Happy to announce that I'll be presenting at the 2013 Popular Culture Conference in Washington, DC at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel on Saturday, March 30th at 1:15 pm.
Here is an abstract on my paper:
Shattering the Room Full of Mirrors: Sylvia Plath’s Poetic Recount of the Destruction of the Feminine Aspects in Men
Sylvia Plath’s poem, “The Courage of Shutting-Up” has never been one of her most famous, in part because of its difficulty. Viewed through a lens of mysticism, however (Plath and her husband Ted Hughes were avidly interested in and practitioners of the occult), this poem focuses on the witch hunt over time against the hermaphrodite, the homosexual, and the witch herself, within ancient and modern literature and contemporary media. The poem tells the story of the public and private crimes against men born with feminine aspects, and the terrible silence that has been required to survive over the ages.
Paper
Topic area: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies
This will be a really cool opportunity to give Sylvia Plath the recognition she has never received as a supporter of queer rights. In a time when few mentioned this topic aloud, Plath had to watch one of her favorite professors and colleagues at Smith College, Newton Arvin, have his life destroyed when it was discovered that he was homosexual.
Those of you who know Tarot know that the World card, for which Plath's poem "The Courage of Shutting-Up" correlates, features the hermaphrodite. It is a card of uniting male and female natures.
For more information about the PCA National Conference, click here.
