{"id":40802273848,"date":"2023-05-16T09:51:42","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T13:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/?p=40802273848"},"modified":"2023-05-17T17:39:38","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T21:39:38","slug":"prof-blair-presents-on-local-writer-margaret-widdemer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/prof-blair-presents-on-local-writer-margaret-widdemer\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Blair Presents on Local Writer Margaret Widdemer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stanley Blair, Ph.D., associate professor of English, recently gave a presentation on Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978)<\/a>, an award-winning poet and novelist who grew up in Asbury Park. The presentation was sponsored by the Monmouth County Historical Association. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Association\u2019s Digital Education Archivist, Dana Howell, said, \u201cWe were pleased to again receive Dr. Stanley Blair as a presenter for our Historically Speaking lecture series. Dr. Blair is fast becoming a favorite of our audience for his ability to take a subject and make unique and fascinating connections to life and literature. With over 500 views and counting to his last lecture<\/a> on our YouTube channel, people are definitely interested!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This presentation focused on Widdemer\u2019s 1915 novel \u201cWhy Not?\u201d Blair showed, through nine correlations, how the novel\u2019s setting fictionalizes two Monmouth County communities near campus: North Asbury Park and Wanamassa in Ocean Township. He went on to discuss how the novel was then adapted into a 1918 silent film, \u201cThe Dream Lady,\u201d directed by one of America\u2019s first female film directors, Elsie Jane Wilson. Blair also discussed his discovery, last summer, of a partial manuscript of the novel in Widdemer\u2019s papers in the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University. In turn, the discovery suggests a possible autobiographical approach to the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSurprisingly, this fascinating local is little-known for all her outstanding accomplishments. Dr. Blair truly shined a well-deserved light on her, bringing yet again another interesting Monmouth County character to a new generation,\u201d Howell said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several Monmouth University students attended the presentation. Kendal O\u2019Neill, a junior health studies student, said that the presentation was \u201cextremely educational, interesting, and unique\u201d: \u201cI am not from the Monmouth County area, so being able to learn about the history around my college was a really cool opportunity. I actually live in Pennsylvania and was surprised to hear Margaret Widdemer was born in Doylestown,\u201d less than an hour from her home. Also from Pennsylvania, junior business student Alana Aufiere \u201cwas pleasantly surprised about Widdemer\u2019s ties back to Asbury Park, which were very cool especially because I am not from here. Learning about her was interesting and sentimental to me because this place is my second home away from home. Getting the opportunity to learn more about someone who grew up here and understands the history of such a beautiful place brought me great joy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, junior English student Sabine Saavedra \u201cwas amazed by how much local history I learned about. Though I don\u2019t know much about the history of Monmouth County, I loved learning how I attend an institution in the same county where writers such as Margaret Widdemer came from.\u201d Junior early childhood-elementary education student Ali Georgelos added that the presentation \u201cbrought up many connections that I would have never thought of. I did not know of Margaret Widdemer prior to this but, I do find it quite interesting that she passed away in a small town only ten minutes away from where I grew up in Upstate New York.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students also remarked on the portion of the presentation in which Widdemer\u2019s novel could be understood as challenging heteronormativity. Saavedra said that \u201cwhat truly caught my attention was how society viewed one\u2019s sexuality, and how society had established what was considered \u2018normal.\u2019 Sydney\u2019s preference to cross-dress as a man and Jim Mattison\u2019s attraction to male attributes gave me a sense of how these characters expressed their sexuality and gender identity. This adds not only interesting character background but also a real situation in a time period when people were not as open-minded as society today.\u201d Georgelos agreed that \u201csome of the major parts of her novel were about facing and battling society at the time. I find it very brave that she was willing to write and talk about these issues, such as sexuality in the characters of Sydney and Jim Mattison.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some students saw relationships between the presentation and their work as students. For example, O\u2019Neill was able to connect the presentation content and the content of a course she was taking: at one point, \u201cI realized the presentation was raising the concept of \u2018regionalism\u2019\u2026. That is always encouraging when you learn something in class and then see an example in real life.\u2026 More terms such as \u2018literary dialect\u2019 and \u2018phonemic orthography\u2019 were brought up, which were previously discussed in class.\u201d In contrast, for Saavedra, the presentation challenged her to read beyond what she was learning in courses: \u201cAfter the presentation, I became more intrigued by Margaret Widdemer\u2019s work, as I would like to look more into writers from local areas. I plan to read more into her works beyond what was shown in Dr. Blair\u2019s presentation about her, as I think it\u2019s important to broaden my perspective of different viewpoints, especially from different time periods. As an English major, I appreciate having access to these sorts of events, so as to learn more of writers that I would otherwise have little knowledge about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blair\u2019s presentation is available online, via the Monmouth County Historical Association\u2019s website<\/a> and on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stanley Blair, Ph.D., associate professor of English, recently gave a presentation on Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978), an award-winning poet and novelist who grew up in Asbury Park. The presentation was sponsored by the Monmouth County Historical Association. \u00a0 The Association\u2019s Digital Education Archivist, Dana Howell, said, \u201cWe were pleased to again receive Dr. Stanley Blair as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2302,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188,423],"tags":[],"person":[861],"audience":[],"school":[110,26],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802273848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-great-location","category-faculty-perspectives","person-sblair","school-english","school-school-of-humanities-and-social-sciences"],"squareimage":{"id":40802268467,"rendered":"\"Head","original":{"url":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2022\/10\/Stanley-Blair-Headshot_20221007_AD_05.jpg","width":6720,"height":4480}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802273848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2302"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802273848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802273848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802273884,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802273848\/revisions\/40802273884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802273848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802273848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802273848"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802273848"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802273848"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802273848"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802273848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}