Books by Kathryn Wichelns
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Papers by Kathryn Wichelns
American Literary Realism, 2021
Radical Pedagogy, 2017
This essay traces the experiences of a literature instructor, with a background in queer theory a... more This essay traces the experiences of a literature instructor, with a background in queer theory and sexuality studies, teaching two sections of a small, multidisciplinary , upper-division undergraduate porn studies seminar at a flagship, Hispanic-serving public university. After briefly exploring the ways that-as a literary comparativist-she failed to predict several practical challenges involved in actual interdisciplinary teaching, the author offers some provocations for teaching porn studies and navigating multiple student disciplines in a discussionformat seminar at a large state university with a diverse student body. The author argues that porn and sexuality studies are particularly useful tools in this institutional environment, as they enable organic interrogations of received ideas about race, class, gender, and sexual identity. After a lack of institutional support, the biggest challenge the author notes in her own initial relationship to interdisciplinary porn studies pedagogy is the training humanities scholars receive in "additive" versions of interdisciplinarity-which fail to question the basic primacy of one pedagogical model.
Comparative Literature, 2015
short story, the play is credited as follows: "Adaptation théâtrale de James Lord d'après la nouv... more short story, the play is credited as follows: "Adaptation théâtrale de James Lord d'après la nouvelle 'The Beast in the Jungle.' Adaptation française de Marguerite Duras" (7; Theatrical adaptation by James Lord, after the original "The Beast in the Jungle." French adaptation by Marguerite Duras). 1 Focusing on May Bartram, Duras's version elaborates James's examinations of gendered relationships to language and space, effectively presenting the original story as an example of l'écriture féminine. In doing so, Duras provides a more clearly feminist alternative to the best-known reading of James's story: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's "The Beast in the Closet," first published in 1986. If for Sedgwick Bartram is a tragically incomplete character who simply "consolidates and fortifies the closet for John Marcher" (206), in Duras's interpretation, her genderspecific perspective is in fact fully formed, but primarily through extralinguistic means, such as James's repeated references to music and art and the story's use of non-linear time. Using tools specific to the theater-set changes, lighting, and the fourth wall-Duras makes Bartram's viewpoint central to the story. The precise elements that for Duras are evidence of James's focus on "feminine" forms of expression, in the context of a relationship between a man and a woman, would later be understood by queer theoretical readers, in the wake of Sedgwick, as what Kevin Ohi terms James's "queerness of style" (see also Rowe and Stevens). Ohi addresses some of the gaps in Sedgwick's analysis, which I delineate briefly below, by suggesting that "the queerness of James's writing. .. resides less in its representation of marginal sexualities-however startlingly explicit those may 1 All translations are mine. Other interpretations of James's story include François Truffaut's 1978 film The Green Room (La chambre verte), which is based on "The Altar of the Dead" (1895), but incorporates elements from "The Beast in the Jungle"; a 1969 British teleplay; and a 1980 experimental American film: The Cold Eye (My Darling, Be Careful), directed by Babette Mangolte (Griffin, 341). Benoît Jacquot made a television version, La Bête dans la jungle, based on the Duras/ Lord play, in 1988.
Early American Studies, 2014
The Henry James Review, 2011
In April 1900, the Atlantic Monthly published Henry James's short story "Maud-Evelyn," which reco... more In April 1900, the Atlantic Monthly published Henry James's short story "Maud-Evelyn," which recounts the history of an impoverished young aristocrat's intimacy with a wealthy older couple. Marmaduke comes to participate fully in the fantasy that dominates the Dedricks' lives, eventually "marrying" their long-dead daughter, Maud-Evelyn. The relationship enables Marmaduke to inherit the couple's fortune; simultaneously, the Dedricks gain the social legitimacy of a noble heir. The story is one of James's many under-read works, but a few scholars have addressed it specifically (e.g., Neal Houston, Richard Gage). Most recently, in her examination of representations of women in James's short stories, Donatella Izzo describes Maud-Evelyn as a "museum," erected by and in the service of her parents' melancholia. 1 Izzo briefly discusses the exploitation of the deceased daughter by her parents and "husband," and certainly this story calls for feminist interpretations. However, "Maud-Evelyn" destabilizes binary definitions of gender and the dynamics of power they support more radically than Izzo seems to allow. The feminine title character's fantastic transformation from dead child to perfectly absent wife is only one of the story's unsettling shifts in identity. Most notably, changes in Marmaduke's life are reflected in his body's sexual and gender markers. James's narrator initially suggests that Marmaduke is an "empty" boy with an ambiguous family background. Later, the young man is described in terms that suggest fullness; he gains a "position and a history" by taking the place of the Dedricks' dead child (180, 196). Lavinia, who rejects Marmaduke's offer of marriage at the story's inception, later relates to him as a "sister" (204). These transgressions are engendered in the story's stylistic elements; James indicates shifting relationships and identities that simultaneously retain the trace of other, seemingly antithetical sexual possibilities. The queer story of "Maud-Evelyn" suggests a deeper perversity, inherent in the institution of heterosexual marriage.
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Books by Kathryn Wichelns
Papers by Kathryn Wichelns