Kim Clune Dot Com

As a recent graduate of the College of Saint Rose, I was invited by editor Ryane McAuliffe Straus, Ph. D. to submit my work for the college’s maiden Journal of Undergraduate Research. Beginning this year, the faculty-reviewed journal will annually publish research from all academic fields to showcase Saint Rose students’ scholarly achievements. Thrilled by the extension to include recent graduates, I dug through my old files, made minor changes based on final grading comments and shipped off my work.

I received a rejection letter on November 30th for my piece on the poetry of Anne Kingsmill Finch.  The rejection came with some deserved criticism. While one reviewer said, “This paper displays a sophisticated and confident command of language and secondary sources,” he/she also said that it drags in the middle and could use more close textual readings. The second reviewer said this piece was worth publishing, but with major revision. It was recommended that I revise and resubmit for the following year’s issue.

Truth be told, I was never driven by pre-romantic peotry in the way that theory and postmodernism classes fueled my interest. I wrote this paper to satisfy my professor and, while I did receive an A, my grade likely reflects my understanding of what was expected rather than any new and exciting contribution. This, I suspect, comes through in my final piece.

While rejection certainly fuels disappointment, mine was short lived. Later that day I received another letter. This one offered provisional acceptance for the second piece I submitted on the film The Last King of Scotland. Now this was exciting news. I worked hard on this paper to shed light on the colonization of Uganda via the cultural ignorance of the Western entertainment industry. After reading my reviewers’ very thorough critiques, there was nothing more satisfying than receiving this final comment: “All in all, however, impressive and interesting!”

As Dr. Straus explained, “Acceptance to the Journal is very competitive; we received over 20 submissions and are able to publish under half of those. As such, you should be very proud of your achievement.” Proud, I am. Beyond the long road of revision and more post-graduation all-nighters than I cared to endure, I feel I’ve honed my best work to date. I have since accepted an invitation to be recognized for having demonstrated “distinguished academic achievement” during the Saint Rose Honors Convocation Ceremony which will be held on March 27th. Perhaps it’s hokey to participate, but this is my first reviewed publication. I’m allowed to be hokey, aren’t I?

Below is the abstract for “Ideological vs. Factual Reality in The Last King of Scotland.” It provides a glimpse at what is now published.

Globalization and economics make the potential for colonization through entertainment media an ever-pressing reality. In the film The Last King of Scotland, the postmodern desire to believe in the political possibility of historiographic metafiction conflicts with the loss of true facts when the film’s unintended and most enthusiastic audience is a nation of Ugandans with a deep desire to learn their national history surrounding Idi Amin’s dictatorship. Comparing history with the concept of historicity illustrates the ways in which Ugandans trust the film’s seemingly factual “reality” while not understanding certain ideological realities created by its fictive devices. Filmmakers, although paying careful attention to Amin’s costumes and settings, intentionally distort the facts surrounding the death of his publicly adored wife, Kay, sacrificing the authenticity of an individual and national experience for the sake of an ideological representation of Western colonization. The determination is that while distortion and colonization are each crimes in their own right, the filmmakers’ profit-driven motive to draw the patronage of Western audiences unwittingly adds another layer of colonization to an already exploited African nation.

Now that this paper is finally in print, perhaps I will revisit that Finch paper … It did end up in a literary discussion on Finch in UK’s Guardian, after all.

Update: The Journal of Undergraduate Research is now available online.

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