Kara Laurene

Kara Laurene Pernicano holds a MA in Literary and Cultural Studies with a Certificate in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati, and she is a MFA Candidate in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY and a Lecturer in English for CUNY. She teaches creative works by modern/contemporary artists/writers, particularly women of color poetics, literacy narratives and digital/visual rhetoric. She has presented literary criticism at numerous conferences and participated in curating two exhibitions of fashion, art and popular culture. She is an active member at NeMLA and an advocate for CUNY Arts alliances like the MoMA/CUNY Partnership to extend Global/Diversity Learning as a High Impact Practice in the English Composition classroom.

In her own creative practice, Kara celebrates queer love, trauma narratives and disability justice. She often remixes image and text to reconstruct fragments of memory. She dabbles in everything from the apostrophe to the collage, actively exploring a comic-drawing practice. Artist and writer, she often hears a lyric quality in text messages and overanalyzes the use of parentheticals. Her creative writing has been published in Snapdragon, Waccamaw and Rabbit, and her visual art has been on view in the Whitney Staff Art Show at the Westbeth Gallery and in LIC Artists’ Creative Mosaic at the Plaxall Gallery. She has served as a guest editor or reader for Breadcrumbs Mag, Snapdragon, Chautauqua and The Cincinnati Review. She also volunteers with 826NYC and Ugly Duckling Presse.

Personal Statement

I am particularly curious how contemporary artists and writers redefine a "coming-of-age" narrative through various forms and mixed genre crafts--whether through poetics, memoir writing, auto-fiction, the graphic novel, or mixed-media arts. Life-narratives often reflect upon difficult material, fraught memories, therapeutic discoveries, childhood traumas, melancholic predispositions, domestic violences and sexual abuses. Memoir may expose one’s selves, tracing personal, familial and social/cultural histories, but an author does not necessarily tell the whole of a story, often pointing to the limits of the form and resisting to frame the details within named categories. Many selves and ruptured worlds through adolescence especially challenge a narrative's expected trajectory and often command a new definition of successful adulthoods.

My work presents a blending of critical and creative methods. My intellectual voice first and foremost is that of an artist and a writer. I consider my literary criticism to be ever “looking on” and “looking through” my own coming of age. Because I am also a scholar and an intellectual at heart, I cannot escape my own uncertainties. I continually turn to autobiographical criticism, feminist writings, queer theory, psycho-linguistic theory, trauma and affect studies to navigate the gaps between personal memory and life-narrative as well as to situate the identity of my work within contemporary thought and practice. My work complicates the linearity of narrative and the definition of the self.

Research and Teaching Interests

Modern and contemporary literature; life-writing and feminist poetics; cultural studies; trauma and memory; psychoanalysis and queer theory; gender and sexuality studies; visual/digital rhetoric; cultural & media studies; global/diversity learning; public humanities, philosophy of art & museum studies

Scholarship

“ ‘Performing for Judy B’: A Critical Journey into Auto-Theory.” Performance Studies Panel. NeMLA Annual Conference, Virtual, March 2021.

“When the ‘Dream Deferred’ Hits Home in Soul: Montage, Closure and Life-writing in America Today.” Interdisciplinary Roundtable. NeMLA Annual Conference, March 2021.

“ ‘Yellow Alert: New York Has Gone YELL/low’ and Other Poems.” Creative Panel. NeMLA Annual Conference, Virtual, March 2021.

“English 102 and Public Humanities in NYC: From the Community College Campus to MoMA.” Pedagogy Panel. NeMLA Annual Conference, Boston, MA, March 2020.

“Literature, Public Humanities, & Creative Criticism in the English 102: Intro to Lit Classroom.” Interdisciplinary Roundtable. NeMLA Annual Conference, Boston, MA, March 2020.

“A Narrative Mapping and Statistical Analysis: Queer Footprints of Homes across NYC.” Presented paper at the NeMLA Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2018.

“Clarissa Vaughn’s Sublime Fantasy in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours .” Presented paper at the PCA/ACA Annual National Conference, Indianapolis, IN, March 2018.

“ ‘Magenta Bra’ and Other Poems.” Presented poetry at the PCA/ACA Annual National Conference, Indianapolis, IN, March 2018.

“The Semiotics of the Diasporic Self in Rehearsal: The Abandoned Baobab and Queen Pokou .” Presented paper at the “Not Reading” English Graduate Conference, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, November 2017.

“The Monstrous-Feminine Adolescent Gaze in The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” Presented paper at the MPCA/PCA Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, October 2016.

“Queering Girl, Interrupted: Violence and Resistance to the Adolescent Female Body as ‘Borderline’ ” Presented paper at the PCA/ACA Annual National Conference, Seattle, WA, March 2016.

“Childhood Sexual Violence and Self-Injury to the Adolescent Female Body: An Interdisciplinary Analysis through Media and Literature.” Presented paper at the 28th Annual Stony Brook English Graduate Conference, “Speaking Text(s): Communication in the Humanities,” March 2016.

“Americanah: A Story of Depression, Diaspora and Double Consciousness.” Presented paper at Wright State University’s Peace, War, and Literature Conference, “Ten Years of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize: A Literary Conference,” October 2015.

“A Lesbian Artist’s Struggle through the Abject: Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?” Presented paper at the University of Cincinnati’s English Composition Program’s Sixth Annual Graduate Student Conference, “Trans Writ Large: Writing Difference,” March 2015.

“A Flapper’s Place on the Golf Course: A New Historical Analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Winter Dreams.’ ” Presented paper at Sigma Tau Delta International Convention, February 2014.

“Philip Traum and Demonic Anxiety in Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger.” Presented paper at Cedarville University’s Undergraduate Literature and Creative Writing Conference, “Experiencing Enigma: Puzzling Our Way to Discovery,” February 2014. 

Reviews, Interviews and Critical Essays

“Teaching Sketches of the ‘dream deferred’ in the Wake of Floyd’s Death: An Investigation of Montage, Closure and Life-Writing in America Today,” Special Issue, The Langston Hughes Review, Abstract Accepted, Article Under Review, February 2021

“Review of Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A History of My Brief Body,” Full Stop, Forthcoming December 2020

“Review of Amber Dawn’s My Art is Killing Me,” Full Stop, October 2020 <https://www.full-stop.net/2020/10/19/reviews/kara-laurene-pernicano/my-art-is-killing-me-and-other-poems-amber-dawn/>

“Review of Lara Mimosa Montes’ Thresholes,” Full Stop, September 2020 <https://www.full-stop.net/2020/09/01/reviews/kara-laurene-pernicano/thresholes-lara-mimosa-montes/>

Interview with Campus News, “Campus News is now a zine,” August 2020 <https://cccnews.info/2020/08/04/campus-news-is-now-a-zine-a-what/?fbclid=IwAR2Gt5k-d2u7dfVJjtr7rPuqQjaqFhXdr4irDuz8wx_dxWYdsytn-5lgs9A>

“Performing for Judy B,” The Humanities in Transition, July 2020 <https://medium.com/the-humanities-in-transition>

Creative Publications

“Spring 2020 in Review: Assemblage from College Newsprint,” Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, Forthcoming Fall 2020

“The ‘Mad’ Look: Quarantine Hair,” comic feature, “Hair” Fall Issue, Ang(st): The Feminist Body Zine, Forthcoming Nov. 2020

“Bathing Memory After It,” “Word Pool” Winter Issue, The Winnow Magazine, Forthcoming Nov. 2020

Excerpt of zine “essays really can break you” and art feature “Ever and Ever, ‘F**k Off,’ Maggie says to Me (Just Now),” “Solar Flare” Issue, 5th Annual R.E.D. (Rebel, Empower, and Dismantle) Zine, Red Whistle Brigade, Spring 2020

“Sonnet to a Trans Person,” “Youth” Issue, Rabbit: A Journal for Nonfiction Poetry, Fall 2017

“Queer Haibun,” Fall 2017 Issue, Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, Nov. 2017 <https://waccamawjournal.com/hybrid/queer-haibun/>

“Magenta Bra,” “Remember” Issue, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, Sept. 2017

Group Collaborations and Exhibitions

Contributing Artist, “Spring 2020 in Review: Assemblage from College Newsprint,” Chapbook Festival, Queens College, Under Review, Spring 2021.

Performing Artist, “Hello, my name is kitty, I’m feeling yellow,” Poetic Theatre Productions, Virtually on Zoom, Fall 2020.

Founder & Host, Why Open Pandora’s Box: Art, Love & Reality, Virtual Open Mic and Creative Salon, Virtually on Zoom, Facebook and Instagram, March 2020 - Present.

Contributing Artist, “Bra and Panties #1,” Mixed Media - Ink, Gouache, Color Pencil and Oil Pastel on Paper, and “Dear Bra and Panties” Spoken Word Performance, LIC Artists’ Creative Mosaic: Artists Working in Queens, curated by Osman Can Yerebaken, The Plaxall Gallery, Fall 2019.

Contributing Artist, “Bra and Panties #2,” Mixed Media - Ink, Gouache, Color Pencil and Oil Pastel on Paper, Westside Exposure: The Whitney’s Staff Art Show, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Westbeth Gallery, Summer 2019.

Contributing Writer, Black Pulp and Woke! Exhibition Opening and Collaborative Event with Writers in Residence, USF Contemporary Art Museum, Summer 2017.

Curatorial & Design Team, Underground Comics, MSU Outlook Gallery, Comics Symposium, mint-condition comics, prints and collections from MSU’s Special Collections, Spring 2017.

Curatorial & Marketing Team, [Re]Dress: Outfitting Controversy, MSU Union Art Gallery, art prints, fashion pieces, photographs, & accessories from the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum and MSU Museum permanent collections, Spring 2017.