Digital Commons Network^™

Law And Literature In Pennsylvania: A Changing Landscape, Juliette Gaggini

Honors Theses

This thesis examines themes of American national identity perpetuated in Pennsylvania surrounding private property through historical, literary and legal analysis. Ideals of private property and land ownership are broken into three transitions throughout Pennsylvania history: the American frontier and initial land claiming by settlers, mass-deforestation and the introduction of widespread agriculture, and finally industrialization and the introduction of mining and fracking. Each of these transitions highlights the physical changes to the region and how they were influenced by American ideals of private property, productivity, and profitability.

Throughout this thesis, I analyze both literary and legal texts to examine societal beliefs …

The Bookworm's Brain: An Analysis On Emotion-Evoking Literature, Savannah Hoffman

Honors Theses

This thesis draws on several literary studies to create and propose the idea that fiction can cause genuine attachment for audiences as well as produce strong, emotional reactions. This attachment can be achieved through the use of universal literary elements found in writing. Through the use of literary elements, authors are able to convey stories that allow audiences to grow true attachment towards their worlds, characters, and ideas. In addition, the acknowledgement of these elements is helpful in understanding why readers often feel emotional connections to the fictional stories they consume. Being able to understand these elements is important for …

Execution By Alien (A Collection Of Poetry), Sara Emma Kahane

Honors Theses

The following is a collection of poems narratively depicting the childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death of a woman and her memories. I will analyze the poetry in meaning and form as well.

Understanding How Women Navigated The Fight For Equality During The Second Republic And Transition-Era Spain Through Feminist Literature, Amanda Jeanette Pagoaga

Honors Theses

This paper explores how women navigated the fight for equality during the Second Republic and Transition-era Spain through the lens of feminist literature. Specifically, comparing and analyzing two books, Doble esplendor by Constancia de la Mora (1939) and Crónica del desamor by Rosa Montero (1979). Both books feature women in their thirties who work and explore themes of marriage and romantic love, friendship as a space of freedom, motherhood, working women, and politics against the backdrop of the ever-changing sociopolitical situation in Spain. Through close analysis of these works, the author examines how these women navigate gender roles and societal …

Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford

Honors Theses

In my thesis paper I look at three primary texts, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to analyze their main antagonists through a vampiric lens. I explain how the characters of Bertha Mason, Miss Havisham, and Dorian Gray are all written with veiled vampiric traits that revolve around themes of sexuality, secrecy and seclusion, and unbridled physical and emotional violence. Although none of these texts is obviously a “vampire novel”, the authors lean into vampire tropes including eerie physical description, doubled relationships, and other vampire lore that can be best …

The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter

Honors Theses

Assuming the near impossible task of sorting through and delineating various conceptions of the self in and throughout literary and civil history, literary critic Irving Howe adopts a highly perceptive and profoundly analytical approach to the enigmatic individual. In the article quoted above, "The Self in Literature," Howe consolidates what he believes to be the most promising attempts at coding and decoding abstractions of the self across numerous literary, philosophical, and sociological texts. The success of Howe’s analysis lies in his ability to simultaneously embrace and scrutinize seemingly incompatible notions of bodily and spiritual discourse. With the knowledge that such …

Censorship In Schools: Reading's Position In The Landscape Of Policy Creation, Rachel Beckham

Honors Theses

Censorship is not new to current issues. It has affected authors and speakers for centuries, but it is especially prevalent today, especially in schools. Teachers and librarians are often challenged for the materials they choose to provide to students. Concerned parents object to the materials for containing sexual content, profanity, or LGBTQ+ characters or themes. This study aims to answer the question, “What role, if any, do books containing controversial topics serve in the literature classrooms of today’s students?” To answer this question, the author of this study conducted a literary analysis on the top three most banned books of …

Women Are More Likely To Use Tentative Language, I Think: A Literary And Statistical Analysis Of Ulysses By James Joyce And Debate Speech, Cozette Blumenfeld, Claire Bracken, Tomas Dvorak

Honors Theses

Language and its utilization can provide valuable information about individuals and their cultural norms. Negotiation is a major factor of the gender wage gap, perpetuated by gender bias. This paper seeks to discover—does language influence gendered cultural norms? Or reflect it? This thesis is divided into eight sections that engage the relationship between gender and language in literature and debate speech. Through critical literary and statistical analysis of the “Penelope” and “Proteus” chapters of Ulysses by James Joyce, it is evident that the female chapter’s invalidation found in literary criticism is from the reception of her speech, and not the …

Noble Pagans And Satanic Saracens: Literary Portrayals Of Islam In Medieval Italy And Iberia., John Spencer Jones

Honors Theses

The medieval Christian world is generally associated with a kind of religious zealotry that would seem to preclude the development of nuanced understandings of the religious Other. The heightened interreligious contact in regions such as Iberia and the Italian Peninsula, however, made room for relationships with members of other faiths that resulted in more developed ideas about these other creeds. This honors thesis examines the portrayal of Islam in the Christian literature of medieval Italy and Iberia, dating from the late 11th century to the middle of the 14th century. It categorizes a few types of the literary “use” of …

Black-Eyed, Abigail Sipe

Honors Theses

Black-Eyed tells the story of Rowan Mae Baker, a ten-year-old girl dealing with too-big-for-a-ten-year-old problems. In the past year, Rowan moved from Jackson to Winona after the unexpected arrest and sudden death of her father. Then, almost a year later, Rowan is sexually assaulted by an older boy from her school. Rowan understands neither of these things. Throughout Black-Eyed, Rowan spends twelve hours running away from home while trying to figure out how to talk to her mom about the assault. Alone for the first time, she begins to observe and question the world around her, to process her …

From Reality To Fiction: How Women’S Mental Health Was Portrayed In 19th Century Literature, Sara Mason

Honors Theses

This thesis is an examination of the history of mental health treatment for women in the 19^th century. Fictional literature written during this time by American and English female authors is used to explore the underlying attitudes towards women who were perceived to have a mental illness. This thesis explores the three works Jane Eyre, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and The Awakening, as well as the biography of the female authors. This information is used to explore the patriarchal society represented in these works and how that is shown through the authors’ writing. The medical profession is also …

A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, And National Identity In Second World War Britain, William L. Maines

Honors Theses

During the early years of the Second World War, a typically unofficial and loose coalition of British newspapers, publishers, propagandists, and booksellers mobilized Britain’s imagined literary past and present as a part of the war effort. They defined the nation through its imagined literary proclivities— its penchant for literary production and consumption, and its “unique” attitude toward literary freedom— and in opposition to the literary tyranny of Nazi Germany. Marshaling the nation’s mythological literary heritage, they enlisted Shakespeare and Milton in the war effort, portraying them as temperate and civilian English heroes. While the rhetoric of “British bookishness” hardly went …

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 …

Art Of Darkness, Sarah Roper

Honors Theses

This paper describes the process, production, and explanation of Art of Darkness, an artistic expression of the struggle with anxiety. All of the work is inspired by literature and art from the English Romantic and Victorian eras, and focuses on quotes about the mind, emotions, and other thought processes. As each piece highlights a different aspect of anxiety, it also portrays the struggles of anxiety through color palette, printing process, and symbolism. These printed pieces consist of letter-press printed materials, with ink-wiped backgrounds and hand-stitched details. Also included are large-scale prints with silkscreened foregrounds, a selection of bookmarks, a …

"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.

Honoré De Balzac’S Portrayal Of The Feminine Condition In The Wild Ass’S Skin, Père Goriot, And The Lily Of The Valley, Brooke V. Musmeci

Honors Theses

In 19th century France, women appeared to be second class citizens. They were often limited in their abilities to have independence and secure their own wealth. This perception of women perhaps justifies why, as Honoré de Balzac’s novels illustrated the realities of French society, he attempted to characterize women’s struggles to obtain control and power in their lives. In his novels The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835), and Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac sought to prove how women could improve their lot.

Firstly, in studying how women had been relegated to second-class citizens under their …

The Typewriter And The Literary Sphere: An Analysis Of Turn-Of-The-Century Literature, Emma K. Holdbrooks

Honors Theses

My thesis explores the typewriter’s impact on early 20^th century American literature. By providing authors with the means to produce work accurately and effectively, the typewriter changed the process of writing. Typewriters also created job opportunities for women, who often served as typists. The typist became the foothold position that changed America’s perception of women in the work force and helped usher in a new social concept, “the New Woman.” To illustrate my claim, I show how the typewriter allowed poets like E. E. Cummings to experiment with spacing. Cummings made the typewriter’s standardization of text and spacing into …

Investigating The Gap: A Study Of The Diversity In Elementary Literature, Sydney N. Taylor

Honors Theses

This study looks into the diversity of elementary level literature used in classrooms for read alouds. Research has shown (e.g., Crisp, 2016; Harrington, 2016), that in many schools, there is a lack of diversity in the literature created for young students. This leaves students feeling that they are not a valued member of the community when they are not represented in the literature read and other students are unable to accept and appreciate the diversity found in their community.

This study worked with two first-grade teachers and had them keep a list of all books that they read aloud over …

Propaganda Y Progreso: El Rol Paradójico De La Magia En La España Premoderna, Alexander K. Rhodes

Honors Theses

La magia tiene varios roles diferentes en la literatura española premoderna. A causa de las connotaciones pecaminosas de la magia, frecuentemente se usa para discriminar contra un grupo subalterno, como en la obra de teatro El niño inocente de La Guardia de Lope de Vega. Se ve que esta forma de discriminación difunde y apoya la anxiety of sameness definida por Christina Lee. La anxiety of sameness es el temor de los nobles de ser infiltrados por los no nobles, incluyendo a los judíos, los moriscos y los de la clase baja. Pero, como se ve en esta tesis, la …

What Makes A Detective: Character In Detective Fiction, Jordan Connelly

Honors Theses

As a subgenre of formula fiction, detective fiction is often not considered serious or legitimate literature. Despite this, detective fiction continues to appear at the top of international bestselling lists. This thesis attempts to answer the question: Why is detective fiction so popular? In order to answer this question, this thesis explores the characteristics of both formula fiction and detective fiction in order to gain a better understanding of the genres, as well as the conclusions of numerous critics regarding what makes a good detective narrative. The ultimate conclusion is that the character of the detective determines whether a detective …

The Cinderella Tale: Oral, Literary, And Film Traditions, Olivia Camille Williams

Honors Theses

Folk and fairy tales have been told for centuries. The most prevalent medium of dispersing popular tales changed with technological advancements. Printed word superseded oral storytelling, to be succeeded by film. Some communal aspects of the tales were lost as print emerged, but with print came illustrations to describe the text. Film reimbued the tales with some of the theatrical elements of the oral tale while keeping, and heightening, the visual elements of the illustrated texts. The tale Cinderella has been, and still is, remarkably poplar. As such, it has received attention in academic circles and popular culture. The tale, …

The Downfall Of Chivalry: Tudor Disregard For Medieval Courtly Literature, Jessica G. Downie

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I have examined the notion of the gradual demise of chivalric ideals throughout the late-Middle Ages and culminating in the sixteenth century, analyzing how and why the developments of the sixteenth century both enabled and required the English monarchy and the aristocracy to redefine social identities and values, public responsibilities, political duties, and national and religious power. This thesis addresses why the Tudor monarchs appear to have disregarded the examples of chivalric behavior championed by late-medieval writers like Sir Thomas Malory and Jean Froissart, and instead, relied on new works of literature that were more relevant forms …

Hollywood Dreams: Postcolonial Nationalism And Gender Oppression In Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeatersp, Andrei Wayne Kyrk Defino

Honors Theses

This paper addresses how gender, sexuality, and resistance affect personal and national identity construction in Dogeaters. This 1990 novel traces the lives of Filipino characters during President Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorial regime--a period that reshaped the Philippines' national identity. Using gender theory and nationhood studies, I highlight how women and queer individuals who challenge masculine norms attempt subversion by creating communities outside of patriarchal constructs but ultimately fail. Specifically, I read Joey Sands's and Daisy Avila's marginality and failure to comply with societal expectations as futile pushbacks against the larger system. Furthermore, their embrace and use of violence as a means …

“¿Qué Coño Es Esto?”: Exploración De Identidad De Género Y De Orientación Sexual En La Mucama De Omicunlé, Vianny C. Lugo Aracena

Honors Theses

La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) es una novela escrita por la autora dominicana Rita Indiana, que lidia con temas que son considerados tabúes dentro de la sociedad dominicana: sexualidad, identidad de género, y espiritualidad afrodescendiente. Indiana utiliza la espiritualidad afrodescendiente para facilitar la exploración de las respectivas identidades de género y de orientación sexual en los personajes principales, Acilde y Argenis. El utilizar la espiritualidad afrodescendiente también permite ver a la novela como un texto literario que utiliza el patakí, una narración que contiene conocimientos afrodescendientes, como elemento estructural principal. Los temas que normalmente caracterizan a los patakíes son abundantes …

Books And Bodies: A Collaborative Process Between Dance And Literature, Sarah Dexter Givens

Honors Theses

This senior choreographic project, Reading Response #6, was created and performed in the fall of 2016 in collaboration with five dancers, one apprentice, and the choreographer. The project was a collaboration of dance with literature by Emily Dickinson, Leo Tolstoy, Richard Wilbur, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Walt Whitman. The final product was performed in the Studio 115 Dance Concert in the University of Southern Mississippi’s Theatre and Dance Building in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. This paper investigates the relationship between dance and literature and explores methods of integration between the two art forms.

Algebraic Poetry, Julian Deville

Honors Theses

Although content has evolved in poetry at a steady pace throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the form in which this content is presented has seen little change. In response to this apparent stagnation of form in poetry, this presentation aims to combat the enforced linearity of writing, embracing Cubist ideals, to make way for a new form of poetry- algebraic poetry. This new form may then provide new inspiration within the literary community, and a new form with which writers may move forward, as opposed to adhering to the same form for centuries. This project then uses modern algebra …

Presentation Of Bicultural Identity In Hispanic Children’S Literature, Elena B. Lofton

Honors Theses

Children of all backgrounds can use literature as a means to understand the world in which they live. Therefore, it is important that children’s books represent diverse cultures and experiences. This study analyzed Hispanic children’s literature published in the U.S. that contained child characters with bicultural Hispanic-American identities. The aim of this study was to determine how the linguistic and literary elements in five books, which contained bilingual Spanish-English interwoven text, combined to present a bicultural identity and lifestyle in the United States today. The literary elements analyzed included themes, character portrayal, the roles of family and the elderly, and …

The Imagined Southern Setting Of Cormac Mccarthy's The Road, John Emory Hooks

Honors Theses

The Road by Cormac McCarthy hardly seems like a work of southern literature at a first glance. The novel is post-apocalyptic. A man and his son, neither of whom are ever named, trek south as they struggle to survive in a world darkened by ash-filled skies. The setting surrounding them is not recognizable as the southern US anymore. The cities are burnt and everything is covered with ash. If we rely on the geography portrayed by a work of literature to identify that literature as southern or not, then The Road cannot be classified as southern based solely on the …

Unlikely Heroes In Despair: Existentialist Narrators In The Novels Of Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, And Don Delillo, Courtney Mullis

Honors Theses

Existentialism is a field of philosophy concerned with questions about existence, death, God, and consciousness. It is "a doctrine that concentrates on the existence of the individual, who, being free and responsible, is held to be what he makes himself by the self-development of his essence through acts of the will" (OED Online). Writing by existentialist philosophers "often belongs more to literature than to philosophy" (Bigelow 173). Existentialist characters in literature are autonomous agents who tend to lack religious faith, constantly ask existentialist questions, and struggle with their own existence and relationship to the world around them. Additionally, existentialist characters …

Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow

Honors Theses

How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.