Digital Commons Network^™

Shakespeare And The Supreme Court: How The Justices Reveal Their Ideologies By Referencing His Works, Rachel Anderson

Honors Projects

The works of William Shakespeare have been referenced many times throughout history, even by Supreme Court justices. Building off of an observation of a mock trial by James Shapiro, this project puts the utilization of Shakespeare from three Court opinions in relation to its context within the play and the opinion to examine what the reference reveals about the authoring justices' ideology. In doing so, this project concludes that the justices utilize Shakespeare's works in their opinions for various reasons, including to infuse their beliefs into their argument. This implies that Supreme Court justices do not base their opinions on …

Haunted Heroines: An Examination Of The Complication Of The Gothic Heroine, Molly S. Callison

Honors Projects

This undergraduate research thesis is an examination of two of the most significant evolutions of the literary figure of the Gothic heroine, focusing on innovations made by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey (1817) and Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre (1847). It discusses the origins of the Gothic heroine, set up by Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto (1764), and examines the ways that Austen and Brontë make their heroines more internally complex, bringing not only realism to the Gothic heroine but a psychological depth to the feminine Gothic.

Women And Supposition: The Chronicles Of Narnia And Biblical Womanhood, Carolyn Dailey

Honors Projects

Supplemented by C.S. Lewis' works in theology, predominately Mere Christianity, and 'Priestesses in the Church?" as well as sources from other theologians, and historians, this paper explores the relationship between Christian tradition and Biblical womanhood that is expressed in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. This paper finds that C.S. Lewis drew more from the core tenets of love and equality that exist at the heart of Christianity rather than from traditional Christian beliefs, including some he held himself. In doing this, he crafted an imaginative fiction that affirms Biblical womanhood.

Integrating Social And Emotional Learning Into Language Arts Classrooms Through Diverse Young Adult Literature, Rachael Schmidt

Honors Projects

This paper discusses the growing integration of social and emotional learning (SEL) in high schools. The project provides an explanation of why SEL should be integrated into classroom instruction, specifically focusing on the language arts classroom. The included teaching guide provides six lessons for integrating SEL in the language arts classroom using diverse young adult literature.

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy, Lena Nighswander

Honors Projects

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy is a new play that takes up the issues of adaptation, translation, and temporality in regards to Frank Wedekind's Frühlingserwachen, a play infamous in its revelry in controversy and unflinching nature in the face of social issues many would prefer to ignore. Several modern adaptations of the original text exist, but none have utilized the 2020s as a setting nor have they used the fertile landscape of the American midwest as a background.

This play, set in Toledo, OH, leans into the Wedekindian tradition of cutting social criticism and controversy in its exploration of …

My Brother: A Picturebook About My Brother's Story Living With Type 1 Diabetes., Lydia Manes

Honors Projects

My Brother is a picturebook about my brother's story living with type 1 diabetes. This story includes real life events, medical terminology, and emotionally connecting text to engage potential readers. The purpose of this picturebook is to serve as an educational tool and to help other children cope with their diagnosis of type 1 diabetes.

Re-Envisioning The Tropics: Nick Joaquin's Philippine Gothic, Ella Marie Jaman

Honors Projects

This paper examines selected stories from Filipino author, Nick Joaquin, through a gothic lens. Drawing from recent development in Gothic studies, I work within a tropical gothic and postcolonial gothic framework to suggest a localized "Philippine gothic" represented within Nick Joaquin's work. Stories examined include the novel "The Woman Who Had Two Navels," as well as the short stories "Summer Solstice, Mass of St. Sylvestre," and "The Order of Melkizedek."

Minor, Ugly, And Meta: Feelings In Contemporary Korean American Literature, Kyubin Kim

Honors Projects

In 2019, Korean American writer Cathy Park Hong published her memoir Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning in the midst of a turning point in Asian American politics. Hong describes minor feelings as “emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.” Used as a concept to summate the Asian American experience in white America as living in a country where one’s reality is constantly questioned and made invisible, minor feelings forges an affective framework to study minoritized, diasporic literature. …

Empire Of Horror: Race, Animality, And Monstrosity In The Victorian Gothic, Grace Monaghan

Honors Projects

This project examines Victorian England through the analysis of three Victorian gothic novels: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903/1912), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). The end of the nineteenth century and the final years of the Victorian era brought with them fears and uncertainties about England’s role in the world and its future, fears that the Victorian gothic sought to grapple with, but inevitably failed to contain. In examining this genre, I draw on “Undisciplining Victorian Studies” (Chatterjee et al, 2020), which calls for the field of Victorian studies to center racial theory. As …

"In Loving Virtue": Staging The Virgin Body In Early Modern Drama, Miranda Viederman

Honors Projects

The aim of this Honors project is to investigate representations of female virginity in Renaissance English dramatic works. I view the period as one in which the womb became the site of a unique renewal of cultural anxieties surrounding the stability of the patriarchy and the inaccessibility of female sexual desire. I am most interested in virginity as a “bodily narrative” dependent on the construction and maintenance of performance. I analyze representations of virginity in female characters from four works of drama originating in the Jacobean period of the English Renaissance, during and after the end of the reign of …