{"id":65544,"date":"2007-06-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-english-professor-takes-a-detour-to-awkwardness\/"},"modified":"2007-06-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-12T00:00:00","slug":"uri-english-professor-takes-a-detour-to-awkwardness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2007\/06\/uri-english-professor-takes-a-detour-to-awkwardness\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 English professor takes a detour to awkwardness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. –June 12, 2007\u2014溏心vlog免费B站 English Professor Mary Cappello took the road less traveled and the result is a book-length essay called Awkward: A Detour released this month by Bellevue Literary Press. It\u2019s a literary hybrid: part memoir, part cultural criticism, part philosophical meditation.<\/p>\n


\n\tCappello didn\u2019t set out to write about awkwardness. Instead a set of serendipities led to awkwardness, a singularly human condition, she says, one that is a wholly pervasive, but woefully ignored and unexamined.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cFINALLY, there is a study of awkwardness in all its many forms: speech, touch, breathing in public, clumsiness\u2026\u201dThe Los Angeles Times proclaimed in its Discoveries section last month.<\/p>\n


\n
\nCappello\u2019s 2001 and 2002 experiences in Russia and Italy served as a foundation in her pursuit of awkwardness, most especially because of her struggles to adjust to life in the United States upon her return, particularly in the year following the events of 9\/11.<\/p>\n


\nBut a seminar in Documentary Discourse and Immigrant Subjectivity convinced her that awkwardness was indeed a subject for a book.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI was teaching Rainer Werner Fassbinder\u2019s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, a beautiful and dark meditation on a relationship between a young Moroccan immigrant to Germany and a German working class-cleaning woman,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe film is structured around surveying gazes, and, consequently\u2014people–most especially the couple in question\u2014as they move in their bodies in \u2018unnatural\u2019 ways, stiffly, even as they try to show affection to one another. My students laughed at these stilted-seeming displays, while I was moved by them.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nThat led to a classroom conversation about all that is NOT revealed. For example, Hollywood films present the body as though its owner has a perfectly seamless and “natural” relation to it and the artificiality it would require to make it so.<\/p>\n


\nThe class prompted Cappello to search for a passage in her Italian immigrant grandfather’s journals. She didn’t find the piece, but instead, found two letters that her grandfather had written to her when she was a child but had never sent. \u201cThe letters were intensely beautiful in their structure and sentiment, and I was struck by the writing and re-writing that was going on in them. As I turned one letter over, I saw, penciled on the reverse end, upside down, atop a page the words that my grandfather was teaching himself that day from the English dictionary, accompanied, not by their English definitions, but by their beguiling Italian counterparts. At the top of the page, the word “awkward” appeared. This was followed by “awhile,” and after that “awe.” <\/p>\n


\nCappello finds examples of awkwardness everywhere\u2014in people of all ages, in speech and in silence, in our cultural, social, psychological, and spiritual lives. She also looks at the way awkwardness figures in the life and work of artists like Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and Fassbinder. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cAwkwardness can be understood to be at the center of being alive\u2014insofar as \u2018being\u2019 depends upon a great many inconsistencies and gaps that we daily try to avoid acknowledging. The gap between being alive and not understanding what it means to be alive is a kind of fundamental awkwardness,\u201d the author explains.<\/p>\n


\n \u201c The book, in a sense, is a celebration of awkwardness\u2014it offers a revaluation of awkwardness, and maybe this is its political aspect: I think our inability to endure awkward states hasn\u2019t served us well (I mean \u201cwe\u201d Americans in a post-9\/11 nation). The radical challenge of our current historical moment is twofold in this sense: we must give ourselves over to an awkward metamorphosis and release awkwardness itself from a definitional stranglehold that treats it as a state that is to be avoided at all costs.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nCappello is deep into writing another book, this one on a pioneering laryngologist who collected more than 2,000 \u201cthings\u201d from people\u2019s airways and stomachs that are on display in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.

\nSchedule of Readings Follow:<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 English Professor Mary Cappello, author of Awkward: A Detour and James Morrison, author of The Lost Girl will read together from their new books at the following venues in June:<\/p>\n


\nCalifornia

\nDutton’s Brentwood Books (http:\/\/www.duttonsbrentwood.com\/)

\nFriday, June 8, 7 p.m.

\n11975 San Vicente Blvd.

\nLos Angeles, Calif. 90049

\n(310) 476-6263<\/p>\n


\nLatitude 33

\nSunday, June 10th, 2 p.m.

\n311 Ocean Avenue

\nLaguna Beach, Calif. 92651

\n(949) 494 5403<\/p>\n


\nPhiladelphia, PA

\nGiovanni\u2019s Room (www.giovannisroom.com)

\nQueering Father\u2019s Day

\nSunday, June 17, 5:30 p.m.

\n345 S 12th St

\nPhiladelphia, PA 19107

\n(215) 923-2960<\/p>\n


\nRobin\u2019s Bookstore (www.robinsbookstore.com)

\nMonday, June 18th, 6 pm

\n108 South 13th Street

\nBetween Chestnut and Samson<\/p>\n


\nNew York City

\nNYC GLBT Center (www.gaycenter.org)

\nWednesday, June 20th, 6 pm (reception); 7 pm (reading)

\n208 West 13th Street

\nNew York, New York 10011

\n212 620-7310

\nBooks will be available for sale through Oscar Wilde Books<\/p>\n


\nNew England<\/p>\n


\nOcean State Summer Writing Conference (http:\/\/www.uri.edu\/artsci\/eng\/)

\n\u201cThe Risk of Writing\u201d

\nSaturday, June 23, 3:15-4:45

\nSpecial Featured Reading Event

\nMary Cappello, Talvikki Ansel, Amity Gaige, James Morrison

\nThe Galanti Lounge, 溏心vlog免费B站 Library

\nKingston, RI 02881\t<\/p>\n


\nBooks, Etc. (http:\/\/www.mainebooksetc.com\/)

\nSunday, June 24, 2 p.m.

\n38 Exchange Street

\nPortland, Maine 04101

\nPh: 207 774-0626<\/p>\n


\nBrown University Bookstore (http:\/\/bookstore.brown.edu\/)

\nTuesday, June 26th, 6:30 pm

\n244 Thayer Street

\nProvidence, R.I .

\n401 863-3168; 800 695-2050

\nFollowed by a \u201cCome As You Are Awkward\u201d Costume\/Dance Party<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. –June 12, 2007\u2014溏心vlog免费B站 English Professor Mary Cappello took the road less traveled and the result is a book-length essay called Awkward: A Detour released this month by Bellevue Literary Press. It\u2019s a literary hybrid: part memoir, part cultural criticism, part philosophical meditation. Cappello didn\u2019t set out to write about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}