Digital Commons Network^™

The Bengali Oil-Eaters: A Speculative Approach To New Materialism And The Nonhuman In Contemporary Petrofiction, Jenna Wayland

Honors Projects

Despite oil’s heavy saturation within the context of contemporary global life, novelistic registrations of oil frontiers and extractive drilling in contemporary world literature remain proportionally barren with regards to oil’s political and geographical importance across the world-system. Petro-cultural production, transnational in scale and imposing in material basis, relegates oil to a paradoxical literary deferment. The general invisibility of petrofiction within the petro-sphere suggests that the materialist basis of petroleum and its fraught geopolitical history has culturally transformed oil into a repressed, peripheral, and hidden material that subsequently renders the oil-encounter unseen in contemporary literature. This creative synthesis of the oil-encounter …

Trauma Is A Wound: Demonstrating The Use Of Character Analysis To Practice Clinical Analysis, Madisyn Beare

Honors Projects

Evidence-based treatments of trauma require clinicians to base their treatments on the client’s specific and individual needs, experiences, cognitions, and place in recovery. Essentially, each new client is a new and unique case, and the practice of understanding how trauma may affect an individual only comes from clinical exposure.Literature provides the public with somewhat of an aid in these circumstances: fictional characters are not real people, and therefore can undergo limitless character analyses. Analyzing a fictional character allows clinicians the ability to practice their exploration of various behavioral indicators of mental health concerns while honoring the ethical code of non-maleficence, …

"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin

Honors Projects

The art of adaptation is a difficult process, and is often hard to please general audiences that have a connection to the source material. As a student who studies both English Literature and Film Production, the question asked through this study is what does it take to write a “successful” adaptation? What qualifies as “successful”? How does an adaptation balance the themes, characterization, and plot of a piece of literature with the continuous momentum and visual complexity that the medium of film requires, all in 120 pages or less? This study engages with these questions by actively practicing adaptation, adapting …

Una Comprensione Computazionale Della Psiche Emotiva E Ordine Nelle Ballate Del Decameron: Stilometria E Elaborazione Del Linguaggio Naturale, Nothando Khumalo

Honors Projects

The present thesis, written in Italian, explores the emotional psyche and narrative order embedded within the ballads of the Decameron, a renowned literary masterpiece by Giovanni Boccaccio. Leveraging the advancements in stylometry and natural language processing techniques, this research aims to convince medieval Italian literature scholars to produce more on scholarship of the ballads and uncover the intricate patterns of human emotions and narrative organization in the ballads. The study begins by establishing a comprehensive corpus of ballads from the Decameron, utilizing digital libraries and text repositories. Subsequently, using stylometric analysis, the research examines the linguistic and stylistic features that …

Adoration Above Objectification: The Promotion Of Other In Black, Mexican And Arabic Love Poetry, Joycelynn L. Baker

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the philosophical fundamentals of sexual objectification and presents opposing literature, written in the 20th century, by Black, Mexican and Arabic male poets in contrast. In vigorous patriarchal environments that provide more opportunities to practice sexual objectification, the poets reframe male metaphysical perception and behavior in romantic or sexual contexts by promoting the autonomy and agency of women above themselves, and displaying their enjoyment of that situation. This paper will discuss how Western metaphysical philosophy impacts self-perception and belief in contemporary romantic contexts.

"Proud Flesh And Blood": Phineas Fletcher, Gabriel Daniel, And Seventeenth-Century Theories Of Embodiment, Micaela Elanor Simeone

Honors Projects

The human body was a site of discovery and redefinition in early modern Europe. This project traces the gradual arc from the mid-seventeenth century towards Cartesian notions of the body in the later part of the century through two fictions: Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650)’s The Purple Island (1633) and Gabriel Daniel (1649-1728)’s Voyage du Monde de Descartes (1690). This project views these two largely-overlooked texts as important literary works that represent the seventeenth century’s transformative debates about and explorations of the human body. I argue that Fletcher employs a dissective mode that embraces mind-body harmony while framing the human as both …

Afterlife: Exploring And Accepting Ideas Through Children's Literature, Kiley Vandevelde

Honors Projects

This project is a written and illustrated book for children to assist with the grieving process by exploring different cultural representations of the afterlife. Death is an inescapable part of the human condition. Belief in an afterlife can help children retain a connection to the deceased and can be a useful tool for healing. While very young children (age four to five) inherently believe in existence after death, this decreases after the age of ten. This book targets children aged seven to ten and explains the benefit to believing in an afterlife. It explores different ideas surrounding the afterlife and …

"Strong Female Characters"? An Analysis Of Six Female Fantasy Characters From Novel To Film, Valari Westeren

Honors Projects

This project is twofold. The first section analyzes six female fantasy characters in their literary and filmic incarnations—Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz), Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian), Arwen Evenstar (The Lord of the Rings), Princess Buttercup (The Princess Bride), Hermione Granger (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), and Annabeth Chase (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief)—noting adaptational changes made to each and placing the twelve incarnations in conversation with each other. This conversation centers around the concept of the “strong female character,” …

"And Gladly Wolde He Lerne": Facilitating Discussion Based Learning About Medieval And Regency Literature Through Interactive Technologies, Emma Vallandingham

Honors Projects

A series of reading guides for Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Frankenstein, that utilize interactive technologies to facilitate student engagement with and discussion of the texts. Each reading guide consists of an overview of the text, relevant historical context, and reading and discussion questions for students to answer. Some reading guides also have corresponding answer guides that provides sample answers as well as hints and tips for answering the questions.

Golden Fantasy: An Examination Of Generic & Literary Fantasy In Popular Writing, Zechariah James Morrison

Honors Projects

This essay attempts to analyze critical theory concerning the division between generic fantasy fiction and higher fantasy literature. In examining how these two different types of fantasy writing are identified by popular criticism, the space in-between is defined and labeled "golden fantasy". This kind of fantasy is identified by maintaining a balance between subversive originality, and derivative reproduction, and is generally popular among consumers and academics as a source of both entertainment and scholarly research. The essay is then followed by 3 original chapters by the essay writer, in an attempt to demonstrate some of the elements of golden fantasy …

Telescopes And Spyglasses: Using Literary Theories In High School Classrooms, Danielle M. Rains

Honors Projects

This project, “Telescopes and Spyglasses: Using Literary Theories in High School Classrooms,” is a pedagogy book that provides information about literary theories in a way that can be applied directly to a classroom. Each chapter includes background information on the theory, instructions on how to read following the theory’s guidelines, how to teach and introduce the theory to students, and how to begin writing an analysis of a work using the theory as a guiding framework.

This project is important because students are being demanded more and more to be able to analyze texts for deeper understanding of the work, …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …