English 442: The Modern American Novel – Multiculturalism: Course Title or Teaching Strategy?
Session Coordinator: Jim Ottery
English Program
University of Illinois at Springfield

Sherman Alexie in Word and Image and the Erasure of “Post-” in Postmodernism

According to the Heath Anthology "Defining modernism is a difficult task. ... A historical definition would say that modernism is the artistic movement in which the artist's self-consciousness about questions of form and structure became uppermost. …” In “Some Attributes of Modernist Literature,” John Lye of Brock University notes a contradiction that such a definition, or is it lack of definition leads to: “Experimentation in form in order to present differently, afresh, the structure, the connections, and the experience of life … and “The tightening of form: an emphasis on cohesion, interrelatedness and depth in the structure of the aesthetic object and of experience ….” Questions of form, along the influence of popular art and culture in Modern literature lead to comparisons of film treatments of literature and their sources – a comparison of form in image and word in Modern representation that may erase the “post-” in Postmodernism, before it can be written. For if Postmodernism refutes boundaries and forms it does so because it follows Modernism with its accelerated delivery of image and word and waves of change in narrative expression.

Maureen Skube
University of Illinois at Springfield
uisgaenglish@uis.edu

A New Stream of Consciousness: A Look at Literary Technique and its Effect on its Teaching in The House on Mango Street and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Thought. Life. Literature. Lit classes are steeped in discussion, flowing ideas, a clarification of concepts, and understanding of various writing styles. But does the literature under study shape the dynamics of a classroom discussion, or is it the discussion that shapes our view of the literature? William James hypothesized stream-of-consciousness, which has been associated with the style of writing used by such Modernists as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. They began the use of stream-of-consciousness as a way to explore the natural process of thought to allow readers to connect with literature at a more personal, experiential level. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and Sherman Alexies’ The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven are examples of a nouveau stream-of-consciousness approach, which leaves the idea of linear writing behind in order to more completely represent the disconnected and disorganized streams of human thought. Stream-of-consciousness style represents a divergence in traditional fictional narrative, and in the same way might transform the discussion of it in a literature class.

Erin N. Tepen
University of Illinois-Springfield
etepen01@yahoo.com

Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth (and Teaching) as Perpetual Works-in-Progress: The Perfect Form When the Center Does Not Hold

In “The calculus of Juneteenth,” Judy Lightfoot describes the state of the Ellison’s manuscript when editor John F. Callahan set out to organize “more than 1,500 pages and boxfuls of notes, some on tiny scraps of paper” into a well-formed novel. Besides the boxes in Ellison’s office were dozens of file cabinet drawers also full of Juneteenth –related material. Based upon the teaching style in English 442, students might tell you that “mess” also represents the state of their teacher’s mind. As an after word, Callahan includes a number of notes that represent the “thinking through” Ellison performed during his writing of the unfinished work. One paraphrases Yeats’ “Second Coming”: The center does not hold. Perhaps, the perfect form of a Modern novel striving to represent human experience where “things fall apart” is an office overflowing with boxes and filing cabinets full of unorganized manuscript pages and notes waiting to tell a story: hypertext in hard copy. Similarly, in student(s) – centered learning, the teacher is not the center of organized knowledge, but rather a repository of experience resembling Ellison’s office, a perfect pedagogical form.

Jim Ottery
University of Illinois at Springfield
Jotte1@uis.edu