age,'" a part of his developing dissertation project. His talk discussed the relevance of Hollywood's early soft–focus techniques for understanding narrative perspective in The Great Gatsby and, more importantly, for recognizing Fitzgerald's deft negotiation of his media environment.
MA student Lauren Clark followed with her paper "From Manfred to Max More: The Anxiety of Desire and the Posthuman Body in Liberal Society" on the connections between the Romantic and Postmodern concepts of the sublime and their connection to the unimaginable future which transhumanists claim technology makes possible for the human race. She points out the fundamental contradiction in transhumanist rhetoric, which uses humanist, individualist arguments to achieve a future where technology removes the boundaries between self and other. In other words, transhumanists' dualist construction of identity, combined with a problematic faith in the "sublime" power of contemporary technologies, allows them argue for a future in which the individual they seek to "free" will instead disappear.
MA student Emily Hooper concluded the colloquium with "'The best thing...was to love just a little bit': The Commodification of Love in Toni Morrison's Beloved," arguing that in Morrison's representation of the institution of slavery, that fact that African Americans were barred from owning property results in the characters construing the objects of their love as objects of property. This type of love becomes particularly problematic in the mother-child relationships in Beloved, where the mother's proprietary attitude toward her children results in violence and the loss of self.
Thanks to the three presenters and to EGO Steering Committee members Cassie Patterson, Kara Spaulding, Jennifer Herman, and Joy Futrell for organizing the Colloquium. Watch for the next Graduate Student Colloquium in Spring Quarter!
PhD student Paul McCormick began the colloquium with his paper, "Soft-focus Unreliability and the Media Ecology of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'Jazz Age,'" a part of his developing dissertation project. His talk discussed the relevance of Hollywood's early soft–focus techniques for understanding narrative perspective in The Great Gatsby and, more importantly, for recognizing Fitzgerald's deft negotiation of his media environment.
MA student Lauren Clark followed with her paper "From Manfred to Max More: The Anxiety of Desire and the Posthuman Body in Liberal Society" on the connections between the Romantic and Postmodern concepts of the sublime and their connection to the unimaginable future which transhumanists claim technology makes possible for the human race. She points out the fundamental contradiction in transhumanist rhetoric, which uses humanist, individualist arguments to achieve a future where technology removes the boundaries between self and other. In other words, transhumanists' dualist construction of identity, combined with a problematic faith in the "sublime" power of contemporary technologies, allows them argue for a future in which the individual they seek to "free" will instead disappear.
MA student Emily Hooper concluded the colloquium with "'The best thing...was to love just a little bit': The Commodification of Love in Toni Morrison's Beloved," arguing that in Morrison's representation of the institution of slavery, that fact that African Americans were barred from owning property results in the characters construing the objects of their love as objects of property. This type of love becomes particularly problematic in the mother-child relationships in Beloved, where the mother's proprietary attitude toward her children results in violence and the loss of self.
Thanks to the three presenters and to EGO Steering Committee members Cassie Patterson, Kara Spaulding, Jennifer Herman, and Joy Futrell for organizing the Colloquium. Watch for the next Graduate Student Colloquium in Spring Quarter!
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