• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.77-94
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• 2018

This paper examines William and Ellen Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860)-a narrative of the enslaved couple's escape from Macon to Philadelphia in the guise of a white male master and a colored slave. Expanding Judith Adler's notion of "travel as performed art," my reading of Running focuses on the Crafts' stratagems of transvestism-crossing boundaries not only of gender, but also of race, class, and disability. If travel can be understood as a form of performed art, then why not address a traveler as a performance artist? I present William and Ellen's role-playing in Running as performers of crossing borders and categories, or, as "fugitive performers," since the couple's story never reaches its final arrival but narrates an eternal run-away, far more than "a thousand miles to freedom." Using social stereotypes of race and gender to disguise, William and Ellen plot, write, choreograph, play, and recite on the moving stages and manipulate the others-especially white American audiences-who accompany the couple's run-away and those who were responsible for the cultural drama-a tragedy of American slavery. Becoming "fugitive performers," William and Ellen de-essentialize and debunk the nineteenth-century America's firm belief in distinct color line between black and white, and in the high yet unstable bars between male / female, abled / disabled, master / slave, and freedom / slavery. The Crafts alert their contemporaries and readers by presenting the complex and permeable boundaries of race, gender, class, social and cultural ability.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.339-365
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• 2011

Charlotte $Bront{\ddot{e}}^{\prime}s$ novel Jane Eyre has long been doted on as one of the canonized texts of British literature since its publication. Seemingly, this romantic novel has nothing to do with plantation based on slave trade. However, paying a keen attention to the fact that Jane's enormous inheritance results from wine plantation at a colony, this essay re-interprets Bertha's drinking and madness as evidence of imperialism. For the porter/jin Bertha and Grace Poole enjoy might have some suspicious connection with wine, the very root of Jane's great expectations. Jean Ryes' Wide Sargasso Sea, writing Jane Eyre back, records Bertha as "a white resident of the West Indies, a colonizer of European descent" (326). However, Jane Eyre, in my interpretation, describes Bertha pretty much as a black Creole. At any rate, the view that the white West Indians are tainted by miscegenation proves contemporary racism and is reflected in the text through Bertha and her mother's intemperate drinking and madness. Drinking and madness are stigmatized as the evidence of the so-called "bad blood"; embodying the stereotypes of drinking, madness, and sexual corruption, Creoles, the very inescapable product of imperialism, provide a convenient excuse for justifying imperialism for purity, civilization, and moral cleanness. In this way, Jane Eyre needs to be re-interpreted politically and historically in the context of colonialism. British imperialism pursues a tremendous amount of profits through grape plantation and wine trades; however, it cleverly leaves in the colony the associated images such as intemperate drinking and madness. Bertha, transferred from Jamaica to Britain, takes in these negative images of "savageness." Transcending the narrow confines of feminist criticism obsessed with doubling between Bertha and Jane, this essay, accordingly, reads Bertha the prisoner in the attic as the captive for perpetuating imperialism. This reading hinges upon interpreting Rochester and St John as colonizers bearing the so-called "white men's burden" to cultivate and civilize savages much like crops such as grapes and sugarcane in the colonial plantation.

• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.155-180
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• 2011

This paper aims at comparing the metanarrative and East Timor's local narrative in Indonesia during the Suharto's regime. Although these history writings have different political goals, the patterns of writings are ironically similar. Both of the history writings show strong nationalistic history writing patterns. Yet, in the writings, these histories place different interpretations on the historical events. In the metanarrative, local dynamics are seen through the diagrams of the nation and nationhood. This narrative finds the roots of the "ethnie" from some kingdoms in Java and Sumatra. These kingdoms, which throve based on the Hindu-Buddhist culture, achieved a territorial unity to a degree, covering some parts of Java and Sumatra. The glorious past disappeared with the advent of the colonial rule. The metanarrative then emphasizes the unity of the ethnic groups in the archipelago, which fiercely resisted against the colonial exploitation and oppression. By this, these ethnic groups were defined as "the masses," the collective identity, which had a same goal to achieve the national independence. In addition, some local histories, which took positive attitudes toward the European forces, were simply left out from the metanarrative. All the separatist movements taking place in the republic were also described as the anti-unifying forces. On the other hand, the goal of the history-writing in East Timor was to enhance the sense of nationalism and create the perception of the "East Timorese." The fundamental aim was the separation from Indonesia. In the narrative, the nationalist politicians overcame the problem of the non-existence of any memories of the glorious past with the awakening of the idea of "the imagined gloriousness of the past if there was no colonial rule." In addition, the narrative overemphasizes the memory of the colonial rule for 450 years under the Portuguese rule in order to stress the fact that it was the colony of Portugal, not of the Netherlands. Finally, the narrative shows how the East Timorese collectively fell to the status of slaves. By this, the political leaders of East Timor evoked the notion that it was recolonized by Indonesia, under which the East Timorese were demoted to the status of slaves. This notion of "slave-master" relationship then became the motives for the independence struggles in East Timor.