Grad's guide to graduate admissions essays - Colleen Reding 2015
University of Pennsylvania - Department of romance languages
General graduate studies
Amiri Baraka’s iconic Black Arts Movement poem, “Black Art,” published in 1966 opens with the statement, “Poems are bullshit unless they are/ teeth or trees or lemons piled/ on a step.” My second year as an undergraduate, this poem caused a completely unexpected and seismic shift in my perception of literature’s role in society. In class one afternoon, I volunteered to read “Black Art” aloud, without having read it before. The jarringly violent and vulgar images the words created as I read them, accompanied by the incredulity that I was the one speaking them into existence, produced obvious visceral reactions in the whole class. For me, that instant made undeniable the fact that, while a poem clearly conveys ideas, it also quite evidently constitutes an action. In a sense, it shocked me into the realization that poetic texts, like all literary texts, do not simply say things; the action Baraka’s poem not only calls for but also takes itself manifests the roles texts play as dynamic interventions in the world they come into.
My interest in studying literature owes a great part of its genesis to that moment; its emphasis on reading theory with literature and, at times, literature as theory, confirms what I find so vital about art: its capacity, on which Baraka’s poem clearly insists, to be and do something real, and to intervene in its context. These ideas have also motivated my choice of focus within literary studies, inspired in part by a fascination with the complex relationship between Latin America and the United States, and the political and economic history of mutual influence that these regions share. Hence, I study twentieth century and contemporary Latin American, Brazilian, and United States literatures in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, with an emphasis on trans-American readings and on analysis of the tensions and possibilities specific to sites of contact between these regions.
As a Master’s student in Comparative Literature, I have worked to ensure I have a comprehensive foundation for moving forward with my thesis project and plans for doctoral studies. I have gained familiarity with contemporary Latin American literature through seminars with Leila Gómez and Peter Elmore, and am continuing to study lusophone and Brazilian literature in Portuguese language and Brazilian literature courses. The Survey of Literary Theory and Enlightenment Aesthetics courses with Eric White and Christopher Braider, as well as Henry Pickford’s Foundations of Critical Theory and the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School seminars will, I hope, confirm my competence with regard to the groundwork of critical and literary theories today. Because I focus on work from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I think an established understanding of its intellectual antecedents is crucial. The time I have spent working on this MA has proven indispensable not only for my understanding of the origins of contemporary work, but also in illuminating the new possibilities it can open up.
In my ongoing MA thesis project I use post- and de-colonial theories and conceptions of queer temporality to analyze Junot Díaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In doing so, I attempt to illustrate how the alienation that Díaz’s characters experience as a result of life in Diaspora, between the Dominican Republic and the United States, not only extends to culture and linguistics, but also sets them in contrast to normative temporal figurations of past, present, and future. I argue that Oscar, through his persistent inability to find sexual partners, ultimate failure to reproduce, and suicide attempt troubles and challenges (hetero) normative figurations of successful life trajectories, the emphases of which are longevity and reproductive sexuality. I hope to explain how queer theory can prove useful in understanding experiences of hybridity and alienation even in contexts where queer sexualities as such do not necessarily appear as central, and simultaneously endeavor to read Díaz’s characters as relevant to discussions of queer temporality.
As I continue my research, I plan to focus on literature that brings directly into play the particular significance of languages, experiences, and lives that exist in between and outside of normative conceptions and categories, in work from Latin America and the U.S., and from sites of contact between the two, such as writing from the Latin American Diaspora, literature from the U.S.-Mexico Border and Puerto Rico, and works that emphasize, address, or enact multiculturality. I am interested in using queer theory, along with narratology and postcolonial work, to explore how analyses of linguistic, cultural, and identical ambiguity can illuminate the alternatives and possibilities that these literatures present and create.
The Program in Hispanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania would be ideal for me for several reasons. The structure of the program, which emphasizes a special area of theoretical interest in addition to literary specializations, would allow me to explore in depth the application of queer theory in studies of narration and themes in literary works. I have had the opportunity to correspond at length with Dr. Román de la Campa this summer and fall about my research interests and doctoral studies plans and was fortunate enough to meet with him in person this November to discuss the possibility of working together. I find his work on Latin American, U.S., and Latino literatures clearly relevant and consequential and feel that I would benefit immensely from studying with him and, of course, the many other scholars on your faculty.
I hope you will consider me for a place in your program and sincerely appreciate your time.