🎭 MELUS 2021 Presentation: Thoughts

Today I and some of my fellow colleagues at the University of Cincinnati presented our panel, titled "Bicultural Personas: Crossings of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture," at the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States conference. My paper, "To Meet in Passing: Alter-Ego as 'Double-consciousness' in Dorothy West’s 'The Typewriter' and Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance" deals with West and Far as preceding a shift in passing narratives in the 20th century and details the way their discussions of double-consciousness both overlap and diverge in their alter-ego tales. 

Our discussion was enlightening--as my colleagues discussed such important work on authors and poets like Francisco Aragón, Roy G. Guzmán and Sarah Winnemucca and their own ideas on assimilation, passing, immigration, and what it means to be bicultural, I was thrilled to be a part of the panel. I believe that we learned from each other quite a lot; despite the challenge of the format.

The conference format, which was both online and discussion based, was odd to say the least. Not only was everybody in their own homes, but nobody presented their paper in the traditional manner; instead, the papers were meant to be read by attendees ahead of time and merely summarized by the panel. Talking to a screen of nofaces (which is relevant to my thinking on the alter-ego, in a weird way) who can't provide any good facework, and who didn't unmute till the very end was a challenge, especially so as it was hard to gauge how much to summarize and how much to go into detail about. But every challenge was met with a wonderful thing; cats, dogs, and rabbits graced our screens, those with their cameras on laughed and chatted about how cute the animals were. Though the setting was naturally tough as nobody is together, there was a sort of intimacy there you could not achieve otherwise. So, while the presentation was not as I expected when planning to attend last year, it was still a great experience and one I will look back on in the days to come.