Sarah Nance | United States Air Force Academy (original) (raw)

Peer-Reviewed Articles by Sarah Nance

Research paper thumbnail of Inhabiting Duration: Contemporary Poetry, Chronic Illness, and Environmental Time

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2023

In examining poetry about chronic illness from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centurie... more In examining poetry about chronic illness from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the article investigates how poets assess and complicate the durations that mark illness. Within the technology-studded healthcare spaces of the 1990s and 2000s, these poems navigate the various scales and technological feats at the forefront of their treatment: the visibility of cancerous cells on an image, the transplantation of an organ, or the amputation of a breast. Although medical technology helps these writers initially traverse the alternative temporalities and scales to which illness draws attention, the poems ultimately move outside of the healthcare realm, instead engaging with environmental spaces. In so doing, these poems come to rely on the expansive timeframes of large-form ecological scale to represent the experience of chronic illness.

Research paper thumbnail of True Crime's Poetic Form: Consuming Disability in Jillian Weise's "Elegy for Zahra Baker"

Amodern 10: Disability Poetics, 2020

In 2010, ten-year-old Zahra Baker disappeared in North Carolina. Baker, who wore a prosthetic leg... more In 2010, ten-year-old Zahra Baker disappeared in North Carolina. Baker, who wore a prosthetic leg and hearing aids, became a media sensation in case that quickly became classified as a murder. This essay examines true crime and disability through the lens of Jillian Weise’s long poem, “Elegy for Zahra Baker,” in which Weise describes the period of waiting between Baker’s disappearance and the discovery of her body. In navigating Baker’s case and the larger sociocultural treatment of the disabled body, “Elegy for Zahra Baker” questions boundaries between private and public life, and brings to light the myriad ways in which bodies become a consumable product for public view.

Research paper thumbnail of Memorial Time: Claudia Rankine, C. D. Wright, and the Temporal Space of Remembrance

Arizona Quarterly, 2020

Media representations of violence in the twenty-first century often point toward a clear narrativ... more Media representations of violence in the twenty-first century often point toward a clear narrative resolution, a move likewise reflected in large-scale, state-sanctioned memorials to the victims of such violence. However, memorials also contain the potential to respond in more immediate ways, disrupting narrative closure and refashioning the relationships among viewer, violence, and time. Using the space of the page and the form of the photograph, Claudia Rankine, C.D. Wright, and Amy Berbert produce alternative temporal relationships to violence, decoupling its remembrance from the place in which it occurred. In doing so, these artists create memorial encounters that are portable, allowing viewers and readers to engage from any location through book publication and social media dissemination. By decentralizing the memorial from the site of violence, these examples radically insist on our participation and our acknowledgement that the future is yet to be inscribed.

Research paper thumbnail of An Economy of Illness: The Poetics of Women in Pain

Literature and Medicine, 2018

This essay examines the position of illness within a capitalist economy, exploring how labor, pro... more This essay examines the position of illness within a capitalist economy, exploring how labor, production, and consumption change through the bodily experiences of illness. Using contemporary poetry by Elizabeth Arnold and Anne Boyer, I suggest first that the experience of illness places women in an alternative economy, not unlike the familiar ways in which women are routinely devalued when their labor is under-appreciated or under(/un)compensated. I argue that being ill often challenges the productivity required by capitalism, and that as a response, experiences of illness play a role in the formation of an alternative economy. Within these new economic structures, affective experiences of pain and disgust—typically devalued in a capitalist economy—become foundational features of taste formation. The poets I examine here explore this complicated affect to suggest that experiences of pain can have important economic and affective effects.

Essays, Creative Work, & Reviews by Sarah Nance

Research paper thumbnail of Moth

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Sari Altschuler's "The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States"

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of The Story That Gets Told About Your Body: Recent Illness Memoirs on Mind, Body, and Storytelling

Research paper thumbnail of "Picking Huckleberries as the World Ends": Keetje Kuipers's "All Its Charms" and Acts of Waiting

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Petra Kuppers's "Ice Bar"

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Catherine Meng's "The Longest Total Solar Eclipse of the Century"

Verse, 2015

uses the image of the eclipse as one of many organizing features, along with diary entries, seaso... more uses the image of the eclipse as one of many organizing features, along with diary entries, seasons, days of the week, and games like musical chairs. Along with these various structuring devices, Meng also pushes our conception of poetic style, mixing prose poetry with more traditional lyric styles, flirting with forms like the sestina, and mixing long, sectioned poems with shorter, page-length poems.

Research paper thumbnail of Inhabiting Duration: Contemporary Poetry, Chronic Illness, and Environmental Time

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2023

In examining poetry about chronic illness from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centurie... more In examining poetry about chronic illness from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the article investigates how poets assess and complicate the durations that mark illness. Within the technology-studded healthcare spaces of the 1990s and 2000s, these poems navigate the various scales and technological feats at the forefront of their treatment: the visibility of cancerous cells on an image, the transplantation of an organ, or the amputation of a breast. Although medical technology helps these writers initially traverse the alternative temporalities and scales to which illness draws attention, the poems ultimately move outside of the healthcare realm, instead engaging with environmental spaces. In so doing, these poems come to rely on the expansive timeframes of large-form ecological scale to represent the experience of chronic illness.

Research paper thumbnail of True Crime's Poetic Form: Consuming Disability in Jillian Weise's "Elegy for Zahra Baker"

Amodern 10: Disability Poetics, 2020

In 2010, ten-year-old Zahra Baker disappeared in North Carolina. Baker, who wore a prosthetic leg... more In 2010, ten-year-old Zahra Baker disappeared in North Carolina. Baker, who wore a prosthetic leg and hearing aids, became a media sensation in case that quickly became classified as a murder. This essay examines true crime and disability through the lens of Jillian Weise’s long poem, “Elegy for Zahra Baker,” in which Weise describes the period of waiting between Baker’s disappearance and the discovery of her body. In navigating Baker’s case and the larger sociocultural treatment of the disabled body, “Elegy for Zahra Baker” questions boundaries between private and public life, and brings to light the myriad ways in which bodies become a consumable product for public view.

Research paper thumbnail of Memorial Time: Claudia Rankine, C. D. Wright, and the Temporal Space of Remembrance

Arizona Quarterly, 2020

Media representations of violence in the twenty-first century often point toward a clear narrativ... more Media representations of violence in the twenty-first century often point toward a clear narrative resolution, a move likewise reflected in large-scale, state-sanctioned memorials to the victims of such violence. However, memorials also contain the potential to respond in more immediate ways, disrupting narrative closure and refashioning the relationships among viewer, violence, and time. Using the space of the page and the form of the photograph, Claudia Rankine, C.D. Wright, and Amy Berbert produce alternative temporal relationships to violence, decoupling its remembrance from the place in which it occurred. In doing so, these artists create memorial encounters that are portable, allowing viewers and readers to engage from any location through book publication and social media dissemination. By decentralizing the memorial from the site of violence, these examples radically insist on our participation and our acknowledgement that the future is yet to be inscribed.

Research paper thumbnail of An Economy of Illness: The Poetics of Women in Pain

Literature and Medicine, 2018

This essay examines the position of illness within a capitalist economy, exploring how labor, pro... more This essay examines the position of illness within a capitalist economy, exploring how labor, production, and consumption change through the bodily experiences of illness. Using contemporary poetry by Elizabeth Arnold and Anne Boyer, I suggest first that the experience of illness places women in an alternative economy, not unlike the familiar ways in which women are routinely devalued when their labor is under-appreciated or under(/un)compensated. I argue that being ill often challenges the productivity required by capitalism, and that as a response, experiences of illness play a role in the formation of an alternative economy. Within these new economic structures, affective experiences of pain and disgust—typically devalued in a capitalist economy—become foundational features of taste formation. The poets I examine here explore this complicated affect to suggest that experiences of pain can have important economic and affective effects.

Research paper thumbnail of Moth

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Sari Altschuler's "The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States"

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of The Story That Gets Told About Your Body: Recent Illness Memoirs on Mind, Body, and Storytelling

Research paper thumbnail of "Picking Huckleberries as the World Ends": Keetje Kuipers's "All Its Charms" and Acts of Waiting

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Petra Kuppers's "Ice Bar"

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Catherine Meng's "The Longest Total Solar Eclipse of the Century"

Verse, 2015

uses the image of the eclipse as one of many organizing features, along with diary entries, seaso... more uses the image of the eclipse as one of many organizing features, along with diary entries, seasons, days of the week, and games like musical chairs. Along with these various structuring devices, Meng also pushes our conception of poetic style, mixing prose poetry with more traditional lyric styles, flirting with forms like the sestina, and mixing long, sectioned poems with shorter, page-length poems.