Millikin Student Presentations

Millikin University students and faculty successfully maintained a scholarly tradition that was initiated by the MU English Department in the Spring of 2005. Their postcolonial panel, a collaborative effort, was presented at the Tenth Annual Conference of the Illinois Philological Association, held at DePaul University on April 7-8, 2006.

Their presentation furthered Millikin’s academic status and visibility in the Midwest region. Our panel is proof of productive collaboration between not only English students and faculty, but also an evidence of collaboration between science, social science, and humanities disciplines. Of the three student participants Amy Wade is majoring in biology (today, she also informed me of her acceptance in Univ. of Illinois graduate program), while the other two are English Education (Christopher Bass) and Writing (Jesse Phillippe) majors respectively.

Amy and Jesse were students in my exuberant, controversial, and sometimes-volatile International literature (with Postcolonial Indo-Anglian and Anglo-Irish concentration) course of the 2005 Fall semester. Their papers were their research projects for this course. Chris Bass’s paper is a cameo of his senior English honor’s essay.

Dean Czerwinski’s recognized the panel’s significance with the encouraging words, “through…lenses of diversity and multidisciplinarity this is a wonderful example of the synergy that happens” when “talented students” embrace the opportunities offered by the uniquely intimate academic setting at Millikin University. The promise of such academic mentoring and professionalization is what brings students to Millikin University and facilitates student retention. As Christopher Bass, a member of the panel said, “we have chosen to attend Millikin because it affords us an opportunity to actively engage with the various fields of the liberal arts and sciences. This panel allows us to employ our passion for the intellectual inquiry in a mélange of disciplines.” Amy Wade joined her voice in commenting that the “IPA conference encourages us to independently create our own academic tableaux from the dynamic Millikin palette.”

History of Illinois Philological Association

The ILLINOIS PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION was founded in 1996 by representatives from several Illinois colleges and universities. Its purpose is to promote fellowship and intellectual exchange among faculty and student members of departments of English, Linguistics, Communication, and Foreign Languages, as well as independent scholars and writers throughout Illinois. ( HYPERLINK "http://www.illinoisphilological.org" http://www.illinoisphilological.org)

Postcolonial Con/Sub/Texts PANEL: A Reflection on the Hybrid Selves

This panel will consisted of one faculty pedagogical and three undergraduate analytical papers that deal with the critical presence of hybridity in postcolonial texts. The theoretical presence of in-betweenness, hybridity, liminality, diaspora, and mestizaje identities has been both generative and vexing for postcolonial studies. This panel responds to and places itself in conversation with the most recent, often disparate and divergent, debates surrounding the issue of hybridity as a critical presence in colonial and postcolonial context, subtexts, and texts. Each paper in this panel critiques different aspects of the varied postcolonial responses; however, as a collective the panel challenges the binary separation of notions of “migrancy, exile and hybridity” from notions of “rootedness, nation, and authenticity” (Ania Loomba Colonial and Postcolonial Identities 183). All four panelists elude the politics of polarity in locating and analyzing hybridity in its “ideological, political and emotional valencies” as well as in its “intersections in the multiple histories of colonialism and postcolonialism” (183).

First Presenter/Chair/Moderator (an estimated 10min presentation): Dr. Purna Banerjee,
Assistant Professor of English, Millikin University.
Paper Title: From Racial Theory to Postcolonial Pedagogy: Hybridity as Interpretive Lens

This paper interrogates the theoretical journey that hybridity as a critical concept has traversed—from its biological lineage that signified the act of grafting and/or intermixing of two different species to its postcolonial recuperation as that which strategically challenges and undermines colonial presence and authority. In pedagogical terms the potency of hybridity as a critical lens becomes obvious when students are taught to view it as an utterance that by its “compositional markers,” may seem to belong to a single speaker, but that which in actuality always contains the presence of other “utterances,” “speech manners,” “styles,” “languages,” “semantic and axiologial belief systems” (Dialogic Imagination 304). Students become nuanced readers in a postcolonial course as they question, theorize, and participate in the historical dimension of the “Third Space” which enables the conceptualization of an “inter-national culture based not on the exoticism or multiculturalism” but that which helps the histories of the people emerge (Bhabha “The Commitment to Theory” 209). Thus, students learn to critique textuality itself as they learn to read into contexts and subtexts of both historical and novelistic narratives where hybridization serves best for a less privileged discourse to challenge and unmask the dominant. This paper contends that the theory of hybridity enables students in postcolonial courses to re-examine the problematic of nationality, location, identity, and historical memory (Gilroy The Black Atlantic 16). This is of particular relevance as we as scholars, educators, and students in an increasingly diasporic and “globalized” world try to find new conceptual tools for the analysis of identities. The best testament to such a critical pedagogy is the following three papers that result from student’s postcolonial inquiry into hybridity.

Second Presenter (an estimated 10min presentation): Ms. Amy Wade, Biology Major, Millikin University.
Paper Title: Hybrid Selves: A critical examination of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India

Lenny, the eight-year-old Parsee narrator of Bapsi Sidhwa’s postcolonial novel Cracking India provides the occasion for tradition and modernity to interact resulting in the creation of multiple levels of hybridity in the text. This paper will reveal that much like the text, Lenny herself is rendered hybrid. The central argument of the paper is that the textual and narratorial hybridities enables Sidhwa to make both political and personal commentary on the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. Through the critical deployment of hybridity, Sidhwa then is able to explore and reveal the pre-partition hybrid unities against British colonialism and the post-partition degeneration of hybrid selves into sectarian interests. The paper will add to current postcolonial concerns about the limits of hybridity by questioning whether Sidhwa’s novel, even while revealing the creative possibilities of hybridity implicates Sidhwa, a postcolonial author, as a participant in Raj nostalgia.

Third Presenter (an estimated 10min presentation): Mr. Christopher Bass, English Honors and French Major, Millikin University.
Paper Title: [In]Sanity and Discontent: a postcolonial inquiry into Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract: This paper provides a textual criticism of Jean Rhys’ postcolonial novel Wide Sargasso Sea. This paper claims that the postcolonial female protagonist, Antoinette, is an exiled character. It is her rootlessness that renders Antoinette as an ethnic and cultural hybrid. Her dual isolation from the Jamaican colonialist (her English patrilineage and French matrilineage) and the natives alike forces her to politically and personally negotiate racial disparities and embrace a hybrid identity. Her Martiniquaise nanny, Christophine, provides the occasion for Antoinette’s hybrid self to find a semblance of home. It is through the deployment of this central hybridity that a postcolonial author like Rhys can challenge the colonial hegemony of the narrative made famous by Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Thus, Bronte’s insane Bertha, the famed “mad woman in the attic,” is reclaimed by Rhys is her complex characterization of Antoinette.

Reflection: Presentation at the Illinois Philological Association (IPA) conference was both challenging and rewarding. I accepted the responsibility of contacting two other students, recommended by Dr. Banerjee,that would be able to organize a panel on a postcolonial topic. I recognize that such a learning experience is quite exceptional at the undergraduate level. The development of writing a proposal, reducing my thirty page paper to a readable nine pages, and organizing all the logistics was quite challenging. It was my first time at an academic conference. It was exciting to be a part of the sharing and exchange of ideas and concepts. The conference allowed me to present my work in the discourse community as well as share ideas and concepts with other academics who were attempting to understand and expand the significance of the postcolonial study. I found it refreshing to be intellectually a part of a community extending beyond Millikin. I was introduced to a greater academic community and offered a glimpse of what life is outside of the “Milli-bubble.” It was helpful to listen and construct ideas with other conference panelists who were familiar with the same theorists, topics, and novels as me. My time at the conference helped reassure myself that all my invested time and effort was well worth it.

Fourth Presenter (an estimated 10min presentation): Mr. Jesse Phillippe, English Writing Major, Millikin University.
Paper Title: Tagore’s Postcolonialism: political pan-nationalism, philosophical universalism, and religious hybridity

This paper explores how Rabindranath Tagore’s pan-nationalism, which informs his decidedly anti-nationalist attitudes, is connected to/ influenced by his conceptions of philosophical universalism and religious hybridity. It analyzes Tagore’s work Nationalism, his internationalist manifesto, and includes evidence from The Home and the World and other research on Tagore’s involvement with the Brahmo Samaj and other universalist religious thoughts. The central argument of this paper is that Tagore’s political internationalism and universalistic hybridity, both philosophical and religious, are decidedly postcolonial and progressive. The inspiration for this paper is derived from the current political climate. This paper suggests that we need to look to figures such as Tagore in order to critique and dismantle the current hegemonic attitudes and social structures and move forward, past homogenous and restrictive forms of nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism.

Reflection: I found that my participation in the IPA conference was a great way to put my ideals into practice, to present something politically progressive at a conference where language and words are the main concern. I would argue that anything to do with language—literature, rhetoric, etc—is undoubtedly social/political—and cultural/historical. This conference was a chance for me to make that point. It was also a chance to see Dr. Banerjee in her natural habitat—the academic conference (and the city). This was particularly apparent when we dropped by a considerably more advanced and intellectual panel on filmic analysis at UIC. So I found it a particularly enlightening experience.