ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

In most cultures the figure of the ghost stands for a forceful separation of past and present. Some cultures integrate the ghost figure into the present in order to provide a sense of continuity. In literature and film the ghost motif has been directly associated with particular cultural meanings, but has also been used as a plot element free of the confines of realism. The meaning of the ghost is deferred (Derrida). This quality of the ghost, neither dead nor alive, neither present nor absent, provided a forum for addressing feminist issues. Some of the first ghost stories were written by women. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) was only the best-known of an enormous body of fiction of its type. Many examples address ethnic/race issues. In Sarah Orne Jewett’s the “Foreigner” (1900) the supernatural element is connected to the “foreign” identity of the protagonist. This seminar examines and assesses the various versions of the ghost motif in literature as an opportunity to articulate identity questions, cultural fears, and minority issues. We will focus on ghostly ambitions written by women writers. The figure of the ghost crosses boundaries of language, nationality, culture, class, race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality. At the same time it is the Other within who speaks for all of them. How has this oppositional quality been used and by whom?

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In most cultures the figure of the ghost stands for a forceful separation of past and present. Some cultures integrate the ghost figure into the present in order to provide a sense of continuity. In literature and film the ghost motif has been directly associated with particular cultural meanings, but has also been used as a plot element free of the confines of realism. The meaning of the ghost is deferred (Derrida). This quality of the ghost, neither dead nor alive, neither present nor absent, provided a forum for addressing feminist issues. Some of the first ghost stories were written by women. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) was only the best-known of an enormous body of fiction of its type. Many examples address ethnic/race issues. In Sarah Orne Jewett’s the “Foreigner” (1900) the supernatural element is connected to the foreign identity of the protagonist. This seminar examines and assesses the various versions of the ghost motif in literature as an opportunity to articulate identity questions, cultural fears, and minority issues. We will focus on ghostly ambitions written by women writers. The figure of the ghost crosses boundaries of language, nationality, culture, class, race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality. At the same time it is the Other within who speaks for all of them. How has this oppositional quality been used and by whom?

[more…]

Since the Enlightenment, the issue of the existence of gods has been a topic of debate. Many have flatly denied the divine. Others have tried to defend the existence of gods in traditional ways against the flow of modern and contemporary speculation. Perhaps more interesting, however, are those positions which attempt to reconstruct arguments for the existence of divinity outside of traditional ontological modes of thinking. Poetry and fiction have always been happy companions of this effort at reconstruction. This seminar explores the manner in which poetry and literature afford means for imaginatively reconceiving the existence of the divine.

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