Digital Commons Network^™

Dark As Day, Rachel Keady

CMC Senior Theses

“All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles... unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing... better than to follow nature." - Caravaggio

In the fall of 2021, I registered to take “Italian Baroque Art” with Professor Gorse at Pomona College, for the spring of 2022. Professor Faggen, one of my advisors, encouraged this and piqued my interest in the characters of this world. After some casual online research, I was transfixed by one artist in particular: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. How could I not be struck …

Impossible Thoughts, Alternative Spaces, Julien Luebbers

Pomona Senior Theses

In this thesis I explore meaning and possibility in the works of Samuel Beckett and Italo Calvino, with emphasis on how the texts refute coherent meaning and use that refutation to re-inscribe the boundaries of the possible.

Language In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence, Axel Ahdritz

CMC Senior Theses

AI language models can now produce text that is indistinguishable from our own, forcing us into a confrontation with the romantic assumptions underlying ‘natural language’ in the West. In this thesis, I will conduct a genealogy of the ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ qualities of language through the literary, philosophical, and mathematical texts in which our ideas of authorship are premised. My hope is that this discussion will deepen our understanding of the language produced by AI models, answer why we feel compelled to anthropomorphize these machines, and situate readers in the reality of our present linguistic moment.

"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez

CMC Senior Theses

During the Victorian age, the law and society were in conversation with each other, and the law reflected Victorian gender norms. Nineteenth-century gender attitudes intersected with the law, medical discourse, and social customs in a multitude of ways. Abuse and gender violence occurred beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. The models of nineteenth-century social conduct were highly gendered and placed men and women in separate social spheres. As this research indicates, the lived practices of Victorians, across social and economic strata, deviated from these accepted models of behavior. This thesis explores the ways that accepted and unaccepted standards of female …

The Adventure Of A Lifetime: Examining Life Lessons In Eighteenth Century Literature, Griffin Ferre

CMC Senior Theses

Embedded within various works of Eighteenth-Century literature lie themes regarding how the protagonists of these stories pursue their own versions of happiness. This thesis examines how characters from a wide variety of Eighteenth-Century novels engage with their surroundings, often resisting the dominant social structures of the time, to fashion more fulfilling lives for themselves. From Robinson Crusoe to Elizabeth Bennet to Frankenstein's monster, these characters come from a wide variety of backgrounds but all reveal several unifying themes. They seek out personal connections rather that striving to fulfill antiquated social expectations and they focus on their own agency, rather than …

Reclaiming The Female Suicide Narrative: Rebirth, A Plunge, And The Absurd, Shelby T. Wax

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis looks at female suicide in literature from the 1890s to 1970s in the novels The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion. Looking at these female-penned novels in comparison the canon of Western literature, they all clearly indicate a change in the treatment of female protagonists suffering from loss. In The Awakening, suicide is represented as a rebirth. In Mrs. Dalloway, the protagonist suffers from a fragmentation of the self. In Play It As It Lays, the protagonist finds life through the Absurd.

The Wisdom In Folly: An Examination Of William Shakespeare's Fools In Twelfth Night And King Lear, Siri M. Brudevold

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the complexities to be found in the characters of Lear's Fool from King Lear and Feste from Twelfth Night. It begins with an investigation of the history behind the taxonomy of fools that William Shakespeare created in his works. The rest of the thesis is devoted to examining the many facets of the two aforementioned fools, with the goal of discovering just how important and influential they are to their respective plots and to the world of literature. Finally, there is a brief coda that explores the other striking similarities that the two plays have in …

Analysis Of Character Translations In Film Adaptations Of Popular Literature, Emmanuel Camarillo

CMC Senior Theses

A brief look at the history of film adaptation studies and its terminology. Character differences between a piece of literature and it's film version are compared in three separate case studies. The film adaptations of a graphic novel, a classic novel, and a play are analyzed on the basis of the changes made to specific characters within their respective stories and the effects of those changes on the overall outcome of the film.

Life And Death: Spiritual Philosophy In Anna Karenina, Jillian Avalon

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the structure, title, epigraph, and spiritual philosophy of Leo Tolstoy’s great novel, Anna Karenina. The intricate structure of the novel can leave more questions than it answers, and as the novel was written at such a critical, complex time of Tolstoy’s life, the ideas the characters struggle with in Anna Karenina are of both daily and cosmic importance. Considering influences and criticism of the novel, the method of Tolstoy’s vision of living well as shown in Anna Karenina leads to a very specific and intricate spiritual philosophy. It is also found that the novel’s structure and …

Adaptation: Is The Book Really Better Than The...Television Series?, Jane F. Eberts

Scripps Senior Theses

When the topic of ‘adaptation’ is brought up, more often than not the coupling of a novel and its most recent Hollywood hit come to mind. Although it may not be at the forefront of the general population’s mind, adaptation is something that we encounter often, and consciously or not, we all have our own theory on the subject. While it may seem that the evolution of book series, to film adaptation, to booming franchise may be recently trending with the acceleration of blockbusters such as Harry Potter, adaptation has been a fundamental part of the advancement of media. …

Weaving Through Reality: Dance As An Active Emblem Of Fantasy In Performance Literature, Tara Maylyn Frankel

CMC Senior Theses

Literature uses dance to reveal underlying messages of fantasy through the themes of the central narrative of female characters. Examining the original texts with respect to their varying adaptations for film and stage, performance literature reveals how directors relate a three-dimensional story to an audience from a two-dimensional world. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Red Shoes” shows an underlying semiotic code where transitioning from the black and white of reality to the red of fantasy is only accomplished through dancing. Oscar Wilde’s Salome displays an eroticization of the exotic solo-improvised dance that provides a semblance of control for the main character. …