28 OCTOBER 2009

Beyond the Primary Text:

Interdisciplinary Research

as Academic Sleuthing

Dr. Ricia Anne Chansky

Assistant Professor Department of English, UPRM

engl 6006

speaker series

ENGL 6006: Research Methods Fall 09 - Dr. Jocelyn A. Géliga Vargas

jocelyna.geliga@upr.edu 787-832-4040 x 3096, 3064

Dr. Ricia A. Chansky

is Assistant Professor in the

English Department at UPRM.

Her scholarly work focuses on

the literatures of marginalized

communities, autobiography

studies, visual culture, and

pedagogy. Her recent

publications include articles on

interdisciplinary literary

analysis, the teaching of

literature, feminist theory, and

visual culture.

CHARDÓN 318

@ 6:00 p.m.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez

Image source: http://cmhr.anu.edu.au

What does a work of art created in the 1970s that

was locked away in a basement for the following

decades have to do with literary studies? Through a

discussion of Judy Chicago’s multimodal

autobiographical narrative, this presentation explores

the academic detective work necessary for building an

interdisciplinary research project. Moving beyond

previous scholars’ criticism that dismiss Chicago’s two

published autobiographies as unreliable narration, this

project examines the symbiotic relationship between

those books, the artist’s journals, and her works of vis-

ual art to suggest that her autobiography is a multifac-

eted project that succeeds only when read together as

an interwoven whole.

CEP (professional development credit) 1