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Hecabe: The Dog-Queen In Contemporary And Ancient Mythmaking, Makayla Steede May 2022

Hecabe: The Dog-Queen In Contemporary And Ancient Mythmaking, Makayla Steede

Honors Theses

This thesis will examine the character of Hecabe from Greek mythology as she is depicted in both ancient and contemporary sources. The sources feature both literary and scholarly work relating to Hecabe and Greek mythology. The primary source texts are The Iliad by Homer, Hecabe by Euripides, Trojan Women by Euripides, A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, and The Women of Troy by Pat Barker. The goal of the thesis is to examine the roles Hecabe plays in each book and examine the similarities and differences in how her story is told across the various texts.


Representation Matters: African American Female Readers’ Perceptions Of Young Adult Literature, Asia Harden May 2021

Representation Matters: African American Female Readers’ Perceptions Of Young Adult Literature, Asia Harden

Honors Theses

In 2019, only 6% of U.S. children’s books published were written by black authors. This portion of the publishing industry, and particularly the category of young adult literature (YA) has room for improvement when it comes to African American representation. To identify how this lack of representation affects readers, this study was broken into two parts which resulted in obtaining the African American female YA author perspective, as well as African American female readers. J. Elle and Kristina Forest were interviewed in the first portion of the study, and three focus groups were conducted in the second study with 13 …


Why Myth Matters: The Value Of The Female Voice In Greek Mythology, Kylie Rogers Apr 2021

Why Myth Matters: The Value Of The Female Voice In Greek Mythology, Kylie Rogers

Honors Theses

In this thesis I will primarily examine how the retellings of Greek myths from the female perspective provide insight into the importance of myth and why these stories are still relevant today. Specifically, I will examine three major figures: Circe in Madeline Miller’s Circe, Penelope in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, and Medusa in Marjorie Garber’s The Medusa Reader, along with a few other minor characters featured in Nina MacLaughlin’s Wake, Siren. By studying the fresh perspectives provided by the narration and journeys of these characters and connecting them to plights and experiences that are currently affecting women as evidenced by …


The Neon Bible, From Page To Screen: John Kennedy Toole’S Portrait Of Small-Town Southern Life, Heather Duerre Humann Mar 2021

The Neon Bible, From Page To Screen: John Kennedy Toole’S Portrait Of Small-Town Southern Life, Heather Duerre Humann

Study the South

Louisiana-born writer John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) represents the South in such a way that stereotypes about the region are brought to bear, he also uses his novels -- his short novel, The Neon Bible (1989), and in his better-known tragicomic novel, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) -- to question the culture of the South. In this manner, Toole offers a multifaceted portrait of the region while also raising questions about the nature of representation.


Good Manners And Bad Treasons: Scottish Jacobite Women And The British Authorities In The Rebellion Of 1715, Margaret Sankey Dec 2020

Good Manners And Bad Treasons: Scottish Jacobite Women And The British Authorities In The Rebellion Of 1715, Margaret Sankey

Journal X

No abstract provided.


Who Is Afraid Of The Pardoner?, Shannon Reed Dec 2020

Who Is Afraid Of The Pardoner?, Shannon Reed

Journal X

No abstract provided.


"By Gift Of My Chaste Body": Female Chastity And Exchange Value In Measure For Measure And A Woman Killed With Kindness, Barbara Sebek Dec 2020

"By Gift Of My Chaste Body": Female Chastity And Exchange Value In Measure For Measure And A Woman Killed With Kindness, Barbara Sebek

Journal X

No abstract provided.


The Deconstructure Of The Canterbury Tales, Elizabeth Scala Dec 2020

The Deconstructure Of The Canterbury Tales, Elizabeth Scala

Journal X

No abstract provided.


Hamlet: Like Mother, Like Son, R. Allen Shoaf Dec 2020

Hamlet: Like Mother, Like Son, R. Allen Shoaf

Journal X

No abstract provided.


Othello's Monsters: Kenneth Burke, Deleuze And Guattari, And The Impulse To Narrative In Shakespeare, Bruce Boehrer Dec 2020

Othello's Monsters: Kenneth Burke, Deleuze And Guattari, And The Impulse To Narrative In Shakespeare, Bruce Boehrer

Journal X

No abstract provided.


"Blood Will Have Blood": Power, Performance, And Lady Macbeth's Gender Trouble, Cristina León Alfar Dec 2020

"Blood Will Have Blood": Power, Performance, And Lady Macbeth's Gender Trouble, Cristina León Alfar

Journal X

No abstract provided.


Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 1997): Full Issue, Journal Editors Dec 2020

Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 1997): Full Issue, Journal Editors

Journal X

No abstract provided.


Tears And Blood: Lady Wilde And The Emergence Of Irish Cultural Nationalism, Marjorie Howes Dec 2020

Tears And Blood: Lady Wilde And The Emergence Of Irish Cultural Nationalism, Marjorie Howes

Journal X

No abstract provided.


The Representation Of Narrative: What Happens In Othello, Lisa Hopkins Dec 2020

The Representation Of Narrative: What Happens In Othello, Lisa Hopkins

Journal X

No abstract provided.


Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn 1996): Full Issue, Journal Editors Dec 2020

Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn 1996): Full Issue, Journal Editors

Journal X

No abstract provided.


Vol. 12 (1971): Full Issue, Journal Editors Sep 2020

Vol. 12 (1971): Full Issue, Journal Editors

Studies in English

No abstract provided.


Playing To Win: The Marriage Market In Jane Austen’S Northanger Abbey, Sense And Sensibility And Emma, Caroline Elizabeth Nall May 2020

Playing To Win: The Marriage Market In Jane Austen’S Northanger Abbey, Sense And Sensibility And Emma, Caroline Elizabeth Nall

Honors Theses

This thesis aims to analyze the implications of the marriage market in Jane Austen’s novels Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Emma. In these books, the main focus will be on Isabella Thorpe, who is actively participating in the “game” of the marriage market, Charlotte Palmer, who has won the “game” of marriage, and Miss Bates, who has lost the “game” of marriage. The historical context of these situations, taking place in eighteenth and nineteenth century England, has been taken into account. Austen has created characters to demonstrate the many aspects of a female’s life and how it relates …


"Monsters In Suburbia": Women's Bodies, Monstrosity, And Motherhood In The Mere Wife, Claire M. Bonvillain May 2020

"Monsters In Suburbia": Women's Bodies, Monstrosity, And Motherhood In The Mere Wife, Claire M. Bonvillain

Honors Theses

This thesis explores themes of monstrosity in Maria Dahvana Headley's novel The Mere Wife in connection with issues of women's bodies and feminism. It analyzes prominent female characters in the novel and the relationships of their bodies to patriarchal authority, showing how and why bodies are deemed monstrous. It discusses the role that motherhood plays in patriarchal society, as well as explores alternatives that the novel offers to this system.


More Than A Language: A Detailed Look At The English Major, Hannah Woods May 2020

More Than A Language: A Detailed Look At The English Major, Hannah Woods

Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the perceptions of the English Major in order to come up with suggestions for the Univeristy of Mississippi English Department with the purpose of increasing enrollment in the English Program. The last decade has seen a large decrease in the number of English Majors throughout the country, and this decrease has been reflected in the University of Mississippi. This thesis looks at recent opinions of the English Major in society, including popular criticisms of the major and responces from the English community. It was found that the two main criticisms of the English Major are that graduates …


The Hair You Wished To Comb, Sarah Barch May 2020

The Hair You Wished To Comb, Sarah Barch

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems exploring gender and trauma in Greek mythology by retelling classical stories in a female voice.


We Know Where You Belong At: Institutions And Marginalized Bodies In The Literature Of Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, And Eudora Welty, Michelle Lynn Ayers Jan 2019

We Know Where You Belong At: Institutions And Marginalized Bodies In The Literature Of Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, And Eudora Welty, Michelle Lynn Ayers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis portfolio explores how three southern authors used fiction to push back against social norms. The literary works of Charles Chesnutt, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty depict the ways in which marginalized bodies are socially regulated and punished. By using Michel Foucault’s theories about power and knowledge, I explore how each of these works uses surveillance to regulate social behavior and what happens to marginalized bodies that refuse to conform to the norm. In Chesnutt’s novel The Marrow of Tradition, Dr. Miller uses his “medical gaze” to diagnose problems within the black community while also elevating himself above his …


Road Trippin': Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives From On The Road To The Road, Scott M. Obernesser Jan 2019

Road Trippin': Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives From On The Road To The Road, Scott M. Obernesser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Road Trippin:’ Twentieth-Century American Road Narratives and Petrocultures from On The Road to The Road" examines late-twentieth century U.S. road narratives in an effort to trace the development of American petrocultures geographically and culturally in the decades after World War II. The highway stories that gain popularity throughout the era trace not simply how Americans utilize oil, but how the postwar American oil ethos in literature, film, and music acts upon and shapes human interiority and vice versa. Roads and highways frame my critique because they are at once networks of commerce transportation and producers of a unique, romantic …


The End Times, Gunnar Ohberg Jan 2019

The End Times, Gunnar Ohberg

Honors Theses

The End Times is a collection of apocalyptic short stories set within the same universe. The stories employ elements of magical realism and grit lit. It is the author's hope that each story deal with at least one external societal issue (such as digital discourse and sexual aggression) and one internal psychological issue (such as depression, obsession/compulsion, and survivor's guilt). Each story is told in the first-person in an effort to best demonstrate the various psychologies of its protagonist. In these stories, God has decided to punish humanity for their transgressions. The devices of this God are fantastic: limbs disappear, …


Of Mules And Mamas: Four Women, Africana Mothering, And Resistance, Ebony Olivia Lumumba Jan 2019

Of Mules And Mamas: Four Women, Africana Mothering, And Resistance, Ebony Olivia Lumumba

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The black woman’s humanity is unjustly linked to domestic responsibility and, thus, the traditional constraints of mothering. The roles of the mother and the created archetype of the mammy often become marred with the latter role overtaking the former—leaving black children without full benefit and access to their biological maternal parent. With the pervasive threat to black lives present in spaces all over the globe, for women of the African Diaspora, simply deciding to accept the role of a mother to a life that is physically, socially, and economically under siege is revolutionary. Considering this, the act of mothering, especially …


In The Shape Of A Woman: Behavioral Compliance To Gendered Expectations In The Early Modern Era And The Implications For Human Identity In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Sydney Shamblin Jan 2018

In The Shape Of A Woman: Behavioral Compliance To Gendered Expectations In The Early Modern Era And The Implications For Human Identity In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Sydney Shamblin

Honors Theses

The purpose of this essay is to examine the role that gender plays in the construction of the human within Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Merry Wives of Windsor. While gender was a vital component of the immaterial essence that distinguished humans from animals, early moderns believed that true internal gender conformity could not exist if it was not accompanied by external expressions of it. Characters in each of these plays fixate on the external proofs of their own gendered identities, and in doing so, they inadvertently reveal that those traits which distinguish humanity are only cultural constructions and learned behavior …


From The Attic To The Screen: An Adaptation Of Jane Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea, Farrah F. Sunn Jan 2017

From The Attic To The Screen: An Adaptation Of Jane Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea, Farrah F. Sunn

Honors Theses

Jane and Antoinette is an adapted screenplay from the novels Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Rhys's novel, written nearly one hundred years after the publication of Jane Eyre in 1847, functions as a prequel to the original text. I develop the two stories into one, cohesive narrative for the screen. The adaptation process includes close analyses of the texts, both independently and in relation to one another. I viewed all film or television adaptations of the two novels and read critical analyses of these adaptations. I also studied adaptation theory and applied those …


Stand Perfectly Still: Statues, Nudity, And The Pygmalion Myth In Victorian Theatre And Culture, Maggie Elizabeth Wallen Jan 2017

Stand Perfectly Still: Statues, Nudity, And The Pygmalion Myth In Victorian Theatre And Culture, Maggie Elizabeth Wallen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stephen Guy-Bray argues that though the story of Pygmalion has taken various forms in the nineteenth century, “it is often read as a story of artistic and sexual triumph” (447). But a sexual triumph for whom? My thesis addresses questions pertaining to how the nude female body is vieon the theatrical stage by focusing specifically on the myth of Pygmalion as presented in W. S. Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I argue that the image of the moving statue, especially in the melodramatic tradition of the pose plastique and tableau vivant, creates instability for the viewer …


Strangers Among Us: Invasive Plants In British Literature, 1669-1800., Thomas Lance Bullington Jan 2016

Strangers Among Us: Invasive Plants In British Literature, 1669-1800., Thomas Lance Bullington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exotic flora in the long eighteenth century (1666-1800) embodied a point of contact between the natural and imaginary worlds, bearing witness to the ways that ideology relocates living things according to human desire. Most accounts view these exotics through the lens of ecological imperialism and “invasive” species. Both of these terms are twenty-first century metaphors that materialize the role of imperialism in circulating exotics, applying the narrative of invading British empire to the behavior of foreign plants. However, such accounts do not fully acknowledge the cultural work that images of foreign plants do. I opt instead for an ecocritical reappraisal …


Honestly, Woman, You Call Yourself Our Mother?: Mothers And Witches In Harry Potter, Mary-Eileen Rankin Rankin Jan 2015

Honestly, Woman, You Call Yourself Our Mother?: Mothers And Witches In Harry Potter, Mary-Eileen Rankin Rankin

Honors Theses

This thesis aims to analyze the importance of maternal nurture and the witches as mothers trope in the Harry Potter series. This nurture is traditional as well as perverse and appears in characters besides the adult women. Rowling creates characters who appeal to paradigms of the Early Modern bad mother witch who harmed children among other accusations associated with female sexuality and motherhood. Additionally, Rowling challenges the negative stereotype of associating witches and bad mothering by presenting witches as good mothers. The power of maternal nurture in the series is best seen through the good mothers. This theme plays such …


Gender Performance, Trauma, And Orality In Adichie's Half Of A Yellow Sun And Purple Hibiscus, Lauren Elizabeth Rackley Jan 2015

Gender Performance, Trauma, And Orality In Adichie's Half Of A Yellow Sun And Purple Hibiscus, Lauren Elizabeth Rackley

Honors Theses

This thesis examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus in order to explore the implications of trauma on middleclass Igbo women's gender performance. The traumas that the women encounter within the novels occur within the domestic sphere and are results of the Biafran War in Half of a Yellow Sun and domestic abuse in Purple Hibiscus. This thesis interrogates women's experiences within the domestic sphere, ultimately reflecting a larger national trauma that Biafra and later Nigeria undergo as a result of colonial occupation. This thesis concludes with an exploration of the culturally specific practice of …