Papers by Elizabeth Toohey
Nieman Storyboard, 2022
I discuss the value of college journalism taught as an immersive lab to create a more inclusive c... more I discuss the value of college journalism taught as an immersive lab to create a more inclusive classroom in today's "majority minority" society -- while also strengthening students' writing skills, information literacy, and democratic engagement. In so doing, I make the case that student-newspaper reporting, with its collaborative practices, community orientation, authentic readership, and potential to draw on lived experience as expertise, is the way forward for the 21st century college writing classroom.
Studies in the Novel: The Postcolonial Novel, Post-9/11, Part One, 2020
Behold the Dreamers follows a Cameroonian couple who, as newcomers to America, harbor dreams of s... more Behold the Dreamers follows a Cameroonian couple who, as newcomers to America, harbor dreams of success unavailable to them back home. Undocumented immigration, the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the thinly veiled racism of an avowedly "post-racial" culture converge in this new generation of immigrants' painful encounter with the American dream. I consider the ways Mbue's novel shares themes with a "second wave" of post- 9/11 literature—first, in centering the disillusionment of a protagonist aspiring to the American dream; next, in its representation of New York as a space haunted by 9/11, but also of resistance to the state; and last, through a failed white-savior narrative, culminating in the expulsion of racialized bodies from the West, that debunks the notion of the post-racial society. Shedding light on how 9/11's political and affective wake pervades Mbue's novel leads to my reassessment of how post-9/11 literature is understood as a genre.
Journal of Religion & Film, 2020
My paper juxtaposes Laurent Cantet’s films The Class (2008) and The Workshop (2017) to explore ho... more My paper juxtaposes Laurent Cantet’s films The Class (2008) and The Workshop (2017) to explore how they are infused with concerns about radical Islam and the place of Muslim immigrants in the West. Both films center on "angry young men" facing class-based marginalization, who are prone to anti-social behavior. In The Workshop, however, a great effort is made to reveal the intellectual potential and moral complexity of the young white French-born Antoine, whose alienation is defined by his attraction to the xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric of the Far Right, whereas viewers of The Class are kept at arm’s length from Souleymane, a Malian immigrant teenager whose nature as a recalcitrant student prone to violent outbursts is interwoven with signifiers emphasizing his Muslim identity. In contrasting these antiheros, I highlight the way Cantet, despite his politically progressive veneer, perpetuates dominant narratives of Muslim immigrants as intractably foreign, which are rooted in colonialism but have experienced a resurgence since 9/11. The cumulative effect of the divergences in these characters’ fates is to depict an angry young Muslim man as innately threatening and "different," unable to assimilate into European culture and drawn inexorably to a tragic end, while an angry young white man embodies great promise, distorted and nearly thwarted by external socioeconomic and cultural factors. Taken together, these films play out western tendencies to marginalize Muslims or reinforce stereotypes of them as inscrutable and alien, while centering, humanizing and valorizing white men.
Contemporary Literature Criticism Yearbook 2016: A Retrospective Covering the Year’s New Authors Prizewinners, and Obituaries. Volume 421, edited by Laurence Trudeau. , 2018
Behold the Dreamers follows the path of a Cameroonian family whose members, like many newcomers t... more Behold the Dreamers follows the path of a Cameroonian family whose members, like many newcomers to America, harbor dreams of success unavailable to them back home. Undocumented immigration, the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the thinly veiled racism of an avowedly “post-racial” culture converge as major themes in this new generation of immigrants’ painful encounter with the American Dream. Yet Mbue’s novel is also a distinctly New York story, capturing the particular experiences of the city.
Film International, 2018
The acclaim Cantet received obscures the way "The Class" reinforces the very undercurrents in Fre... more The acclaim Cantet received obscures the way "The Class" reinforces the very undercurrents in French culture he sets out to critique. Rather than unearthing or mirroring the racial dynamics of twenty-first-century Paris, Cantet brings to the film a set of fascinations and anxieties latent in the French imagination about blackness, Islam and Arab culture. His preoccupations and preconceptions with race, religion and nationality appear first in the portrayal of Muslim immigrants as threatening; next, in his image of a ‘white saviour’ bent on rescuing racial minorities; and last, through a narrative that symbolically banishes its Muslim characters. These elements make 'The Class' not just a postcolonial text, reflecting France’s long history with its African and Muslim subjects, but one that sheds light on the embattled landscape of twenty-first century France, and the West more broadly, in the long wake of September 11, 2001.
"Terror in Global Narrative: Representations of 9/11 in the Age of Late-Late Capitalism", 2016
New York, as a capital of finance and culture, has been one of Hollywood’s favorite settings, oft... more New York, as a capital of finance and culture, has been one of Hollywood’s favorite settings, often functioning as a glamorous character itself. Yet in the wake of 9/11, escalating government surveillance prompted filmmakers to call this image into question. Tom McCarthy’s 2007 film "The Visitor" marks a turning point. Set in the aftermath of the towers’ collapse, support-the-troops signs and flags haunt the city, saturating it with reminders of 9/11’s political repercussions. In this article, I explore McCarthy’s portrayal of New York and its Muslim immigrants, who overturn stereotypes of (male) terrorists or (female) victims. Their displacement instead creates an “unhomely fiction” (to draw on Homi Bhaba’s term) signaling a threat to the city by the state. Their fate, and that of the protagonist--an economist who studies capital but knows little of its human face--suggests the problem of the post-9/11 U.S., rather than terrorism, is American exceptionalism, which expels certain bodies as dangerous because they lack cultural and political capital.
Book Reviews by Elizabeth Toohey
Christian Science Monitor, 2020
Christian Science Monitor, 2020
In Yaa Gyasi's second novel, the daughter of a troubled immigrant family nds a way to combine sci... more In Yaa Gyasi's second novel, the daughter of a troubled immigrant family nds a way to combine science and faith in her career as a neuroscientist.
Christian Science Monitor
Christian Science Monitor
Christian Science Monitor, 2019
Christian Science Monitor, 2019
“Ayesha at Last” is packaged as chick lit, with a silhouetted face with a dash of lipstick, aroun... more “Ayesha at Last” is packaged as chick lit, with a silhouetted face with a dash of lipstick, around which swirls a purple hijab on its golden cover, but that’s just the book’s mask – and this is a book that’s all about the masks we wear to protect ourselves or please others. Where the novel shines is as “immigrant lit,” painting a nuanced portrait of an immigrant community and exploring themes like the intergenerational conflicts that can arise around tradition and assimilation. These become even more fraught in our current political landscape, with its rising tides of Islamophobia and nationalism. Yet “Ayesha at Last” is light and incandescent and deeply pleasurable from start to finish. You know it’s a good book when it’s obvious from the start who is going to get married, and yet you still can’t stop reading.
Christian Science Monitor, 2019
Film International
The life of one of France’s most celebrated novelists hits in rapid succession all the major note... more The life of one of France’s most celebrated novelists hits in rapid succession all the major notes of the MeToo movement --the suppression of women’s voices in the public, and especially artistic, sphere; the derailment of their careers by powerful men who exploit, rather than mentor them; and the financial consequences for women – all of these themes, refracted through the setting of turn of the century Paris, define Colette. Colette finds her voice fairly early on; it’s taking credit for her writing and extricating herself from an exploitative relationship that consumes the decade plus the film spans. One might consider as a modern-day parallel the writer Linda Bloodworth Thomason’s exposé of how CBS executive Les Moonves strung her along for years on a contract promising he’d get around to producing one of her shows again one day, while obviously enjoying jerking her around. One hundred years post-Colette, despite writing for shows like MASH and creating the hit Designing Women, she took years to extricate herself from an emotionally manipulative professional relationship that had for years obstructed her writing from reaching the screen. Despite a few moment of heavy-handedness, the film is valuable as one of relatively few that center women who are groundbreakers, innovators, sexual initiators, makers of their own fortune and history.
Film International
Director Lorna Tucker traces the remarkable road taken by Vivienne Westwood from her youth design... more Director Lorna Tucker traces the remarkable road taken by Vivienne Westwood from her youth designing punk fashion in a record shop to growing into one of the few existing independent global fashion companies. As Westwood opens flagship stores in Manhattan and Paris, all the while trying to maintain artistic integrity and a cogent business strategy, the loss of control she and her husband Andreas grapple with is palpable, especially in light of Westwood's recent foray into environmental activism, which can detract from her (or seem at odds with) the growth of her business. Despite its in-your-face subject, however, Tucker's documentary shies away from diving deep on key issues of gender, politics, and capitalism. Yet "Westwood" is still a good film, especially for punk or fashion aficionados --and of value in paying tribute to a woman of boundless creativity and unconventionality, who has made a success simply by doing what she likes.
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Papers by Elizabeth Toohey
Book Reviews by Elizabeth Toohey