MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This is an interdisciplinary panel that examines asymmetrical power relationships as portrayed in literature and television. Issues of gender and racial and ethnic inequalities are the lens through which questions of power will be surveyed.

Damayanthie Eluwawalage posits that religion and language support the “uneven circulation of power between men and women…to comprehend society, one must examine religion’s role in society.” Amy Williams Wilson uses Caroline Forbes (The Vampire Diaries), “a powerful female vampire,” to examine the different roles a woman plays. Caroline is both a model and a representation of women as they “navigate an often dysfunctional environment” that we live in. Brenda Lara examines “aspects of lo cotidiano, or the everyday lives” of a Latino/a family as portrayed in One Day at a Time, to question structures of power. She focuses on “the various worlds Latinas, particularly queer Latinas, cross to navigate dominant structures such as machismo, marianismo, and homophobia.”