Something’s Got a Hold on Me: ‘Lingering Whispers’ of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Ghana
Interior of Men’s Slave Cells – Cape Coast Castle – Ghana, Image by Flickr User Adam Jones, PhD
I am standing in the mouth of the female dungeon. I hesitate to breathe for fear the hole will swallow me. It is competing with a rising tide of anguish that also threatens to eat me alive. The hole is dark, dank and noisome yet oddly comforting. After all, this is why I, and others, come to this site of torture—to fill in the gaps of our history, to make better sense of our lives, to find some comfort. But how does one find home in throbbing loss? Why must one dig for answers—that, ultimately, produce new questions—within the locus of pain? I run my fingers across the length of the thick, cavernous rock. It is brown like my skin…I can’t tell where it ends or begins.
In a 2010 interview with FADER Magazine, poet Gil Scott-Heron declared, “The spirit should be material. It’s your blood. Inside your bloodstream is your parents and their parents and their parents and their parents and they want you to make it, because when you do what you do and you’re successful, then they’re happy you made it. You’re the link with immortality” (88). What Scott-Heron articulates here is an ontological claim to spirit as inherently material and always already an eternal force over life’s struggles. The answers to the puzzle are embedded underneath the skin in an internal dialogue between spirit, mind, blood, bone and mass. This same ideological force is what pulls so many African American tourists back to Elmina and Cape Coast Castles in Ghana, in search of what Anne Bailey calls “lingering whispers” in African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade (3). We spin back the wheel of time to re-trace its deep grooves and recover the loss/lost in dungeons, burial sites, Donkor Nsuo (The Slave River), and the Atlantic Ocean.
Marks made by slaves in the Cape Coast Castle slave dungeons, Image by Flickr user Floris van Halm
Perhaps one’s DNA is a recording that is not only biological and racial but cultural and cosmological. Carolyn Cooper, in Noises In the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the “Vulgar” Body of Jamaican Popular Culture discusses “noises in the blood and reverberating echoes in the bone” as genealogical discourses of race. Can one’s DNA be an embedded and embodied soundtrack that charts particular and interconnecting nodes of history? Are those memories, experiences, dreams and longings then “recorded on my body,” as Nancy Frey suggests in “Stories of the Return: Pilgrimage and Its Aftermaths” (101) ? If we broke down the strands into coherent codes, or notes, or rearranged them into other combinations, what would they sound like? Would it produce a series of mixtapes, like hip hop records that sample older Black music—blues, R&B, funk, soul and jazz—and re-articulate them with new and emerging sounds? Perhaps it’s like Nathaniel Mackey muses in Bedouin Hornbook, “The last thing I remember is coming to the realization that what I was playing already existed on a record” (5). The slave forts become the ontological point of racial and cultural identity because, according to Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, “the dungeon was a womb in which the slave was born” and where, by the performance of walking through the “Door of Return” one’s social life can be recovered, revitalized or remade (111).
I strain to hear any forms of life. As Slavoj Žižek suggests in “‘I Hear You With My Eyes’; or, The Invisible Master,” “ultimately we hear things because we cannot see everything” (90 and 92). According to tour guides at Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, the brick slave pens reverberate with the loss/lost of life, particularly at night, where bodiless moans, sobbing, screams and litanies can be heard rocking through the forts. But I can only detect distant sounds of activity beyond the back of the castle doors and “The Door of No Return.” The predominant noise is the Atlantic Ocean, crashing against the seashore. I hear the fishermen speak in rapid, hushed tones as their bodies struggle against the tiny canoes, their oars pulse against the waves as nets are thrown in with great precision. At the entrance of the castle, teenaged boys patronize African American tourists with “Sister! Brother!,” “Akwaaba”(Welcome), or “Welcome Home” as they pass folded letters with requests for contact information, money, or school donations, colorfully braided bracelets or other trinkets for sale. Market women pierce the air with unique calls for customers to try their products of bagged ice water, oranges, sugarcane, pineapple, and groundnuts. Cab drivers compete for tourists’ attention with loud, intermittent honks, verbal petitions or hisses.
Outside Cape Coast Castle, Image by Flickr User Abby Flatcoat
Outside the Door of No Return – Cape Coast Castle – Ghana, Image by Flickr User Adam Jones, PhD
The shops in the courtyard just beyond the reception area are now filled with traditional instruments—drums, guitars, piano boxes, and rattles—beads, cloth, masks, paintings, rugs and postcards. It is no longer a market in Black flesh but of “African” objects, or cultural artifacts that amplify the racial identity of diasporic visitors, and make them more “real” once they return home. Shop owners busy themselves making crafts, passing the day chatting with one another and potential customers.
This cell in which I stand is one of many at the Twin Castles, the gargantuan fortresses that after five hundred years continue to hold fast to the southern coast of Ghana. The intersecting trails of fine cracks rupture the once-pristine white paint on the walls. . .possibly one for every person stolen out of the dungeons. The hull is transfixing, the hold captivating. For some reason, I am suddenly reminded of Rev. James Cleveland’s gospel song, “Something’s Got A Hold On Me” where he proclaims, “Something hit me/Up over my head/And run right to my feet.”
.
Cleveland is talking about the power of the Holy Ghost to re-fashion his troubled life through spiritual re-birth. He sings of transformation from a life of misery to a brand new liberation that is manifested like a shock through his entire being and body. This new shock counters the crisis he regularly experiences “in the world.” This new bodily sensation permeates his entire being and acts as a shield against daily strife. Similarly, Etta James’ secular version, “Something’s Got A Hold On Me” attests, “My heart feels heavy/my feet feel light/I shake all over/ but I feel alright.”
.
James’ something is more possessive of her person; it is the overwhelming yoke of romantic love that seeps into her pores and won’t let up. This occupation of James’ senses is so startlingly pleasurable that she longs for and needs it. Similarly, The Miracles’, “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” pronounces, “Don’t want to leave you/don’t want to stay here/don’t want to spend another day here/oh, oh, oh, I wanna sit now/I just can quit now.”
.
Robinson expresses the ambivalence of love and longing—frustration, disappointment, ecstasy and desire—that crowds the senses with the sheer torture of being powerless over this structure of feeling. The protagonist is unable to shake hold of the beloved object, which makes him question his own capacity.
The “hold” becomes embodied and acts out in ways the mind cannot comprehend or prevent. It is the same hold the castles have on many African American visitors—an enigmatic narrative of love, loss and longing that the progeny of slaves refuse to relinquish and attempt to retell by inserting their bodies into slave histories. African Americans tour the castles as a way of tracing what Ralph Ellison calls “the grooves of history” in Invisible Man (443). Like a phonograph record, grooves are meant to be linear and progressive, but diasporic African history is awkward, uneven and full of odd ruptures, gaps and distortions. As James Clifford insists in “Diasporas,” “Diaspora discourse articulates, or bends together, both roots and routes” (251). These grooves consist of a series of complex and overlapping relationships that are multi-directional and non-linear. Like an album record, the records of history indicate particular events of static (crisis), interludes (junctures), and rhythms (discourse).
78 Record grooves by Flickr User Roger Smith
“The music is mysteriously ‘in’ these physical recesses, pressed into the vinyl,” Steven Feld argues in Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, “and listeners may imagine journeying there to merge right ‘into the groove’” (111). Grooves are doubly intentioned as: 1) the tracing of deep historical roots through specific routes of migration and 2) a physical and/or psychic space where utopic possibilities are imagined, alternative choices can be sought out, and past and future events are persistently contextualized within the present moment. To be “in a groove” is to be in tune with multiple realities simultaneously, to compress or stretch out time and space and one’s capacity in extraordinary ways.
Strangely, this cell is absent of all sound, even the static, white noise of silence. But it refuses to sound for me and tell me its history. I hear nothingness in the emptied hole. All that remains is a heavy vastness of what once was. As Mackey so profoundly articulates, “I wept for the notion of kin, as though the very idea were an occasion for tears, a pitiful claim to connection, a bleeding socket whose eye’d been plucked out” (21).
Over time, the cold stone has absorbed the blood, sweat, feces and bones of its inhabitants. It is the only material trace that proves the enslaved were once there.
—
Sionne R. Neely received her Ph.D. in August 2010 in American Studies & Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. Her dissertation examines how music artists in Ghana create transnational work alliances in response to shifting political regimes under independence, from Kwame Nkrumah’s administration to the present. Since 2005, Dr. Neely has recorded and archived more than 150 interviews with creative artists and industry professionals based in Ghana. In 2010, Dr. Neely co-founded ACCRA [dot] ALT, a cultural organization that promotes the alternative work of emerging Ghanaian artists through innovative programming and international exchange with artists worldwide. In 2011, she co-produced the Accra homecoming concert and documentary film for hip hop artist Blitz the Ambassador and Afro-Pean soul duo, Les Nubians. She is co-producer of Gbaa Mi Sané (Talk To Me), a short documentary film that explores the creative process of young visionary artists in Ghana (to be released in Summer 2013). Dr. Neely will also publish an article on hip hop practices in Ghana in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion Series (Fall 2013).
Share this:
Sound at MLA 2013
“Northeastern University, Boston, MA” by Flickr user ksparrow11 under Creative Commons 2.0 License
Lastly, Jennifer, regular contributor Osvaldo Oyola, and I will be presenting at this year’s MLA. Jennifer is participating in a roundtable Saturday at 3:30; look out for session #588, “Race and Poetics: On Aesthetic Practice in Ethnic Studies,” which considers cultural difference as seen in different genres and media. Osvaldo is presenting on Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in session #97, “American Linguistic Plurality.” I will be presenting at a non-sound-studies panel on Friday at noon titled “How Did I Get Here? Our ‘Altac’ Jobs” (s#270). My topic will be how I moved from an adjuncting job to an alternative academic position and how this moved changed my ideas of a career in academia.
If you are not present at MLA, please follow along via Twitter! You can check out the #MLA13 hashtag, but if you’re interested in a particular session from the ones below, you can also search on Twitter for the session number during its scheduled time. You can also check out the conference action by following the official Sounding Out! twitter account (commandeered by our Editor-in-Chief) or following my personal account, @literarychica, for our live-tweets from MLA 2013.
Please comment to let us know what you think–both before and after MLA 2012. If I somehow missed you or your panel in this round up, please let me know!: lms@soundingoutblog.com
–
Liana M. Silva is co-founder and Managing Editor of Sounding Out!.
Jump to THURSDAY, January 3
Jump to FRIDAY, January 4
Jump to SATURDAY, January 5
Jump to SUNDAY, January 6.
“A Chilly Night in Boston” by Flickr user Stuck in Customs under a Creative Commons 2.0 License
Back to menu
THURSDAY, January 3
Thursday, January 3
8:30–11:30 a.m.
.3. Evaluating Digital Work for Tenure and Promotion: A Workshop for Evaluators and Candidates
Republic A, Sheraton
Program arranged by the MLA Office of Programs. Presiding: Alison Byerly, Middlebury Coll.; Kathleen Fitzpatrick, MLA; Katherine A. Rowe, Bryn Mawr Coll.
Facilitated discussion about evaluating work in digital media (e.g., scholarly
editions, databases, digital mapping projects, born- digital creative or scholarly
work). Designed for both creators of digital materials and administrators
or colleagues who evaluate those materials, the workshop will propose
strategies for documenting, presenting, and evaluating such work.
Preregistration required.
12:00-1:15
22. Expanding Access: Building Bridges within Digital Humanities
205, Hynes
A special session.
Presiding: Trent M. Kays, Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Lee Skallerup Bessette, Morehead State Univ.
Marc Fortin, Queen’s Univ.
Alexander Gil, Univ. of Virginia
Brian Larson, Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Sophie Marcotte, Concordia Univ.
Ernesto Priego, London, England
36. Languages of the Occupy Movement
307, Hynes
Program arranged by the Division on Language and Society. Presiding: Frank Farmer, Univ. of Kansas
Corinne Seals, Georgetown Univ., “Examining the Linguistic Landscape of Occupy”
Corey J. Frost, New Jersey City Univ., “Occupy and Rhetorics of Amplification”
Keith Spencer, Carnegie Mellon Univ., “Class, Race, and the ‘Common Man’: Interviews with Occupy Pittsburgh”
Respondent: Frank Farmer
40. Hearing and Seeing Anew: Ralph Ellison’s Aural and Visual ;8Registers
Beacon A, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Horace Porter, Univ. of Iowa
Shanna Greene Benjamin, Grinnell Coll. “Listening inside a Glass Box: Mary Rambo’s Lessons for Invisible Man”
Herman Beavers, Univ. of Pennsylvania, “The Noisy Lostness: Oppositionality and Acousmatic Subjectivity in Invisible Man”
Lena Michelle Hill, Univ. of Iowa, “Silent Sights of Fatherhood in Three Days before the Shooting…”
Respondent: Kenneth W. Warren, Univ. of Chicago
3:30–4:45 p.m
94. Modernism and the Senses
Beacon D, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Alex Niven, Univ. of Oxford; Stephen Ross, Univ. of Oxford, Saint John’s Coll.
Jonathan Day, Univ. of Oxford, Saint John’s Coll. “Cognitive Realism and the Problem of Qualia”
Matt Langione, Univ. of California, Berkeley, “Modernizing Modernism: Intentionality, Neuroscience, and the Sense of Modernist Poetry”
97. American Linguistic Plurality
203, Hynes
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Literature of the United States in Languages Other Than English. Presiding: Heidi Kathleen Kim,Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Audrey Wu Clark,United States Naval Acad., “Dialects of Regionalist Modernism in Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance”
Benjamin A. Railton, Fitchburg State Univ., “Vocal Color: Recovering an Alternative, Multilingual American Literary Realism”
Osvaldo Oyola, Binghamton Univ., State Univ. of New York, “Traduciendo de el Dork: Cultural and Lingual Syncretism in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,”
Melissa Dennihy, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York “Hybrid Tongues: Linguistic Innovations and Inventions in Contemporary Multiethnic United States Literature”
102. Digital Diasporas
Public Garden, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Division on Black American Literature and Culture. Presiding: Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford Univ.
Corrie Claiborne, Morehouse Coll., “Living Word”
Adam Banks, Univ. of Kentucky, “Digital Griots”
Marcyliena Morgan, Harvard Univ., “Hip- Hop Archives”
107. The Linguistic Construction of Narrative Space
313, Hynes
Program arranged by the Division on Linguistic Approaches to Literature. Presiding: Monika Fludernik, Univ. of Freiburg
Robert Troyer, Western Oregon Univ., “Locating Action in the Postapocalyptic Text World of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”
Birgitta Svensson, Stockholm Univ., “Acting, Being, Sensing, and Saying: Analyzing Characters with a Functional Language Approach,”
Pauline Bleuse, Grand Valley State Univ., “Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange; or, The Use of an Unfamiliar Language to Relate Controversy”
5:15–6:30 p.m.
125. Translating for (and from) the Italian Screen: Dubbing and Subtitles
201, Hynes
Program arranged by the American Association for Italian Studies. Presiding: Philip Balma, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
Anna Belladelli, Univ. of Verona, “Misrepresentations and Re- representations of Otherness in the Italian Dubbing of United States TV Series,”
Giulia Centineo, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz “Dubbing Hollywood and Difference,”
Daniele Fioretti, Miami Univ., Oxford, “Qualunquista Equals Socialist? Political Issues in the Subtitling of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La ricotta,”
129. Teaching in the Shallows: Reading, Writing, and Teaching in the Digital Age
Berkeley, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Robert R. Bleil, Coll. of Coastal Georgia; Jennifer Gray, Coll. of Coastal Georgia.
Speakers: Susan Cook, Southern New Hampshire Univ.; Christopher Dickman, Saint Louis Univ.; T. Geiger, Syracuse Univ.; Jennifer Gray; Matthew Parfitt, Boston Univ.; James Sanchez, Texas Christian Univ.
Respondent: Robert R. Bleil
Nicholas Carr’s 2008 article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and his 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains argue that the paradigms of our digital lives have shifted significantly in two decades of living life online. This roundtable unites teachers of composition and literature to explore cultural, psychological, and developmental changes for students and teachers.
140. Illness and Disability in Asian American Literature
Hampton, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Division on Asian American Literature. Presiding: Anita Mannur, Miami Univ., Oxford
Cynthia Wu, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York, “Daniel K. Inouye’s Journey to Washington: Disability and the Hidden Privileges of Local Japanese Ascendancy in Hawai‘i,”
Ellen Samuels, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, “Multilinguality and ‘Deaf Speech’ in Betty Quan’s Mother Tongue,”
Rick H. Lee, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, “SIN, HIV, SFO: AIDS, the Body, and Justin Chin’s Corpus,”
James Kyung-Jin Lee, Univ. of California, Irvine, “Against Asian American Health: Vibrant Secularities and Medical Narratives of Illness”
142. What’s Place Got to Do with It? Voices and Vision in Midwestern Literature
Beacon G, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio Univ., Athens
Andy Oler, Indiana Univ., Bloomington, “‘High and Fervently They Were Singing’: Voice, Space, and Midwestern Modernity in Langston Hughes’s 1930 Novel Not without Laughter”
Alexander Engebretson, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York, “The Midwest Seen New Englandly: Regional Tensions in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead”
James Alfred Lewin, Shepherd Univ., “Sara Paretsky’s ‘Other’ Chicago”
7:00–8:15 p.m.
152. Political Trauma and Literary Alchemy: Testimonios and the Regenerative Power of Language
202, Hynes
A special session. Presiding: Jennifer Browdy De Hernandez, Bard Coll. at Simon’s Rock
Speakers: Nicole Caso, Bard Coll.; Martha Helena Montoya Velez, Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México; Alicia Partnoy, Loyola Marymount Univ.; Maria del Carmen Sillato, Univ. of Waterloo; Y. L. Mariela Wong, Coll. of Mount Saint Vincent
To mark the fortieth anniversary of the Pinochet coup in Chile and nearly forty years since the military takeover in Argentina, this session features three Southern Cone testimonialists, who will read passages from their works, and three respondents, who will lead a discussion on the power of narrative to resist a legacy of violence and fear. For excerpts from the three testimonials, visit bethechange2012.wordpress.com/mla-2013-testimonios.
155. Movements, Incantations, and Parables of Queer Performance
201, Hynes
A special session. Presiding: Ann Pellegrini, New York Univ.
Sean Edgecomb, Univ. of Queensland, “Queer Movement: The Mystique of Alexander Guerra’s Traveling Rabbit”
Eng- Beng Lim, Brown Univ., “Incantatory Pinkness from Singapore to Utah”
Carrie J. Preston, Boston Univ., “Queer Christian Submission in Drag: Benjamin Britten and William Plomer’s Curlew River”
165. Beyond the PDF: Experiments in Open-Access Scholarly Publishing
Hampton, Sheraton
A special session
Speakers: Douglas M. Armato, Univ. of Minnesota Press; Jamie Skye Bianco, Univ. of Pittsburgh; Matthew K. Gold, New York City Coll. of Tech., City Univ. of New York; Jennifer Laherty, Indiana Univ., Bloomington; Monica McCormick, New York Univ.; Katie Rawson, Emory Univ.
As open- access scholarly publishing matures and movements such as the Elsevier boycott continue to grow, open- access publications have begun to move beyond the simple (but crucial) principle of openness toward an ideal of interactivity. This session will explore innovative examples of open-access scholarly publishing that showcase new types of social, interactive, mixed- media texts.
For abstracts and discussion, visit beyondthepdf.wordpress.com/ after 1 Nov.
167. Digital Humanities and Theory
Riverway, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Stefano Franchi, Texas A&M Univ., College Station
Geoffrey Rockwell, Univ. of Alberta, “Theoretical Things for the Humanities”
Stefano Franchi, “From Artificial Intelligence to Artistic Practices: A New Theoretical Model for the Digital Humanities,”
David Washington, Loyola Univ., New Orleans, “Object- Oriented Ontology: Escaping the Title of the Book”
For abstracts, visit dhcommons.tamu.edu.
177. Hybridity and Multilingualism in Yiddish
308, Hynes
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Yiddish Literature. Presiding: Sarah Ponichtera, Columbia Univ.
Ken Frieden, Syracuse Univ., “Mysticism and Its Discontents: Hasidic and Anti- Hasidic Narratives between Hebrew and Yiddish”
Nikki Halpern, Université Paris Diderot 7, “Memory Palace, Yiddish Ghetto (Isaac Bashevis Singer and That Vexatious Yiddish Identity)”
Saul Zaritt, Jewish Theological Seminary, “The Master from Krochmalna Street: Isaac Bashevis Singer and World Literature,”
“Boston Custom House Tower at Night” by Flickr user Manu_H under Creative Commons 2.0 License
Friday, January 4
8:30–9:45 a.m.
204. Theorizing Indigenous Literatures in Latin America
303, Hynes
A special session. Presiding: Kelly S. McDonough, Univ. of Texas, Austin
Ulises Juan Zevallos-Aguilar, Ohio State Univ., Columbus, “Diglossia and Linguistic Registers: Toward a Sociolinguistic Reading of Peruvian Quechua Literature/ Hacia una lectura sociolingüística de la literatura quechua peruana”
Susan Foote, Univ. of Concepción, Chile, “Mapuche Testimony and Poetry in Chile: Poetic and Prose Discourse over Time”
Adam Coon, Univ. of Texas, Austin, “Icnotlahtolli / Migrant Words: Indigenous Theoretical Approaches to Migration in Contemporary Nahua Literature”
Ramsey Tracy, Trinity Coll., CT, “Indigenous Narrative from Oral Performance to Text: Semantic and Structural Aesthetic Concerns as Applied to the Work of Literary Translation”
209. Humanities in the Twenty- First Century: Innovation in Research and Practice
Commonwealth, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Division on Teaching as a Profession. Presiding: Christine Henseler, Union Coll., NY
Lynn Pasquerella, Mount Holyoke Coll., “The Promise of Humanities Practice”
David Theo Goldberg, Univ. of California, Irvine, “Making the Humanities ‘Count’”
Jane Aikin, National Endowment for the Humanities, “The National Endowment for the Humanities”
Christine Henseler, “The Humanities in the Digital Age”
220. Image, Voice, Text: Canadian Literature
Beacon D, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Canadian Literature in English. Presiding: Sophie McCall, Simon Fraser Univ., Burnaby
Sunny Chan, Univ. of British Columbia, “AvantGarde.ca: Toward a Canadian Alienethnic Poetics of the Internet”
Hannah McGregor, Univ. of Guelph, “Intermedial Witnessing in Karen Connelly’s Burmese Lessons”
Sarah Henzi, Univ. of Montreal, “Aboriginal New Media: Alternative Forms of Storytelling”
For abstracts, write to smccall@sfu.ca after 15 Nov.
10:15–11:30 a.m.
223. “Spanglish” and Identity within and outside the Classroom
206, Hynes
Program arranged by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. Presiding: Domnita Dumitrescu, California State Univ., Los Angeles
Robert Train, Sonoma State Univ., “Becoming Bilingual, Becoming Ourselves: Archival Memories of Spanglish in Early Californian Epistolary Texts”
Jorgelina Fidia Corbatta, Wayne State Univ., “Gloria Anzaldúa’s Discourse as a Mestiza and Queer Writer”
Ana Sánchez-Muñoz, California State Univ., Northridge, “‘Who soy yo?’: The Creative Use of Spanglish to Express a Hybrid Identity in Chicano/a Heritage Language Learners of Spanish”
Regan Postma, Albertson Coll. of Idaho, “‘¿Por qué leemos esto en la clase de español?’: The Politics of Teaching Literature in Spanglish”
236. Representations of Cultural Resistance: Deafness and Power
Hampton, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Rebecca Garden, Upstate Medical Univ., State Univ. of New York
Christopher Becker Krentz, Univ. of Virginia, “Deaf Literature, Medicine, and the Paradoxes of Identity”
Rebecca Garden, “Reproducing Deafness: Visual Culture and Pathology”
Lennard J. Davis, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, “Cochlear Wars: Deaf Culture against Science?”
237. Access to What? A Roundtable on Public Scholarship, Community Engagement, and Diversity
Fairfax A, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Bruce Burgett, Univ. of Washington, Bothell
Speakers: Jodi Melamed, Marquette Univ.; Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo, Vanderbilt Univ.; Imani Perry, Princeton Univ.; Chandan Reddy, Univ. of Washington, Seattle; Doris Sommer, Harvard Univ.
Respondent: Gregory S. Jay, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Questions of access in higher education most often focus on who gets in, who is left out, and how the sorting of life chances plays out across the larger institutional landscape. (is roundtable shifts that conversation by linking the question of “Access for whom?” to the equally pressing issue of “Access to what?”
239. Representing Race: Silence in the Digital Humanities
Gardner, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Adeline Koh, Richard Stockton Coll. of New Jersey
Speakers: Moya Bailey, Emory Univ.; Anne Cong-Huyen, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Hussein Keshani, Univ. of British Columbia; Maria Velazquez, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
Respondent: Alondra Nelson, Columbia Univ.
This panel examines the politics of race, ethnicity, and silence in the digital humanities. How has the digital humanities remained silent on issues of race and ethnicity? How does this silence reinforce unspoken assumptions and doxa? What is the function of racialized silences in digital archival projects?
For links and participant biographies, visit www.adelinekoh .org/ blog/2012/04/02/racend/.
12:00-1:15 pm
270. How Did I Get Here? Our “Altac” Jobs
Back Bay B, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Brenda Bethman, Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City
Speakers: Donna M. Bickford, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Brian Croxall, Emory Univ.; Kathryn Linder, Suffolk Univ.; Liana Silva, Univ. of Kansas; Sarah Werner, Folger Shakespeare Library
Respondent: C. Shaun Longstreet, Marquette Univ.
This roundtable features “alternative academics” who will discuss the paths to their “altac” job, including opportunities and challenges that come with altac positions, strategies universities might employ to maximize and leverage PhD- prepared administrators, preparing graduate students for altac jobs, the role of mentoring, and differences between altac, adjunct, and tenure- track jobs.
For a longer description of the panel and panelists’ bios, see bit.ly/JqjHdj
1:30–3:30 p.m.
295. Getting Funded in the Humanities: An NEH Workshop
210, Hynes
Program arranged by the Office of the Executive Director. Presiding: Jason+C. Rhody, National Endowment for the Humanities
This workshop will highlight recent awards and outline current funding opportunities. In addition to emphasizing grant programs that support individual and collaborative research and education, the workshop will include information on the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities. A question-and-answer period will follow.
1:45–3:30 p.m.
296. Tuning In to the Phoneme: Phonetic and Phonological Nuances in Second Language Acquisition
306, Hynes
A forum arranged by the Linguistic Society of America and the MLA. Presiding: Bryan Kirschen, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Christine Shea, Univ. of Iowa, “Orthography Modulates Phonological Activation in a Second Language”
Jane Hacking, Univ. of Utah; Rachel Hayes- Harb, Univ. of Utah, “Orthographic and Auditory Contributions to Second- Language Word Learning: Native English Speakers Learning Russian Lexical Stress”
Polina Vasiliev, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, “Native English Speakers’ Perception of Spanish and Portuguese Vowels: The Initial State of L2 Acquisition”
Viola Miglio, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Eva Wheeler, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, “Pronunciation of Basque as L2 by American English Native Speakers: Problems and L1 Interference”
The difficulties L2 learners have in perceiving and producing target- language sounds accurately manifest themselves in the perception and production of vowels, consonants, and suprasegmental features like intonation and stress, as well as in word recognition. Each presentation brings a different perspective on these issues, demonstrating a variety of means and methodologies available in exploring such themes.
For further details, visit www .linguisticsociety .org/meetings-institutes/ annual-meetings/2013.
3:30–4:45 p.m.
343. All Ears: Listening as a Way of Understanding Literature
Independence East, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Chiara Alfano, Univ. of Sussex
Speakers: David Ben- Merre, State Univ. of New York, Buffalo State Coll.; Paul Gordon, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder; May Peckham, Washington Univ. in St. Louis; Jessica Teague, Columbia Univ.
This roundtable seeks to start a discussion on the interface between accounts of listening to literature and listening as reading literature. Although the specific focus will be on literature and theory of the twentieth century, the roundtable will resonate with all who are interested in learning to read with their ears.
350. Puerto Rican Print Cultures
208, Hynes
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Puerto Rican Literature and Culture. Presiding: Tomás Urayoán Noel, Univ. at Albany, State Univ. of New York
Kahlil Chaar-Pérez, Harvard Univ., “Letters of Bondage: Blackface and the Merengue Craze in El Ponceño, 1852– 54”
Anne Garland Mahler, Emory Univ., “The Linguistic Politics of Piri Thomas: African American Vernacular English and Racial Discourse in Down These Mean Streets”
Juan Rodriguez, Georgia Inst. of Tech., “Poesía, imagen y tecnología en Rizoma de Áurea María Sotomayor”
Respondent: Rubén Ríos Ávila, Univ. of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
353. Avenues of Access: Digital Humanities and the Future of Scholarly Communication
Republic Ballroom, Sheraton
A linked session arranged in conjunction with The Presidential Forum: Avenues of Access (112).
Presiding: Michael Bérubé, Penn State Univ., University Park
Matthew Kirschenbaum, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, “The Mirror and the LAMP”
Cathy N. Davidson, Duke Univ., “Access Demands a Paradigm Shift”
Bethany Nowviskie, Univ. of Virginia, “Resistance in the Materials”
The news that digital humanities are the next big thing must come as a pleasant surprise to people who have been working in the field for decades. Yet only recently has the scholarly community at large realized that developments in new media have implications not only for the form but also for the content of scholarly communication. This session will explore some of those implications—for scholars, for libraries, for journals, and for the idea of intellectual property.
363. African Testimonial Literature
209, Hynes
Program arranged by the Division on African Literatures. Presiding: Joya F. Uraizee, Saint Louis Univ.
Kimberly Nance, Illinois State Univ., “‘Use Beginning, Middle, and End’: Testimonial Narrative as Reintegrative Therapy in Delia Jarrett- Macauley’s Moses, Citizen and Me”
Tamara Moellenberg, Univ. of Oxford, Brasenose Coll., “New Lacunae: Silence and the Child Soldier”
James D. B. McCorkle, Hobart and William Smith Colls., “In the Shadow of Rwanda: Boubacar Boris Diop, Tierno Monénembo, and Véronique Tadjo and the Literature of Testimony”
Jessica Roberts, Queen’s Univ., “Contested Testimonials: Child Soldier Memoirs”
5:15–6:30 p.m.
399. Term Limits: The Language of the Presidential Campaign
Commonwealth, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Division on Language and Society. Presiding: Bruce W. Robbins, Columbia Univ.
Speakers: David Bromwich, Yale Univ.; Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth Coll.; Hortense Jeanette Spillers, Vanderbilt Univ.
Three perspectives by distinguished scholars on the language used by the candidates in the 2012 presidential campaign.
“Boston Sunset” by Flickr user bettlebrox under Creative Commons 2.0 License
Back to menu
SATURDAY, January 5
SATURDAY, January 5
8:30–9:45 a.m.
432. Aural Literature and Close Listening
Beacon H, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Michelle Nancy Levy, Simon Fraser Univ., Burnaby
Matthew Rubery, Univ. of London, Queen Mary Coll. “The Case against Audiobooks”
Cornelius Collins, Fordham Univ., Bronx, “Aural Literacy in a Visual Era: Is Anyone Listening?”
Justin St. Clair, Univ. of South Alabama, “Novel Sound Tracks and the Future of Hybridized Reading”
Lisa A. Hollenbach, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, “Poetry as MP3: PennSound, Poetry Recording, and the New Digital Archive”
For abstracts, write to mnl@sfu.ca
442. Reading Aloud to Revise: Exploring the Role of Intonation in Silent Written Language
Fairfax B, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Peter Elbow, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst
Reading aloud to revise is a celebrated practice, but it is too little taught as a concrete skill and too little analyzed from a linguistic point of view. In this workshop, participants will explore this valuable teaching technique. We will work on sample passages by reading them aloud with attention to rhythm and sound and will analyze the linguistics of intonation to show why the tongue is a reliable guide to strong clear prose.
For two chapters from Elbow’s recent book, write to elbow@english.umass.edu.
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m.
497. Redefining the “Fossilized” Language of the Twenty- First Century
201, Hynes
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on General Linguistics. Presiding: Marnie Jo Petray, California Polytechnic State Univ., San Luis Obispo
Bryan Kirschen, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, “Contemporary Linguistic Features of ‘Cervantine’ Judeo- Spanish”
Nassima Neggaz, Georgetown Univ., “Syria’s Arab Spring: Language Enrichment in the Midst of Revolution”
Covadonga Lamar Prieto, Univ. of California, Riverside, “Fossilized Features in 1:45–3:00 p.m.Contemporary California Spanish and Their Relation with Historical California Spanish”
1:45–3:00 p.m.
539. Gendered Blues Subjectivities and Racial Politics across Southern History
Beacon F, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Adam Gussow, Univ. of Mississippi
Adam Gussow, “Thee Devil’s Son-in- Law: Blues Masculinity, Interracial Sexuality, and the Infrapolitics of Jim Crow”
Courtney George, Columbus State Univ., “‘What Would the Music Be Like?’: Revolutionary Music in Alice Walker’s Meridian”
Nicholas Gorrell, Univ. of Mississippi, “‘If Your Heart Been Broken, Call on the Handy Man’: Female Sexuality and Revisionist Masculinities in Contemporary Southern Soul-Blues”
Respondent: R. A. Lawson, Dean Coll.
For abstracts, write to ngorrell@olemiss.edu after 15 Nov.
546. Taste, Touch, Hear: Race, Science, and the Senses in the Nineteenth Century
Beacon A, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Pomona Coll.
Uri McMillan, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, “An Echo across Centuries: Joice Heth’s Sonic of Dissent”
Kyla Schuller, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, “Touching Time: Frances E.W. Harper’s Evolutionary Aesthetics”
Kyla Wazana Tompkins, “Lifestyle Eugenics: Joel Chandler Harris and the Birth of Victim Citizenship”
550. The Classroom as Interface
Hampton, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Kathi Inman Berens, Univ. of Southern California
Elizabeth Mathews Losh, Univ. of California, San Diego, “The Campus as Interface: Screening the University”
Jason Farman, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, “Being Distracted in the Digital Age”
Kathi Inman Berens, “Virtual Classroom Software: A Medium-Specific Analysis”
Leeann Hunter, Georgia Inst. of Tech., “The Multisensory Classroom”
566. Wonder and Marvel in Cross- Cultural Encounter
207, Hynes
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Romance Literary Relations. Presiding: Lynn Ramey, Vanderbilt Univ.
Paula Park, Univ. of Texas, Austin, “The Utopian Impulse to Archive New Sounds in Alejo Carpentier’s The Lost Steps”
Laure M. Marcellesi, Dartmouth Coll., “Sexual Misunderstandings: First European Encounters with Tahiti”
Danielle Carlotti-Smith, Univ. of Virginia, “Le choc avec le réel: Intertextual Encounters in the French West Indies”
For abstracts, visit my.vanderbilt .edu/lynnramey/mla2013/.
569. One Hundred Years of The Rite of Spring
305, Hynes
Program arranged by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. Presiding: Rebecca Jane Stanton, Barnard Coll.
Francoise Rosset, Wheaton Coll., MA, “The Rite of Spring: Roerich’s Pagan Past”
Marilyn Sizer, Seattle, WA, “The Rite of Spring: Stravinsky’s Mysterium”
Carol Rowntree Jones, Nottingham, England, “The Rite of Spring: Pina Bausch; Danger; and a Woman, Writing”
Respondent: Harlow L. Robinson, Northeastern Univ.
For abstracts, visit http://mlaslavic2013.blogspot.com/.
3:30–4:45 p.m.
577. Science and Technology in Afro-Modern Literature
Beacon D, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Marques Redd, Marquette Univ.
Marques Redd, “The Technology of the Ancient Egyptian Future: The Cosmic Poetry of Sun Ra”
Zakiyyah Jackson, Univ. of Virginia, “The Future Is a Parasite: Octavia Butler and Posthumanism”
Beth M. Coleman, Harvard Univ., “Race as Technology: Ideologies and Literatures of ‘ Post- Race’ Identity”
583. Intellectual and Cognitive Disability Studies
Beacon F, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: John N. Allen, Milwaukee Area Technical Coll.
Sarah Pett, Univ. of York, “‘Aphasia’s Fingerprints’: Language Impairment, Autobiography, and Fiction in Paul West’s The Shadow Factory”
Michelle Jarman, Univ. of Wyoming, “The Savant and the Silent Subject: Challenging the Hierarchy of the Autism Spectrum”
John N. Allen, “The Reception of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and the Discourse of Down Syndrome”
588. Race and Poetics: On Aesthetic Practice in Ethnic Studies
Beacon A, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Nathan Grant, Saint Louis Univ.
Speakers: John Alba Cutler, Northwestern Univ.; Samantha Pinto, Georgetown Univ.; Libbie Ri-in, Georgetown Univ.; Jennifer Stoever- Ackerman, Binghamton Univ., State Univ. of New York
Respondent: Kandice Chuh, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York
This roundtable will consider cultural forms of difference across a range of genres, including the lyric, collaborative authorship, and radio. We will focus on how aesthetics shifts some of the major tenants of ethnic studies, looking at major as well as neglected authors across African American, Latino/a, Asian American, and anglophone postcolonial studies.
5:15-6:30 pm
616. Poetic Occupations: From the Great Depression to the “Great Recession”
Independence East, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Sarah Ehlers, Univ. of South Dakota
John Marsh, Penn State Univ., University Park, “Percentile Poetics and Distributive Justice”
Sarah Ehlers, “‘The Left Needs Rhythm’: Poetry Speaks the Depression”
Paula Rabinowitz, Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities, “Class Ventriloquism: Women’s Letters, Lectures, Lyrics”
621. Reading, Reading Machines, and Machine Reading
Gardner, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Media and Literature. Presiding: Jessica Pressman, American Council of Learned Socs.
Matthew Rubery, Univ. of London, Queen Mary Coll., “Phonographic Reading Machines”
Katherine Wilson, Alelphi Univ., “Mechanical Mediations of Miniature Text: Reading Microform”
Mara Mills, New York Univ., “Between Human and Machine, a Printed Sheet: (e Early History of OCR (Optical Character Recognition)”
631. Literary Theory and American Sign Language Literature
Hampton, Sheraton
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession. Presiding: Jill Marie Bradbury, Gallaudet Univ.
Rebecca Terese Sanchez, Fordham Univ., Bronx, “‘Human Bodies Are Words’: The Poetics of Deaf Voice”
“The Gaze: Film Studies and the Flying Words Project,” Pamela Kincheloe, Rochester Inst. of Tech.
“ASL Protest Poetry and Refashioning the Traditional Oral Epic,” Kristen%C. Harmon, Gallaudet Univ.
639. Two Tools for Student- Generated Digital Projects: WordPress and Omeka in the Classroom
Back Bay B, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Gabrielle Dean, Johns Hopkins Univ., MD
Speakers: Amanda L. French, George Mason Univ.; George Williams, Univ. of South Carolina, Spartanburg
This “master class” will focus on integrating two digital tools into the classroom to facilitate studentgenerated projects: Omeka, for the creation of archives and exhibits, and WordPress, for the creation of blogs and Web sites. We will discuss what kinds of assignments work with each tool, how to get started, and how to evaluate assignments. Bring a laptop (not a tablet) for hands- on work.
“060701boylston1” by Flickr user Dan4th under Creative Commons 2.0 License. In the background is the Hynes Convention Center
Back to menu
SUNDAY, January 6
Sunday, January 6
8:30–9:45 a.m.
692. Baroque Forces
303, Hynes
Program arranged by the Division on Colonial Latin American Literatures. Presiding: Anna H. More, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Ivonne del Valle, Univ. of California, Berkeley, “Colonial Baroque: Violence as History”
Lisa Voigt, Ohio State Univ., Columbus, “Festive Forces in Potosí”
José Francisco Robles, El Colegio de México, “Sigüenza y Vico”
Rachel Spaulding, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, “The Baroque Voice: Syncretic Afro- Catholic Performance and Power in the Visions of Early Modern Brazil’s Rosa Maria Egipçiaca”
693. Theorizing Digital Practice, Practicing Digital Theory
Liberty A, Sheraton
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Information Technology. Presiding: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke Univ.
Tanya E. Clement, Univ. of Texas, Austin, “What Text Mining and Visualizations Have to Do with Feminist Scholarly Inquiries”
Dana Solomon, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, “Building the Infrastructural Layer: Reading Data Visualization in the Digital Humanities”
Stephanie Boluk, Vassar Coll., “What Should We Do with Our Games?”
Respondent: Victoria E. Szabo
For abstracts, visit people.duke.edu/~ves4/mla13/.
10:15–11:30 a.m.
698. Intonation and Poetic Convention
Dalton, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Natalie E. Gerber, State Univ. of New York, Fredonia; Benjamin Glaser, Skidmore Coll.
Benjamin Glaser, “Libraries of Rhythm”
Thomas Cable, Univ. of Texas, Austin, “When Free Verse Is Not Free Enough”
Steve Willard, Univ. of California, San Diego “Suffused Selves: Intertextual Poetics, Intonation, and Prosody,”
Respondent: Natalie E. Gerber
For abstracts, write to gerber@ fredonia.edu.
700. May 4 Voices: Teaching about the 1970 Kent State Shootings through Oral History and Drama
Back Bay A, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Robert Balla, Univ. of Akron
Speakers: Robert Balla; Kenneth Bindas, Kent State Univ., Kent; Katherine Burke, Theatre of the Oppressed, Inc.; David Hassler, Kent State Univ., Kent
Roundtable discussion of May 4 Voices, an oral history play about the Kent State student shootings of 1970. The session will explore the play’s usefulness in multiple pedagogical settings. Panelists will describe their experiences with May 4 Voices in diverse disciplines and elicit audience responses, along with ideas for incorporating the play into humanities curricula.
701. Trauma, Affect, and Genre in African American Culture
Riverway, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Cherise Smith, Univ. of Texas, Austin
Speakers: Stephanie Batiste, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Sonnet Retman, Univ. of Washington, Seattle; Christina Sharpe, Tufts Univ.; Cherise Smith; Lisa Thompson, Univ. of Austin
In this roundtable, we turn to a range of cultural media, from plays and photographs to novels and musicals, to explore the ways that various African American artists historicize and politicize racial trauma through the innovative use of genre and its affective possibilities.
702. South Asian- izing the Digital Humanities
209, Hynes
A special session. Presiding: Rahul Gairola, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Suchismita Banerjee, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “Creating Alternate Voices: Exploring South Asian Cyberfeminism”
Waseem Anwar, Forman Christian Coll., “Digitizing Pakistani Literary Forms; or, E/Merging the Transcultural”
Rashmi Bhatnagar, Univ. of Pittsburgh“Reimagining Aesthetic Education: Digital Humanities in the Global South”
Respondent: Amritjit Singh, Ohio Univ., Athens
For abstracts, write to rgairola@uw.edu after 1 Dec 2012.
708. Victorian Oral Culture, circa 1861–1901
Public Garden, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Anne Zwierlein, Univ. of Regensburg
John Plunkett, Univ. of Exeter, “Ways with Words: Peepshows, Panoramas, and the Showman- Lecturer”
Janice Schroeder, Carleton Univ., “The Schooled Voice: Sound and Sense in the Reports of the School Inspectorate”
John M. Picker, Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., “Siri Love, circa 1900: Voice Engine Fictions in the Age of Synergy”
For abstracts, visit www.uni-regensburg.de/sprache-literatur-kultur/anglistik/staff/zwierlein/index.html
715. Philip Roth’s Music
Liberty B, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Aimee Lynn Pozorski, Central Connecticut State Univ.
Ira Nadel, Univ. of British Columbia, “Philip Roth and the Music of Seduction”
Aimee Lynn Pozorski, “Nationalism, Lyricism, and Self- Loathing in I Married a Communist and Indignation”
Matthew Shipe, Washington Univ. in St. Louis, “Dream a Little Dream: Music as Counternarrative in Philip Roth’s Late Fiction”
Respondent: B. Jane Statlander- Slote, Miami International Univ. of Art and Design
For abstracts, visit rothsociety.org after 15 Dec.
1:45–3:00 p.m.
793. Anthropomorphism
206, Hynes
Program arranged by the Division on Comparative Studies in Romanticism and the Nineteenth Century. Presiding: Sara Guyer, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Helmut Heinz Müller- Sievers, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, “Making the Gestell Sing: Romantic Music Theory, Virtuoso Performance, and the Aesthetics of Machines”
Jessica Kuskey, Syracuse Univ., “Industrial Anthropomorphism and the Victorian Factory Question”
Monique Allewaert, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, “Antimorphism”
795. Literature and Digital Pedagogies
Fairfax A, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Anaïs Saint- Jude, Stanford Univ.
“Teaching Modernism Traditionally and Digitally: What We May Learn from New Digital Tutoring Models by Khan Academy and Udacity,” Petra Dierkes- Thrun, Stanford Univ.
“Digital Resources and the Medieval- Literature Classroom,” Robin Wharton, Georgia Inst. of Tech.
“Toward a New Hybrid Pedagogy: Embodiment and Learning in the Classroom 2.0,” Pete Rorabaugh, Georgia State Univ.; Jesse Stommel, Marylhurst Univ.
For abstracts, visit litilluminations.wordpress.com/ after 1 Dec.
“after hours” by Flickr user haydnseek under Creative Commons License 2.0
Share this:
Current Top Posts
April 2021
January 2020
November 2019
October 2019
August 2019
April 2014
November 2017
March 2015
December 2017
October 2015
Sounding Out! 
Recent Comments