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Ellen O'Donoghue Oddy

Ellen OÕDonoghue Oddy graduated from The University of Leeds in 2014 with a BA Hons in English Language and Literature. She has strong research interests in Modern and Contemporary Literature, from Europe to the Americas, and has a particular interest in the manipulation of form and style trends during these eras. Her dissertation, titled ÔWriting an Empty Country: The Unfurnished Novels of Willa CatherÕ, examined the reduced style of CatherÕs form in the context of the vast Nebraska settings of her novels. Ellen is currently completing an MA at UCL in English: Issues in Modern Culture, and this summer I’ll be writing my thesis on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s use of words on his canvas.

Merging aesthetics and politics: Toni Morrison’s jazz affect in JAZZ (1992)

Morrison produces an aestheticism that is driven by her own political impulse, which means that her political impulse – to protest against American history – is felt rather than known. As a result the untold stories of black America become real. Because Morrison writes American history through feeling, sense, and blurred images, not through definitive, clear information and files of data, to the reader her history of America becomes more than a history, it acts like a memory.