📚 UC 2023 Presentation: Thoughts

Below is the abstract for a paper I presented at the University of Cincinnati in March, 2023, in Ohio. The conference theme was "Power in the Academy," and I looked to Heller's first novel in order to critique and explain how violence and power are inextricably linked in society. Here is the abstract:

    Catch-22 has been written on at length, as it has not only captured so perfectly the shifting mood of America post-World War II but also introduced a term so central to American thinking that has become ubiquitous in the decades since its release. Oddly enough, however, much of the scholarship on Catch-22 lacks proper discussion of some larger theorists and much of the interest in the novel centers on its discussion of war as a horrific cultural phenomenon and its methodical usage of humor injected into the lingering image of tragedy. One of the most underutilized avenues of thought is the way that Heller’s novel displays, employs, and critiques violence and power. In this presentation, I hope to both look to these themes and incorporate theorists who have thus far not been a large part of the novel’s discussion. I will examine how violence and power function in Heller’s novel considering critical understandings of Foucault and Benjamin, and, as a result, hope to come to a deeper understanding of what Catch-22’s ideas on these themes highlight about not just the novel’s world, but our own.

The panel I was featured on was rather interesting, with a focus on bodies, disability, and Foucault; papers on disability in The Jungle, Virginia Woolf, and more led to a fascinating discussion afterwards about what it means to live in a society that reads the body as a tool, something one can own, and how these authors think we might break out of that system.