Scholarly books
COVER DESIGN BY LINDA STEIN
Sculpture entitled "Heroic Compassion 665," copyright Linda Stein; Jayne Cortez photo, copyright Melvin Edwards; Adrienne Rich photo, copyright Colleen McRay.
Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero: Voice, Vision, politics and Performance in U.S. Contemporary Women's Poetics (Lexington Books, forthcoming March 2016). Edited by Laura Hinton.
312 pages. Hardcover ($95.99) & electronic (available soon). PROMOTION CODE: LEX30AUTH16
In a tribute to Third Wave feminist poetics based in Civil Rights and human rights across the globe, this collection of integrated chapters by multiple authors examines the work of both the great American jazz poet Jayne Cortez and lyric poetry icon Adrienne Rich. It also includes the feminist art and commentary of New York City-based sculptor Linda Stein, in her engagement with Wonder Woman and other feminist superhero figures. The volume's introduction considers superhero culture, particularly the mythos of the feminist superhero, in the context of the life work of both Rich and Cortez. The volume as a whole brings together two unlikely poetics by examining the roots of contemporary feminist political theory. It yokes together popular-culture studies with poetics studies in a new kind of intellectually-politically engaged multi-media / multi-disciplinary format that includes provocative sculptural images.
“As boldly conceived by editor Laura Hinton, this exceptional volume brings together for the first time these great contemporaries who crisscrossed the country but never met . . . . This anthology should be de rigueur reading for anyone who has dared, thanks to the inspiring poetry of Cortez and Rich, to dream of a common language.—Cynthia Hogue, Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Arizona State University
“Wonder Women move among us in the work-a-day world, without capes, with no magic bracelets, quietly or loudly changing our ways. Jayne Cortez and Adrienne Rich were real people; we knew them . . . . Laura Hinton has here convened a critical Justice League, more capacious than the original, and more just.”—Aldon Nielsen, Penn State University”
The Perverse Gaze of Sympathy: Sadomasochistic Sentiments from Clarissa to Rescue 911 (Albany: SUNY P, 1999).
SUNY Press Series in Feminist Theory and Criticism
Suggesting that sentimental novels, films, and TV melodramas are guided by an ambivalent and sadoerotic sympathy, this book shows sympathetic sentiments to be cultural formulations of male desire, and sympathy itself to be the embodiment of a controlling gaze. In a playful but historically persuasive linkage of diverse texts, Laura Hinton shows how sympathetic spectators love their victims and, in the process, maintain authoritarian codes of sexual and racial difference.
279 pages. Hardcopy $53.50. Paperback $31.95.
"Hinton's bringing to bear on the novel the sensibility of the reader literate in film alerts her to the role of spectatorship within novels and in the reading process, as it simultaneously allows her to position contemporary sentimental spectatorship in a history that derives from the novel."—Mary Ann O'Farrell
"'Sympathy' as it is placed within the broad and richly suggestive synthesis of film theory, psychoanalysis, and literary/cultural history becomes a new topic. This book offers a new interpretation of 'sympathy,' a concept often historically bound ... [it] brings together some of the most important critical and theoretical notions of representation and subjectivity of the past thirty years."—Suzanne R. Pucci
Reviewed in Clio, Choice, & Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts
We Who Love To Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing And Performance Poetics. Co-Edited With Cynthia Hogue (Tuscaloosa: U Alabama P, 2002)
University of Alabama Press Series in Modern & Contemporary Poetics
The first critical volume devoted to the full range of women's postmodern works, it includes some of the most respected writers and critics in the contemporary avant-garde. We Who Love to Be Astonished collects a powerful group of previously unpublished essays to fill a gap in the critical evaluation of women's contributions to postmodern experimental writing. Contributors include Alan Golding, Linda Kinnahan, Elisabeth Frost, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and many others; discussions include analyses of the work of Kathleen Fraser, Harryette Mullen, Lyn Hejinian, Theresa Cha, Kathy Acker, and several other contemporary women writers.
Reviewed in Contemporary Literature, How2, & South Atlantic Review
Scholarly Articles & Editorial Work
"Vision / Performance / Sound: A Body 'Doubling into Woman-hood' in the Poetics of Jayne Cortez." In Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero. Edited by Laura Hinton (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016).
"From Fragility to Heroic Strength: Mapping the Female Body in Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose." Co-author with Deborah M. Mix. In Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero. Edited by Laura Hinton (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016).
"Introduction: Wondering about the Wonder Women of Contemporary American Poetry." In Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero. Edited by Laura Hinton (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016).
“”Spatial Motion’: On Leslie Scalapino’s How Phenomenon Appear to Unfold/the Hind.” Jacket 2, January 2015. Earlier version delivered at the Tulsa School of Poetics Conference, University of Tulsa (November 2009).
"Poet's Theater: An Introduction." Postmodern Culture 20, 1 (2010).
“The Return of Nostalgia: The Fetishistic Spectator in Leslie Scalapino’s The Return of Painting and the Hudson River School of Art.” Textual Practice 24.2 (2010): 1-32. Earlier versions delivered as a keynote address at “Poetry of Plays” conference, Barnard College, New York City, 2002; and at the Tulsa School of Poetics conference, University of Tulsa (Tulsa, OK, 2009).
“The Performing Hybrids in Harryman’s Performing Objects. How2 3.3 (2009): 22 paragraphs, with video illustration.
“Introduction to the Writing of Carla Harryman.” How2 3.3 (2009): 6 paragraphs.
“(G)aping Women; or, When the Man Plays the Fetish.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 48.2 (October 2007).
“Symbolic Thinking in the Feminist Literature Classroom: A Student-Professor Dialogue.” In collaboration withCCNY undergraduates Susan Hill, Petal Largie, and Carmel McMahon. The Julie Mango: Journal of Creative Expressions (Spring 2007). [Invited.] Earlier version delivered with Largie and McMahon at the “Women, Gender, Pedagogy Conference,” City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, New York, NY (February 2006).
“To Write Within Situations of Contradiction: An Introduction to Carla Harryman’s Inter-genre Writing.” Postmodern Culture 16.1 (September 2005): 13 paragraphs.
“Zither & (Autobiographical) Introduction: The Writings of Leslie Scalapino,” How22.2 (Winter 2004): 16 pp ms.
“Introduction to ‘Memoire/Anti-Memoire: New York City Women Writers Recall September 11, 2001.’” How2 1.8(November 2002): 14 paragraphs.
"Postmodern Romance and the Descriptive Fetish of Vision in Fanny Howe's The Lives of the Spirit and Lyn Hejinian's My Life." In We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics. Ed. Laura Hinton and Cynthia Hogue (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama P, 2002): 140-151.
“Introduction: Oppositions and Astonishing Continguities.” Co-authored with Cynthia Hogue. In We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics.
“Leslie Scalapino: A Biographical Essay.” The Literary Dictionary (Summer 2001).
Co-editor (with Heidi Bean), Special Issue on Contemporary American Poet’s Theater, Postmodern Culture, Volume 20, 1 (pub. November 2010).
Editor, “The Performance Works of Carla Harryman.” Special section in How2 (2009). Section includes new essays on the performance poetics/ poetry plays of Carla Harryman, as well as a new interview, bibliography, and video-digital recordings of the Language writer.
Editor, “The Writings of Leslie Scalapino.” Special section in How2 2.2 (2004). Section includes eight new essays, an previously unpublished interview, an artist statement by Scalapino, a London audio recording, and complete bibliography of Scalapino’s work.
Editor, “Memoire/Anti-Memoire: New York City Women Writers Recall September 11, 2001.” Special section in How2 8 (November 2002). Section includes eight essay and poetry memoires by writers including Ann Lauterbach, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Daniela Gioseffi, and others.
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Book reviews & writer interviews in Journals
“Leslie Loved Invasion of the Body Snatchers (or, Note on her ‘Note on Secret-Life Writing’ in Dahlia’s Iris /Secret Authobiography). Delirious Hem (2010).
“Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader, ed. Maria Damon and Ira Livingston.” Rain Taxi (2010).
“The Strangeness of Girldrive (by Emma Bee Bernstein and Nona Aronowitz).” Poetry Project Newletter, 10, 1 (2010).
“An Interview with Carla Harryman.” Postmodern Culture 16,1 (2005): 15 pp.
“Three Conversations with Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.” With Introduction and 18 photographic illustrations by Laura Hinton. Jacket No. 27 (2005): 30 pp ms. [Invited.] Shorter versions published as “Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and the Abstract Lyric Process.” The Journal of the Academy of American Poets (2005): 13-14. “Two Conversations with Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.” (Introduction and Interview.) In Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry & Interviews. Ed. Elizabeth Frost and Cynthia Hogue. (U Iowa P, 2006): 43-56.
enough! ed. Rick London and Leslie Scalapino (O Books, 2002). Rain Taxi (2003): 30-31.
Women Poets of the 21st Century. Ed. Juliana Spahr and Claudia Rankin (Wesleyan UP, 2002). How2 9 (2003): 12 paragraphs.
“Centering Margins: The 'Language' Poets Reconsidered (as Women)." Contemporary Literature 41.1 (2000): 180-188.
“Review of Marcel Hénaffs The Invention of the Libertine Body.” Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 37.9 (2000).
"A Feminist Poet's Poets: Appreciating Scheming Women." HOW2 1(1999).
“The Contemporary Long Poem: Feminist Intersections and Experiments: A Roundtable Discussion with Susan Howe, Sharon Doubiago, Kathleen Fraser, Harryette Mullen, Karen Brennan, Elizabeth Frost, Jenny Goodman, Donna Hollenberg, Jean Heuving, Laura Hinton, and Aldon Nielsen." [Group interview moderated by Kathleen Crown and Cynthia Hogue]. Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 27. 5 (1998): 507-536.
Interview with Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino," Private Arts 10 (1996): 58-77.
"'Liberating' Pornography for Women: A Review of Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power (Ed. Pamela and Roma Gibson)." In American Book Review 16.4 (1994): 7.
"Review of American Women's Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory." In Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 17.4 (1994): 415-17.
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Invited Talks
"Jayne Cortez: The Early Theater Years." For "Out of L.A.: A Tribute to Jayne Cortez (1934-2012). AWP (Los Angeles, April 2016 – forthcoming).
“Mourning, Visuality and Multi-Media in Women’s Contemporary Poetics.” A Matter of Lifedeath: Mosaic Journal Conference (Winnipeg, Canada – October 2014).
“’A Body ‘Doubling into Woman-hood -- Jayne Cortez.” American Literature Association (Washington D.C., May 2014).
"The (Feminist) Body’s Location in the Prose Writings of Adrienne Rich." Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900 (Louisville, KY -- February 2013).
"MOVEMENT/WRITING//MEANING/POWER; or, When Bruce Met Sally." Bruce Andrews Symposium, Fordham University (New York City – December 2012).
“Hybrid Forms of Mourning in Kristin Prevallet's I, Afterlife and Akilah Oliver's A Toast in the House of Friends. American Literature Association Conference (San Francisco, CA, May 2012).
"Behind Hiddenness: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s Artist-Book Collaboration with Richard Tuttle." National Poetry Foundation Conference on the '80's (Orono, ME, June 2012). Respondent Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.
"On "New or Neglected Relevant Women Poets" -- The Feminist Interiors of How(ever)." National Poetry Foundation Conference on the '80's (Orono, ME, June 2012).
“Contexualizing Cha’s Films.” Belladonna Celebrates Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Bowery Poetry Club. New York City (March 2011).
“Activity,” Performativity, and a Poetry of “Enduring Uncertainties.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900 (Louisville, KY, February 2011).
“Morning and Multi-Media Poetics.” Poetry Symposium at Centenary College (Hackensack, NY, October 2009).
“The Eyes of“I” in Prose-Poem Autobiographies by Bernadette Mayer and Lyn Hejinian.” Lifting Belly High: Women’s Poetry Since 1900, at Duquesque University, Pittsburgh, PA, September 2008).
Conceptual Art, Film, and the Poetry Hybrid of Dictee: The “Evictive State” of the Image.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900 (Louisville, KY., February 2009).
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Cross-Genre Poetics: Her Late ‘70's Film Shorts and Artist Books. The National Poetry Foundation Conference, University of Maine, Orono, ME, June 2008).
“The Performing Hybrids in Harryman’s Performing Objects. For panel entitled, “Reading Carla Harryman.” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900 (Louisville, KY, February 2008).
“Event as Spatial Motion”: The Agitated Spectator in Leslie Scalapino’s Poetry Play How Phenomena Appear to Unfold.” MLA Conference. Philadelphia (December 2006).
“‘Escape Artist” of the Lyric: Marjorie Welish’s Visual-Verbal Hybrid, Begetting Textile.” “Beautiful November Poetry Conference,” City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, New York, NY (November 2005).
“(In)Visible Possibility in Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s Artist-Book Collaborations.” American Literature Association Poetry Conference, San Diego, CA (September 2005).
“A Response to Leslie Scalapino’s Crowd and not evening or light and The Tango: the Topic of Trauma.” “Tasking the Translator,” Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (March 2005 – invited speaker).
Respondent, “Film Panel,” “Beauty and the Eye of the Beholder,” CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY (November 2004).
“Fetishism and the Performative Spectator in the Writings of Leslie Scalapino.” Keynote address for “The
Poetry of Plays,” conference at Barnard College, New York, NY (April 2002 – invited speaker).
“Fetishism in Notorious.” Women’s Studies Program Lunch Series, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY (November 2000).
“Narrative Borders in Fanny Howe’s Saving History and the Cinematic Paradox.” New Modernisms Conference, Philadelphia, PA (October 2000).
“The Lady (Re-)Appears: Fetish British Women in Hitchcock’s ‘30s Films.” At “Inroads and Outposts: At Home and Abroad in the Empire– British Women in the ‘30s,” conference at CUNY Graduate Center, New York, New York(September 2000).
"The Wrong Plot: Aberrations, Misfits and Midgets in Hitchcock's Perverse Route." Hitchcock Centenary Conference. New York University, New York, NY (October 1999).
"From Myth to History: The Marks of Words in Toni Morrison's Beloved." Modern Language Association, San Francisco, CA ( December 1998)
"Divided Bodies and Machines of Vision: The Pre-cinematic Spectator in Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale." Modern Language Association, San Francisco, CA (December 1998).
Respondent, "The Contemporary Long Poem: Feminist Intersections and Experiments." Modern Language Association, Toronto, Canada (December 1997).
"Sadomasochistic Sentiments: Visual Perversion and Sympathy in Clarissa, Media Murder-Trial Narratives, and 'Rescue 911.'" Pat Kahana Memorial Speaker (keynote), 9th Annual Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Conference at SUNY Stony Brook, entitled, "The Horror! The Horror!" Humanities Center, Stony Brook, NY (November 1996).
"Sentimentality and Sadistic Specularity: Henry James's House of Fiction as a Movie House." Modern Language Association, San Diego, CA(December 1994).
"Spectacular Survival: Rescuing the White Middle Class on 'Rescue 911.'" Console-ing Passions: Television, Video, and Feminism Conference, Tucson, AZ(April 1994).
"Middle-Class Auto-Ethnographies and the TV 'Reality Show' Genre." The International Conference on Narrative, Vancouver, BC, Canada (May 1994).
"The Sentimental Novel and Its Sadomasochistic Spectator: From Richardson's Clarissa to Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale." Connecticut College Department of French, New London, CT (March 1994).
"Rationality, Sentimentality, and the 'Natural' Woman of Mary Wollstonecraft." CUNY English Department Forum, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY (February 1993).
"Excessive Mothers and Daughters: The Maternal Melodrama and the Daytime Talk-Show 'Sally Jessy Raphael.'" Society for Cinema Studies, New Orleans, LA (February 1993).
“Sirk's Imitation of Life: Sentimentality and Sadomasochism." For series entitled "Visualizing Genders/Racializing Sex," Women's Studies Program, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY (April 1993).
Moderator for panel entitled "Aspects of Gender: Psychology and Narrative." The International Conference on Narrative, Albany, NY (April 1993).
"Sentimental Nature in Wuthering Heights; or, William Wyler Meets Emily Brontë on the Yorkshire Moors." Film/Lit Society Conference, Baltimore, MA (June 1992).
"'Unnatural Excitement' and Narrative Masquerade: The Lesbian Aesthetic in Alexander's Bridge." The Santa Fe Conference on Willa Cather, Santa Fe, NM (August 1989).
"The Political Prose of Audre Lorde." The Stanford University Graduate Women's Network, Stanford, CA (1988).
"Viewing Women in Hitchcock." Stanford University Department, Stanford, CA(1987).
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conference panel work
ORGANIZER OF:
"Out of L.A.: A Tribute to Jayne Cortez (1934-2010)." AWP (American Writers & Publishers's Asssociation, L.A., forthcoming April 2016).
“The Political Poetics of Jayne Cortez.” American Literature Association (Washington D.C., May 2014).
"A Tribute to Adrienne Rich." Two panels and a keynote on Rich's feminist poetics. The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900 (Louisville, KY -- February 2012)
“Strange Vision(s): Versions of the Visual in Contemporary Women's Cross-genre Poetics.” Lifting Belly High: Women’s Poetry Since 1900, Duquesque University (Pittsburgh, PA, September 2008). Participants included Aldon Nielson, Elizabeth Frost, and Laura Hinton.
“Reading Carla Harryman. The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900 (Louisville, KY, February 2008. Participants included Carla Billiteri, Christine Hume, Laura Hinton, with Carla Harryman responding and Alan Golding presiding.
“Intersecting the Visual in Women’s Cross-Genre Writing.” “Beautiful November Poetry Conference,” Graduate Center of CUNY, NY, NY (November 2005). Participants included Elizabeth Frost, Marjorie Welish, Claudia Rankine, and Laura Hinton.
“Media(ting) Modernisms: The Avant Garde Intersection of Literature and Film." New Modernisms Conference, Modernist Studies Association (Philadelphia, Fall 2000). Participants included Lyn Hejinian, Susan McCabe, Laura Hinton.