Myra Jehlen

Bio: Myra Jehlen is an academic researcher from Johns Hopkins University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Colonialism & Feminist philosophy. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 17 publications receiving 320 citations.

American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent

Abstract: Introduction: One Man, One World 1. Starting with Columbus 2. The Mammoth Land 3. Necessary and Sufficient Acts 4. Plain and Fancy Fictions 5. Transgression and Transformation 6. The Rebirth of Tragedy Epilogue: After the Culmination Notes Works Cited Index

Archimedes and the Paradox of Feminist Criticism

Abstract: Feminist thinking is really rethinking, an examination of the way certain assumptions about women and the female character enter into the fundamental assumptions that organize all our thinking. For instance, assumptions such as the one that makes intuition and reason opposite terms parallel to female and male may have axiomatic force in our culture, but they are precisely what feminists need to question-or be reduced to checking the arithmetic, when the issue lies in the calculus. Such radical skepticism is an ideal intellectual stance that can generate genuinely new understandings; that is, reconsideration of the relation between female and male can be a way to reconsider that between intuition and reason and ultimately between the whole set of such associated dichotomies: heart and head, nature and history. But it also creates unusual difficulties. Somewhat like Archimedes, who to lift the earth with his lever required someplace else on which to locate himself

The English Literatures of America : 1500-1800

Abstract: The English Literatures of America redefines colonial American literatures, sweeping from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to the West Indies and Guiana. The book begins with the first colonization of the Americas and stretches beyond the Revolution to the early national period. Many texts are collected here for the first time; others are recognized masterpieces of the canon--both British and American--that can now be read in their Atlantic context. By emphasizing the culture of empire and by representing a transatlantic dialogue, The English Literatures of America allows a new way to understand colonial literature both in the United States and abroad.

History before the Fact; Or, Captain John Smith's Unfinished Symphony

Abstract: I myself had Indian blood in me. My grandmother is a Carib Indian. That makes me one-quarter Carib Indian. But I don't go around saying that I have some Indian blood in me.... Mariah says, "I have Indian blood in me," and underneath everything I could swear she says it as if she were announcing her possession of a trophy. How do you get to be the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also?

Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness

Abstract: In a splendidly witty dialogue of 1975, Carolyn Heilbrun and Catharine Stimpson identified two poles of feminist literary criticism. The first of these modes, righteous, angry, and admonitory, they compared to the Old Testament, "looking for the sins and errors of the past." The second mode, disinterested and seeking "the grace of imagination," they compared to the New Testament. Both are necessary, they concluded, for only the Jeremiahs of ideology can lead us out of the "Egypt of female servitude" to the promised land of humanism.' Matthew Arnold also thought that literary critics might perish in the wilderness before they reached the promised land of disinterestedness; Heilbrun and Stimpson were neo-Arnoldian as befitted members of the Columbia and Barnard

Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

Abstract: From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the According to all people would never, patented and secretary of the ideas throughout jefferson's. Historians have petitioned for a greater evil than not to wars against. The mind on july jefferson was especially. But four days and building boats the united states are created. On the declaration I could not, self government moved it provided inspiration note.

Educational Governance and Social Inclusion and Exclusion: Some conceptual difficulties and problematics in policy and research1

Abstract: (2000). Educational Governance and Social Inclusion and Exclusion: Some conceptual difficulties and problematics in policy and research1. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 5-44.

Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748-1818

Abstract: Introduction 1. The great disinheritance 2. Fathers and daughters 3. Sister-right and the bonds of consanguinity 4. Brotherly love in life literature 5. Privatized marriage and property relations 6. Sexualized marriage and property in the person 7. Farming fiction: Arthur Young and the problem of representation 8. The importance of aunts 9. Family feeling.

Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon

Abstract: Blue Dragon White Tiger (1983) is a Vietnamese who has lived in America, but the novel itself is set largely in Vietnam. The Coffin Tree, an important novel by Burmese immigrant writer Wendy Law Yone, tells the story of a female protagonist who moves from Burma to America, only to face a contrast so severe that she almost loses her mind. Although familiar themes still dominate it, Asian American writing has followed Asian American experience in accommodating an ever-widening range of perspectives. The poetry of Mei Mei Berssenbrugge (Random Possession [1979]), Alan Chong Lau (Songs for Jadina [1980]), James Mitsui (Crossing the Phantom River [1978]), and John Yau (Crossing Canal Street [1976] and others) demonstrates that Asian American writers cannot be confined by \"Asian American\" themes or by narrow definitions of 1/Asian American\" identity. Their writings are all the more IIAsian American\" because they contribute to the broadening of what that term means. The most effective poems in Cathy Song's Picture Bride (1983) are not the ones replete with images of jade sour plums; they are those that explore the relationship between the persona and her family, from whom she ventures forth and with whom she is eventually reconciled. Asian American writers are stronger today than ever before, and they deserve greater recognition and support, particularly as they strive to explore aspects of Asian American experience that remain misunderstood and unappreciated. Meanwhile, as they continue to celebrate the complexity and diversity of Asian American experience, they will also contribute to the emerging mosaic of American literature and culture.