Emily Waples | Hiram College (original) (raw)
Papers by Emily Waples
River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, 2021
I would like to thank my committee for seeing me through this process, especially my chair, Scott... more I would like to thank my committee for seeing me through this process, especially my chair, Scotti Parrish, whose deep and careful analyses have helped shape my thinking, whose example as a scholar and teacher has encouraged me, and whose kindness has sustained me. Kerry Larson energized my interests in the nineteenth century, and I'm indebted to his keen readings and expert diagnostics. Alex Stern brought her invaluable expertise and intellectual rigor to bear upon this project. My thanks to Gregg Crane for lending his eye to this dissertation's earlier stages, and to Danny Hack for lots of things, not least of which is agreeing to read this. Research for this dissertation was generally supported by fellowships from Rackham Graduate School and the Institute for the Humanities. I'm deeply and happily beholden to the intellectual community at the University of Michigan for including me and energizing me these past six years. Sid Smith has been an invaluable mentor from the very beginning. June Howard helped me to formulate my interests; Scott Lyons offered reassurance during a time of some despair. I thank the 2015-2016 Institute fellows for their generous engagement with my work; the members of my cohort, especially Adam Sneed, a dear friend since day one, for their companionship; and the faculty and students in the Medical Humanities Path of Excellence at the University of Michigan Medical School for welcoming me among them. And I'm especially grateful to my students for all of their insight and energy, for challenging me and for reminding me why I'm here. I wake daily with devout thanksgiving for my transcendent teachers-for Claudia Skerlong, who showed me that thinking critically about literature is one way of loving it, and for Paul Kane, whose example made me want to pay it forward; it was Paul who pointed me in the direction of Ann Arbor, for which I will remain ever thankful. I owe more than I can express to my mother, Kim Young. As a feminist, teacher, and parent, she remains my primary example of the joyful negotiation of work and care. This is for her. My family has been a constant source of support and encouragement. My father, David Waples, is a paragon of unflagging intellectual curiosity; no matter how many degrees I earn, I doubt I will ever read so many books. Sharon Knapp has taught me much about the importance of maintaining the happy pursuit of creative labor. Pat Keller took care of me, and so many others, during her too-short and selfless life; my work endeavors to honor her memory. And thanks to my brothers, Greg, Bret, and Nathan, for being a few of my favorite people. This is a project about the politics of self-care, but I could not have completed it without the care of Dr. Jennifer Griggs and the staff at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. To that end, I am immensely grateful to the Graduate Employee Organization for ensuring that I have had what so many others in this country do not: access to quality, affordable health care. Finally, I cannot write about care without acknowledging my deep debt of gratitude to Anthony LoSapio, who has cared for me, in large ways and small, for all of these years.
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2021
The coronavirus pandemic has prompted renewed scholarly and popular interest in epidemic fiction,... more The coronavirus pandemic has prompted renewed scholarly and popular interest in epidemic fiction, from biomedical thrillers to dystopian tales of disease-desolated worlds. While fiction may cultivate our expectations about the probable paths of the pandemic, it also invites us to participate in the creative process of imagining alternative futures. This essay examines how two recent novels, Ling Ma's Severance (2018) and Karen Thomson Walker's The Dreamers (2019), offer feminist refigurations of the genre Priscilla Wald has termed "the outbreak narrative." Shifting emphasis from the epidemiological quest plot that has tended to dominate this genre, both novels focus on everyday cultures and ethics of care, illustrating how patriarchal systems produce and perpetuate conditions of vulnerability. In particular, pregnancy plots in both novels work to interrogate cultures of paternalism, raising key ethical questions about limitations and violations of the bodily autonomy. Illuminating, in spectacular and speculative fashion, how conditions of inequality and precarity are radically revealed and intensified by a public health crisis, novels like Severance and The Dreamers are essential tools for teaching about-and living through-the crisis of our pandemic present.
Victorian Literature and Culture, 2020
This essay presents an ecocritical analysis of Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative,... more This essay presents an ecocritical analysis of Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative, the 1850s manuscript novel by a formerly-enslaved African American woman that was recovered by Henry Louis Gates in 2001. Examining Crafts's extensive engagement with Charles Dickens's Bleak House, it argues that Crafts's fictionalized narrative of enslavement and self-emancipation re-imagines a Victorian politics of environmental health as a critique of environmental racism. Showing how Crafts presents the material ecology of the plantation South as a site and vector of violence, it reads The Bondwoman's Narrative as resisting nineteenth-century scientific discourses of racialized immunity that sought to legitimize the systemic neglect of enslaved people in the antebellum United States.
Tulsa Studies in Women S Literature, 2013
This essay examines postfeminist or third-wave ideologies in postmillenial breast cancer narrativ... more This essay examines postfeminist or third-wave ideologies in postmillenial breast cancer narratives by women under forty. Exploring the ways in which younger women are negotiating the project of embodying breast cancer, it engages the narratives and subjectivities that have been made available by—and since—second-wave feminism. While acknowledging the problematic and oft-misunderstood implementation of Audre Lorde’s untenable legacy, this essay critiques and resists the postfeminist backlash against “victim feminism” exemplified by projects like Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Cancer franchise. Ultimately, it aims to claim a space for the third wave to respond to breast cancer, seeking alternatives to the individual subjectivity of “survival” by championing cyberfeminist initiatives and community-based advocacy.
Configurations, 2014
This essay argues that the medium of graphic illness memoir, or “autopathographics,” can work to ... more This essay argues that the medium of graphic illness memoir, or “autopathographics,” can work to challenge the master plot of “survival” that has circulated as part of breast cancer culture for the past thirty years. Exploring the emergent genre of breast cancer autopathographics through an analysis of two best-selling memoirs published in 2006—Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s Cancer Vixen: A True Story and Miriam Engelberg’s Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics —this essay examines the graphic in two senses: first, it strives to enter an emergent conversation about the uses of the visual-verbal genre of graphic memoir as a means to narrate stories of illness and disability; further, it takes into account the popular usage of the word graphic to note the kind of explicitness or excess for which illness narratives are commonly critiqued. Autopathographics offer new possibilities for women to represent the embodied changes occasioned by cancer in ways that register the uncertainty of the disease’s temporality in the face of metastasis and terminal illness—part of breast cancer’s epidemiological narrative that is too often ignored.
River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, 2021
I would like to thank my committee for seeing me through this process, especially my chair, Scott... more I would like to thank my committee for seeing me through this process, especially my chair, Scotti Parrish, whose deep and careful analyses have helped shape my thinking, whose example as a scholar and teacher has encouraged me, and whose kindness has sustained me. Kerry Larson energized my interests in the nineteenth century, and I'm indebted to his keen readings and expert diagnostics. Alex Stern brought her invaluable expertise and intellectual rigor to bear upon this project. My thanks to Gregg Crane for lending his eye to this dissertation's earlier stages, and to Danny Hack for lots of things, not least of which is agreeing to read this. Research for this dissertation was generally supported by fellowships from Rackham Graduate School and the Institute for the Humanities. I'm deeply and happily beholden to the intellectual community at the University of Michigan for including me and energizing me these past six years. Sid Smith has been an invaluable mentor from the very beginning. June Howard helped me to formulate my interests; Scott Lyons offered reassurance during a time of some despair. I thank the 2015-2016 Institute fellows for their generous engagement with my work; the members of my cohort, especially Adam Sneed, a dear friend since day one, for their companionship; and the faculty and students in the Medical Humanities Path of Excellence at the University of Michigan Medical School for welcoming me among them. And I'm especially grateful to my students for all of their insight and energy, for challenging me and for reminding me why I'm here. I wake daily with devout thanksgiving for my transcendent teachers-for Claudia Skerlong, who showed me that thinking critically about literature is one way of loving it, and for Paul Kane, whose example made me want to pay it forward; it was Paul who pointed me in the direction of Ann Arbor, for which I will remain ever thankful. I owe more than I can express to my mother, Kim Young. As a feminist, teacher, and parent, she remains my primary example of the joyful negotiation of work and care. This is for her. My family has been a constant source of support and encouragement. My father, David Waples, is a paragon of unflagging intellectual curiosity; no matter how many degrees I earn, I doubt I will ever read so many books. Sharon Knapp has taught me much about the importance of maintaining the happy pursuit of creative labor. Pat Keller took care of me, and so many others, during her too-short and selfless life; my work endeavors to honor her memory. And thanks to my brothers, Greg, Bret, and Nathan, for being a few of my favorite people. This is a project about the politics of self-care, but I could not have completed it without the care of Dr. Jennifer Griggs and the staff at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. To that end, I am immensely grateful to the Graduate Employee Organization for ensuring that I have had what so many others in this country do not: access to quality, affordable health care. Finally, I cannot write about care without acknowledging my deep debt of gratitude to Anthony LoSapio, who has cared for me, in large ways and small, for all of these years.
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2021
The coronavirus pandemic has prompted renewed scholarly and popular interest in epidemic fiction,... more The coronavirus pandemic has prompted renewed scholarly and popular interest in epidemic fiction, from biomedical thrillers to dystopian tales of disease-desolated worlds. While fiction may cultivate our expectations about the probable paths of the pandemic, it also invites us to participate in the creative process of imagining alternative futures. This essay examines how two recent novels, Ling Ma's Severance (2018) and Karen Thomson Walker's The Dreamers (2019), offer feminist refigurations of the genre Priscilla Wald has termed "the outbreak narrative." Shifting emphasis from the epidemiological quest plot that has tended to dominate this genre, both novels focus on everyday cultures and ethics of care, illustrating how patriarchal systems produce and perpetuate conditions of vulnerability. In particular, pregnancy plots in both novels work to interrogate cultures of paternalism, raising key ethical questions about limitations and violations of the bodily autonomy. Illuminating, in spectacular and speculative fashion, how conditions of inequality and precarity are radically revealed and intensified by a public health crisis, novels like Severance and The Dreamers are essential tools for teaching about-and living through-the crisis of our pandemic present.
Victorian Literature and Culture, 2020
This essay presents an ecocritical analysis of Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative,... more This essay presents an ecocritical analysis of Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative, the 1850s manuscript novel by a formerly-enslaved African American woman that was recovered by Henry Louis Gates in 2001. Examining Crafts's extensive engagement with Charles Dickens's Bleak House, it argues that Crafts's fictionalized narrative of enslavement and self-emancipation re-imagines a Victorian politics of environmental health as a critique of environmental racism. Showing how Crafts presents the material ecology of the plantation South as a site and vector of violence, it reads The Bondwoman's Narrative as resisting nineteenth-century scientific discourses of racialized immunity that sought to legitimize the systemic neglect of enslaved people in the antebellum United States.
Tulsa Studies in Women S Literature, 2013
This essay examines postfeminist or third-wave ideologies in postmillenial breast cancer narrativ... more This essay examines postfeminist or third-wave ideologies in postmillenial breast cancer narratives by women under forty. Exploring the ways in which younger women are negotiating the project of embodying breast cancer, it engages the narratives and subjectivities that have been made available by—and since—second-wave feminism. While acknowledging the problematic and oft-misunderstood implementation of Audre Lorde’s untenable legacy, this essay critiques and resists the postfeminist backlash against “victim feminism” exemplified by projects like Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Cancer franchise. Ultimately, it aims to claim a space for the third wave to respond to breast cancer, seeking alternatives to the individual subjectivity of “survival” by championing cyberfeminist initiatives and community-based advocacy.
Configurations, 2014
This essay argues that the medium of graphic illness memoir, or “autopathographics,” can work to ... more This essay argues that the medium of graphic illness memoir, or “autopathographics,” can work to challenge the master plot of “survival” that has circulated as part of breast cancer culture for the past thirty years. Exploring the emergent genre of breast cancer autopathographics through an analysis of two best-selling memoirs published in 2006—Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s Cancer Vixen: A True Story and Miriam Engelberg’s Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics —this essay examines the graphic in two senses: first, it strives to enter an emergent conversation about the uses of the visual-verbal genre of graphic memoir as a means to narrate stories of illness and disability; further, it takes into account the popular usage of the word graphic to note the kind of explicitness or excess for which illness narratives are commonly critiqued. Autopathographics offer new possibilities for women to represent the embodied changes occasioned by cancer in ways that register the uncertainty of the disease’s temporality in the face of metastasis and terminal illness—part of breast cancer’s epidemiological narrative that is too often ignored.