Department of English faculty member Dr. Jeanette McVicker鈥檚 interdisciplinary projects during her sabbatical broadly explore the changing conceptions of the human subject as these are constructed through media (mainstream news and social media), politics (including discourses of war and terror) and culture (literature and the arts). Her questions focus specifically on the many implications of these constructions with regard to citizenship, political agency and language. The separate yet related projects will take concrete form through several conference presentations during the spring and summer that she hopes to expand into eventual publications.
Dr. McVicker鈥檚 primary emphasis during the first half of her sabbatical focused on mainstream news media both in the U.S. and in the U.K./Europe and their role in shaping readers鈥 conceptions of the subject: who counts as human, and what implications follow? She addressed this in a paper, 鈥淢edia narratives of transnational terror and the construction of subjectivity,鈥 presented at Augusta University in Augusta, Ga., for the inaugural transnational journalism history conference, co-sponsored by Dublin City University in Ireland, in early March. Taking a critical theory approach to an historical analysis of news before and after September 11, McVicker analyzes the U.S. mainstream news media鈥檚 constructions of subjectivity in reporting on terrorism and its transnational impact.
In a second conference paper, this one presented at the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference, held at New York University鈥檚 Arthur Carter Journalism Institute in New York City in mid-March, McVicker looked more specifically at the way terrorism intersects with neoliberalism in U.S. media reporting of social justice issues. This paper, 鈥淪ocial justice vs security: media, democracy and the war on terror in the era of neoliberalism鈥 took an historical approach to consider how neoliberalism has created an internalized racial 鈥榦ther鈥 that converges with an external racialized 鈥榦ther鈥 constructed through the discourse of terrorism, and the implications for citizenship and democracy.
During the second half of the semester, McVicker鈥檚 focus turns toward literary studies.
She will take up the question of subjectivity as it pertains to Virginia Woolf鈥檚 sense of Englishness, and how that mattered to her as a writer. McVicker will present a paper, 鈥溾機urious contrasts!; reimagining the legacy of heritage,鈥 at the 27th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf at the University of Leeds (U.K.), focusing on Woolf鈥檚 relation to place and its impact on her subjectivity as a distinctly English writer. McVicker focuses on Woolf鈥檚 travels to the English countryside in contrast with her two trips to Greece, one early and one late in her career, during which issues of nationalism and heritage are foregrounded in British and European culture. The paper explores the relation that these specific journeys have to Woolf鈥檚 developing sense of tradition, history, and western civilization, and her sense of her own 鈥榩lace鈥 as a writer.
