Introduction: (Mis)Leading

Abstract

This special issue of the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies marries together two of the most important aspects of graduate student development - conference participation and publication. To celebrate the high standard of scholarship produced by graduate students at not only the University of Iowa but also schools around the nation, the Journal created a special issue specifically for scholars who present at the Craft Critique Culture Conference. This conference, hosted by the English department graduate students at the University of Iowa, offers graduate students the unique opportunity to present research as well as creative writing and art. This issue is the first time the three have come together, and it is an exemplar of the high quality work graduate students generate.The Craft Critique Culture Conference is in its fifteenth year as a graduate student-run organization. It has a long tradition of creative, innovative conference themes as well as attracting brilliant senior scholars to participate as keynote speakers. The 2014 CCC collected together presenters under the theme Mis-Leading and brought Dr. Marah Gubar to Iowa. Dr. Gubar, herself an enthusiastic supporter of graduate student work, offered a unique keynote address that worked through the complexities and rewards of forging new paths in scholarship, a path she called the third way. Her talk encouraged young scholars to trust their instincts about the texts they work with and their personal reactions to scholarship they read. It is in those reactions, she argued, that one can find something different and new to bring to the conversation. In the spirit of her talk, Journal editors took to the conference panels to identify strong papers that create new ways in scholarship.Following the theme of the conference, the articles collected here each illustrate a new way of considering literature, historical events, or contemporary culture that illuminate complexities, demonstrate misleading assumptions, and engage third ways. For example, Justin Cosner engages with the misleading representations of religious faith in Charles Brockden-Brown's Wieland, arguing that the text illuminates a larger critique of the impulse to assert religious certainty and totalizing rational understanding of the world in nineteenth-century America. Turning to more contemporary literature, Faith Avery's discussion of Toni Morrison's Tar Baby argues for the misleading nature of selfishness throughout the novel. Avery argues that Morrison's readers are asked to question whether selfishness in the name of individuality is akin to selling in the case of the novel's protagonist, Jadine. Avery points out how this misleading contradiction allows Morrison to direct ethical examination in the novel toward issues of racial and cultural re-appropriation. Together, these articles present the importance of questioning typical or mainstream critical narratives as each demonstrates the way scholarship can redirected from misleading understandings of both literature and culture. …