ENGL403: Senior Seminar
Tue, Thu 3:30-5:20
Foster 415
Fall 2009
Prof. Fatima Mujcinovic
Office hours: T, Th 10-12
Foster 213, Ph: 832-2370
[email protected]
Course Description
This seminar is designed as a capstone course for English majors (seniors only) to
integrate and synthesize all academic skills developed and practiced during the course of
undergraduate English studies. It requires advanced levels of literary interpretation and
analysis, theoretical discourse, and scholarly research and Writing.
Focusing on contemporary Caribbean American texts, we will examine their
literary aspects (genre, narrative technique, themes, etc.) as well as their sociopolitical
and cultural dimensions: the legacy of slavery and colonialism, state violence and
repression, exilic and diasporic experiences, subaltern history, and the complexity of
cultural identity. Our discussions will be informed by postcolonial, feminist, and
multicultural theories.
The primary class assignments are two short papers (4-5pgs), a seminar paper
(15-18pgs), a class presentation, and three in-class essays. While I will suggest specific
topics for the short papers, you will identify your own topic for the seminar paper. Two
students will prepare a 20-30min presentation on one of these islands/countries, focusing
on their sociopolitical history and culture: Puerto Rico, Cuba, Antigua, Jamaica, Haiti,
and the Dominican Republic.
This class satisfies the cultural diversity requirement for English majors.
Required Texts
Julia t\-lvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies (1994).
Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven (1987).
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood
(1990).
Edwige Danticat, The Farming of Bones (1998).
Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban (1992).
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (1988).
Grade Distribution
--participation
--presentation
--in-class essays
--2 short papers
--seminar paper
10%
10%
10%
30%
40%
Amy Godding
English 403
Prof. Mujcinovic
17 December 2009
Flowers in Chains:
Females in Dictatorships as seen in Dreaming in Cuban and
In the Time of the Butterflies
Patriarchy not only defines the roles of women in the domestic sphere but also the
roles of both men and women in the public sphere. Governments are all too often based
on patriarchal structures that create a hierarchy even within the interactions of men with
other men. These patriarchal governments are exemplified and taken to an extreme in
dictatorships. This paper will examine the interactions of women within these patriarchal
dictatorships by focusing on Castro's Cuban regime as portrayed in Cristina Garcia's
Dreaming in Cuban and Trujillo's reign over the Dominican people in Julia Alvarez's In
the Time of the Butterflies.
As the leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro has risen as a powerful and charismatic
leader. He managed to create a devoted following of revolutionaries that allowed for his
successful overtaking of Cuba. In his book Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous
World: the Psychology of Political Behavior, Jerrold M. Post outlines the psychology of
narcissistic and charismatic leaders. Charismatic leaders often have mirror-hungry
personalities, which Post defines as requiring "a continuing flow of admiration from their
audience to nourish [themselves]" (191). To get this the leader often promotes an aura of
strength and grandeur which is aided through the application of splitting. Castro uses
splitting to create an "us versus them" mentality with his followers. When faced with
criticism Castro often finds someone or something to blame (Post 202). This
scapegoating technique splits Castro and his followers, separating them from those that
supposedly deserve fault.
While Fidel Castro, referred to only as £1 Lider, is not directly portrayed in
Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban, the way in which the characters of her text react to
his political presence as leader of Cuba is telling of many followers' reactions to a
charismatic leader.
Post outlines four properties offollowers'
devotion to these
charismatic leaders. The last two of them being: "The followers unconditionally comply
with the leaders' directives for action" and "The followers give the leader unqualified
emotional support" (188). The character of Celia del Pino exemplifies these traits.
At first glance Celia may appear to be a liberated woman. With her husband dead
and her children grown she chooses to devote her life to £1 Lider: "Ten years or twenty,
whatever she has left, she will devote to £1 Lider , give herself to the revolution" (Garcia
44). Celia is not only "entrusted with the anachronistic mission to patrol her patch of
coast by night against Yankee marauders, she also receives an appointment as judge of
her neighborhood tribunal, resolving disputes brought to her in a surprising equanimous
manner" 01asquez). She works in the sugarcane fields and she volunteers for numerous
goodwill missions. These are all actions that could be attributed to an empowered
woman, one who has broken away from the domestic sphere and now steps into the
public arena.
Prior to Castro's revolution women's role in life was relegated to the domestic
sphere but once Castro's regime took power, as Andrea O'Reilly Herrera points out in
her essay "Women and the Revolution in Cristina Garcia's 'Dreaming in Cuban''':
women were integrated into every aspect of the Revolution; for the first time in
Cuban history they were granted the opportunity to participate in the paid labor
force and fulfill roles in the military, the economy, and in intellectual circles from
which they had traditionally been excluded. (77)
In spite of these steps to integrate women into the public sphere and Celia's enthusiastic
involvement in her new government, Celia's actions are not those of a woman liberated
from the patriarchy of a traditional family home, but of a woman devoted to maintaining
the male-dominated hierarchy of the world around her.
Rather than overthrowing oppressive hierarchies, Celia embraces them as seen
through her unmitigated devotion to EI Lider. Celia not only complies unconditionally to
EI Lider's designs for action through her work in a dozen politically sponsored microbrigades, she also gives him an unqualified level of emotional support. This support is so
much that it borders on the inappropriate side of romance for "again and again, Celia's
commitment to Castro and the Revolution are described in erotic terms" (Herrera 76).
Celia dresses as though for a date during her all-night vigils at the shore, "putting on red
lipstick and darkening the mole on her cheek, [Celia] imagines that EI Lider is watching
her, whispering in her ear with his warm cigar breath" (Garcia 112). She replaces all
other forms of patriarchal figures in her life with EI Lider which her daughter, Felicia
notes, "how her mother worships him! She keeps a framed photograph of him by her bed,
where her husband's picture used to be" (Garcia 110).