Pathways: a journal of humanistic and social inquiry
Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry is a peer-reviewed journal associated with the HSI Pathways to the Professoriate Program, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To learn more about the HSI Pathways to the Professoriate Program, visit our website.
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Publication The Shame Framework: Queer Faith in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God(2021-02-17) Montes, Isabella MThis work focuses on queer faith and how queer persons who have struggled with traditional values, public opinion, and lingering violence due to their sexuality, can reclaim their space and voices within religious communities. By redefining purity, exploring an alternative belief system though hybrid spirituality, and understanding the connection between pride and shame, queer persons can establish a dynamic framework, that allows for queer faith to be employed as a method of agency. This is analyzed through a literary perspective, focusing on the work of Ana Castillo’s novel, So Far From God.Publication Symbol, Signification, and Hashtags as Violence Against Black Bodies; A Comparative Analysis of Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen(2021-02-17) Edouard, Lynn SIn Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American lyric the concept of Black subjectivity rendered as symbol is represented through the narratives of Harriet and Trayvon Martin. By using Harriet’s explanation of becoming symbolic in Cliff’s No Telephone To Heaven as a lens to examine Trayvon Martin’s life and death as narrated in Rankine’s Citizen, I expand the conversation of symbolic rendering. In Cliff’s work, symbolic rendering is achieved through sexual violence in the post-colonial Caribbean context. For Rankine, the post-colonial carceral state in U.S. society becomes the site for the symbolic rendering of policy brutality and racial profiling. Using Saussure’s General Linguistics, Foucault’s concept of the PanOpticon, and bell hooks’s Loving Blackness as Political Action, I argue that Cliff and Rankine’s works illuminate how symbolism becomes violence against Black bodies by rendering the lived experiences of the individual as an object.Publication Establishing a Fixed Home: The Attempt at Identity Completion in Alvarez’s "Antojos" and Menéndez’s "Her Mother's House"(2021-02-17) Molina, Anaridia RImmigrant experiences are often characterized by identity anxiety and a corresponding longing to identify a single place to call “home.” In Julia Alvarez’s "Antojos" and Ana Menéndez’s "Her Mother's House," the main characters return to their native or ancestral land in search of a space to claim as home, and relatedly, a permanent location for a fixed identity in the Caribbean. This paper examines how in these works, typically unbeknownst to the protagonists themselves, establishing a home regularly takes the form of securing what they perceive to be “wholeness” and “completion.” I argue that the texts reveal that the protagonists’ search for a fixed and static place to call home, derived from desires of identity completion, cannot be found, and rather their place of arrival can solely exist in the ambiguity of language and memory. As such, eventually, the reader is prompted to understand that not having a traditional essentialized notion of home to guide the protagonists frees them and allows them to embrace rather than reject their linguistic and spatial multiplicities.Publication Traditional and Nontraditional Activism: Literary and Political Pedagogies of La Chicana(2021-02-17) Ponce, AnahiYxta Maya Murray’s Locas and Felicia Luna Lemus’s Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties both grapple with themes relating to the impact of Malinchismo experienced by real-life Chicanas in both political and cultural discourses. Despite this parallel, these texts and their characters have not received critical attention in the field of Chicana Literature when compared with texts such as Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. The womxn in these texts have similarly been stripped from narratives of activism because of their evocation of nontraditional forms of activism, which are often overlooked in comparison to more traditional ones, as a result of the application of respectability politics. While the womxn in these novels challenge the status quo through nontraditional activism and resistance, it is significant to consider how the systems of oppression that they are forced to navigate are intrinsic with those experienced by their real-life counterparts, as well as throughout the history and establishment of Chicana feminism and activism at large. This article is not meant to dichotomize Chicanas who partake in traditional versus nontraditional activism, but rather to provide insight as to how Chicanas have continuously acted as agents of change, in the face of colonization’s enduring legacies.Publication An Autopsy of the Black Revolution: Looking at Henri Christophe through the Césairean lens(2020-01-13) Piard, Johanna MIn his play The Tragedy of King Christophe, Aimé Césaire shows how Henri Christophe is incapable of establishing an anti-colonial black state because he adopts the colonial structure where his subjects are forced into free labor therefore perpetuating slavery. Instead of considering the immediate needs of the country, Christophe attempts to bring Haiti up as an equal competitor in the industrialized West despite its embargo and looming threat of reoccupation. Christophe becomes a slave master (the ultimate capitalist), thriving on the exploitation of his subjects to build the Citadel. This article looks at how Césaire's play brings nuance to "post-colonial" discourse, showing how the initial victims of colonialism can perpetuate this framework if they profit from it.It also highlights the significance this piece of Haitian Revolutionary literature has on global black liberation literary movement. While the play goes beyond the accuracy of true historical events, Césaire contextualizes what dismantling colonialism potentially means.Publication Deconstructing Cultural Food Borders: The Creation of New Latinidades in Latina Literature through Consumption(2019-02-19) Vigil, ElizabethThis research explores contemporary Latinx literature to examine the way discourse about food is presented as a form of socio-cultural control through the demand for culturally regulated forms of consumption. Judgmental discourse in what is said about food, how it is said, and expected behaviors of consumption are tied to the creation of a collective Latinx cultural identity. This cultural identity and its expected authenticity revolve around eating foods that are considered static segments of Puerto Rican cultural tradition. It works to assess expectations of identity which are forced upon individuals. This investigation looks at how the refusal of cultural foods and the consumption of cross-cultural foods is linked to the crossing of cultural food borders and thereby physical borders. It examines the concept of cultural loyalty through food and the creation of new Latinidades through consumption in Esmeralda Santiago’s, When I Was Puerto Rican.Publication From Poe to Cortázar: Spheres of Influence and Circles(2020-01-13) Garcia, Luis FA close examination as well as an exploration of the influence Edgar Allan Poe’s Eureka and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Circles provided to Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar in his short story Axolotl, From Poe to Cortázar: Spheres of Influence and Circles provides a comparison and contrast of the overall thematic elements and literary resources of these texts and authors.Publication Curando La Herida: Shamanic Healing and Language in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera(2019-02-15) Lopez, EstefanyThis paper explores the influence of shamanic tropes and philosophy in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Shamanic philosophy holds that language can materially transform realities, and Anzaldúa applies this framework in her aesthetics. Anzaldúa uses metaphor to reimagine the border not as a partition but as a wound to be healed; this metaphor seeks to transform the U.S/Mexico relationship and undermine the oppressive discourse of US hegemony and white supremacy. Moreover, the intertextual and bilingual nature of the text performs the healing of the wound by generating a new language of mestizaje. These aesthetic tactics are likened to traditional shamanic practices such as the removal of harmful intrusions and glossolalia. Lastly, shamanic philosophy is evaluated relative to two dominant western philosophies of language, logocentrism, and poststructuralism. The value in revisiting shamanic philosophy lies in its radically affective understanding of language, and its potential to empower the marginalized to participate in the formation of mestiza consciousness and more equitable realities.Publication Gendering of Home and Homelessness in Latinx Literature(2019-02-15) Ahumada, Maria PThis research interrogates the gendering of notions of home and homelessness using the theoretical framing of Anzaldúa in a critical analysis of the works of Sandra Cisneros in The House on Mango Street, and Helena Maria Viramontes' The Moths and Other Stories. The women in these narrative struggle with the societal expectations that are imposed on them through patriarchal ideals, which invade the spaces of their home. This framework can lead to a sense of outsiderness and feelings of homelessness within the home for women when they realize that they are being oppressed by a dominant culture.Publication Women Being Groomed as Objects of Desire in Romantic Comedies(2019-02-15) Janania, Stephanie MThe films His Girl Friday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Annie Hall are dominated by the male gaze and the men’s expectations of their women partners. In “Women Being Groomed as Objects of Desire in Romantic Comedies,” there is a shift in focus on how the women in these films are perceived and how they are much more like objects for their partner’s pleasure.