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NER Out Loud

Listen to “Take Stock” by Clarence Orsi

April 11, 2018

There was a time when I attempted to step outside gender, to be the woman in the astro-nautical chef uniform manipulating the translucent box of ideology. Or rather, to be the person. To become interchangeable. To become stock.

Listen below as Sam Martin reads Clarence Orsi’s “Take Stock.” Martin’s reading took place on November 10, as part of the annual NER Out Loud reading at Middlebury College. “Take Stock” was originally published in NER Vol. 38, No. 2 (2017) and is available to read online here. 

http://www.nereview.com/files/2018/01/03-Sam.mp3

 

ABOUT THE READER

Sam Martin ’19 is a double major in Theater and American Studies at Middlebury, originally from Richmond, Virginia. Sam is a firm believer in the power and necessity of art and storytelling, especially now and especially here, and is delighted to be able to experience and share this evening’s selection of writings. He has worked in performance, stage management, lighting design, and directing, and will be appearing next in the Theater department’s production of Will Eno’s Middletown.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clarence Orsi is a Baltimore-based writer and Assistant Professor of English at Cecil College in Maryland. His interests include contemporary and twentieth-century fiction, literary and cultural criticism, urban space, and queer literature, among many others. He has a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His essays and fiction have appeared in publications including the American Literary Review, the Believer, Chicago Review, Cincinnati Review, and n+1.

 

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Filed Under: Audio, NER Out Loud, News & Notes Tagged With: Clarence Orsi, Sam Martin

NER Out Loud Online

January 11, 2018

In case you missed it—or want to relive the live event—all audio recordings, photos, and reader and author bios from the November 2017 NER Out Loud performance are now available online.

Follow the links below or visit the NER Out Loud home page.

 

Pele Voncujovi reads Kazim Ali’s “Origin Story”

Sam Martin reads Clarence Orsi’s “Take Stock”

Paige Guarino reads Devon Walker-Figueroa’s “Philomath”

Nia Robinson reads Rosaleen Bertolino’s “The Doll Family”

Dominick Tanoh reads Paisley Rekdal’s “Horn of Plenty”

Amanda Whiteley reads David Heronry’s “War Stories”

A photo slideshow of the event can also be found HERE.

Photos and information about the S’Mores Reading Reception can be found HERE.

All photos are available in individual format through albums (“NER Out Loud 2017” and “S’Mores Reading Reception 2017″) on the NER Facebook page.

 

Filed Under: Audio, NER Out Loud, News & Notes Tagged With: Clarence Orsi, David Heronry, Devon Walker-Figueroa, Kazim Ali, Paisley Rekdal, Rosaleen Bertolino

Clarence Orsi

Take Stock

June 28, 2017

Sandeep Mishra, “Life, Pattern, Colour”

The stock photo accompanies an article about Germany’s legal recognition of intersex infants. Even though the photo has been chosen to embody the “third gender” mentioned in the headline, we have to begin by calling the figure in this photo a woman, for we cannot see a third gender until we define one of the primary two. The woman has porcelain perfect skin. Hair helmeted in a glossy pixie, she wears a stiff white shirt like a cross between a chef’s uniform and a spacesuit. (All the great sci-fi writers have known that the future of gender is a space-age matter, and so does this woman.) With a finger white as the tracks left by the moon she traces a translucent box hovering in the air in front of her. Is the box gender itself? She is outside of it, but she also appears to be able to move it at her whim. She does not smile, nor does she frown. Instead she is intent, full of purpose about the task ahead of her: she has to embody the Future of Gender. Too bad for her that we can only speak of the future in the language of now.

♦

Lately I have become interested in stock images, specifically in stock photos supposed to represent gender neutrality. Even conventionally gendered stock photos are designed to remove specificity. A stock image is a photo of a conceptual container—“woman at work smiling”—instead of a particularity—“Linnea Jessup smiles at her computer at re/max Realty on 23rd Street.” The stock image container is supposed to be able to convey the essence of its shell (woman, work) while avoiding the messy precision of time, context, and social location. Yet few stock photos attempt to remove gender, perhaps the most basic lens through which we see the world. The ones that do are illustrative in their failure. Experiment: type “androgynous” into the Corbis search engine and see if you can will yourself outside gender.

[read more]

From NER 38.2

 

Clarence Orsi is a graduate of the PhD program in writing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His essays and fiction have appeared in publications including the American Literary Review, the Believer, Chicago Review, Cincinnati Review, and n+1. He teaches writing at Cecil College in northern Maryland and lives in Baltimore.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Clarence Orsi, Nonfiction, Sandeep Mishra, Take Stock


Vol. 43, No. 4

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NER Digital

Serhiy Zhadan

Literature & Democracy

Serhiy Zhadan

“That’s the appeal of writing: you treat the world like a potential text, using it as material, setting yourself apart, stepping out.”

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