Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Keyword
-
- Identity (6)
- Feminism (4)
- Literature (4)
- American (3)
- English language -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers (3)
-
- Gender (3)
- Poetry (3)
- Austen (2)
- Comedy (2)
- Fiction (2)
- Frankenstein (2)
- Gothic (2)
- Medieval (2)
- Melville (2)
- Migration (2)
- Mythology (2)
- Race (2)
- Self-consciousness (2)
- Tragedy (2)
- 1792-1822 Julian and Maddalo (1)
- 1795-1821 Fall of Hyperion (1)
- 1865-1939 -- Poetic works (1)
- 18th Century (1)
- 18th Century Literature (1)
- 2001 (1)
- 2666 (1)
- Abomination (1)
- Absurd Modernists (1)
- Academic achievement (1)
- Acculturation (1)
Articles 1 - 30 of 147
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Deadly Emotions: The Argument For Tempered Feeling In British And American Literature Of Sentiment, Miranda Anne Liebsack
Deadly Emotions: The Argument For Tempered Feeling In British And American Literature Of Sentiment, Miranda Anne Liebsack
Dissertations and Theses
This project focuses on late eighteenth-century literature of sentiment, specifically examining the man and woman of feeling characters in The Adventures of David Simple (1744) and Volume the Last (1753), both written by Sarah Fielding, The Man of Feeling (1771), written by Henry Mackenzie, The Power of Sympathy (1789) by William Hill Brown, and The Coquette (1797), by Hannah Webster Foster. I use the following terms to analyze these texts: sensibility functions as the ability to feel great emotion, emotionally and physically; sympathy is the ability to connect with another with emotions, and sentiment is tempered emotion based in morality …
The Incurable Fanny Price: Disabled Perspective And Resistance To The Cure Narrative In Jane Austen’S Mansfield Park, Aurora C. Soriano
The Incurable Fanny Price: Disabled Perspective And Resistance To The Cure Narrative In Jane Austen’S Mansfield Park, Aurora C. Soriano
Dissertations and Theses
Improvement and cure are frequently on the minds of the characters in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. However, what happens when you introduce a chronically ill character like Fanny, who can’t ever be fully cured, into these curative plots? In order to better understand the ways Austen complicates curative discourse, this paper focuses on Fanny’s own perspective and embodied experience of chronic illness, in which she fatigues easily and experiences headaches and pain. Despite clear evidence in the novel of Fanny’s ill health, scholarship analyzing Fanny’s character has historically been fraught with ableist assumptions and subjective opinions. Ignoring the way …
Things Left Behind, Aqeel Ahmad
Things Left Behind, Aqeel Ahmad
Dissertations and Theses
Things Left Behind is the story of a family in a small town in Pakistan where both the town and the family are transitioning between their traditional ways of living and Modernity coming from outside the town. Through its various characters, the narrative unfolds the struggles of facing challenges put by technology and colonial projects. The characters long for the safety and familiarity of their rural and traditional backgrounds while becoming part of an urban and modern milieu, creating a conflict. The arrival of Modernity takes place at the cost of the rearrangement and modification of the traditional and familiar …
"An Infinite Advantage": A Kierkegaardian Analysis Of Anxiety And Despair In Post-War American Literature, Jeremiah Davis
"An Infinite Advantage": A Kierkegaardian Analysis Of Anxiety And Despair In Post-War American Literature, Jeremiah Davis
Dissertations and Theses
“An Infinite Advantage”: A Kierkegaardian Analysis of Anxiety and Despair in Post-War American Literature uses a theistically informed existentialist lens to examine issues of selfhood as depicted in American literature from the mid-twentieth century. During this period in America, the changing nature of religious worship led to an uncertain understanding of what it meant to be an individual. With examinations of characters from five novels published in the period, I explore how Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophy can help us better understand how Christian authors from the period attempted to define what makes up a self and how a self is to …
Redeeming Femininity: A Steinian Catholic Feminist Reading Of Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction, Amanda Pugh
Redeeming Femininity: A Steinian Catholic Feminist Reading Of Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction, Amanda Pugh
Dissertations and Theses
By situating an analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s short fiction in conversation with Edith Stein’s theology of gender, this project contributes to the critical conversation that interprets O’Connor’s fiction through various feminist frameworks. I respond by proposing an alternative feminist framework that centers O’Connor’s sacramental or incarnational vision of the human body and her characters’ movement from fallenness to redemption. Stein’s theology posits that men and women live their fallenness and redemption in differentiated ways that correspond to their embodied masculinity and femininity, respectively. For men, participating in redemption involves imitating the sacrificial love of Christ’s crucifixion. For women, participating in …
Reading Utopian Pedagogies: Discovering The Practical Here And Now Of Utopian Thinking, Carter Johnke
Reading Utopian Pedagogies: Discovering The Practical Here And Now Of Utopian Thinking, Carter Johnke
Dissertations and Theses
This thesis offers a way of reading texts for their utopian aims, a term I use to analyze utopian themes and ideas in a text while keeping the focus on practicality. Reading a text for its utopian aims discovers what a text hopes for but always reflects on how those hopes serve the here and now of the author and the reader. The idealistic conclusions of utopian thinking, the utopian visions, only play a role in the utopian aim. This project does not promote the ultimate or extreme ends of utopian visions; instead, it analyzes the educational effects of entertaining …
Don't Say Gay: Love Language In Coriolanus, Patrick Lynch
Don't Say Gay: Love Language In Coriolanus, Patrick Lynch
Dissertations and Theses
Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare's Roman plays, a sub-genre which also includes Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. The one element these plays have in common is the ideal Roman hero, the civis romanus, who meets a tragic end. These heroes are not generally considered queer as no free Roman male could allow himself, per social indoctrination instilled since youth, to take on a submissive role. However, Caius Martius and the relationship he maintains with Tullus Aufidius could arguably be seen as homoerotic or even, possibly, homosexual. This paper takes a closer look at …
The Dissonant History Of Tristan And Isolde, Amanda Persaud
The Dissonant History Of Tristan And Isolde, Amanda Persaud
Dissertations and Theses
This essay traces the historical evolution of the story of Tristan and Isolde through three distinct phases, highlighting the transformation of the story from a feudal version to a post-feudal rendition infused with courtly love doctrines and notions of Christian love. It examines the early versions of the story by Béroul and Gottfried von Strassburg and discusses the shift in the portrayal of the relationship between Tristan and Isolde from one that decries disloyalty to one that is more sympathetic to their love. The essay also analyzes Richard Wagner's opera version of the story, which celebrates individual desire over duty …
Trauma And The American Dream: Frictions Of The Dominant Fiction In Steinbeck And Smith, Mary Johnson
Trauma And The American Dream: Frictions Of The Dominant Fiction In Steinbeck And Smith, Mary Johnson
Dissertations and Theses
This project focuses on how John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (1952) and Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) portray individuals’ interaction with the dominant fiction of the American Dream. At the time of these novels’ publication, the ideology of the American Dream was a prominent feature of America’s culture, encouraging individuals that success is possible if they work hard enough. Steinbeck and Smith challenge this concept as their novels depict scenarios which thwart individual’s opportunities at success and characters whose hard work goes unnoticed. Specifically, I explore how the trauma and adversities characters experience in childhood and adolescence …
The Victorian Crisis Of Faith: Uncertainty, Pessimism, Morality, And Monsters. A Look At Nineteenth-Century British Gothic Horror And The Unassailable Unknown, Jay Schroeder
Dissertations and Theses
This work investigates how Gothic narratives employed negative aesthetics, monstrous bodies, exploded meaning, and an unshakable mood of uncertainty to explore rising fears of dwindling morality and impending human doom during the long nineteenth century. Using Eugene Thacker’s cosmic pessimism, Sianne Ngai’s concept of tone, and Stephen Greenblatt’s theories of resonance and wonder, combined with monster theory, Gothic criticism, biological studies of fear, and nineteenth-century studies in medicine, science, and literature, I investigate how these texts constructed monstrous bodies to create an atmosphere of fear that reflected a culture of pessimism and a crisis of faith to contend, albeit unsuccessfully, …
Abomination, Anneliese Donstad
Abomination, Anneliese Donstad
Dissertations and Theses
Abomination is a collection of creative nonfiction essays through which I examine my sexual and gender identity alongside negotiating the trauma of my childhood, adolescences, and early adulthood. I specifically interrogate how evangelical Christianity acted as a traumatizing agent in its focus on the total depravity of humanity and demonization of queerness. I explore the various ways language impacts and constructs individuals and their experiences. The essays in this collection partly come together to form a narrative of my life; however, this collection is not arranged to be chronological. There is no singular narrative arc. While the essays are interconnected, …
Confined In (Patri)Architecture: How Gothic And Horror Literature Exposes Ongoing Violence And Oppression Against Women, Clara A. Macilravie Cañas
Confined In (Patri)Architecture: How Gothic And Horror Literature Exposes Ongoing Violence And Oppression Against Women, Clara A. Macilravie Cañas
Dissertations and Theses
This project focuses on the intersections of space, power, gender, religion, and the architecture of institutions that confine and repress women. I argue that these texts focus on how patriarchal and domestic ideologies lock women into gendered expectations through oppressive gender politics. Chapter one demonstrates how early gothic female writers used representations of physical structures, such as abbeys and castles, to expose the eighteenth-century woman’s experiences of abuse and confinement by repressive patriarchal and monarchal rule. This chapter connects themes and arguments within Sophia Lee’s The Recess (1783) and Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance (1790) to reveal the metaphors that …
Amplifying Agency And Presence Of Native American Women In 21st Century Literature, Rachel Mitchell
Amplifying Agency And Presence Of Native American Women In 21st Century Literature, Rachel Mitchell
Dissertations and Theses
This project analyzes Native American women's voices and agency through their presence in a variety of 21st-century literary genres. The texts illuminate a clear presence of Native American authors who actively write Native American female characters that are powerful and take agency over their bodies and stories. The examples of Native American female characters allow readers to see more realistic and relatable figures within literature. Chapter one focuses on the empowering Native American female protagonists in Larissa FastHorse’s What Would Crazy Horse Do? (2019) and Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Sovereignty (2020). The playwrights offer crucial insight into more empowering and complex …
Disaster And Hope In The Comic Universe Of 'Gardening In The Tropics', Molly Mosher
Disaster And Hope In The Comic Universe Of 'Gardening In The Tropics', Molly Mosher
Dissertations and Theses
In this paper, I explore ideas of dominion and how Western canon has helped propagate ideas of human domination of the natural world. Using Joseph W. Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival, I trace a line from the advent of the literary tragedy to the climate crisis. To contrast, I use his idea of comedy as the antidote to domination — a way of thinking that might inspire collaboration with the natural world. I will explore the comic with, predominately, Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, alongside Jamaica Kincaid’s gardening studies and Mona Lisa Saloy’s essay on environmental destruction. To …
Mira Muchacha: The Latinx Bildungsroman In Elizabeth Acevedo’S The Poet X, Layza M. Garcia
Mira Muchacha: The Latinx Bildungsroman In Elizabeth Acevedo’S The Poet X, Layza M. Garcia
Dissertations and Theses
This thesis explores how the Bildungsroman’s traditional narrative transforms into a window to the Latinx experience in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X. The traditional Bildungsroman features white, male, and European protagonists, according to Louis F. Caton in “Romantic Struggles: The Bildungsroman and Mother-Daughter Bonding in Jamaica Kinclad’s Annie John” (126). Recognized as the first work in the Bildungsroman genre, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796) tracks the development and education of the protagonist from boyhood to manhood. In 20th and 21st century literature, the Bildungsroman structure expands to reflect the diverse cultures, lifestyles, and identities of its readers. …
Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, The Funneling Effect Of Capitalism, And The Production, Consumption, And Proliferation Of Violence For Profit, John Timlin
Dissertations and Theses
Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 is a realist text, one that reflects the simple fact that in contemporary capitalism, the physical destruction of female bodies is a profitable enterprise; one that forces its readers to confront their complicity or outright participation in violence against women; and one that relates directly to violence against women as consumable entertainment in American mass culture.
Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie
Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie
Dissertations and Theses
This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …
Led Down The Garden Path: Cognitive Processing Of English Language Idioms, Daniel Alan Vandehey
Led Down The Garden Path: Cognitive Processing Of English Language Idioms, Daniel Alan Vandehey
Dissertations and Theses
The discourse community surrounding the study of idioms often disagree regarding the proper classification of idioms. Some scholars believe that the figurative meaning of many idioms cannot be determined through the deconstruction of their lexical parts, and therefore should be classified as an irreducible lexical unit. Others believe that even though the figurative meaning of some idioms are obscured, people process these opaque idioms as they would a metaphor, constructing meaning through an integration process that includes the component pieces of the idiom, the surrounding context, and the message receiver's knowledge network. This study forwards research concerning whether idioms should …
The Failed Principle Of Reformed Female Politeness – Exploring Tactical Silence And Voices In Jane Austen’S Sense And Sensibility, Punrada Saengsomboon
The Failed Principle Of Reformed Female Politeness – Exploring Tactical Silence And Voices In Jane Austen’S Sense And Sensibility, Punrada Saengsomboon
Dissertations and Theses
The dichotomy between Elinor and Marianne's manners in Jane Austen's 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility is often central to several readings and interpretations of this novel. Based on the debates concerning the culture of politeness in the eighteenth century, some critics see Elinor's social doctrine as the novel celebrated form of polite female manners. However, the paper will argue how the novel instead criticizes the social and intellectual impact this the idealized doctrine of female manners has on young women. The paper will look at three important moments of social interactions in the novel: the party with the Middletons, the …
The Miseducation Of Marianne Dashwood: Jane Austen’S Politicization Of Sentimental Discourse, Kevin Frazelis
The Miseducation Of Marianne Dashwood: Jane Austen’S Politicization Of Sentimental Discourse, Kevin Frazelis
Dissertations and Theses
Examining the love triangle between Marianne Dashwood, Colonel Brandon, and John Willoughby provides new insight into how Austen decided to politicize the notion of the novel to demonstrate the inherent flaw in how sentimental novels to depicted romances bared a threat to women. I work against the conventional opposition of "good" versions of masculinity versus "poor" versions to posit a notion that instead, most masculinities are unstable and a detriment to the fairer sex. In this essay, I will argue that Sense and Sensibility disclose Austen's anxieties regarding sentimentalism because, from this perspective, Marianne Dashwood's character arc illustrates the author's …
The Process Of Cultural Appropriation In Literature And How It Can Be Changed, Wendy Meza
The Process Of Cultural Appropriation In Literature And How It Can Be Changed, Wendy Meza
Dissertations and Theses
This paper explores the ways cultural appropriation has existed in literature from the time of Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" to the present, with the publication of Jeanine Cummins's novel American Dirt. After dissecting the motives behind the exploitation of traumatic events and acknowledging the consequences appropriation has on the individuals it is portraying, the inclusion of NoViolet Bulawayo's novel We Need New Names proposes a way for contemporary literature to revolve around cultures without silencing voices and allowing individual identities to shine in the texts.
Walking Through Fire: Black Men’S Quest For Autonomy In August Wilson’S Two Trains Running And King Hedley Ii, Natasha Young
Walking Through Fire: Black Men’S Quest For Autonomy In August Wilson’S Two Trains Running And King Hedley Ii, Natasha Young
Dissertations and Theses
This paper explores Black male characters in August Wilson's Two Trains Running and King Hedley II. Characters in these plays seek personal autonomy through economic stability. They seek these things during the turbulent times of the 1960's and 1980's in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Hill District. The roads they take are filled with self discovery, humility and peril.
The Hydra Of Modern Literature, Genevieve Sharp
The Hydra Of Modern Literature, Genevieve Sharp
Dissertations and Theses
Modernist Literature
"Dawn And Doom Was In The Branches": Eros Revisited In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Fernando M. Duran
"Dawn And Doom Was In The Branches": Eros Revisited In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Fernando M. Duran
Dissertations and Theses
No abstract provided.
"Beyond Consolation": Or Strangeness, Estrangement, And Strange-Ing In The Elegy For The Black Body, 1955-Present, Naomie Jean-Pierre
"Beyond Consolation": Or Strangeness, Estrangement, And Strange-Ing In The Elegy For The Black Body, 1955-Present, Naomie Jean-Pierre
Dissertations and Theses
The Elegy for the Black Body examines the mid-twentieth to early-twenty-first-century poetic justice crafted by African American poets to eulogize individual African Americans whose deaths were the result of racial and political violence. In the age of lynching, mass shooting, and police brutality, I argue that an African American poetic tradition persists that, while not entirely beholden to the ancient elegy, is its distant relative, along with the English and American Elegy. I argue further that while the contemporary American elegy has undergone for the last six decades intensive study, from the notable studies done by Peter Sack’s in The …
"The Hazards Of Being Free": Thinking About Not Thinking In Infinite Jest, Josh Cunningham
"The Hazards Of Being Free": Thinking About Not Thinking In Infinite Jest, Josh Cunningham
Dissertations and Theses
This paper is about self-consciousness and how it figures in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Because Infinite Jest is such a large novel (1079 pages, including the indispensable footnotes), it serves, like other large novels before it, as a kind of encyclopedia of contemporary culture. The novel, in large part, treats self-consciousness—a distinctly human phenomenon, one which certainly accounts for our dominance as a species—as a problem (on both an individual and collective level) that needs to be overcome. This is because, as it turns out, self consciousness, when it becomes epidemic, is as much a boon as it …
The Embodiment Of Theory In Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, Julie A. Ficks
The Embodiment Of Theory In Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, Julie A. Ficks
Dissertations and Theses
The purpose of this research is to explore how Maggie Nelson, in her groundbreaking memoir The Argonauts (2015), works to bring critical theory (primarily queer and feminist theory) out of the academy and into the realm of the personal, rendering theory as tangible and embodied in a real-world setting. Through this unique exchange, Nelson radically reinstates norms relating to gender, sexuality, motherhood and relationships.
Revolution, Reform, And Class Conflict In Rebecca Harding Davis’S Life In The Iron-Mills, Thomas Collins
Revolution, Reform, And Class Conflict In Rebecca Harding Davis’S Life In The Iron-Mills, Thomas Collins
Dissertations and Theses
Life in the Iron-Mills (1861) by Rebecca Harding Davis is a very early example of American fiction that depicts the living and working conditions in a mill town. Although the novella advocates for workers, it does not accurately depict contemporaneous working-class culture. Davis depicts workers as isolated and helpless in the face of the forces that oppress them rather than giving voice to the workers’ movement of her time. Although Davis depicts workers in a debased state, the text’s narrator holds out hope of the “Dawn,” suggesting a revolutionary movement. Because the narrator offers no interpretation regarding how the working …
Suffering And The Black Female Narrative In The Twentieth Century, Aquilah Jourdain
Suffering And The Black Female Narrative In The Twentieth Century, Aquilah Jourdain
Dissertations and Theses
Adventure, romance, and happiness are not large parts of the stories Black women tell. If we had to name ten mainstream literary novels released in the last 50 years that featured Black women central to the plot — and included the aforementioned themes — we would be hard-pressed to find them. Though there are real life accounts of love, joy, and adventure in the lives of Black women, why do we see these life experiences documented sparingly? In the stories written by andforBlack women, where can Black female readers find joy in their history and culture without elements of grave …
Representations Of Immigrants In Young Adult Literature, Frances Augusta Ramos Verbruggen
Representations Of Immigrants In Young Adult Literature, Frances Augusta Ramos Verbruggen
Dissertations and Theses
This study was conducted to determine how immigrants and the immigration experience are represented in current young adult (YA) literature. In the study, I asked the following questions: Who are the immigrant characters in recent YA books? Why do they come? How do they experience immigration? How are they perceived or treated by others? A content analysis methodology was used to examine, from a critical literacy viewpoint, recent young adult novels with immigration themes. Data were analyzed by identifying and interpreting patterns in themes across 22 YA novels with immigrant protagonists or other important characters, published between 2013 and 2017. …