Digital Commons Network^™

"Dragging The Net Of Estrangement": Poetics Of The Sea In Elegies Of The Mediterranean, Shiraz Aryan Fazli

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Becoming Biophilic Beasts, Nat Tereshchenko

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This project seeks, by way of experimentation with a poetic and lyrical register, to embody in its form and content the expression of the interrelated and co-constitutive relationship between human beings and other animals. It addresses through its form the limitations of philosophy and of traditional notions of rational argumentation in order to expose ways in which such methods of writing about ethics in regards to animals have fallen short of addressing that which brings us close to animals, allows us to touch and be touched by them, and ignites us to act according to a kind of felt and …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided …

A Hundred Houses: Pauline Leader And The Spatial Poetics Of Disability, Carl Robert Nelson

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

The Greater Torment: Religious And Secular Desire In The Poetry And Criticism Of T.S. Eliot, Katie Buonanno

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Red Sea, Yellow Earth, Isabella Clay Martinez

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Dissidence And Displacement : Translation Theory Through The Work Of Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Darren Smith

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purported thesis is intended to aptly discuss the ways in which the particular work of Natalya Gorbanevskaya is able to be translated through the lens of a Daniel Weissbort and how through a full understanding of certain theories allow for certain notions of displacement and loss to traverse cultural boundaries through the act of translation. After a brief introduction, it is important to discuss the necessary background information and its relation to the task of translation before moving into an in-depth analysis of the poet’s work to argue how this displacement is visible through her translated work, before concluding …

"Woven Into The Deeps Of Life": Death, Redemption, And Memory In Bob Kaufman's Poetry, Peter Davis

Pomona Senior Theses

The scholars who have taken up the task of writing about Bob Kaufman have most often done so in response to a perceived demand: the lack of Kaufman scholarship, readership, anthology, publicity, canonization. The basis of this need is clear: Kaufman is almost never included as even a third-string Beat, a fringe Surrealist, or an underappreciated Jazz performer. To the committed readers of Kaufman – and almost all of his readers seem to be committed ones – it’s unforgivable. These various canons, major (mid-century American poets, Beat poets) and minor (Jazz poets, American Surrealists), are clearly missing one of their …

Chutes And Ladders: John Ashbery's Poetics As Experience, Alexander Ibo Zondervan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

I’ve always found it difficult to say just what I think is happening in John Ashbery’s poetry, even when I recognize that I’ve undergone something through the course of reading. With Ashbery, I find myself becoming conscious of how I construct meaning from language, and I understand this self-reflexivity as a “poetics as experience.” Ashbery had read or at least been aware of the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens—all of which explore how consciousness manifests through language. I read these figures through American pragmatism, which views writing as an activity that follows perception …

Soot & Shadow, Christa Crawford

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Soot & Shadow is a creative nonfiction-based collection of poetry that focuses on the themes of freedom and loss. The manuscript delves into the lives of immigrant women, specifically those affected by the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and those who came to America as the brides of American servicemen following WWII. Based on eyewitness testimony, the poetry attempts to capture the essence of the events, the devastating tragedy, love, loss, and the freedom these women sought as they discovered Truth through adversity. The poetry itself explores various poetic genres while attempting to push against the confines of the page. …

Emily Dickinson's Echology: A Listener's Reconceptualization Of Citizenship, Consciousness, And The World, Beth Ann Staley

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

What I call Emily Dickinson’s “echology” combines the terms “echo” and “ecology” to understand how Dickinson’s work echoes – and is an echo – of the world and how, consequently, her work resides not just in her handwritten documents and their publication in various editions but in an ecology that’s tied to the earth that hosted her, the air that faced her, and the sea kept her listening. To assess the critical value of Dickinson’s echology, this dissertation begins by apprehending how the story of the echo is a story about sound masking, specifically about how the echo that is …

Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the use of memoir, my work centers on how poetry is situated within public education curriculum. I explore the curricular context of poetry through the lenses of my lived experiences in early childhood, as a K-12 student, and as an early career classroom teacher. My dissertation draws upon a wide array of literature, honing in on the poetic perspectives of philosophers (Aristotle, 1996; Heidegger, 1947 & 1971/2013; Plato, 1955/2007), poets (Hall, 2003; Eliot, 1920 & 2009), and curriculum theorists (Leggo, 1997 & 2018; Pinar, 1994; Sameshima, 2007). The foundation of my work is drawn from my own circular experiences, …

What If I Don't: Episodes From Her Life., Emmanuella Okoli

Senior Projects Fall 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Sustaining Lamentation In Traumatic Grief Through The Contemporary Elegy: A Practical Theology Of The Poetics Of Testimony, Patricia Shawn Fawson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project addresses the problem that sustaining lamentation for particular testimonies of bereaved people is not supported culturally or spiritually by current practices of mourning. In a democracy, religious leaders become public theologians who respect and respond to diverse religious, political, historical, and economic interests without losing focus on the individual, family, and corporate systems and the ongoing elements of traumatic grief. In the context of lamentation and memorialization, when spiritual caregiver fail to acknowledge potentials for particular ways of mourning to contribute to empowerment and healing, mourners' grief can be foreclosed.

In North America, the dominant rhetoric of public …

There Must Be A Reason People Come Here, Brian James Foley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The poems in this collection are meant to be read as a preparation of ground and ask to be connected to a larger thought beyond the discrete experience of the poem itself. That thought is that no artistic expression exists outside of the historical conditions in which it was made, and those conditions must be broadcast in concert with the poem.

I cite that these poems are the result of existential degradation developed during the production of subjectivity under modern, hegemonic structures of Neoliberal Capitalism. They were cultivated from "bits of sensitivity" drawn from an unexceptional past regulated by systems …

Climate Change, Taylor Shalon Byas

All ETDs from UAB

The poems in this thesis function on two different levels. On one level, they explore the similarities and differences between Chicago and Birmingham, the two places in which I have spent most of my life. On another level, these poems attempt to reconcile the differences between my younger and older selves, both of which have existed in environments fraught with social and political tensions. The first half of this collection explores Chicago and more closely examines my ancestry and family history. The poems in this section also endeavor to deconstruct stereotypes about Chicago and to depict the city as a …

Borrowing Time: The Classical Tradition In The Poetic Thoeries Of T. S. Eliot And Ezra Pound, Nicholas Odom

Honors Undergraduate Theses

T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are two of the most prominent figures of Anglo-American modernist poetry, both having played central roles in the development of a distinct poetic style and atmosphere in the early 20^th century by means of their publishing and editing the work of other poets as well as publishing their own poetry. However, Eliot and Pound have an interest in the classical world that is not clearly shared with the majority of other modernist poets, and this interest distinguishes the sense of "modernism" that Eliot and Pound promoted from that of other major modernists like …

"Bachelor Buttons": Feminist And Womanist Essays And Poems, Billy E. Clem Jr.

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In this critical and creative dissertation, I sketch a brief study of selected multicultural hybrid texts in contemporary US Anglophone literary studies; discuss their implications for reading, writing, and teaching; and present my own hybrid text.

Second-wave feminist and womanist theories and practices opened literary and cultural studies to new and exciting ideas and methods for reading, teaching, and writing both canonical and non-canonical Anglophone texts. One genre emerging anew by these theories, practices, and practitioners is the literary hybrid text, a multi-genre form composed of a variety of prose genres, poetry, drama, and/or visual imagery. Hybrid texts ask readers …

Burning, Drowning, Shining, Blooming: The Shapes Of Aging In W.B. Yeats’ Poetry, Malea C. Martin

CMC Senior Theses

Love and growing old are thematically inseparable in W.B. Yeats' poetry, yet it is the former with which this great Irish poet is often associated. The poet's attitudes toward aging are made clear through his symbolism, complicated Irish allusions, and a sometimes jarring treatment of women. As it turns out, these devices have as much to do with Yeats' concern over aging as they have to do with the infamous Maud Gonne. This thesis attempts to not only expose and analyze these intricacies, but also challenge the way the literary canon typically isolates Yeats’ more famous poems without the context …

Only One Went Through The Green Door, Rachel Sahaidachny

Graduate Thesis Collection

Written in three parts, Only One Went through the Green Door, explores abandonment, homelessness, childhood, womanhood, and choices made or unmade that create the complicated and winding path of life. The poems use narrative and lyric to examine the effects of childhood trauma on the development of a persona, and its shadow. Emotional realities explored through natural landscapes, and at times through child-like language, create an unsettled speaker who quests for some final understanding that might lead to peace.

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Sean Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In December of 2001, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (Def Poetry Jam) turned HBO viewers into audience members of a televised poetry reading, featuring spoken word and performance poetry. Over six seasons, actors, rappers, comedians, and the host, Mos Def, joined poets in a unique representation of counter-public open mic poetry readings and poetry slams. This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the …

2/4 Being, Riley R. Woods

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Forever Baby, Carlos Javier Medina

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.