IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks :: Browsing by Author "Springer, Jennifer Thorington"

Browsing by Author "Springer, Jennifer Thorington"

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All the Pieces Matter: Fragmentation-as-Agency in the Novels of Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo
(2013-01-30) Morguson, Alisun; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Fox, Stephen L.; Henry Anthony, Ronda C.
The fragmented bodies and lives of postcolonial Caribbean women examined in Caribbean literature beget struggle and psychological ruin. The characters portrayed in novels by postcolonial Caribbean writers Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo are marginalized as “Other” by a Western patriarchal discourse that works to silence them because of their gender, color, class, and sexuality. Marginalization participates in the act of fragmentation of these characters because it challenges their sense of identity. Fragmentation means fractured; in terms of these fictive characters, fragmentation results from multiple traumas, each trauma causing another break in their wholeness. Postcolonial scholars have identified the causes and effects of fragmentation on the postcolonial subject, and they argue one’s need to heal because of it. Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo prove that wholeness is not possible for the postcolonial Caribbean woman, so rather than ruminate on that truth, they examine the journey of the postcolonial Caribbean woman as a way of making meaning of the pieces of her life. This project contends that fragmentation – and the fracture it produces – does not bind these women to negative existences; in fact, the female subjects of Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo locate power in their fragmentation. The texts studied include Danticat’s "Breath, Eyes, Memory" (1994) and "The Farming of Bones" (1999), Cliff’s "Abeng" (1984) and "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), and Mootoo’s "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1996) and "He Drown She in the Sea" (2005).
Constructing Radical Black Female Subjectivities: Survival Pimping in Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe
(Project Muse, 2015) Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Department of English, School of Liberal Arts
This essay seeks to add to progressive scholarship that probes the ways in which black women create safe spaces to unapologetically accept their sexuality and the sexual agency that evolves as a result while simultaneously acknowledging the fluidity of feminine identities. In what follows, the author begin by describing the implications of what bell hooks calls "radical black subjectivity" for the sexual agency that may be secured by women who participate in sex work. Second, she examines how Clarke's protagonists, Ma and Mary, evolve and emerge as sexual agents rather than mere victims in their quest for personhood. Their reinvention of self surpasses personal subjectivity and serves as a testament to the struggles of women like themselves who resist from the margins, validating such experiences as worthy of scholarly critique. The third part of the essay challenges the simplistic and troubling idea that women who participate in sex work are merely objects -- objectified by men or self-objectified.
Dance and Identity Politics in Caribbean Literature: Culture, Community, and Commemoration
(2011-06-03) Tressler, Gretchen E.; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Kubitschek, Missy Dehn; Shepherd, Susan Carol
Dance appears often in Anglophone Caribbean literature, usually when a character chooses to celebrate and emphasize her/his freedom from the physical, emotional, and societal constraints that normally keep the body in check. This study examines how a character's political consciousness often emerges in chorus with aesthetic bodily movement and analyzes the symbolic force and political significance of Caribbean dance--both celebratory (as in Carnival) and defensive (as in warrior dances). Furthermore, this study observes how the weight of Western views on dance influences Caribbean transmutations and translations of cultural behavior, ritual acts, and spontaneous movement. The novels studied include Samuel Selvon's "The Lonely Londoners" (1956), Earl Lovelace's "The Dragon Can't Dance" (1979), Paule Marshall's "Praisesong for the Widow" (1983), and Marie-Elena John's "Unburnable" (2006).
Faculty perceptions of multicultural teaching in a large urban university
(2012-06) Bigatti, Silvia M.; Gibau, Gina Sanchez; Boys, Stephanie; Grove, Kathy; Ashburn-Nardo, Leslie; Khaja, Khadija; Springer, Jennifer Thorington
As college graduates face an increasingly globalized world, it is imperative to consider issues of multicultural instruction in higher education. This study presents qualitative and quantitative findings from a survey of faculty at a large, urban, midwestern university regarding perceptions of multicultural teaching. Faculty were asked how they define multicultural teaching, how they engage in multicultural teaching, what they perceive to be the benefits of multicultural teaching, and what barriers to implementing multicultural teaching they experience. Results indicate faculty members most frequently define multicultural teaching as using diverse teaching pedagogies and materials. In line with their definitions, faculty also report engaging in multicultural teaching through use of inclusive course materials. Faculty identified positive learning outcomes for all students as a primary benefit to engaging in multicultural teaching. The primary barrier reported by faculty is an anticipated resistance from students. Variations in responses based on academic discipline and rank of faculty member are discussed.
"A field lately ploughed" : the expressive landscapes of gender and race in the antebellum slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and William Grimes
(2013-10-07) Nyhuis, Jeremiah E.; Schultz, Jane E.; Henry Anthony, Ronda C.; Springer, Jennifer Thorington
The complicated state wherein ex-slaves found themselves, as depicted in the narratives of Bibb, Jacobs, and others, problematizes the dualistic relationship between North and South that the genre’s structural components work to enforce, forging an odyssey that, although sometimes still spiritual in nature, does not offer the type of resolutions that might easily persuade fellow slaves to abandon their masters and seek a similarly ambiguous identity in the so-called “free” land of the North. For blacks and especially fugitive slaves, such restrictive legal provisions provided an “uncertain status” where, writes William Andrews, “the definition of freedom for black people remained open.” In those slave narratives that dare to depict the limits of liberty in the North, this “open” status is particularly reflected in the texts’ discursive terrain itself, which portends a series of candid observations and brutal details that actively work to deconstruct any sort of mythological pattern associated with the slave narrative genre, thereby offering a more expansive view of the experience for most fugitive slaves. The Life of William Grimes, a particularly frank and brutal diary of a man’s trials within and without slavery, is one such slave narrative, depicting a journey that, while more consistent with the general experience of ex-slaves in the antebellum U.S., often works outside the parameters of traditional, straight-forward slave narratives like Douglass’s. “I often was obliged to go off the road,” Grimes admits at one point in his autobiography, and although his remark refers to the cautious path he must tread as a fugitive slave, it might just as well describe the thematic and structural characteristics of his open-ended autobiography. Reputedly the first fugitive slave narrative, the publication of Grimes’s Life in 1825 initiated the beginning of a genre whose path had not yet been forged, which likely contributed to its fluid nature. At the time of his narrative’s publication, Grimes’s self-expressed testimony of injustice under slavery was about five years ahead of its time; it wouldn’t be until the 1830s that the U.S. antislavery movement would begin to consciously seek out ex-slaves to testify to their experience in bondage. Once this literary door was open, however, antislavery sentiment became for many early African American authors “a ready forum” for self-expression. Whereas in twenty years’ time Douglass would take full advantage of this opportunity by drawing inspiration from a number of already established narratives, Grimes as an author found himself singularly “off the road” and essentially alone in new literary territory, uncannily reflecting his sense of alienation and helplessness in the North after escaping from slavery aboard a cargo ship in 1815.
Get involved : stories of the Caribbean postcolonial black middle class and the development of civil society
(2018-03-07) Williams-Pulfer, Kim N.; Stanfield II., John H.; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Benjamin, Lehn; Steensland, Brian
The main research question of this project is: How do the narratives of Caribbean black middle class civil society within the bounds of the “post-postcolonial” state, explain the evolving yet current environment of local and postcolonial civil society development? Using the Bahamas as a case, this project explores the historical, political, cultural, and social conditions that supported the development of civil society within the context of a postcolonial society. Furthermore, an investigation via in-depth interviews, participation observation, archival, and contemporary document analysis contextualizes the present-day work of civil society leaders in the Bahamas. Methodologically, the project employs narrative analysis to uncover the perspectives, voices, and practices of black middle-class Bahamian civil society offering an unfolding, dynamic, and nuanced approach for understanding the historical legacies and contemporary structure of local civil society and philanthropy. The study focuses on three primary forms of narratives. These include the narratives of the past (historical), the narratives of expressive and aesthetic cultural practices, and the narratives of lived experience. The project locates that the development of civil society is linked to historical and cultural forces. The findings show that that the narratives of history, social, and artistic development foregrounds a hybrid model of civil society development drawn from the experience of slavery, colonialism, decolonization, as well as the emerging structures related to economic and political globalization. Furthermore, observed through resilience narratives, local civil society leaders negotiate the boundaries of hybridity in their understanding of their personal, social, and professional identities as well as the way in which they engage government, the public, as well as local and international funders.
High‐Impact Practices: The Call for a Commitment to Quality Educational Experiences and Inclusive Excellence
(2018) Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Hatcher, Julie A.; Powell, Amy
Imagining the other: the possibilities and limits of the sympathetic imagination in J.M. Coetzee's recent fiction
(2011-11-18) Caldwell, Christine Sego; Hoegberg, David Erick; Schultz, Jane E.; Springer, Jennifer Thorington
In three of J. M. Coetzee’s recent novels, Disgrace (1999), Elizabeth Costello (2003), and Slow Man (2005), the South African author explores notions of authorship and challenges the possibilities of the sympathetic imagination. The notion of the sympathetic imagination has roots in Romanticism, and it connotes inhabiting another in order to understand or interpret. Romantic poet John Keats described the poet as “continually in for [sic] and filling some other body” (Letter to Richard Woodhouse), and Coetzee addresses the notion of the sympathetic imagination in his work. There are two facets of the sympathetic imagination: that which governs social relations and that which authors and creative minds attempt to claim as a driving force behind their work. It is important not to conflate the two separate facets of the sympathetic imagination. The social facet encourages good citizenship and allows humankind to behave in humane ways. It counters one’s private desire for mastery and balances self-interest with self-sacrifice; the sympathetic imagination helps others attain their goals and places others’ needs alongside one’s own selfishness. A sympathetic imagination is an essential quality in society, yet it will always yield only partial success. It cannot achieve complete success because truly inhabiting and embodying another living person is simply impossible, but in fiction, Coetzee explores the possibilities and limits of the sympathetic imagination at the level of language and metaphor. The other facet of the sympathetic imagination is often claimed by authors, poets, and artists to allow them to inhabit the subjects of their creativity. Coetzee tests the limits of authorial claims that writing is accomplished by applying a sympathetic imagination. In doing so, he creates metaphysical frames in which his own author-characters interact with other characters to reveal that some characters resist being written. In these metaphysical frames of fiction, Coetzee suggests that an author’s sympathetic imagination will never have total success; he sets forth a notion of partial success that helps address what is gained when the sympathetic imagination runs up against limits. My argument is that the authors and characters in these three novels attempt acts of sympathetic imagination and recurrently encounter limits. Coetzee questions perceived notions of authorship and the possibilities of the sympathetic imagination without offering alternatives. He critiques common notions of authorship and character writing but offers no real solutions.
Multicultural Teaching: Barriers and Recommendations
(2010) Khaja, Khadija; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Bigatti, Silvia; Gibau, Gina Sanchez; Whitehead, Dawn; Grove, Kathleen; Office of Academic Affairs
A pedagogy that serves students of all backgrounds and trains them to compete in a diverse world is becoming imperative. University educators have been slow to accept the challenge of multicultural teaching, yet it is not clearly understood why this is the case. The authors surveyed 464 faculty members from across disciplines at a large urban, Midwestern campus. This mixed-methods study assessed faculty conceptualizations of multicultural teaching, the degree to which they may be engaged in this practice, and what challenges they face. The findings revealed that faculty members perceived several barriers to multicultural teaching, including student resistance, language barriers, lack of teaching resources, time constraints, and lack of knowledge about multicultural teaching pedagogies. Although the faculty perceived that most barriers were related to student factors, they revealed some degree of insight into their own role in terms of relative effort and lack of knowledge. Furthermore, faculty identified various institutional barriers that could be addressed to facilitate multicultural teaching at institutions of higher education. The importance of multicultural teaching in the current economic and political environment is discussed.
Polished ‘Hoes’, Dancehall Queens, and Sexual Freaks: Voices From the Margins of Caribbean Literature
(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Springer, Jennifer Thorington
Polished Hoes, Dance Hall Queens, and Sexual Freaks: Women’s Voices From the Margins is a book-length project that will examine multiply marginalized Caribbean women’s narratives of resistance as they challenge and transform the sexual politics of black communities. Scholarship in black studies, particularly in the Caribbean, tends to reward normative behavior and marginalizes women who do not conform to set standards, deeming them deviants and denying them black citizenship–access to national belonging–within their disparate nations. Those considered “deviants” and their troubled identities are not deemed worthy of national belonging. Analyzing Anglophone literature, film, news reports, texts written by underground groups, and popular culture, in English, Polished Hoes addresses two main questions: how do marginalized Caribbean women create radical identities and counter-subcultures as they resist oppression? And what new radical politics and communities evolve from these? Polished Hoes proposes a new black resistance theory grounded in the experiences of multiply marginalized women and their challenges to various forms of oppression.

Browsing by Author "Springer, Jennifer Thorington"

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