Digital Commons Network^™

“This Wonderful Machine”: How Should We Teach Humanities Texts Like Gulliver’S Travels In The Time Of Chatgpt?, Richard J. Haslam

Critical Humanities

The quoted phrase in the essay title comes from a passage in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels in which a Grand Academy of Lagado professor demonstrates a “wonderful Machine” that can generate scores of books “without the least Assistance from Genius or Study.” The essay explore the challenge for teaching classic humanities texts like Gulliver that the (perhaps not so) “wonderful Machine” called ChatGPT poses. Student Owen Terry’s Chronicle essay (May 12, 2023) identifies two crucial aspects of that challenge: “We don’t fully lean into AI and teach how to best use it, and we don’t fully prohibit it to keep …

Marcia Lynn Hoard Williams, Kelli Johnson

Oral Histories – NPS AACR Civil Rights In Appalachia Grant

Kelli Johnson conducting an oral history interview with Marcia Williams.

This oral history is part of the National Park Service African American Civil Rights History and Appalachia Grant Program.

“Wild Mobs, To Mad Sedition Prone”: Preaching The American Revolution, Barry Levis

Sermon Studies

The Church of England in the American Colonies was really not a single institution. Because no local bishop governed the church in America, falling as it did under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, the clergy tended to have differing loyalties. Especially in the southern colonies, local vestries ruled the clergy because they controlled their stipends; therefore the clergy followed the lead of the local squirearchy and suppressed their personal views regarding independence. The New England Anglican clergy were equally in a difficult position. Midst the hostility of Puritanism and the Sons of Liberty, they seemed like an alien …

Mothers At Work: Reconstruction And Deconstruction Of Patriarchy In Gone With The Wind, Catherine Willa Staley

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In this thesis, I explore the performances of motherhood in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and how those performances conflict with culturally constructed expectations of that role. An analysis of Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes, and how each woman compares to the South’s model for motherhood, reveals implications that extend beyond the novel’s Civil War setting to reveal the ongoing negotiation of modern readers still living within patriarchal conceptions of mothering. In Chapter 1, I outline the novel’s spectrum of motherhood, which is composed of characters who nurture and manage others. Each individual on that spectrum contributes to or …

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

The Present Giver And Other Stories On Human Connections, Erin B. Waggoner

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The Present Giver and Other Stories on Human Connections is a collection of seven short stories dealing with individuals that struggle to connect to another person. However, the stories also explore that these characters still feel the need to connect, stories very indicative of my own struggles with apathy and relationships. The critical analysis takes on a creative non-fiction approach as a way to show my development as a writer and how these stories relate to what I've learned through the years from my love of reading.

The Tractarians' Political Rhetoric, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This article examines the political speaking and writing of John Keble, John Henry Newman, and other leading figures of the Oxford Movement. It argues that while they were essentially conservative in the pulpit, where they spoke as official representatives of the Established Church, they were more critical and outspoken in other works, where they enjoyed more of the freedom afforded to private citizens.

The First Act, Angela Hunt

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The First Act is a creative thesis which explores the boundaries of biography and autobiography, fact and fiction, as the life of my mother, Deborah Wolfe, and my own, intersect in prose and drama. My purpose in writing this thesis was to examine and seek an understanding of my own relationship with the past and the present, as I explored the roots of my family history, specifically through the eyes of my mother, while using aspects of my family’s West Virginian and Mormon heritage. By reading the following story, you will, in a way, go on that journey with me …

“Since Merlin Paid His Demon All The Monstrous Debt”: The Celtic In Keats, Brandy Bagar Fraley

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis argues that the Keatsian critical canon refuses to acknowledge the influence of Celticism in the works of John Keats and that such a gap displaces his poems from their cultural context and also prevents re-readings that might add depth and distinction to his place in the Romantic canon. After discussing the Celticism inherent in the literature, art, and social phenomenon of Keats’s day and briefly reviewing the scarce criticism that exists on the topic, the author reveals the prevalence of Celtic philosophies, figures, myths, and settings in Keats’s poetry. Then, she further argues that Keats through the feminized …

Shirking No Danger: The Civil War Diary Of Robert C. Thompson, Robert C. Thompson, Jack L. Dickinson, Marshall University Special Collections

Manuscripts

The Civil War diary of this Tennessee farm boy who was a soldier in the 41^st Tennessee Infantry, CSA, is interesting for several reasons. It starts with his experiences in a POW camp a few months after his capture at Ft. Donelson, Tenn., in Feb. 1862. It relates the joy of being exchanged and returning to his unit. The remainder of the diary accounts his unit’s marching and skirmishing across Mississippi. He was a very detail-oriented person, and recorded the dates he mailed letters to his wife and the dates he received answers. As a lieutenant of his company, …

The Samuel Smith Land Grants: A Historical Study Of Land Ownership And Use In Southern West Virginia, Stephen M. Porter

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study intends to illustrate the history of several tracts of land granted to General Samuel Smith, of Baltimore, Maryland by the state of Virginia in the years 1796 and 1797 containing, in totality, 300,000 acres (more or less). This research attempts to untangle some of the tangled web of ownership (both surface and mineral) that has affected this tract in particular and reflects the general trend of corporate land ownership in southern West Virginia.

Irish Representations In The Films Of Jim Sheridan And Neil Jordan, Jeffrey K. Jack

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis explores four films from "second wave" directors Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan: The Crying Game, The Butcher Boy, The Field, and The Boxer. In these films, Sheridan and Jordan add complexity to previously static film representations of Irish society and culture. The study analyzes the modifications Sheridan and Jordan make to the cultural and political representations of the "first wave" of Irish films, relating theoretical developments more traditionally used in literary studies, including "postcolonialism" and "postmodernism." It also explores how these four films have influenced more recent developments in Irish cinema, including the recent shifting of the settings …

The Fight Master, Fall/Winter 2005, Vol. 28 Issue 2, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

East 52 : A Multi-Genre Work Chronicling One Man’S Final Journey, M. Joseph Jarrett

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Middle-aged Michael Coogan heads east on US Route 52 through the area known as "Creed County" (a combination of Mercer Co, WV and Bland Co, VA), returning home to "bury" his father, although the man has been in the ground for several months. After a near fatal accident, Michael sees historical markers often revealing two stories: the typical history and the "unknown" history—a description of a fateful event that occurred in or near the locale described. Upon learning of these second histories, he visualizes the events surrounding the unknown facts related to him on the "reverse" markers. These stories trigger …

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Hillbillies And Sharecroppers: An Introduction To East Coast And Mississippi Blues Styles, John Wesley Taylor

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In his thesis, Hillbillies and Sharecroppers: an introduction to East coast and Mississippi blues guitar styles, along with the accompanying CD performance, John Taylor discusses pre-WWII blues. The discussion includes regional guitar styles as well as physicalities involved in the performance of early acoustic blues in Appalachia and Mississippi. There is a chapter devoted to subjects covered in early blues songs with a list of lyric examples as well as a biography section devoted to both white and black performers in these styles. The live performance utilizes stories behind the songs and historical information of the performers discussed in the …

The Narratology Of Jennifer Johnston's Novels, Robert N. Hutton

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Irish novelist Jennifer Johnston has published twelve novels to date, from The Captains and the Kings in 1972 to The Gingerbread Woman in 2000. Eileen Battersby's recent Irish Times article “Making Sense of Life” called her “the quiet woman of Irish fiction, “ referring to her understated, sophisticated writing style. All of her novels are short (Joseph Connelly and others have called them “novellas”), and she has become known for her ability to describe a complex situation in a direct, compact way.

This discussion is intended to investigate the narratology of several Johnston novels: to explore narrative voice, narrative chronology, …

Wading In The Lethe, Honor J. Mccain

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

To Honor (by Wendy Jones Johnson, circa 1976)

The rosebud mouth, the round, little thighs,

Our plump, bright elf with the dark, blue eyes

Our lives before were so incomplete

Soon the flutter inside of two, tiny feet

We thought we knew freedom

The years before you came

Now we know the wonder of creating life's flame

Aflame to grow, to flicker, and at last be an ember

To enrich our lives for years to remember

How we cherish and love you, your innocent glee,

You, the miracle of warmth and sensitivity.

My mother wrote this poem when I was …

William Lowther Jackson And The Civil War In West Virginia's Mountains, Ronald V. Hardway

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

On the eve of the American Civil War one of the most prominent politicians and businessmen in western Virginia was Judge William Lowther Jackson of Parkersburg, Wood County. Jackson, a native of Harrison County and a member of one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful dans in northwestern Virginia, represented his region In the Virginia Assembly for three consecutive terms in the 1850s. He served as Second Auditor for the State of Virginia and directed the Virginia Literary Fund for public education. He had been lieutenant governor of the state during the administration of Governor Henry A. Wise. He …

The Narrative Voice Of Lee Smith: Emergence Of A Passionate Narrative Voice Through Body And Spirit, Judith A. Eddy

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Winding farther and farther off the concrete interstate, climbing higher and deeper into the mountains, leaving two-lane roads behind for a one-lane dirt road, and then leaving the last vestiges of the dirt road behind and forging still deeper and deeper into the mountains, the adventuresome traveler beholds the emerging isolated rural hollows. What kind of people choose to live in this remote southern geographical region known as the Appalachian mountain range which runs from northern Georgia through the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Virginias and Pennsylvania? The people who chose to live in these isolated regions are not the town …

Narrative Voicings In The Novels Of Roddy Doyle, Larry Poe

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Scholars have generally ignored Irish novelist and playwright Roddy Doyle. Little attention has been paid to his narrative techniques or to his development as a novelist. In the American academy, thus far, only one dissertation concerning Doyle’s novels has appeared, written in 1996, by Caramine White, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. White notes that her dissertation is the first on Doyle and “its basic purpose will be to introduce the novels to the reading public and to convince the reading public that Doyle, although a very popular artist, is also a gifted writer who should be taken …

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

No abstract provided.

The Muffler Mailbox Man, J. Amari Roland

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Upon my arrival on earth. Mother forbad me from doing two things: going to K-Mart and talking to my Uncle Ike.

Ironically, the first word I learned to read was "K-Mart.” Mother pointed out the store every time we drove past. She told me many times of the evil that could befall a person if he entered its doors. I reckoned she knew all about K-Mart because she claimed to have gone there twice before I was born. Based on the two visits, Mother decided that the voice of the blue-light special masked some sinister, subliminal message. While everyone else …

The Fight Master, Spring 1991, Vol. 14 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Fight Master, January 1980, Vol. 3 Issue 1, The Society Of American Fight Directors

Fight Master Magazine

No abstract provided.

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

0054: Aleshire Family Papers, 1862-1889, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

The Aleshire Family Papers consist mainly of correspondence dating from 1863 to 1888. Many of the letters are written by various members of the family to Joseph Aleshire as he traveled the Midwest, buying wheat for the family flour mill. Most of these letters concern fluctuations of the wheat market and other business matters.

There are a number of letters from Mary Aleshire to her parents and brothers, dating from 1863 to 1878. These describe her life at college in Cincinnati, and later, upon her return to Gallipolis, her involvement with social and family matters.

The letters from Charles Aleshire …

Thoughts, S. Roger Tyler

Tyler, S. Roger, 1878-1963

According to the title page, the book is a collection of articles published in two newspapers: the Advertiser in Huntington, West Virginia, and the Gazette in Charleston. Those articles were “based on sermons prepared and delivered by Dr. Tyler over a period of sixty years in the ministry.”

Salt Industry Of The Kanawha Valley, Lorena Andrews Anderson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The manufacture of salt became at an early date one of the most important industries in the State of West Virginia. The development of this industry increased the population in various localities and aided in the improvement of transportation. There were, as two authors have pointed out, "salt springs in nearly every county of the state." However the two chief centers of this industry were in the counties of Kanawha and Mason. The remaining salt wells were at Bulltown in Braxton County, on New River in Mercer County, on the Monongahela River in Harrison County, and at the mouth of …