IUPUC faculty members Katherine Wills, Ph.D., and Terry Dibble, Ph.D., recently presented at the 2010 Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900.

The presentation, “The Killing Village:  It Takes a Village to Destroy Unruly Women,” illustrated the construction of women as scapegoats in literature across a variety of cultures. Examples of this trend include the slaughter of a self-governing group of women in Toni Morrison’s “Paradise;” the destruction of a mother by post-war village politics in Nicholas Gage's “Eleni;” and the annihilation of a transgressive woman’s home in Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior.” 

Wills and Dibble explored the critical concepts regarding why women are perceived as a threat to village stability, and considered what scapegoating revealed about the values and politics of the community.

“A well-known African proverb declares, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’” Wills said. “Any number of writers, organizations, and politicians - Hillary Clinton foremost among them - have used this statement to romanticize, idealize, and sentimentalize “village” life in a modern era when individuals seem more and more isolated from their communities by interventions like technology, work, and institutionalized daycare.”

Wills is an assistant professor of English and Dibble is a lecturer of English for the IUPUC Division of Liberal Arts.