This year, we are pleased to publish three outstanding essays that consider the poetics—and politics—of the body. Studying a range of periods and topics using diverse critical approaches, the essays demonstrate that literature, with its representational and formal capacities, illuminates complex ensembles of embodied and disembodied experience. In “From Idol to God,” Rosette Simityan examines how Mina Loy resists constraining notions of femininity in her lyrical exploration of childbirth, an experience Loy renders in iconoclastic poetic form. Damascus Triola takes a different tack, exploring not the physical body but the “Halcyon Dreams” through which Chaucer envisions new modes of self and subjectivity. Finally, in “Power and Privilege within the Academy.” Teresa Diviachi analyzes David Mamet’s Oleanna, explicating the way that the university—as an institutional body—affixes identities to the bodies acting within it; in doing so, she demonstrates that the academy not only perpetuates but also disrupts and reformulates gendered power disparities to suit its needs.
We hope that readers learn as much from these diverse, thoughtful pieces as we have, and we extend our sincere thanks to the writers and editors who have contributed to this volume.
We hope that readers learn as much from these diverse, thoughtful pieces as we have, and we extend our sincere thanks to the writers and editors who have contributed to this volume.
—Austin Lim and Francesca Colonnese, GLA Co-Chairs, 2018–2019