Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Calling All Corpses: An Examination Of The Treatment Of The Dead In Old English Literature, Jessica Troy

English Language and Literature ETDs

The care and disposal of the dead bodies, an unavoidable reminder of one’s mortality, rarely receives in-depth literary attention. In early medieval England, the Anglo-Saxons dealt with corpses but seldom discussed the undertaking in written documents. Instead they focused on the grandiose deeds of heroes like Beowulf and the holy lives of revered saints.

This dissertation examines various genres of Old English literature to identify times when authors discuss corpses and to what end these discussions led. Hagiographers, for example, describe the corpses of certain saints such as Æthelthryth and Edmund at length while the bodies of other saints are …

Nystagmic Poetics In Lorine Niedecker’S Postwar Poetry, Edward Ferrari

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In this article I explore the work of Lorine Niedecker, a poet not conventionally associated with disability studies, in order to flesh out an account of the function of visual disability in midcentury poetics and praxis. To do this I read Niedecker’s formative sequence “For Paul,” the late long poem “Wintergreen Ridge,” and other poems, through deformative practices in the belief that such an engagement shows how Niedecker’s hybrid objectivist praxis can be integrated with critical models of disability studies. Such an integration is then bodied forth in what I’m calling a “nystagmic poetics.” In such a poetics, the physical …

Through The Mouth: An Essay On Appetite And Ecocide, Iemanja Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of mourning and resilient joy in the midst of ecocide. Resisting the pervasive classification of the human as inherently destructive, I look to appetite as an aesthetic procedure that includes a material desire for intimacy with the more-than-human. My study considers the intersections of aesthetic production (primarily twentieth-century poetry and visual art), climate science, geology, cultural studies, theory within the contemporary nonhuman turn, and Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. I employ an interdisciplinary approach, which helps me explore the various ways that literal and figurative appetite can be a way of sensing and exploring …

Textframe: Cosmopolitanism And Non-Exclusively Anglophone Poetries, Michael N. Scharf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project proposes a replacement for some institutional-archival mechanisms of non-exclusively anglophone poetry as it is produced under racial capitalism and archived via its universities and grant-bearing nonprofits. The project argues specifically for the self-archiving of non-exclusively anglophone poetry, and by extension of poetry, in a manner that builds away from US-dominated, nationally-organized institutions. It argues that cosmopolitanist norm translation, as advocated by various critics, can function as part of a critique of institutional value creation used in maintaining inequalities through poetry. The US-based Poetry Foundation is currently the major online archive of contemporary anglophone poetry; the project comprises a …

Unruly Matter: Masculine Consumption In English Restoration Literature, Shawn Watkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unruly Matter: Masculine Consumption in English Restoration Literature

Over the past several decades, material culture scholars working within the “Long 18^th Century” have identified how the figure of the woman consumer became an ideological nodal point that registered new enthusiasm for emerging economic dynamics (mercantilism, nascent capitalism, etc.) while also expressing masculine anxieties about consumerism and the role of consumable goods in English society. Although many scholars have noted that men functioned symbolically and ideologically as English society’s primary consumers of material goods in the later 17^th century, there is no scholarly work that aims to describe the …

The Battle Of The Sexes: Montagu V. Swift, Madison Savoie

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Two of the most interesting “guardians” of eighteenth-century sociocultural standards were the satirists Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Swift is remembered by scholars as one of the “greatest prose satirists in the history of English Literature,” but Montagu, until recent decades, has been less well-known. This thesis will look at the satirical poetic dialogue between the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift and the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and provide insights into the sociocultural dynamics of gender in eighteenth-century British print life as revealed by the individual texts.

Looking At Shadows: Four French Texts In English Translation, Kalena M. Hermes

World Languages and Cultures

This project present four French texts in English translation that share the theme of loss. This theme is perhaps one of the most poignant and relevant; loss is an experience that every human will encounter, and as people we continue across time to grapple with what it means for us and how to deal with it. These four texts will bring the perspectives of four authors to light in English. When we study how other countries and cultures deal with common human issues, we are able to gain new views on these issues. This project will make these texts accessible …

My Poetry Writing, My Defeat Of Illusion, Binghui Jin

MSU Graduate Theses

Poetry writing is a valuable treasure of literacy. As an international student from China, I created this poetry collection as an illustration of my own understanding, internalization, and admiration of poetic expression in English between American and Chinese cultures. This cultural collusion mainly focuses on human relationships, especially romantic relationships and family love, as well as personal emotions, and the meaning of life. In order to do that, I returned to the work of classic Chinese poets, especially Su Shi, whose work is the basis for my sense of poetry. His poetic style of rhyming and creating images rooted in …

Improving Student Learning: An English Teacher’S Research, Planning, And Analysis Journey, Rachel Lantz

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This final portfolio was submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of English with a specialization in English Teaching. The projects contained in the portfolio exhibit the journey of research, planning and analysis. The portfolio contains: a substantive research paper, a teaching based project, a combination of a substantial research and a teaching-based project, and a literary theory paper.

Network Poetics: Studies In Early Modern Literary Collaboration, John Ladd

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Literature scholars often consider the seventeenth century to be the period in which the role of the individual author as we know it today was consolidated, strengthened, or even invented. Scholars of collaboration, most notably Jeffrey Masten in his book Textual Intercourse, tend to treat the phenomenon of joint literary work as limited to coauthorship and either to specific genres (usually drama) or specific periods in time (usually 1590 to 1620). In this model, collaborative environments give way to authorial ones, particularly in Restoration England as the position of the professional author was strengthened by changes in publishing practices. However …

Forbidden Attraction: Russian Poets Read T. S. Eliot During The Cold War, Nataliya Karageorgos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this study is to demonstrate how the reception of T. S. Eliot, one of the leading proponents of Anglo-American modernism, shaped the aesthetics of Russian poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, Russian culture found itself in a unique situation of separation from the Western world, with which it had largely identified in the previous century. The official change of the cultural paradigm that took place in the aftermath of the October Revolution led to the advancement of the literary theory and practices of Socialist Realism, shutting off modernist tendencies and …

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.

"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 …

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 …

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.

"I Refuse To Die:" The Poetics Of Intergenerational Trauma In The Works Of Li-Young Lee, Ocean Vuong, Cathy Park Hong, And Emily Jungmin Yoon, Helli Fang

Senior Projects Fall 2019

This project explores how trauma and violence within immigrant and refugee narratives are preserved and embodied in the poetry and prose works of four Asian American writers, Li-Young Lee, Ocean Vuong, Cathy Park Hong, and Emily Jungmin Yoon. In this examination arises the question of how trauma from a historical event can be passed down to people who have not witnessed them firsthand, such as the children of war refugees. I argue that these works are written not solely with the intention to remain truthful to the informative or factual history of these inherited traumatic events, but rather, to preserve …

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, …

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 …

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 …