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Articles 1 - 30 of 32
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Visibility In The Redacted Space: What Censored Poetry Reveals About Guantanamo Bay Prison And The Individuals Trapped Inside, Chase Portaro
Visibility In The Redacted Space: What Censored Poetry Reveals About Guantanamo Bay Prison And The Individuals Trapped Inside, Chase Portaro
English Capstone Projects
This paper discusses what readers can understand about Guantanamo Bay and the larger setting of America's Islamophobic "War on Terror" through the poetry of individuals detained inside of Guantanamo Bay Military Prison. In 2002, Mark Falkoff, with the help of a team of lawyers, translators, and human rights advocates published a collection of twenty-two detainee-authored poems, titled Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. This paper discusses the emerging neo-colonial subjectivity of America's War on Terror, as it analyzes the available writings of Guantanamo poets. The new language of subjectivity of victims of contemporary American empire is defined by suppression, as …
Rewrite The Past And Remember The Future: How Expatriates Built An Independent Ireland, Morgan Grabowski
Rewrite The Past And Remember The Future: How Expatriates Built An Independent Ireland, Morgan Grabowski
English Honors Papers
This paper seeks to answer the question “How did Ireland create a unique identity after gaining independence from England?” In order to answer that question, I analyzed five different Irish authors who wrote in a timeframe spanning the first half of the twentieth century. These authors are W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Elizabeth Bowen, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett. These authors, at one point or another, wrote texts which are considered Irish, while living abroad. Because of this, this paper focuses on their status as expatriates, and how that influenced their contributions to the Irish Literary Revival, which is the literary …
Fantasy Escapism: Using Role-Playing Games To Explore Mental Health And Gender Identity, Aidan Cipolla
Fantasy Escapism: Using Role-Playing Games To Explore Mental Health And Gender Identity, Aidan Cipolla
English Summer Fellows
This project analyzes how escapism through the use of role-playing games can be used as a coping mechanism for those struggling with a variety of topics, including gender dysphoria and mental health issues. The project takes an ethnographic approach to data gathering, consisting of interviews with a small group of Dungeons and Dragons / video game players, and personal anecdotes regarding the author’s experience with escapism.
Adapting The Classics: Making The Invisible Visible, Kate Isabel Foley
Adapting The Classics: Making The Invisible Visible, Kate Isabel Foley
Theater Honors Papers
This project seeks to answer the question, “How can a writer use an old story to shine new light on modern issues and make the invisible visible?” My adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a genderbent retelling with queer themes while my adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is a dark reimagining of Mrs. Darling as an antihero protagonist who must become Captain Hook to try to save her children. Both my research and these two plays focus on bringing visibility to marginalized communities, specifically women and members of the queer community.
Consent In Conversation: Education Of Sexual Violence In Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Emily Benning
Consent In Conversation: Education Of Sexual Violence In Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Emily Benning
Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics
Maya Angelou’s memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is just one of many titles challenged and banned in public schools for “sexually explicit” content. On page 71 of her 281 page autobiography, Angelou discloses that she was raped at 8 years old by her mother’s boyfriend, and despite it being followed with scenes that emphasize the value of healing through literature, public attention has been directed to the (non-consensual) intercourse itself as a reason for censorship. As censorship efforts have expanded in the past two decades, challengers have continued to add more ban-worthy qualities to the list …
Unit Plan For A Course On Banned Books For 11th And 12th Grade, Jonny Gherman
Unit Plan For A Course On Banned Books For 11th And 12th Grade, Jonny Gherman
English Capstone Projects
This lesson plan will teach high school students (11th-12th grade) what censorship is, why it is powerful, and what to do with it. Aligned with Pennsylvania State Standards, students will identify common themes between the two most popular genres of banned books (race & gender/sexuality). Through a series of activities, discussions, and a final project, students will practice close reading, critical thinking, and basic research skills.
Pride And Prejudice: A Modern, Queer Retelling For The Stage, Kate Isabel Foley
Pride And Prejudice: A Modern, Queer Retelling For The Stage, Kate Isabel Foley
Theater Summer Fellows
In the course of studying LGBTQ topics in a queer drama class, I noticed that there was a glaring omission in our readings: the “B.” However, this lack of bisexual representation wasn’t due to a poor syllabus, but to a dismaying lack of bisexual representation in theatre as a whole. This observation, as well as my own experience as a bisexual woman, motivated me to use my love of writing and theatre to fill the void. After performing in Pride and Prejudice at Ursinus, I knew that Jane Austen’s story was the key to me bringing visibility to an underserved, …
(Fun)Ction: Developing Games From A Narrative Standpoint, Julian Barocas
(Fun)Ction: Developing Games From A Narrative Standpoint, Julian Barocas
English Summer Fellows
My goal with this project has been to deepen my understanding of why people play games, how to make games narratively compelling, and what technical methods are effective in play. This has allowed me to investigate both the technical, scholarly assessments of board game dynamics while also exploring their real-world applications, successes, and weaknesses. Building on my research, my project has culminated in a full prototype of an original board game that has both narrative structure and an engaging gameplay structure. I have also produced a reflection paper on the experience and an annotated bibliography of my research texts and …
(Fun)Ction: Developing Games From A Narrative Standpoint, Julian Barocas
(Fun)Ction: Developing Games From A Narrative Standpoint, Julian Barocas
English Presentations
My goal with this project has been to deepen my understanding of why people play games, how to make games narratively compelling, and what technical methods are effective in play. This has allowed me to investigate both the technical, scholarly assessments of board game dynamics while also exploring their real-world applications, successes, and weaknesses. Building on my research, my project has culminated in a full prototype of an original board game that has both narrative structure and an engaging gameplay structure. I have also produced a reflection paper on the experience and an annotated bibliography of my research texts and …
The Yellow Belly Anthology: Micro-Films About Humans At Their Least Impressive, Tommy Armstrong
The Yellow Belly Anthology: Micro-Films About Humans At Their Least Impressive, Tommy Armstrong
English Honors Papers
In the fall semester of 2019, I worked with my adviser Dr. Jon Volkmer on writing sixty sixty-second shorts on the theme of human insecurity, based off of real-life experiences and stories. I wrote a series of micro-scripts satirizing human self-consciousness and anxiety — moments that are rushed over or lost in longer-form mass media and film. The scripts show humans at their most indecisive, insecure, and vulnerable. Each of these scripts give glimpses into one or two people’s interior lives as they find themselves in a particular nerve-provoking situation. In all of the shorts, a person must overcome, submit …
Rewriting Women: A Feminist Examination Of Lolita's And Pride And Prejudice's Costume And Revisionist Adaptations, Courtney A. Duchene Ms.
Rewriting Women: A Feminist Examination Of Lolita's And Pride And Prejudice's Costume And Revisionist Adaptations, Courtney A. Duchene Ms.
English Honors Papers
This project examines costume and revisionist media adaptations of Lolita and Pride and Prejudice to see how adapters have altered the texts in order to increase the agency of the female characters. It consists of four chapters: one on the 1962 and 1997 cinematic costume adaptations of Lolita; one on the 1995 BBC mini series and the 2005 film costume adaptations of Pride and Prejudice; one on the Pride and Prejudice revisionist adaptations, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and the 2012-2013 Youtube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries; and one on the revisionist film adaptations of Lolita, The Diary …
A Sample Of Understudied Works In Aberdeen Ms 123, Bailey Ludwig
A Sample Of Understudied Works In Aberdeen Ms 123, Bailey Ludwig
English Honors Papers
This project examines and transcribes various understudied texts from the University of Aberdeen’s MS 123 in order to create a more complete picture of this manuscript. Chapter one looks at the “Sultan Letters” and “List of Kings,” two fictional texts discussing politics, and their evocation of crusades and travel romance genre conventions. The second chapter looks at the intersection of poetic form, vernacularity, gender, and religion in the poem “Modyr of Maries III” and excerpts from the Golden Legend. Finally, the third chapter examines two medical texts, “Diet & Bloodletting” and “32 Perilous Days,” for their conventionality, vernacularity, and …
Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc
Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc
History Honors Papers
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …
Understanding The American Subaltern: An Exploration Of Complex Literary Characters Through Socio-Cultural Lenses, Sophie Gioffre
Understanding The American Subaltern: An Exploration Of Complex Literary Characters Through Socio-Cultural Lenses, Sophie Gioffre
English Summer Fellows
This project involves the analysis of three novels — Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Ann Petry’s The Street, and Toni Morrison’s Sula — featuring main characters who are forced to navigate realistic socio-economic environments rooted in racist, sexist, and classist systems of oppression in the United States of America. Through the process of completing close-readings of the novels, conducting extensive secondary research on historical contexts, and examining other scholarly criticisms and interpretations of these novels, I develop new insights into the main characters’ plights. To transfer this conceptual understanding into a more personal and empathetic …
Complete Bosoms, Incomplete Men: Reading Abstinence In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc
Complete Bosoms, Incomplete Men: Reading Abstinence In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc
English Summer Fellows
Measure for Measure has often been called one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, and as recent productions show, Measure’s problems — including sexual coercion and governmental corruption — resonate with readers and audiences today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context, arguing that protagonist Isabella represents a radical break from merchant economics by opting out of the sexual economy. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the values of abstinence, and those claims are at odds with Isabella's claims. My research will …
Seasoned Antisemitism: Cannibalism In The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Bailey Ludwig
Seasoned Antisemitism: Cannibalism In The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Bailey Ludwig
English Summer Fellows
My project examines an episode of maternal cannibalism within the medieval poem The Destruction of Jerusalem. Several variations of the story of the 70 AD Roman siege of Jerusalem that include this particular episode exist; the story even has roots in the bible. I am looking at the poem within this context and noting its differences in order to best determine its intentions. This version, more so than any other I have encountered, eliminates complicating factors, such as the murder of the child or presence of male figures, in order to make its antisemitic message as direct as possible. The …
Literary Beasts: Use Of Animal Imagery In The Canterbury Tales, Morgan Kentsbeer
Literary Beasts: Use Of Animal Imagery In The Canterbury Tales, Morgan Kentsbeer
English Independent Study Projects
Through this paper I am going to argue that animals from the Middle Ages held more worth and were often considered to be more important than their modern counterparts. This gets shown through the three types of ways that animals are used within The Canterbury Tales. First, they are used as allegorical shorthands that imply more meaning with a fewer amount of words; this concept is primarily shown in “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” Secondly, animals are crafted into characters but still end up being used as tools by other characters or Chaucer himself. For this, …
Maybe She Found Me In A Poem, Robin Gow
Maybe She Found Me In A Poem, Robin Gow
English Honors Papers
Maybe She Found Me in a Poem explores my own family relationship and family stories through a variety of poetic forms, persona poetry, and prose pieces centered on an imagined relationship with my grandmother who died before I was born. The collection asks, “How much are our family stories our own?” and “Can we create memory?” Themes of haunting, ghosts, queerness, shared memory, death, and burial are carried throughout the collection and brought forward in their respective sections. Images are placed throughout as part of the collection to amplify the “haunting” power of the text.
The Bird That Flew Backwards, Robin Gow
The Bird That Flew Backwards, Robin Gow
English Honors Papers
The Bird that Flew Backwards examines women poets from literary Modernism in the 1910s and Beat culture in the 1950s. Analyzing these eras in tandem reveals contrasting historical constructions of American womanhood and how sociocultural trends influenced how the “poetess” constructed herself and her work and illustrates the retrograde nature of women’s rights in the 1950s. Through close reading, digital mapping, and historical background, The Bird that Flew Backwards establishes a new critical perspective by linking the more well-known Modernists with lesser-known women in 1910s Greenwich Village Bohemia. This linkage between eras branches off to explore themes of formation of …
The Harlem Renaissance's Hidden Figure, Jada A. Grice
The Harlem Renaissance's Hidden Figure, Jada A. Grice
English Summer Fellows
This project will seek to look at the Harlem Renaissance’s hidden figure, Jessie Fauset. Jessie Fauset was born to an A.M.E. minister and his wife as one of ten children in Camden County New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia. From there she got her college degree and began teaching all over the country. She has written four novels, There is Confusion, Plum Bun, The Chinaberry Tree, and Comedy: American Style, all of which I have read this summer. Each novel focuses on the early twentieth century black family. I will be analyzing these novels under the four themes of passing, …
Quantum Physics And Relativity In Lovecraft's Fiction, Garrison Mccammon
Quantum Physics And Relativity In Lovecraft's Fiction, Garrison Mccammon
English Summer Fellows
The early twentieth century brought about some of the best and most influential horror or weird tales ever written in the English speaking world. The most impressive and most lauded author of the group composed of such figures as Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Arthur Machen, Clark A. Smith, and Robert E. Howard was H. P. Lovecraft. Posthumously declared the literary successor to Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft’s fiction and tales of terror have cast such a huge shadow that every significant author in weird writing since his passing has claimed him as a literary heir. Lovecraft’s works were a landmark …
Text And Paratext: Analyzing Edith Wharton's Hudson River Bracketed In Its Periodical Context, Paige Szmodis
Text And Paratext: Analyzing Edith Wharton's Hudson River Bracketed In Its Periodical Context, Paige Szmodis
English Summer Fellows
Studying a novel in the context of its paratexts — including the illustrations, advertisements, and captions surrounding the fiction — reveals how the publication context can shape a literary work. This project examines Edith Wharton’s Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and its paratexts by comparing the final version of the novel with textual changes made in its monthly periodical publication in the magazine The Delineator (1928-1930). As mass-consumerism and advertising increasingly targeted women during the 1920s, examining Wharton’s work in a popular middle-class women’s magazine like The Delineator illuminates how paratexts affect audience perceptions of the novel’s characters, conflicts, and themes. …
Literacy And Citizenship: Helping Students Learn The Importance Of Being An Informed And Educated Citizen, Luke H. Schlegel
Literacy And Citizenship: Helping Students Learn The Importance Of Being An Informed And Educated Citizen, Luke H. Schlegel
English Summer Fellows
My project utilizes the concept of Understanding by Design, as outlined by education experts Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, to craft a 12-week curriculum for high school junior and senior English students. McTighe and Wiggins use backwards planning to create long-term learning goals for students. Rather than superficially trying to cover a wide range of material in class, which results in short-term acquisition of knowledge mostly forgotten in the long run, McTighe and Wiggins focus on “big ideas,” that generate conceptual understanding. Ultimately, students will be able to transfer this knowledge to settings outside of the classroom. To help them …
Jessie Fauset’S Not-So-New Negro Womanhood: The Harlem Renaissance, The Long Nineteenth Century, And Legacies Of Feminine Representation, Meredith Goldsmith
Jessie Fauset’S Not-So-New Negro Womanhood: The Harlem Renaissance, The Long Nineteenth Century, And Legacies Of Feminine Representation, Meredith Goldsmith
English Faculty Publications
Fauset’s texts offer a repository of precisely what critic Alain Locke labeled retrograde: seemingly outdated plotlines and tropes that draw upon multiple literary, historical, and popular cultural sources. This essay aims to change the way we read Fauset by excavating this literary archive and exploring how the literary “past” informs the landscape of Fauset’s fiction. Rather than viewing Fauset’s novels as deviations from or subversive instantiations of modernity, I view them as part of a long nineteenth-century tradition of gendered representation. Instead of claiming a subversiveness that Fauset might have rejected or a conservatism that fails to account for the …
A Redemption Of Meaning In Three Novels By Italo Calvino, Dominick J. Knowles
A Redemption Of Meaning In Three Novels By Italo Calvino, Dominick J. Knowles
English Honors Papers
In this thesis I present three readings of Italo Calvino’s later novels: Invisible Cities (1972), If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979), and Mr. Palomar (1983). My primary aim is to defend Calvino against dominant scholarly interpretations that position him as a Postmodern nihilist, a literary trickster interested solely in toying with the mechanics of language. My analysis of Calvino’s work re-envisions him as a special breed of Postmodernist concerned with humanity’s ability to create spaces for meaning in spite of an indifferent cosmos. Drawing from psychoanalytic theory, cognitive science, analytic philosophy, and phenomenology, I synthesize my own critical …
Recalling Anna, Reclaiming Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Approach To Jean Rhys's "Voyage In The Dark", Emily Duffy
Recalling Anna, Reclaiming Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Approach To Jean Rhys's "Voyage In The Dark", Emily Duffy
English Independent Study Projects
A psychoanalytic reading of Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark, which compares the experiences, dreams and memories of the character Anna with that of Freud's protagonist, Dora, in his Portrait of Dora.
Treasure Hunt Without A Map: Archival Research At The University Of Pennsylvania, Meghan Strong
Treasure Hunt Without A Map: Archival Research At The University Of Pennsylvania, Meghan Strong
English Independent Study Projects
Under the supervision of Meredith Goldsmith in the English Department, I spent this semester developing archival research projects for lower level students in the humanities. My project corresponded with the aims of the Council for Undergraduate Research, which works to develop undergraduate research skills throughout the disciplines. The Kislak Center is a nearby resource that has the potential to provide students with opportunities to develop crucial research skills while discovering little pieces of history that are hidden away in the archives. The final exercises presented here focus on the subjects of Walt Whitman, Marian Anderson, and Michel de Montaigne.
"Nobody Else Knows Me, But The Street Knows Me" - Jean Rhys's Urban Flaneuses: Mapping "Good Morning, Midnight", Emily Duffy
"Nobody Else Knows Me, But The Street Knows Me" - Jean Rhys's Urban Flaneuses: Mapping "Good Morning, Midnight", Emily Duffy
English Independent Study Projects
My project explores the urban geography of Paris, as depicted by Rhys, through theories of space articulated by Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, and Gaston Bachelard. I will provide some theoretical context to show how approaching this novel from a spatial perspective can help us understand Sasha’s experience. Additionally, I explore how Sasha’s gendered body moves through these spaces, how place and space affect her identity, and how mapping this novel can enrich the experience of the reader, especially a reader who is unfamiliar with interwar Paris.
Introduction: John Gower's Twenty-First Century Appeal, Kara Mcshane, R. F. Yeager
Introduction: John Gower's Twenty-First Century Appeal, Kara Mcshane, R. F. Yeager
English Faculty Publications
This is the introductory essay to a special issue of the South Atlantic Review focusing on John Gower. Guest editor for this issue is Kara L. McShane with the assistance of R. F. Yeager.
Social Healing In Gower's Visio Angliae, Kara Mcshane
Social Healing In Gower's Visio Angliae, Kara Mcshane
English Faculty Publications
I argue that Gower uses metaphorical images common from vernacular romance—particularly the image of the rudderless ship—to help himself and his readers process the upheaval of the Great Rising. As a healing narrative, the Visio is meant as a public, political text that can begin healing at both personal and communal levels. The Visio is reforming, but it is not radical. In Gower’s worldview, social reform must begin with the highest levels of society and move downward.