PhD Completion Seminar - Ruth McHugh-Dillon

You are warmly welcomed to join Ruth McHugh-Dillon at her PhD completion seminar:

Title: "I'm not a bad guy": Junot Díaz and the Intimate Legacies of Authoritarianism

Junot Díaz's fiction 'takes on' the legacies of the Dominican Republic's Trujillo dictatorship (1930-1961). Díaz challenges Trujillo's hypermasculine script of identity, exposing continuity in cultural and political power structures that enable one man to serve as 'master symbol' of Dominicanness. Meanwhile, Díaz's recurring narrator-protagonist Yunior - serial womaniser, cheater, dissembler - internalises Trujillo's macho, hypersexual behaviour.

The thesis argues that Díaz's authorial position as 'voice' of US Dominicans, along with his participation in #MeToo revelations - as both survivor and accused - reveal gendered power dynamics that continue to dictate cultural and political power, entangling questions of authoritarianism, authorship, and authority.

Date: Thursday, May 16
Time: 1pm
Location: David Caro (Building 192), Room 209