Digital Commons Network^™

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.

[Un]Seen, Al Benbow

Honors Projects

[un]seen is a community-centered project and installation that consists of a collection of portraits and statements from underrepresented members of the LGBTQ+ community. Each subject submits their own action item that depends on their identity and response to the question, “what do you wish people understood about the experience of being [your identity]?”

This project was initially born out of research into the commodification of LGBTQ+ identities, and the realization that corporations tend to market to members of the LGBTQ+ community who they believe have the most spending power: white, cisgender, able-bodied, upper class, gay men, and therefore most often …

Properly Unhinged: A Collection Of Poems, Madison Everett

Honors Projects

This is a collection of poems that explores the identities I possess and am a part of. These identities include being half black and half white, clinically diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Generalize Anxiety Disorder, pansexual or bisexual or something altogether different (depending on the day), and cis gendered womanhood. I also explore what a poem is and what a poem is not, and how there is very little difference between the two. In a lot of ways, this is an exploration into myself and what it means to be within the world. What does it mean to …

Nancy Drew: A Feminist Icon Or A Problematic Figure Of The Patriarchy And White Privilege, Elizabeth J. Farren

WRIT: Journal of First-Year Writing

In the detective fiction genre, Nancy Drew is one of its most iconic sleuths, and is so cleverly named the “girl detective.” Originally created in 1930, Nancy Drew serves as an inspirational figure for young girls and women across generations, as her intelligence and resourcefulness allowed her to challenge traditional gender roles for women as well as solve complicated mysteries. With the rise of the women’s rights movement and in the 1960s, many aspired to attain Nancy Drew’s independence and subvert the patriarchy, breaking the glass ceiling that held them down in the role of the submissive housewife. The second …

Placing Caster Semenya Within And Outside Of Discourse On Sex And Gender In The Space Of International Professional Athletics, Joanna Line

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Caster Semenya’s body has caused a rupture within the space of international professional athletics, which is structured according to a binary conceptualization of sex and gender. This rupture created a space for international discourse about alternative ways in which sex and gender can be defined, and to reimagine the space of international professional athletics, and other binary-bound non-sport spaces, to be more inclusive. Cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove's concept of landscapes and Stuart Hall’s concept of coding and decoding provide a framework for exploring how Caster Semenya’s body has been read and interpreted like a …