August 19th, 2020
Professor Megan Anderson Has Chapter Accepted In Edited Collection
优蜜传媒 Assistant Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies Megan Anderson has had a chapter accepted for inclusion in an edited collection titled Geniuses, Addicts, and Scribbling Women: Depictions of Writers in Literature and Film.
The collection published by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowan & Littlefield Publishing Group, examines how writers and their labor are culturally represented.
Her chapter, 鈥淔inding Their Way: Coming of Age as a Writer in John Irving鈥檚 The World According to Garp and A Widow for One Year,鈥 explores why John Irving鈥檚 oeuvre includes so many characters who become writers.
鈥淚rving contains his long, linear narratives within the specific framework of the Bildungsroman and consciously connects coming of age to writing,鈥 Anderson explained. 鈥淎s his protagonists 鈥 literal or metaphorical orphans 鈥 struggle to understand their origins, the act of becoming a writer or storyteller offers them an aspect of control in that they now have a vocation and an individual identity.鈥
Anderson鈥檚 chapter on Irving is connected to her dissertation work on examples of the female Bildungsroman in American literature. Taken from the German words bildung, meaning 鈥渆ducation or formation,鈥 and roman, for 鈥渘ovel,鈥 the term describes a 鈥渘ovel of formation鈥 or coming of age story.
Anderson鈥檚 work was also published in American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture this year. Her profile piece on Charles Henry Smith (1826-1903), a Civil War era humorist who wrote under the pen name Bill Arp, was included in a two-volume encyclopedia set published by ABC-CLIO.
鈥淎s Arp, Smith used satire and sarcasm to complain about the North鈥檚 prosecution of the war and, later, Reconstruction policies,鈥 Anderson noted. 鈥淭he cracker-barrel philosopher was immensely popular because he gave a voice to Confederates and commoners in the South.鈥
Anderson is Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies department at Limestone and is currently a doctoral degree candidate in Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
