Hello everybody!
After a quick hiatus, the MSt weblog is now again with updates from the brand new course group: Clare, Amal, Kate, Mary Jean and Barney. We’re kicking off with an entry from Mary Jean, our new Departmental Lecturer in Poetry. Here’s what they’ve been studying and researching currently:
What I’m Studying Now
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wooden
This can be a mesmerizing novel which meditates on how we would reply to our world’s a number of crises (ecological or in any other case) – can we flee from them because the protagonist within the novel makes an attempt to do by deciding to dwell in a convent, and is it in reality attainable to maintain ourselves secure from the uncomfortable truths we’d moderately not look within the eye? The novel asks tough questions on forgiveness, guilt and the way one would possibly dwell ethically. I cherished Wooden’s writing type; she has the precision of a poet and attracts the reader in with sensual, atmospheric scenes.
James by Percival Everett
I discovered Everett’s retelling of the traditional story of Huckleberry Finn deeply shifting and eye-opening. Language is foregrounded on this novel: it turns into a device for camouflage for slaves who want to look as if they’ll’t learn or communicate eloquently to fulfill the twisted egos and expectations of their white slave house owners. I additionally discovered the complicated friendship between James and Huck to be trustworthy and honest, and it’s in the end their relationship which constitutes the beating coronary heart of this novel. This can be a e-book which is able to stick with me for a really very long time.
Present Initiatives / Analysis
I’m researching what ‘queer studying’ means in preparation for the 2025 LGBT+ Historical past Month lecture which I will likely be giving subsequent yr at Oxford. I’ve been excited a few forthcoming e-book titled The Edinburgh Companion to Queer Studying (2024) and have been returning to the writings of Sara Ahmed for inspiration, notably Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (2006). I’m additionally engaged on an essay for a collection in Poetry Journal referred to as ‘Arduous Emotions’, having chosen ‘anger’ as the sensation I’d wish to give attention to. That is proving to be a tough essay to put in writing certainly, however it has additionally been a pleasant excuse for me to return to attention-grabbing work by D.W. Winnicott, Alison Bechdel and Darian Chief that are enabling me to assume via acquainted ideas in a special mild.
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