Category Archives: SWLF

Violence and Masculinity in Film

After a long summer hiatus, Inspiration Dissemination is back on the airwaves and your podcast platforms this week! Kicking off our Fall quarter lineup is Andrew Herrera, MA candidate with Jon Lewis in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film here at Oregon State University.

Herrera’s research might sound like a dream come true to some: “I study movies, honestly.”

For Herrera it really is a dream come true – he grew up with a lifelong love of film, inspired by watching movies with his mother as a child, the same movies that she had also grown up with. But it was after seeing Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 hit film Black Swan that he knew that studying film was going to be a career for him. The psychological horror production stars Natalie Portman as a dancer in a production of Swan Lake and follows her descent into madness as she struggles with a rival dancer. Herrera recalls that after seeing the film in theaters he sat in the car for several hours, just thinking about what he’d seen. This was around the time he learned that he could actually study film as an academic pursuit, and ended up writing about Black Swan for a literature class, comparing and contrasting it with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

He eventually finished his Bachelor’s degree in English Literature here at Oregon State University, and decided to stay and pursue a Master’s in Film Studies. His dissertation is focusing on the themes of three films by acclaimed Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn: Drive, Only God Forgives, and Bronson. Herrera is looking at the three films through the lens of masculinity, gender performativity and violence – all three center around male characters engaged in violent trajectories. Herrera in part argues that the three films present masculinity as a kind of performance or even a very literal costume, in the case of Drive (Ryan Gosling’s character is known for his iconic white jacket which sports a scorpion design, which he is only seen wearing when committing acts of violence.) The removal of weakness and femininity through violence and fighting leads to the rebirth of masculinity in Bronson, and in Only God Forgives features an almost Oedipal-like protagonist (also played by Ryan Gosling) who eventually cuts open the womb of his dead mother in a representation of asserting control over his own masculinity. Herrera is also interested in the intersection of masculinity and queerness in media, and how these themes show up explicitly or implicitly in these three and other films.

To hear more about these movies, the way masculinity is portrayed in film and its cultural impacts, and Herrera’s research, tune in to Inspiration Dissemination this Sunday evening at 7 PM at KBVR 88.7 FM or listen live online at https://kbvrfm.orangemedianetwork.com/. If you missed the live episode don’t forget to check out the podcast, now available wherever you get your podcasts.

Horror in Fiction

In 2021 Jordan Peele remade the 1992 cult horror classic, Candyman. The 2021 remake received critical success and despite being delayed several times due to the covid-19 pandemic, was a box office success as well. In both the 1992 and 2021 versions, the eponymous main character is a black man. But in the remake, the character deviates from the usual narrative trope of being a menacing black man to a man with complex emotions and feelings. For most viewers, these changes make for a good story, but likely are not things that they dwell on, and certainly are forgettable by the time they have left the theater. But for our guest this week, literature MA student Marisa Williams in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film, these differences are what gives them inspiration and are what inform their research. While Marisa has just begun their thesis work, they know that they will examine issues of racism on black bodies within contemporary literature. Specifically, Marisa plans to explore how the legacy of colonialism has remained in the literature of French-Caribbean authors writing in the 21st century despite more than two centuries of emancipation from colonialism.

In order to do this kind of research, Marisa first has to learn about the history and philosophy of colonialism and post-colonial identity in the Caribbean. They plan to do this by exploring how notions of “Creole-ness,” the monstrosity of whiteness, and identity have all shaped the French-Caribbean experience in today’s literature. This has led Marisa to some interesting literary “rabbit holes,” that has taken them through history, philosophy, and fantasy literature.

To learn more about what is “Creole-ness,” the monstrosity of whiteness, and identity and how they relate to fantasy literature, tune in live on Sunday May 1st, 2022 on KBVR to listen. You can also catch more of Marisa’s story and research when they present as part of OSU’s 2022 Grad Inspire which will be taking place on May 12th.

“Willed Women”: Studying Medieval Literature at OSU

An image of the second nun from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

When asked to trace her love of literature to its origins, Emily McLemore returns to her babyhood. “My dad started reading to me from the day I was born, so my love of reading started early,” she says. Last month, Emily defended her Master of Arts thesis, “Willed Women: Female Bodies & Subversive Being in the Knight’s and Second Nun’s Tales.”

Her path to studying medieval literature began as an undergraduate at Western State Colorado University. Before attending WSCU, she worked a series of jobs but always knew that she wanted to return to college and become a teacher. Emily studied English, with an added emphasis in Secondary Education, but when she began student teaching in an eighth grade classroom, she quickly realized it wasn’t for her. She had read Beowulf in one of her undergraduate courses, and that experience helped her recall what she loves about literature and textual analysis: learning to illuminate the complexities of a narrative to understand its meanings and cultural connections.

Emily McLemore

She applied to one graduate school program—the MA in Literature and Culture at Oregon State—and was admitted with a position as a Graduate Teaching Associate. Once at Oregon State, she met with Professor Tara Williams, who recommended that she read the Second Nun’s Tale, one of the lesser-known Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Emily began to consider how women, gender, and sexuality studies might be a lens through which to read this tale. Along with another Canterbury Tale, the Knight’s Tale, she formed an argument around how the women in these texts employ their bodies and their sexuality to confront and subvert patriarchal power structures. Her thesis tackles these two tales and their “willful women,” a subject that she presented on last month at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. Emily will continue to study these works and other medieval texts this fall as she begins a PhD in English at the University of Notre Dame.

The Ellesmere Chaucer, a 15th century manuscript of the Canterbury Tales.

To learn more about Emily’s research and her path to graduate school, tune in to hear our conversation on Sunday, June 11^th at 7:00 pm on 88.7 FM KBVR Corvallis or listen live online.

Workshop-Around the World

Twenty years in the future, U. S. A.

Civilization has changed dramatically in the aftermath of a plague. Communication is limited and travel is prohibited for most. Two sisters are separated by thousands of miles, one in San Francisco and one in Pittsburgh. They want desperately to reunite, but traveling across the country is nearly impossible nowadays.

Brooke, or Book-book as her sister Lane calls her, just wants to go, anywhere, a step forward is a step closer to Lane. She can’t get a travel permit, what will she do? She boards a train west, an unauthorized passenger on a train going…somewhere. Conditions on the train are inhospitable to say the least, but what did she expect. She arrives at her destination, a labor camp. This train was not restricting passengers, and now Book-book is a prisoner. Forward yes, but now Brooke is trapped and no closer to reaching Lane.

Conditions are worsening in San Francisco. People are desperate to the point of violence. Lane is not alone; not alone like Book-book. Now she has a choice. Does she follow her partner and flee the city for their own safety? How will Book-book find her?

The above was inspired by conversation with Mackenzie Smith about her novel-in-process.

A group photo of some of the writers who participated in the creative writing workshops at the National University of Timor-Leste in Dili. Mackenzie Smith (center).

We are hanging in suspense this week on Inspiration Dissemination as our guest, Mackenzie Smith, first year M. F. A. in Creative Writing, briefly described novel she is writing, tentatively titled, The Clearest Way into the Universe. For Mackenzie, this novel, which she plans to use as her thesis project, started out as a short story she wrote before coming to OSU. Now she is wrapped in this novel, “chewing” over the fine details as she rides her bike, browses the grocery store, and chats with colleagues at workshop. Her message for students and young writers is, “writing is a process of thinking.”

A “kudos wall” at the launch party and reading in Timor-Leste where audience members left compliments and words of encouragement for the writers.

Mackenzie really is writing all the time and she is no stranger to workshops. She is a former Luce Scholar in India and Fulbright Fellow in Montenegro where she ran writing workshops and hosted story clubs. She just returned from Timor-Leste where she co-organized a writing workshop that resulted in an online zine featuring original compositions from Timorese writers. Additionally, Mackenzie is the Non-fiction editor for a literary magazine Print-oriented Bastards.

Belina Maia Do Rosario reads her work in Dili, Timor-Leste at the launch party and reading for the zine, Writing Around Memory and Place.

Mackenzie likes that creative writing allows you to expand upon your interests and experiences. In her novel, Mackenzie brings her experience traveling and conveys the human emotion of uncertainty when making big decisions that affect your future and your familial relationships. Mackenzie writes because, “when people consume a piece of art, they change the way they think, the way they act, and the way they feel. Art can change their lives and a little at a time – art can change the world.”

You won’t want to miss this interview. Hear an except from The Clearest Way into the Universe read by the author and learn more about Mackenzie’s unique and adventurous journey to graduate school by tuning into 88.7 FM KBVR Corvallis or stream the show live at 7 pm on Sunday April, 17.

Write About Now

And it was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me.

I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

No they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence,

But from a street I was summoned,

From the branches of night, abruptly from the others,

Among violent fires,

Or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

– Pablo Neruda

As humans, writing—whether it is fiction, history, of even science and technology—is one of the primary ways in which we communicate and describe the world around us. Tomorrow evening, Sunday, October 10th, André Habet of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film joins us on Inspiration Dissemination to discuss his thesis on rhetoric and composition teaching style in classrooms in Belize.

After falling in love with poetry in High School in Belize, where he was raised, André decided to pursue a creative writing degree in the United States. Now André studies how the process of writing itself is taught in the classroom, something that has a rich literature in the United States, but has been very little attention in the country of Belize. In writing, composition is the form and style of putting a written work together. Different ways of teaching composition in school have different theoretical foundations and different ideological agendas, and these can sometimes have a powerful impact on the way we grow up to view the world around us.

To lean more about André’s research and his personal journey, tune in on Sunday night to 88.7FM KBVR Corvallis at 7PM PST, or stream the show live online at http://kbvr.com/listen!

Yes, This is being recorded: Having a conversation about 21st century technology with 20th century tape recordings

In the 21st century, the advent of cell phone video recordings and social media has made it easier for the voices of protesters to be heard. From the Arab Spring to the Ferguson protests, new technology has been instrumental in showing the world an unfiltered glimpse into the events as they happened. This method of communication did not exist before, but it had influences.

Tonight at 7PM PST, we speak with Rich Collins, a Masters student in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film about the influence of Zora Neale Hurston, Hunter S. Thompson, and gonzo journalism on the documentation of 21st century protests. We’ll walk through Collins’ journey about how his passion and deep interest for gonzo journalism has lead him to trying to studying literature and culture here at Oregon State University.

Tune in on 88.7FM in Corvallis at 7PM PST or you can stream it live online at http://kbvr.com/listen