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Literature in English, North America

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James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Educators About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan May 2025

James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Educators About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan

Honors College Theses

This is an extended analysis of James Baldwin's "A Talk to Teachers" about how to bring representation into the classroom. I use Baldwin's other essays and fiction along with educational research to look into the way Baldwin understands education and the importance of bringing healthy queer representation into the classroom. I provide both theoretical observations along with practical implications of what this means for educators in the classroom and what they can do to help all their students feel seen, represented, and welcome in the classroom.


With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner May 2024

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …


Standing On The Front Porch Of To Kill A Mockingbird, Anna Mclain May 2024

Standing On The Front Porch Of To Kill A Mockingbird, Anna Mclain

Honors Theses

This thesis is an examination of the front porch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. After providing background on the practical functions of the front porch in the South, I argue that this space serves as a synthesis between perception and reality in Lee’s novel. My thesis is divided into three sections that each explore different characters on the front porch: Boo Radley, Southern women, and Scout. Analyzing specific scenes with these characters on the front porch, I consider how the space exposes various tensions in the novel and highlights Lee’s larger themes.


Final Master's Portfolio, Savannah Packman May 2024

Final Master's Portfolio, Savannah Packman

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio uses Marxist and feminist film theory to analyze various forms of visual media. It analyzes Mark Mylod's film The Menu (2022), Julie Taymor's film Across the Universe (2007), the historic V-J Day Kiss photograph, and popular TikTok videos. This portfolio focuses on the impact of capitalism in the political and economic sphere. It also analyzes images of women throughout history and critiques how these images have been used to formulate the American body politic.


Book Review: Afternoons With Harper Lee, Lindsay G. Wong May 2024

Book Review: Afternoons With Harper Lee, Lindsay G. Wong

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.


Gentleman Death In Silk And Lace: Death And The Maiden In Vampire Literature And Film, Emily Wilson May 2024

Gentleman Death In Silk And Lace: Death And The Maiden In Vampire Literature And Film, Emily Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis contains an examination in the psychosocial significance of Hans Baldung Grien’s “Death and the Maiden” art motif, created during the Renaissance period following the Black Death, and its resurgence in the vampire fiction genre of both literature and film. I investigate the motif in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) as well as their film adaptations by Francis Ford Coppola (1992) and Neil Jordan (1994), respectively. By examining the presence of the motif in art, literature, and film, I found that the common threads across all investigated works were the dominant social …


Jane Austen And A Biographical Study Of The Historical Narrative Process, Serena Young May 2024

Jane Austen And A Biographical Study Of The Historical Narrative Process, Serena Young

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Jane Austen, beloved national literary icon of Great Britain, is world-renowned for her fiction. Biographers have attempted to authentically piece together her life and often, try to connect her narrative to when and how her fiction was written, as well as point out circumstances within her personal life and speculate their influence on her work. Literary analysts and critics that have examined the historical narrative process, Hayden White and Kevin Gilvary, have found that the way in which a historical account is presented plays a significant role in how history is understood and perpetuated. When examining Jane Austen’s life, many …


Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell Apr 2024

Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell

Master's Projects

There is something quintessentially human about ghost stories, yet particular regions tend to be more powerfully associated with haunted folktales than others. One of the regions is the southeastern United States. In fact, these oral traditions appear to have influenced the area's best-known literary subgenre: the Southern Gothic.

Why is the South considered haunted? Are there particular qualities in historical events that make them more likely to engender ghost stories? What makes the South's folkloric spirits so powerful that they appear even in modern literature? Most of all, what connects the region's history and folklore with the Southern Gothic? By …


Written In Blood: The Cultural Work Of Family, Sexuality, And Race In Adaptations Of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, Ariana Alvarado Apr 2024

Written In Blood: The Cultural Work Of Family, Sexuality, And Race In Adaptations Of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, Ariana Alvarado

Undergraduate Theses

Anne Rice’s gothic novel “Interview with the Vampire” (1976) has not only stood the test of time as a cult classic, but has continued to be told and retold through a film adaptation (1994) and recent AMC television production (2022). Looking through the lens of adaptation theory and the ideas of Nina Auerbach in Our Vampires, Ourselves, this presentation highlights how both the original novel and subsequent adaptations use the figure of the vampire to represent the social changes of the era of its creation, particularly in regards to queerness and sexuality.


Censorship Of Lgbtq+ Books: Causes And Consequences, Merrick Glass Apr 2024

Censorship Of Lgbtq+ Books: Causes And Consequences, Merrick Glass

Honors Projects

Censorship in the United States of America has accelerated over the past four years. LGBTQ+ books are specifically being targeted and banned within high school classrooms. Banned books are nothing new--court cases today are influenced by Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982) plurality decision on censorship. Students and professionals alike have power in their rights and voices. In the framework of bell hooks, the classroom can be perceived as a site of resistance in order to take power back into students' hands. Without a diversity of books, students will lack cognitive development and community.


Secondary Characters As First-Person Narrators: A Study Of Empathy, Lily Walter Apr 2024

Secondary Characters As First-Person Narrators: A Study Of Empathy, Lily Walter

Senior Honors Theses

One of the greatest functions of literature is its ability to make readers attuned to the emotions of others. Specifically, literature promotes the practices of both empathy and sympathy. Point of view has a strong effect on how emotion is directed, and the secondary character as the first-person narrator functions as a literary device to direct the reader’s sympathy toward an unlikable, fatally-flawed protagonist. Secondary characters draw the reader close to the emotional world of the narrative through an others-orientation, their status as survivor, and their relationship to the protagonist. Ishmael in Moby Dick and Nick Carraway in The Great …


“A New Era Of Black Thought”: Revisiting Gil Scott-Heron And The Hbcu Protest Novel, Magana J. Kabugi Apr 2024

“A New Era Of Black Thought”: Revisiting Gil Scott-Heron And The Hbcu Protest Novel, Magana J. Kabugi

The Vermont Connection

In 1972, spoken-word artist and poet Gil Scott-Heron published his second novel, controversially titled The Nigger Factory. As the student arm of the Civil Rights Movement started to shift its intellectual concerns from integration to questions of Black Power and self-determination, Scott-Heron’s novel burst onto the literary scene like a stick of dynamite. Literary critics and newspapers didn’t quite know what to make of the novel, which focused on a student government president and a fringe opposition group both vying for control over a student protest at a fictional historically Black college. Raw, direct, and full of rage, the book …


Trauma Is A Wound: Demonstrating The Use Of Character Analysis To Practice Clinical Analysis, Madisyn Beare Apr 2024

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, …


Tolkien, Augustinian Theodicy, And 'Lovecraftian' Evil, Perry Neil Harrison Apr 2024

Tolkien, Augustinian Theodicy, And 'Lovecraftian' Evil, Perry Neil Harrison

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A number of scholars have commented upon Augustine of Hippo’s influence upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s portrayal of evil in his legendarium. However, in his seminal work J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey pushes back against this perception, noting that there are some forms of evil in the legendarium that do not adhere to the Augustine’s belief that evil is merely a “twisting” of good. This article argues that Ungoliant is one such exception to the Augustinian paradigm because of the uncertainty regarding her origins.This uncertainty complicates the Augustinian view of evil that permeates the legendarium and instead echoes …


Wallpaper Yellow, Jasmine Aust Apr 2024

Wallpaper Yellow, Jasmine Aust

FUSION

The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a significant piece of American literature published in 1892. This submission intends to capture its essence musically by adapting the prevailing themes of its narrative into song. Through the use of dynamics, delivery, and diction, the song conveys the evolution of Gilman’s piece. The composition includes deliberate tonal shifts and lyrical choices to reflect the story's progression and the protagonist's descent into madness. Selective adaptation was employed, consciously omitting certain narrative elements while prioritizing key thematic events. The musical piece intends to accurately represent core themes and properly adapt …


H.D. And Women's Self-Image, Kristen Clay Apr 2024

H.D. And Women's Self-Image, Kristen Clay

Student Writing

This paper analyzes three works, “Thetis,” “Triplex,” and “Eurydice,” by modernist poet H.D. for the purpose of understanding how high-profile women characters can be used to explore the overarching similarities in female identity. This line of connection is found through the subject of each poem being figures from Greek mythology - Thetis, Helen, and Eurydice - and the themes in each poem being some variation of the formation of identity under male influence. In “Thetis,” the subject defines herself as a mother, and her role is shaped by the existence of her son, Achilles. In “Triplex,” Helen appeals to the …


Denise Levertov And Changing For God’S Presence, Jeremiah Veldhuyzen Apr 2024

Denise Levertov And Changing For God’S Presence, Jeremiah Veldhuyzen

Student Writing

This paper is about the struggles experienced as a person of faith and how to react to those struggles.


Appealing To Truancy: How Mary Oliver Escapes Americana, John Wise Apr 2024

Appealing To Truancy: How Mary Oliver Escapes Americana, John Wise

Student Writing

How the work of Mary Oliver disagrees with the American Cultural way of thinking.


Adrienne Rich: Examining Change Through Individual Introspection, Alexandra Miller Apr 2024

Adrienne Rich: Examining Change Through Individual Introspection, Alexandra Miller

Student Writing

Adrienne Rich, well known for writing about her sexual identity and feminist activism, has written poetry throughout her changing lifetime. Her unique path through life has led readers to analyze development across her works. Individual introspection can be the source of this evolution in her poetry, allowing many of her readers to relate. Adrienne Rich’s poems, “Origins of History and Consciousness”, “Diving into the Wreck”, and “Splittings” bring to light self-reflection and how we navigate change through introspection.


Listening To "Silence": Alternative Modes Of Communication In Korean And Korean American Women's Literature, Judy Joo-Ae Bae Mar 2024

Listening To "Silence": Alternative Modes Of Communication In Korean And Korean American Women's Literature, Judy Joo-Ae Bae

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

South Korean feminist activity may be relatively unknown to many Western readers; however, a distinct form of feminist activism can be seen when considering alternative modes of communication that are not less than, simply different from “speech” or “voice” as forms of agency celebrated in the West. Alternative modes of communications such as silence, song, touch, and performance also speak important messages which can be heard when understood through local knowledges. In the three cases of South Korean and Korean American women’s fictions used in this dissertation, I unpack these alternative modes of communications used by the female protagonists through …


Textual Variants In Eudora Welty’S "A Piece Of News”, Brooke Derrington, Abby Choe Mar 2024

Textual Variants In Eudora Welty’S "A Piece Of News”, Brooke Derrington, Abby Choe

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Eudora Welty’s “A Piece of News” presents the question, how does one achieve self-actualization? For the protagonist Ruby Fisher, the answer is language, although that answer is not clear in the original 1937 published version of the story. That story’s focal point is Ruby’s tumultuous and complicated relationship with her husband, Clyde. In contrast, the revised 1941 version from Welty’s collection A Curtain of Green shifts the focus from Ruby’s abusive marriage to her interiority. The subsequent increase in word count, shifts in narration, and emphasis on Ruby claiming her name when she reads it in a newspaper elevates the …


The Ecology Of American Noir, Katrina Younes Mar 2024

The Ecology Of American Noir, Katrina Younes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In The Ecology of American Noir, I investigate the relationship between the conventions of noir fiction and film and its sub-types in relation to environmental crises. Specifically, I address questions that not only allow us to (re)read early hardboiled literature and neo-noir films, but that also help us identify a new sub-genre of noir and develop an ecocritical methodology: I call this contemporary sub-genre and methodology “eco-noir.” I trace the development of strategies of mapping urban blight and environmental deterioration in classic hardboiled fiction of the 1940s, neo-noir films of the 1970s, and eco-noir texts of the post millennial …


New Coyote Stories: “Ooljéé” Feb 2024

New Coyote Stories: “Ooljéé”

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.


When Language Fails: A Critical Analysis Essay Of Kathryn Stockett’S The Help:, Evan Mccreary Feb 2024

When Language Fails: A Critical Analysis Essay Of Kathryn Stockett’S The Help:, Evan Mccreary

Black Album Mixtape

A critical analysis essay of Kathryn Stockett's New York Times Bestselling book, The Help, and it's subsequent film adaptation, and how in recent years, particularly following the murder of George Floyd, the story has been used as a classroom tool for teaching students about racism and its effects. Written by a Black student in a primarily white school community, this essay was written as an antithesis to the ideology that the book and movie exceed their intended intentions of being a beneficial teaching tool to youth.


'Since No Expressions Do': Queer Tools For Studying Literature, Filipa G. Calado Feb 2024

'Since No Expressions Do': Queer Tools For Studying Literature, Filipa G. Calado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how digital methods and tools for studying text engage with queer literature. I critique digital methods and tools by posing computation, where textual data is cleaned and structured for electronic processing, against the complexity of queer subjecthood and affects expressed in textual style, form, and voice. While tools like quantitative text analysis, for example, transform, and necessarily reduce, qualitative elements of gender and sexuality into numerical data such as word frequencies or concordances, I argue that this reduction opens up possibilities for interpreting the formal qualities of queer literature. Just as digital formats transform and manipulate text …


Book Review: Ruin And Resilience: Southern Literature And The Environment, Kevin J. Reagan Feb 2024

Book Review: Ruin And Resilience: Southern Literature And The Environment, Kevin J. Reagan

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.


“This Wonderful Machine”: How Should We Teach Humanities Texts Like Gulliver’S Travels In The Time Of Chatgpt?, Richard J. Haslam Jan 2024

“This Wonderful Machine”: How Should We Teach Humanities Texts Like Gulliver’S Travels In The Time Of Chatgpt?, Richard J. Haslam

Critical Humanities

The quoted phrase in the essay title comes from a passage in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels in which a Grand Academy of Lagado professor demonstrates a “wonderful Machine” that can generate scores of books “without the least Assistance from Genius or Study.” The essay explore the challenge for teaching classic humanities texts like Gulliver that the (perhaps not so) “wonderful Machine” called ChatGPT poses. Student Owen Terry’s Chronicle essay (May 12, 2023) identifies two crucial aspects of that challenge: “We don’t fully lean into AI and teach how to best use it, and we don’t fully prohibit it to keep …


Detroit Poet Laureate: A Local And National Necessity, Rosemary O'Meara Jan 2024

Detroit Poet Laureate: A Local And National Necessity, Rosemary O'Meara

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

From 1981–2020, Detroit officials appointed a city-recognized poet laureate. Though the position has been vacant since the 2020 death of Naomi Long Madgett, this essay advocates for reinstatement of a Detroit poet laureate to help spotlight important Detroit artists and to ensure that the words and ideas of Detroiters are sustained and celebrated. A poet laureate would continue to uniquely serve Detroit to help preserve its complex history and contribute to a literary canon specific to the city.


Madness As Response To Inherent Cultural Conflicts In Anglophone Fiction From 1700 To 2020, Anna Klambauer Jan 2024

Madness As Response To Inherent Cultural Conflicts In Anglophone Fiction From 1700 To 2020, Anna Klambauer

Comparative Woman

Madness in literature has a long and colourful history. While its representation varies significantly in different literary periods, madness is nonetheless a consistent theme responding to inherent conflicts of civilisation. Thus, in the eighteenth-century novel, madness is subdued and forced to express itself in the language of rationality, while in the nineteenth century the theme becomes increasingly subversive. In the form of the madwoman trope (Gilbert and Gubar 1979), madness is simultaneously a reaction to restrictive patriarchal norms, and a frame in which the gender conflicts of the time can be safely and effectively played out. In the twentieth century, …


Harriet Monroe: An American Poet In Vevey. Her Diary Entries, May 16 – July 26, 1898, Harriet Monroe, Michael R. Hill, Deborah Anna Logan Jan 2024

Harriet Monroe: An American Poet In Vevey. Her Diary Entries, May 16 – July 26, 1898, Harriet Monroe, Michael R. Hill, Deborah Anna Logan

Zea E-Books Collection

Since its inception in 1912, Poetry magazine has been widely regarded as a premier resource for modern poetry and poets. Published in Chicago as Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, its legacy continues today through the Poetry Foundation, a superlative online resource for seekers of poets, poems, and random lines needing identification. A less immediately recognizable legacy is that of its founder, Harriet Monroe (1860–1936), one of those fin de siècle “intellectual women” typically dismissed as a contradiction in terms. But Monroe was a force to be reckoned with, and this beautifully crafted volume participates in the recuperation of a life …