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Final Master's Portfolio, Ayotunde Afolabi

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio explores themes of gender and race, identity representation, and agency within various literary texts. It encapsulates a series of analytical essays that scrutinize how these themes intersect and manifest across diverse literary landscapes, emphasizing the ways in which authors address and challenge societal norms and structures through their narratives. Each essay within the portfolio not only mirrors the engagement with these themes but also showcases the development of a theoretical approach that bridges classical literary analysis with contemporary issues of identity politics and social justice.

"A Narrative Is A Living Body”: Trans-Relations In Contemporary Transmasculine Fiction, Madison Rougier

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores how recent novels are able to expand representations of transgender experiences and promote identification with these characters and their experiences, even if the reader is not trans themself. It begins by delving into a brief history of transgender narrative and the problems associated with these narratives having been primarily in the form of memoir. It then examines how Rose Tremain’s Sacred Country, despite being one of the first instances of a fictional narrative focused on a transgender man, reflects similarly problematic narrative characteristics to those found in memoir. Proposing a concept of trans-relational reading, which promotes identifications …

‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury’, Rage Should Not Be A Privilege: The Potential Power Of The ‘Racial Imaginary’, Georgia Mcgovern

CMC Senior Theses

Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.

I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines …

How Early Modern English Pedagogy Shaped The Gendered And Racialized Use Of Magic In William Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Erin Lindsay Faya

Graduate Thesis Collection

Magical usage plays a significant role in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. However, who gets to use magic and in what ways? Why is Prospero painted the protagonist while Sycorax gets labeled a witch though both use magic? This thesis looks at how early modern English pedagogy shapes the use of magic in The Tempest. When magic is read as knowledge, then the pedagogy influencing early modern education dictates whose knowledge counts and is seen as correct and whose is erased and vilified. The epistemological formation happening in early modern England is apparent in The Tempest as Prospero uses magic …

The Framing Of The Shrew: Induction, Gender, And Agency In William Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Samantha Stringham

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Shrews abound, not only in Shakespeare’s works but in our modern world. Katherine, Shakespeare’s titular shrew, is in the good company of Beatrice, Adriana, and even, some argue, her seemingly virtuous sister Bianca. These women, all of whom push against the confines posed by the social conventions of Renaissance womanhood, have become increasingly relevant as women, now more than ever, demand that their voices be heard and continue to rally against the assertion that railing, scolding, turbulent behavior makes one a shrew (or perhaps, that being a shrew is an inherently bad thing). The increasingly feminist leanings of modern audiences …

Men, Women, And Italians: The Masquerade Of Narrative And Identity In Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Ruth A. Holmes

English Theses & Dissertations

The chaotic masquerades that proliferated during the British long eighteenth century punctuated the period’s preoccupation with order and categorization. The identity categories that the masquerade disrupted, the novel reinforced, or perhaps even created. It was in the middle of this period, in the political center of Britain, that Samuel Richardson published his third and final novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), a novel which centers England and was also centered by England, a national treasure entangled in literary and cultural history. Tracing the nexus of gender and nationalism in Grandison then becomes important given the novel’s active entanglement …

Gothic Transformations And Remediations In Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Wendy Fall

Dissertations (1934 -)

My project considers the transformation of gothic characters as they move among different types of publications in the nineteenth century. As they meander from triple-decker novels to chapbooks, to theatrical scripts, to periodicals, and to penny serials, gothic stories and portrayals of people in them are altered by the length and technological capability of each form. They also mutate to reflect the tastes and ideologies of their changing audiences, and to hybridize genres under the popular influence of realism toward the mid-century. The mainstays of the gothic mode remain stable; these publications adhere to ambiguous or pluralistic ideologies, are obsessed …

Masculine Desire And Feminine Imitation: Contextualizing Heterosexual Relationships In Sister Carrie, Jennifer L. White

Master of Arts in Classical Studies

Theodore Dreiser is generally considered one of the greatest American naturalist authors across the genre. His depiction of life is gritty and harsh, his characters at the mercy of their natural impulses and their unforgiving environment. However, there is also a sentimental element to Dreiser’s work, especially in his portrayal of romantic relationships. In the face of unrelenting adversity, there is a glimmer of possibility in the longing for meaningful human connection, if only under different circumstances. While Dreiser’s naturalistic approach suggests that such relationships can never be truly fulfilling due to either the innate frailty of the participants or …

"Where Sex Is Directly Concerned" Agatha Christie And The Feminization Of Detective Fiction, Barbara Javori

Theses and Dissertations

Agatha Christie’s name is synonymous with the Whodunit. She is without a doubt one the most popular and best selling authors of all time. Christie’s work built upon the first examples of detective fiction, including Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. However, Christie’s embrace of the traditionally female spaces, her subversion of expectations, and her unlikely detectives set her apart from her predecessors with their focus on male intellect, patriarchal superiority, and absent female characters. Christie’s novels established recognizable patterns still used today in books, television and movies. This project examines the arc of detective fiction …

Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk’S Transgressive Look At A Hyperrealized Society, Jordan R. Trevarthen

MSU Graduate Theses

By critically analyzing Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters, I was able to conclude that the transgressive portrayal of hyperrealized consumerism warranted a close examination into the value American society places on an individual’s ability to replace authenticity for consumer obedience. Palahniuk’s dangerous representation of the body throughout the novel serves to highlight numerous ways in which a consumer transgresses against their own physical and mental well-being to achieve happiness constructed by capitalistic agendas. By using French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality in connection with gender, disability, and feminist theory and ecocriticism, I attempt to deconstruct the neoliberal ideology to which …

Representations Of Military Women In Contemporary War Stories, Deborah Daley

Theses and Dissertations--English

Representations of Military Women in Contemporary War Stories seeks to understand how war stories influence our perception of who belongs in military service. With the canon of western war writing dominated by the memoirs and stories of white men, what happens when service women enter into and author war stories, and how does their appearance destabilize questions of who is fit for military service? War literature provides an important lens through which to observe how military service is scripted by culturally and socially constructed expectations of one’s gender, race, and occupation. In male-dominated workplaces, women must not only perform in …

"Why Do You Keep Alone?:" Isolated Women In The Plays Of Shakespeare, Alexus Litchfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The works of William Shakespeare have been well explored, but there is a lack of criticism that examines how the depiction of women is shaped by the genre of the play. Linda Bamber is one of the few critics who have explored this connection between gender and genre. However, while she focuses on the plays’ psychological dynamics, I examine the social dynamics between characters in my study of gender and genre. I suggest that, in both tragedy and comedy, isolation is a strong marker of unhappiness for Shakespeare’s female characters. Examining three tragedies, I find that Lady Macbeth, Goneril, Regan, …

Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth, Christopher Maverick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1938 introduction of Superman, superheroes have been ever-present in American popular culture. Indeed, with the modern preponderance of comic book movies dominating the American cinematic box-office, superhero fantasy is arguably the most important genre of fiction being produced in the contemporary moment. Peter Coogan, Kurt Busiek and many other scholars have discussed the prominence and relevance of the superhero fantasy as a genre. Still others, including Umberto Eco and Marco Arnaudo, have asserted that the superhero is not so much a genre and as it is the evolution of mythology. In Sex and the Superman, I argue …

Unit Plan For A Course On Banned Books For 11th And 12th Grade, Jonny Gherman

English Capstone Projects

This lesson plan will teach high school students (11th-12th grade) what censorship is, why it is powerful, and what to do with it. Aligned with Pennsylvania State Standards, students will identify common themes between the two most popular genres of banned books (race & gender/sexuality). Through a series of activities, discussions, and a final project, students will practice close reading, critical thinking, and basic research skills.

Conceptions Of Space, Gender, And Movement Within Literature And Film: An Analysis Of "The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs" & Westward The Women, Stephanie Fishleigh

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Often portrayed as static, and neutral, “space,” as it is used in this paper, refers to a literary conception, one which encompasses a sphere of locations as well as settings of events, characters, and objects within a literary narrative. Much to our detriment, humans are often compelled to codify and compartmentalize the world around us, using perceived differences as our epistemological touchstone. This phenomenon extends even to our relationship to space. In examining the interplay between space, geographies, genre, and gender, using two objects of analysis, this paper seeks to further the current scholarship on how gender ideology informs our …

"Meatheads" Redefined: An Analysis Of The Union College Football Team, Michaela Wood

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the experiences and representations of the male football player. It provides an anthropological study of Union College football players and a film analysis of the sports film genre, revealing critical insights about relationships among bodies, diet preferences, and gendered stereotypes. These insights move beyond the “meathead” stereotypes that society constructs for the male football player. This thesis combines Anthropology and English to reveal that questions about hegemonic masculinity arise in the minds of the very athletes who embody the stereotypes of ‘the man.’ Moreover, sports films’ popularity lies in themes that entice men to acknowledge their emotions. …

Dominance And Radical Submission In Seventeenth-Century Drama: Chastity, Fairness, And Silence In Portrayals Of Mar(R)Iam(Ne), Sophonisba, And Cleopatra, Laura S. Deluca

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This thesis conducts an extensive reading of early modern English playwrights’ interpretation of ancient royalty. I survey a series of seventeenth-century plays concerning Mariamne I, the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba, and Cleopatra VII. I argue that the English stage produced two models of ancient royalty. Mar(r)iam(ne) and Sophonisba personify one model, functioning as white, seemingly obedient figureheads. I document playwrights portraying their men as reducing them to their chastity and fairness, or lack thereof. Despite the inactivity of these objectified women, the qualities that these men obsess over catalyze masculine irrationality. The other model, which Cleopatra embodies, encompasses blackness and defiance. …

Fantasized Masculinity Performed In American War Narratives, Shea O'Scannlain

English Honors Theses

In this thesis I wanted to explore the ways that masculinity has been written in history through the genre of fiction. The first chapter discusses traumatized white masculinity in Kurt Vonnegut's novel SlaughterHouse Five and Oliver Stone's film Born On The Fourth of July. The second chapter deals with the female Black experience in response to the white patriarchy in Toni Morrison's novel Home and HBO's television series LoveCraft Country. And finally chapter 3 deals with mythologized masculinity redeemed through violence in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver and Frank Miller's comic book series The Dark Knight Returns. …

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Examining The Power And Privilege Of Escapism In Young Adult Literature And Its Culture, Stacey Watson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will explore the systematic biases embedded within this genre, highlighting the ongoing battle between tokenism and inclusive storytelling. Thesis will also emphasize the importance of this genre, its tight grasp on popular culture, and showcase positive representations introduced by new creators over the years.

"Custome Is An Idiot": How Genre Bending Opens New Meanings For Hæc Vir, Or The Womanish Man, Stephen Montgomery-Anderson

All Theses

Hæc Vir, or the Womanish Man is often conceived of as a satirical pamphlet. Moreover, scholars such as Linda Woodbridge and Simone Chess read the pamphlet as ultimately and explicitly arguing for a normative rendering of gender. Such readings, while acknowledging the rhetorical power and feminist nature of the crossdressed female character Hic Mulier’s arguments, invariably discount them in favor of a supposed return to normalcy. I instead suggest that Hic Mulier’s arguments be read as genuine and potentially altering. I further argue that we should read Hæc Vir as a closet drama. Bending the genre of the …

Accepting Or Opposing The Status Quo: A Look At The Women Characters In Mariama Bâ’S So Long A Letter (1981) And Chimamanda Adichie’S Purple Hibiscus (2003), Omolola Giwa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What exactly is the status quo of women in Africa? Women’s selfhood has been systematically subordinated or outright denied by law, customary practices, and cultural stereotypes. Scholars like Judith Bennet suggest that religious practices and colonial rule subjugate African women. Patriarchal ideologies guide the society’s discrimination against women and this has influenced the status of women, especially married women and the way they respond in times of affliction.

Authors like Chimamanda Adichie and Mariama Ba in their fictional novels The Purple Hibiscus and So Long a Letter focus on capturing the struggles and conditions of women in the Western African …

Confined In (Patri)Architecture: How Gothic And Horror Literature Exposes Ongoing Violence And Oppression Against Women, Clara A. Macilravie Cañas

Dissertations and Theses

This project focuses on the intersections of space, power, gender, religion, and the architecture of institutions that confine and repress women. I argue that these texts focus on how patriarchal and domestic ideologies lock women into gendered expectations through oppressive gender politics. Chapter one demonstrates how early gothic female writers used representations of physical structures, such as abbeys and castles, to expose the eighteenth-century woman’s experiences of abuse and confinement by repressive patriarchal and monarchal rule. This chapter connects themes and arguments within Sophia Lee’s The Recess (1783) and Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance (1790) to reveal the metaphors that …

“I Save Me”: Gender, Agency, And Power In Better Call Saul, Stephanie Kocer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Historically, women on television have been portrayed in wife and mother roles, making them a foil to their husbands, but never the main focal point of the show. These characters stay on the sidelines, without being given truly original storylines where they are allowed to drive their own narratives. During the first season of Better Call Saul, Kim Wexler is a supporting character, without any storylines that aren’t linked to Jimmy McGill. Jimmy often treats Kim as a damsel in distress. He thinks it’s his job to save her, and usually from the chaos that he’s created. In this thesis …

The Act Of Seeing And Being Seen: Visual Explorations Of Queerness And Memory In Alison Bechdel’S Fun Home, Vanessa Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

In the autobiographical illustrated novel Fun Home, Alison Bechdel uses various art styles and comic techniques to examine her father’s life as a closeted gay man and his tragic suicide, as well as her own childhood and experience with homosexuality. This thesis explores how Bechdel uses the medium of the graphic novel to showcase different visual perspectives and ways of bearing witness to the past, memory, trauma, and interpersonal relationships, showing how they converge to create the story of how one generation’s model of queer identity can impact and shape the next. Bechdel presents multiple points-of-view in her exploration …

Agatha Christie: A Look Into Criminal Procedure And Gender, Carmella Monico

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

With 2020 being the 100^th year since Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published, it seems fitting to celebrate such an accomplished author with a deeper look into the inner workings of her novels. While she wrote mystery novels that involved many detectives, the two most popular are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This paper will examine these two detectives in regard to the criminal procedure each uses to solve their respective cases. Would her detectives’ work hold up in court then or even today? Additionally, the difference in gender between Poirot and Marple …

Adapting Animals: Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Science, And Media, Kristen Layne Figgins

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin and other proponents of evolutionary theory provided a theoretical framework for discussing the question of humanity’s place in the world. These nascent theories emphasized the shared animal nature of humans and the nonhuman creatures who had once occupied a distinctly lower place on the chain of being. My dissertation addresses the question of how nineteenth-century scientific attitudes about animals were reflected in the literature of the period. By examining culture-texts from the nineteenth century, it is clear that literature was an active participant in extending scientific knowledge, often by playing with the blending categorical …

Noisy Transgressions: Gendered Noise, Female Voices, And Noisy Narration In Anne Bronte's The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Brianna Phillips

English MA Theses

This thesis re-evaluates Anne Brontë’s critically undervalued novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) through its noisy women. By joining the fields of narratology and noise studies, I argue for the subversive noisiness of a novel that has been overwhelmingly dismissed by critics as a text of female silence, subjugation, and subordination. However, by offering a soundscape of gendered noise and proliferating female voices, Brontë privileges the sounds of women’s voices in such a way that female noise “re-voices” the masculine origins of the novel (Gilbert Markham’s frame narrative). Contrary to traditional readings of Brontë’s heroine, Helen Huntingdon proves subversively …

“It Could Have Happened To Any Of You”: Post-Wounded Women In Three Contemporary Feminist Dystopian Novels, Abby N. Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My goal for this thesis is to investigate the concept of (mis)labeling female protagonists in contemporary British fiction as mentally ill—historically labeled as madness—when subjected to traumatic events. The female protagonists in two novels by Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure (2018) and Blue Ticket (2020), and Jenni Fagan’s 2012 novel The Panopticon, are raised in environments steeped in trauma and strict, hegemonic structures that actively work to control and mold their identities. In The Panopticon, this system is called “the experiment”; in The Water Cure, it is personified by the character King and those who follow him; …

The Fragility Of White Masculinity: An Exploration Of The White, Heterosexual Male Fantasy Of Gender In Horror, Allison D. Clark

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Keats And Shelley: A Pursuit Towards Progressivism, Serenah Minasian

Theses and Dissertations

An analyzation of the poems, letters, and works of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a perspective focusing on the history of sexuality, breaking gender binaries, and pushing towards progressivism. This thesis proves how John Keats is both an effeminate man who displays exemplary ways of breaking gender expectations but also a man who possess misogynistic tendencies. Also, this thesis analyzes Percy Shelley’s use of gender expectations and how he breaks them with the use of his characters. Studying these two British Romantics shows how these two cisgender, straight, white men provide an ability to push back on their …