Betsy Erkkila
Biographic Data
| ID | 296356 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Betsy Erkkila |
| GIVEN NAMES | Betsy |
| FAMILY NAME | Erkkila |
| SIGNATURE | ERKKILA B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Whitman, Melville, and Political Theory
Radical Jefferson
Radical Jefferson Betsy Erkkila (bio) I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816 A s Michael Hardt reminds us in "Jefferson and Democracy," whereas many Left scholars have been dedicated since the 1970s to criticizing Jefferson for his racism, sexism, and expansionism, the Right has in effect hijacked the revolutionary legacy of the founding and reinvested the term democracy with its…
To Paris with my Love
Resume Les mouvements revolutionnaires francais de 1789, 1848 et 1870 occupent une place importante dans l’imagination poetique et politique de Walt Whitman. Les soulevements de 1848, en France et dans toute l’Europe, revetent une signification particuliere car ils se sont produits a un moment decisif dans l’evolution de Whitman, renforcant son sentiment d’identite avec l’homme « ordinaire » et, plus generalement, avec l’humanite entiere. L’influ…
Critical History
Critical History Betsy Erkkila (bio) You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories. —Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony It seemed to some of us that who you were, and where you were, determined to a very considerable extent what you were able to see as the facts. —Desmond Tutu, On the Soweto Uprising As an undergraduate and later a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s and 1970s, I remember students carrying …
Feminism without tears
PLURALISTS 'DANCE'; THEORISTS 'STORM' OR 'MARCH,' WRITES NINA Baym in her 1984 essay The Madwoman and Her Languages: Why I Don't Do Feminist Literary Theory. Setting the pragmatism and diversity of American academic feminism in the 1970s in opposition to the Francocentric, legalistic, and increasingly misogynist work of feminist theorists in the 1980s, the article and its provocation are characteristic of Baym's witty, no nonsense, and avowedly l…
Breaking Bounds
BLExplores Whitman's homosexuality in relation to his poetry, politics, and life BLIncludes work by Eve Sedgewick, Michael Moon, and Jonathan Arac These new essays reject the persistent tendency in Whitman studies to isolate his sexuality from his politics, and his poetry from both. The issue of his sexuality is instead brought into contact with a wide range of issues, from nationalism to race and gender, pointing to the interdisciplinary future …
Splintered Worlds
From Noon to Starry Night
Callow's evocative new life of Walt Whitman captures the elusive truth of the great poet of democracy. His prose is clear and easy and elegant, his observation sharp but kind and never superficial. - V. S. Naipaul
Ethnicity, Literary Theory, and the Grounds of Resistance
THIS ESSAY SEEKS TO ADDRESS SEVERAL QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE current direction, theory, and practice of American literature and studies in the United States. My large question has to do with the relation between minority discourses and poststructuralist theory in the study of American literature and culture. I would like to pose the questions of the subject, authorship, experience, and representation as they have been posed by poststructuralist th…
The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet
The Wicked Sisters
This provocative study of the lives and works of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, and Gwendolyn Brooks focuses on the historical struggles and differences among and within women writers and among feminists themselves. Erkkila explores the troubled relations women writers experienced with both masculine and feminine literary cultures, arguing that popular feminist views often romanticize and maternalize women write…
Minor Prophecy
Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence
Whitman the Political Poet
Recent critical studies have emphasized the formal, mystical, and psychological dimensions of Walt Whitman's art, dwelling mainly upon his Emersonian and Transcendental sources. This study is the first book to undertake a detailed analysis of Whitman's entire work in relation to the political struggles of the 19th century. Erkkila repairs the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political, the poet and history, that has …
Revolutionary Women
Reply to Walker
Greta Garbo
The Nightingale's Burden
Dickinson and Rich
Walt Whitman among the French
Greta Garbo
Ethnicity, Literary Theory, and the Grounds of Resistance
THIS ESSAY SEEKS TO ADDRESS SEVERAL QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE current direction, theory, and practice of American literature and studies in the United States. My large question has to do with the relation between minority discourses and poststructuralist theory in the study of American literature and culture. I would like to pose the questions of the subject, authorship, experience, and representation as they have been posed by poststructuralist th…
Walt Whitman among the French
The Nightingale's Burden
Dickinson and Rich
Greta Garbo
Reply to Walker
Revolutionary Women
Whitman the Political Poet
Recent critical studies have emphasized the formal, mystical, and psychological dimensions of Walt Whitman's art, dwelling mainly upon his Emersonian and Transcendental sources. This study is the first book to undertake a detailed analysis of Whitman's entire work in relation to the political struggles of the 19th century. Erkkila repairs the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political, the poet and history, that has …
Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence
The Wicked Sisters
This provocative study of the lives and works of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, and Gwendolyn Brooks focuses on the historical struggles and differences among and within women writers and among feminists themselves. Erkkila explores the troubled relations women writers experienced with both masculine and feminine literary cultures, arguing that popular feminist views often romanticize and maternalize women write…
Minor Prophecy
The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet
Ethnicity, Literary Theory, and the Grounds of Resistance
THIS ESSAY SEEKS TO ADDRESS SEVERAL QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE current direction, theory, and practice of American literature and studies in the United States. My large question has to do with the relation between minority discourses and poststructuralist theory in the study of American literature and culture. I would like to pose the questions of the subject, authorship, experience, and representation as they have been posed by poststructuralist th…
Breaking Bounds
BLExplores Whitman's homosexuality in relation to his poetry, politics, and life BLIncludes work by Eve Sedgewick, Michael Moon, and Jonathan Arac These new essays reject the persistent tendency in Whitman studies to isolate his sexuality from his politics, and his poetry from both. The issue of his sexuality is instead brought into contact with a wide range of issues, from nationalism to race and gender, pointing to the interdisciplinary future …
Splintered Worlds
From Noon to Starry Night
Callow's evocative new life of Walt Whitman captures the elusive truth of the great poet of democracy. His prose is clear and easy and elegant, his observation sharp but kind and never superficial. - V. S. Naipaul
Feminism without tears
PLURALISTS 'DANCE'; THEORISTS 'STORM' OR 'MARCH,' WRITES NINA Baym in her 1984 essay The Madwoman and Her Languages: Why I Don't Do Feminist Literary Theory. Setting the pragmatism and diversity of American academic feminism in the 1970s in opposition to the Francocentric, legalistic, and increasingly misogynist work of feminist theorists in the 1980s, the article and its provocation are characteristic of Baym's witty, no nonsense, and avowedly l…
Critical History
Critical History Betsy Erkkila (bio) You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories. —Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony It seemed to some of us that who you were, and where you were, determined to a very considerable extent what you were able to see as the facts. —Desmond Tutu, On the Soweto Uprising As an undergraduate and later a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s and 1970s, I remember students carrying …
To Paris with my Love
Resume Les mouvements revolutionnaires francais de 1789, 1848 et 1870 occupent une place importante dans l’imagination poetique et politique de Walt Whitman. Les soulevements de 1848, en France et dans toute l’Europe, revetent une signification particuliere car ils se sont produits a un moment decisif dans l’evolution de Whitman, renforcant son sentiment d’identite avec l’homme « ordinaire » et, plus generalement, avec l’humanite entiere. L’influ…
Radical Jefferson
Radical Jefferson Betsy Erkkila (bio) I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816 A s Michael Hardt reminds us in "Jefferson and Democracy," whereas many Left scholars have been dedicated since the 1970s to criticizing Jefferson for his racism, sexism, and expansionism, the Right has in effect hijacked the revolutionary legacy of the founding and reinvested the term democracy with its…
Whitman, Melville, and Political Theory
Art (15 works) · History (12 works) · Poetry Analysis and Criticism (11 works) · History (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Art history (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)