Archaeologies of Gossip: AIDS in Contemporary Gay Fiction

<p>Queer criticism is now in its third decade and, as critical orthodoxy, running up against its own limitations. What, for example, is a discipline preoccupied with the unspoken, the marginal and the blurring of gender boundaries to do with Edmund White’s unambiguously gay, masculine “red unsheathed fury of the third penis of the afternoon”? The Western AIDS novel is, overwhelmingly, a product of a historically precise, explicitly gay, male experience. This thesis seeks unapologetically to engage with this writing on its own terms, eschewing the queer critical lens as insufficient, and, rather, reading for a specifically gay aesthetic. Grounded in a broader overview of both AIDS novels and existing criticism, this thesis consists of extended close readings of two exemplary AIDS novels: Edmund White’s The Farewell Symphony and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. Firstly, I articulate the centrality of the gay sexual body to the representation of AIDS in The Farewell Symphony, tracing its representation of the disease through the epidemiological mapping of the virus itself, within the highly specific culture of gay New York in the 1970s. Secondly, I examine the way in which the re-imagination of a selective tradition of gay literary predecessors in The Line of Beauty, specifically Henry James and Oscar Wilde, provides an aesthetic solution to articulating AIDS.</p>

Archaeologies of Gossip: AIDS in Contemporary Gay Fiction

<p>Queer criticism is now in its third decade and, as critical orthodoxy, running up against its own limitations. What, for example, is a discipline preoccupied with the unspoken, the marginal and the blurring of gender boundaries to do with Edmund White’s unambiguously gay, masculine “red unsheathed fury of the third penis of the afternoon”? The Western AIDS novel is, overwhelmingly, a product of a historically precise, explicitly gay, male experience. This thesis seeks unapologetically to engage with this writing on its own terms, eschewing the queer critical lens as insufficient, and, rather, reading for a specifically gay aesthetic. Grounded in a broader overview of both AIDS novels and existing criticism, this thesis consists of extended close readings of two exemplary AIDS novels: Edmund White’s The Farewell Symphony and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. Firstly, I articulate the centrality of the gay sexual body to the representation of AIDS in The Farewell Symphony, tracing its representation of the disease through the epidemiological mapping of the virus itself, within the highly specific culture of gay New York in the 1970s. Secondly, I examine the way in which the re-imagination of a selective tradition of gay literary predecessors in The Line of Beauty, specifically Henry James and Oscar Wilde, provides an aesthetic solution to articulating AIDS.</p>

More Than Two Decades of Research on Selective Traditions in Environmental and Sustainability Education—Seven Functions of the Concept

This study investigates functions of the concept of selective traditions by means of a qualitative systematic review synthesis of earlier research. The study is based on a review method for integrating qualitative studies and looks for “themes” in or across them. In this case, it is about how the identified publications (twenty-four in total) use the concept of selective traditions. All but two studies stem from the Swedish context. The selective traditions relate to teachers’ approaches to the content, methods and purposes of environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Teachers mainly work within one specific selective tradition. Seven different functions were found in the publications of which five are claimed to be valuable for the development of ESE teaching, while the other two functions are useful in monitoring changes and development in ESE teaching. The results are discussed in terms of the consequences for research, practice and teacher education aiming at offering suggestions on how to develop future (transformative) ESE teaching.

The (Mis)representation of Enslavement in Historical Literature for Elementary Students

Context Elementary teachers will make difficult pedagogical choices when selecting materials to support their students’ learning about historical topics. Given the variety of historical books written for their students, certain stories will be emphasized and ultimately legitimated and others will be silenced through absence. Objective of Study The objective of this article is to identify and analyze children's literature spanning a spectrum of theoretical positioning and to interrogate their instructional implications. We investigate narratives and images of enslavement in children's literature through the question: how is enslavement portrayed in recently published elementary-level (first through sixth grade) literature? Research Design This article is a content analysis of 21 recently published elementary-level books that portray enslavement in U.S. history. Unlike previous studies of enslavement in children's literature, we analyzed both the narrative text and the illustrations in our dataset using methods that ensured interrater reliability. To accomplish this, we developed and tested an analytical tool for understanding the interpretive stances books deploy when they portray difficult moments in history. We deductively categorized textual and visual depictions of enslavement into one of three stances: selective tradition, social conscience, and culturally conscious. The criteria for these stances were established through critical race theory and the broad research tradition on African-American subjects in children's literature. Results Our analysis revealed the presence of all three depictions in children's literature. Our findings call attention to the need for careful decision-making on the part of elementary teachers, as their decisions around book selection will enact a curriculum that honors particular perspectives of U.S. history. The problematic elements identified in previous studies remain prevalent in modern books for elementary students. However, our findings also suggest teachers will be presented with a more complicated set of options when selecting among historical children's literature than previously documented by researchers. Conclusions While a diversity of interpretive narratives about enslavement is present in elementary-level history books, the invisibility of race in U.S. history remains a powerful feature in current historical resources. Researchers of a number of topics in K–12 education will find utility in the analytical tool developed for this article. Selective tradition, social conscience, and culturally conscious are interpretive frames that can be directed at any number of topics in children's literature.

Rolling back Modernity: Selective Tradition and Contemporary Literary Politics in the South Pacific

This article relates Raymond Williams’s concept of “selective tradition” to the shaping of literary history in Aotearoa New Zealand. It makes the case for the ongoing salience of Williams’s narrative of modernity as a “long revolution,” and his sense of the threats to democratic and cultural participation around the turn of the 21st century, as a framework for situating recent cultural politics. The article closes with some suggestions for possible future directions for the development of locally-based materialist literary criticism.