In-Class Mini-Meetings!

If you want dibs on a certain time slot for a five-minute paper consultation during class next week, sign up here! Alternately, you can forgo a five-minute class meeting and schedule a ten-minute meeting during Tuesday and Thursday office hours, 3:30-4:30 in THH 261.

Tuesday

2:40-2:45
2:45-2:50
2:50-2:55
2:55-3:00
3:00-3:05
3:05-3:10
3:10-3:15
3:15-3:20

Thursday

2:10-2:15
2:15-2:20
2:20-2:25
2:25-2:30
2:30-2:35
2:35-2:40
2:40-2:45
2:45-2:50
2:50-2:55
2:55-3:00
3:00-3:05
3:05-3:10
3:10-3:15
3:15-3:20

"gladly beyond": Our Last Day with Esther Greenwood and The Bell Jar

For the last day of The Bell Jar, we will be taking up the themes of birth, rebirth and death, especially in light of "the baby" that appears on p. 3 only to disappear for the rest of the novel. We will ask about Joan, writing, and, finally, we will consider the question at the center of the novel: Is Esther "crazy"? And what is the eponymous bell jar all about?

Post your discussion questions below.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Esther Greenwood makes the goggle-eyed headlines! (The Bell Jar, Day Three)

We'll be focusing on the theme of doubles on Tuesday, both in terms of the Esther's internal doubling and the external doubles available to her as a cold war woman. Apropos of our most recent discussion, consider how the gendered double standards of American middle-class society at this time of bipolar world politics might be as responsible for Esther's psychic split as her own psychological make-up.

The Bell Jar Tolls for You, Part Two.

Let's keep today's guiding questions on cold war womanhood in mind for Thursday's class discussion. Consider the life paths open to a young (white) woman in early-1950s capitalist consumerist American culture--that is, Don-and-Betty-Draper country. What good and bad adult examples are available to Esther as she envisions (or is forced to envision) a future for herself? How do gendered expectations shape not just her personal plans but also her relationships with men (like Lenny, Buddy, Constantin, her father, et al.)? 

Please post a question of your own on this or related topics. Feel free to return to the allegory of the fig tree from chapter 5 as you contemplate how Esther's future is gendered in chapters 7-11, as well as the birth-and-death scene at the hospital with her betrothed, Buddy Willard, from chapter 6. We will be looking at these episodes as keys to coming sections, much like we close-read the first few pages of the book. 

Beginning the Bell Jar

Please post your questions below for your pair of chapters from the first six of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Try to extract themes by close-reading a particular passage.

Remember that you are responsible for reading all of the chapters through the end of 6, not just your own. 

Extra Credit: Through Eastern Eyes Live! Remarks on the Reading of Socialist Memoirists

For those of you cold warriors who braved the LA cold to hear about how ladies once lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain, I salute you! For the sake of your less adventurous colleagues, please share a little of what you learned tonight from former comrades Angela Thompson and Ana Tajder in this public forum. 

Through Eastern Eyes: Ruth Zernova's "Elizabeth Arden" and Drakulic's "Make-Up and Other Crucial Questions"

As if a rejoinder to today's questions about the present-absence of women in the works of cold war culture East and West, we get Ruth Zernova and Slavenka Drakulic to speak back with a distinctly Soviet flavor. Please focus your questions on "Elizabeth Arden," and consider connecting them to Nekrasov's travelogue, "On Both Sides of the Ocean," or the woman's perspective provided in Mad Men, incidentally expressed at the beauty salon in both pieces. 

the cold war heats up "on both sides of the ocean" (and in Cuba)

Over the weekend you'll be watching the Mad Men episode from the end of season 2, "Meditations in an Emergency," named after the collection of poetry and eponymous poem by Frank O'Hara (which you'll also be reading). Don Draper himself is shown dipping into this book at the start of the season, and reciting "Mayakovsky" as a voice over to end the season premier. Click on the link to listen to the one poem, or go nuts and watch the whole episode.

In order to offset the Americanness of this representation of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis-- as it is experienced by the public on the national level, on the level of (capitalist) corporation, and the more personal plane of familial experience--we will also read Victor Nekrasov's Russo-Soviet travel impressions, "On Both Sides of the Ocean," written roughly concurrently with the events depicted on Mad Men.

Post your questions below about any and all of these texts. Also, consider how they paint a fuller picture of cold war gender roles and normative American society more broadly, as a stark contrast to the marginal American expatriate communities Burroughs provides in Queer. Keep in mind how the cold war was not just about politics at the highest level, but about the most intimate aspects of everyday life. The two threads are inextricable, these texts suggest. How?

Routine Questions/Lee on the Road: Day 2 of Queer

Now that you've read all of Queer, you're prepared to post questions below that speak to the text's specific features as well as its general arcs. Feel free to connect your comments on Burroughs' novella back to the other pieces we've read, e.g. what do Lee, Anthony Burns, Andrei Kazimirovich, and Jesse have to say to one another as cold war characters? What does Queer have to say about the cold war? And what in the world do Lee's routines have to say about any of this?