9:35 a.m., July 8, 2010----Six undergraduate students from across the nation recently completed the third annual University of Delaware Arts and Humanities Summer Institute (AHSI) by sharing the results of their research on novels exploring issues of race and gender in American society during the 19th and 20th centuries.

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The research presentations were made to faculty and members of the UD community during a daylong research symposium held June 29 in Memorial Hall.

The Arts and Humanities Summer Institute ran from June 6 through July 2 and included class discussions, student research, guest lecturers and workshops.

Rosalind Johnson, AHSI director, said “the research of these students was exhaustive.” Martin Brueckner, associate professor of English, and AHSI co-faculty adviser, congratulated participants for their research efforts and preparation for possible graduate school careers.

Timothy Spaulding, AHSI faculty co-adviser and associate professor of English and Black American Studies, noted that the students' research efforts examined three novels from a variety of critical perspectives. The novels were Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853) by William Wells Brown, Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, and The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison (1970).

Shannon Pratt of Francis Marion University in South Carolina examined Brown's novel though her research presentation, “Cross-dressing and Gender as Performance in William Wells Brown's Clotel.”

Published in London and written by a fugitive from slavery and an abolitionist spokesman, Clotel has been considered the first African-American novel.

“Upon reading William Wells Brown's Clotel, I noticed that there were several episodes in the text in which characters disguised themselves as the opposite sex,” Pratt said. “I found these occurrences interesting, but I was confused as to what their purpose was in a novel that otherwise was about racial differences and slavery.”

Pratt noted that while the entire framework of American society at the time was being challenged by these acts of racial and gender cross-dressing, Brown still believed in the importance of maintaining established gender lines.

“It occurred to me that Brown's poignant addition of minstrel shows questioning racial differences and relating the accounts of slaves were all about challenging society's beliefs of race and slavery,” Pratt said. “In the midst of all of this he accidentally challenged society's beliefs about gender, as well.”

Morrison's first novel was the focus of “Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes, Black Skin” presented by Tazia Shorter of Tennessee State University.

The Bluest Eye, set in Morrison's birthplace of Lorain, Ohio, focuses on the tragic psychological devastation of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl who sought to attain the ideal American standard of feminine beauty as reflected in the popular American culture of the time.

This standard of female beauty also became an obsession of Pecola's mother, Pauline Breedlove, who sought escape from the realities of her everyday life as an African American woman by watching the movies of blonde-haired film stars like Jean Harlow. Pauline later sought the same kind of release through religion.

“Pauline Breedlove is a victim of what she can't have, and is willing to drive her family crazy because of it,” Shorter said. “She is insecure with who she is, unhappy with her marriage, and she fails to realize that the white woman she aspires to be doesn't exist.”

Other presentations included:

“Whose House is it Anyway? The Fall of the House in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye,” by Debbie Nguyen of Swarthmore College;

“Defying the 'Norms': The Construction of the Literary Free Jazz Ensemble in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye,” by Tempestt Gavins of Columbia College;

“The Un/Mothering of Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye,” by Patricia Abrahams of Syracuse University; and

“Cinema and Christianity as Outlets for Communal Self-Deception in The Bluest Eye,” by Staci Poston of Francis Marion University.

Article by Jerry Rhodes
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson and Evan Krape