Yesterday after taking the English Honors Exam, I literally ran to the Graduate Center to give my presentation at the CUNY Pipeline Conference… Yep. As luck would have it, both equally terrifying events were on the same day, but thankfully they are now over so I can calmly reflect… The test was not as horrible as I expected it to be, although I am worried that the professors on the honors committee won’t be able to read my messy handwriting. I also made it to the conference on time and even had to present first (due to technical difficulties), which was extremely nerve-wracking… especially with Dr. Faherty, my Pipeine mentor, and so many students and faculty members in the audience. I had to constantly remind myself to breathe at first, but I’m happy to report that everything went relatively well (even though I still have problems projecting my voice in large rooms).
The paper I presented on was titled: “Destabilizing Normative Conceptions of Kinship, Identity and Nationality in Gish Jen’s The Love Wife.” I will paste the fancy abstract I wrote for the conference at the end of this post for anyone who is interested, but in a nutshell, my Pipeline thesis explores how Jen’s novel provides a new transnational model for perceiving self and national identification, one that accounts for the various socio-economic changes precipitated by globalization.
Now to move away from my confusing and potentially boring research subject… The panel I presented on was interesting because there was very little correlation between our topics. After my presentation, Amy Vogel from Hunter College did a powerpoint on “Neuroanatomy and Literature,” which was fascinating even though the complex scientific terminology has completely escaped me (one of the reasons why I’m an English major and not a future scientist). Afterwards, Roberto Ventura did an awesome performance piece, providing an original dance interpretation of a song. I also visited another panel after the break and would like to note that Michael Parillo’s presentation on “A Heroine’s Addiction: The Cycle of Submission in Jane Eyre’s Patriarchal Houses” provided a unique analysis of Bronte’s novel that made me see it in a completely different light.
Overall, I would like to say that the CUNY Pipeline Conference was a great success. All of the presenters including me were rewarded with spiffy certificates to commemorate our achievements, which was really nice and definitely added to the experience. Finally, to any of you who are interested in pursuing a career in academia, doing conference presentations would be a great resume builder!
My Abstract:
“Destabilizing Normative Models of Kinship, Identity and Nationality in Gish Jen’s The Love Wife.”
Family and identity are consistently linked to a conception of nationality- one that emphasizes the importance of cultural and biological ties as rooted in particular locales. However, as globalization facilitates the blurring of bodies and boundaries, the resulting changes suggest a need to re-conceptualize figurations of kinship and the self. This paper examines how Gish Jen’s The Love Wife destabilizes normative constructions of family and identity, ushering in new modes for negotiating operant transnational dimensions. Her portrayal of Blondie and Carnegie’s family exemplifies American diversity through the interracial marriage of a Caucasian female and Chinese-American male, a union that draws together both adopted and biological children. But rather than painting an idealized portrait of the “new” American family, Jen presents readers with a model of multiculturalism in crisis, illustrating how repressed histories contest current kinship practices. I argue that these reemerging histories create a rupture in the family that transforms it from a private to transnational space, opening a discourse between cultures that allows for a reexamination of kinship and identity across national boundaries. As such, this novel typifies postmodern-multiculturalism, a literary genre that challenges, in both the form and content of its narratives, normative models of social and cultural cohesion.
