Next Meeting: Feb.14 (Thurs.), 2008, 4:30-6:00PM, Berger Gallery, 207 College Hall, Duquesne University.

Presenter:  Professor Magali Cornier Michael, Chair, Dept. of English, Duquesne University

Bio: Magali Cornier Michael, Professor of English, is the current Chair of the English Department as well as the Co-Founder and former Director of the Womens and Gender Studies Program at Duquesne University.  Her areas of specialization include Post-1945 British and American Literature and feminist studies.  She has presented papers at a variety of national and international conferences; has published articles on such authors as John Fowles, Don DeLillo, Angela Carter, D.M. Thomas, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, and Toni Morrison; and is the author of two books, New Visions of Community in Contemporary American Fiction:  Tan, Kingsolver, Castillo, Morrison (University of Iowa Press, Oct. 2006) and Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse:  Post-World War II Fiction (State University of New York Press, May 1996).  Her current work focuses on history and narrative form in contemporary fiction.
 
Title:  New Visions of Community in Contemporary American Fiction

Abstract:
This book asserts that the notion and ideals of community continue to matter greatly within the context of late twentieth century America.  That community still matters is evidenced by the various social and activist movements since the Civil Rights Movement that build upon and promote ideas of community and the coalition work necessary to create communities; the many theoretical, intellectual explorations of the notion of community in the United States as well as internationally; and the prolific literary engagements with the idea of community.  Indeed, this book focuses on the latter, analyzing the ways in which American women writers in particular have been busy exploring the hybrid versions of community on which ethnic cultures that thrive in the United States, but have not been assimilated as a result of racist attitudes, have had to depend.  What these novels demonstrate is that these hybrid versions of community, which draw from other-than-dominant culturally specific ideas and histories, have something to offer Americans as the United States moves into the twenty-first century and must continue to reinvent itself in the face of the increasing diversity of its population.  Indeed, this study argues that novels such as Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club (1989), Barbara Kingsolvers The Bean Trees (1988) and Pigs in Heaven (1993), Ana Castillos So Far from God (1993), and Toni Morrisons Paradise (1998) exemplify a trend within late twentieth century American literature to mine the great variety of ethnic traditions present in the United States, within the context of feminist and ethical theories and practices, as a means to rethink community and coalition.  Indeed, in their willingness to re-imagine and re-construct established ideas of subjectivity and agency via a process of creative bricolage, these literary texts offer new hybrid versions of communities and more communal forms of agency.