"Flirts and Other "Voluptuous Tyrants":Wollstonecraft, Rousseau and the Politics of Desire"

For the 18th and 19th centuries, flirtation was largely understood to be the symptom of a woman’s uncontrollable (and innate) sexual appetite. Any woman who questioned its cultural operations, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, was accused of being simultaneously sexually inappropriate in her interests, as well as prudish in her denial of feminine desire as a legitimate expression of a woman’s character. What this talk will argue, however, is that, for Wollstonecraft, the flirt is a fundamentally masculine figure who engages not in a struggle over desire, but rather in a struggle for power based on monarchical politics of the Ancien Regime.

The Atlantic and Everything After

As a reader, I am drawn to pieces that flirt with the boundaries between prose and poetry and I believe these preferences are evidenced in my own work, which not only encompasses creative nonfiction and poetry, but which also teases its way along the line separating the two. In The Atlantic and Everything After, I have worked with both prose poetry and the lyric essay, two styles that combine and highlight the different strengths of creative nonfiction and poetry.I created this work to explore the transformation I embarked upon when I first boarded that plane to Nova Scotia in August 2009. I created it to pay homage to the people and places that have moved or changed me. I created it to acknowledge the many similarities of travel and writing, both of which are often ugly, uncomfortable, a bit frightening, and terribly frustrating.In the process of its creation, I was forced to confront painful and delightful memories, to realize the significance of those memories within my own heart. I exercised the modes of poetry and nonfiction (and a few in between) in order to bring the many complicated aspects of travel together in a way that does its discomfort and enchantment equal justice. I have filled the pages of The Atlantic and Everything After with my poems and my prose, my own life-cherishing force. I am pleased to welcome you to it.