Distaste: Joyce Carol Oates And Food, David Rutledge

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Distaste: Joyce Carol Oates and Food

Abstract

In many of her short stories and novels, Joyce Carol Oates depicts an unhealthy relationship with food. The range of these unhealthy relationships is wide, from overeating to the point of suicide, in Expensive People, to starving oneself in an attempt to deny one’s physical nature, in “Orange” and them. Overindulgence is a means for attempting to fill that space where the soul should be; undereating is often an attempt to deny one’s place in the social world. The eating disorders she portrays are rooted in both personal and social causes. …

Of Ghosts And Spaceships: Reclaiming Chinese National Identity Through Science Fiction, Nicholas M. Stillman

Global Honors Theses

This paper examines the extent to which Chinese science fiction literature has played a role in the reframing of Chinese national identity as one that is based in scientific and technological development. Specifically, whether the recent push during a 2007 conference in Chengdu for increased science fiction consumption has resulted in more scientific development and more positivist science fictional literature.

The paper both evaluates the current state of science fiction in China and the potential impact of its narratives through an analysis of the historical context of the role of science fiction in China compared to the more modern usage …

Lisbeth Salander Lost In Translation - An Exploration Of The English Version Of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Kajsa Paludan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This thesis sets out to explore the cultural differences between Sweden and the United States by examining the substantial changes made to Men Who Hate Women, including the change in the book’s title in English to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. My thesis focuses in particular on changes in the depiction of the female protagonist: Lisbeth Salander. Unfortunately we do not have access to translator Steven T. Murray’s original translation, though we know that the English publisher and rights holder Christopher MacLehose chose to enhance Larsson’s work in order to make the novel more interesting for English-speaking …

Transferential Poetics, From Poe To Warhol, Adam Frank

Literature

Transferential Poetics presents a method for bringing theories of affect to the study of poetics. Informed by the thinking of Silvan Tomkins, Melanie Klein, and Wilfred Bion, it offers new interpretations of the poetics of four major American artists: Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Andy Warhol. The author emphasizes the close, reflexive attention each of these artists pays to the transfer of feeling between text and reader, or composition and audience— their transferential poetics. The book’s historical route from Poe to Warhol culminates in television, a technology and cultural form that makes affect distinctly available to perception. …

The Rape Of Blanche: An Examination Of Critical Analysis & Sexist Overtones, Audrey Thayer

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The first people to ever listen to the words of A Streetcar Named Desire were two women, Margo Jones and Joanna Albus. Tennessee Williams read them an uncompleted first draft of the play. Margo Jones was “supportive of the play but urged him to rewrite it and to soften Blanche's hysteria. He listened, and ignored her” (Rader 199). The very first people who were privy to the violent, sensual, chaotic world of Blanche and Stanley were two women who found fault in Stella's character. They saw her hysteria, no doubt an unbecoming trait, as “far out,” or perhaps unbelievable. Much …

The Submissive, The Angel, And The Mad Woman In District 12: Feminine Identity In Suzanne Collins’S The Hunger Games, Kirstie E. Linstrom

English 502: Research Methods

The social roles women are given in literature are often debated by critics. This essay discusses the treatment and perceptions of female characters in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy. Throughout the trilogy, the male characters shape the identities of the female characters through language and enforcing Western gender roles. Katniss, Prim, and their mother each fill different roles typically assigned to women. Katniss is a submissive female; Prim is the innocent angel in the household; and their mother portrays a mad woman that cannot cope with reality. These characters—Katniss in particular—are often misconstrued by audiences and critics. Katniss is …

Biological Vestiges In American Psycho, Russell K. Allen

English 502: Research Methods

In proposing that the use of violence as allegory in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is warranted, this essay challenges a popular reading of the text, one found in many critical articles, that proposes otherwise. Specifically, this essay will break the novel’s cast into three factions, with each faction having a biologically definable origin: representations of the past, representations of the present, and representation of an ambiguous territory in between. Jean serves to depict a time when people communicated on a level beyond that which is comprehensible to most Generation Xrs. She has been transplanted into the novel’s present from …

The Price Of Growing Beyond Innocence: Examining The Literary Lineage Of Mark Haddon’S The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, James A. Clark

English 502: Research Methods

Through a thorough examination of textual clues in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, particularly those moments in the narrative in which Christopher Boone begins to develop an understanding of his own emotional and developmental limitations, as well as the results of that burgeoning understanding, this essay seeks to establish Haddon’s novel as a subtle homage to—if not the direct progeny of—Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and other noteworthy works of literature in which a fictional protagonist, originally limited mentally or intellectually, suffers emotional anguish brought on by self-awareness resulting from either internal action …

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: Making The Past Present, Rebecca Hoevenaar

Honors Projects

Art has the unique ability to create new meaning from past events. As a work of literature, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five has succeeded in doing this. Vonnegut took the bombing of Dresden and make it present and relevant in the minds of young Americans during the Vietnam War. Readers made connections between the two horrific events. In our contemporary world, Slaughterhouse-Five still remains an important work of literature. Violent conflicts and horrors continue to happen as with the recent Iraq War.

The Longing, H. Rice

H. William Rice

No abstract provided.

Stalking Glory, H. Rice

H. William Rice

No abstract provided.

My Father's Dogs, H. Rice

H. William Rice

No abstract provided.

Pledger Lake, H. Rice

H. William Rice

No abstract provided.

Somewhere Amongst The Ashes, Keith Rebec

All NMU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

SOMEWHERE AMONGST THE ASHES

By

Keith Rebec

This story collection explores how human beings deal with loss. Whether the loss stems from death, the loss of personal innocence, or the loss of love, the characters within are forced to make decisions that he or she wouldn't make if given the choice. Some of the characters, in an effort to prevent the same or a similar type of loss from reoccurring in their lives, desperately seek ways to avoid the issues altogether, which further complicates their troubles. Others, unbeknownst to their impending loss, must make split second decisions that will …

To A Poor Old Woman / A Una Pobre Mujer Vieja, Francisco Plata

Verbum

Translation of the poem "To A Poor Old Woman," by William Carlos Williams, into Spanish.

"We Can't Reclaim What We Don't Understand": Teachers' Perceptions Of Advocacy And Voice In A Rural Institute Of The National Writing Project, James Anthony Anderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines teachers' perceptions of advocacy and voice in a summer institute of the National Writing Project. The Rural Advocacy Institute, a first-time initiative through the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, offered three weeks of professional development centered on rural education and teaching English language arts in rural public schools. The study is a grounded theory study; grounded theory forces the researcher to stay "close to the data," compare data sets, and use reflective writing to identify conceptual categories in the data. Data collection in the study included semi-structured interviews with six K-12 teachers participating in the Institute and twenty-seven …

Trashed: The Myth Of The Southern Poor White, April Elizabeth Thompson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The fact of class has been a powerful tool in the process of identity formation, particularly in the American South, which has been viewed as a region apart from the national imaginary. To counter this exclusion, Southerners have often relied on stereotypes. One of the most prevalent and tragic of these is the stereotype of poor white trash, a construction that has been utilized to insist upon elite white Southerners' exceptionalism and innocence and to assert their rightful place in American historiography. While it is difficult to calculate their level of success, as perceptions of the region have varied through …

Reforming The Performance Of Masculinity: Stephen Crane's Critiques Of Riis's And Roosevelt's Civic Militarism, Cambri Mcdonald Spear

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Progressive Era (1890-1920) marks a unique period of social change in American history not only because of reformists' muckraking attacks against political machines and other corrupt social practices, but also because gender permeated every aspect of reform. The doctrine of separate spheres, which had been such a mainstay of Industrial Revolution-era America, was blurring rapidly, as many reformists, like suffragists, pressed for greater gender equality. However, an extremely fascinating characteristic of this period that is often overlooked is the inevitable way in which the performance of gender became essential for reformists to be successful.

Regina Hewitt, Ed., John Galt: Observations And Conjectures, Anthony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

Review of collection of scholarly essays on the Scottish novelist and poet John Galt (1779-1839), who was also a pioneer in Canadian fiction.

Walt Whitman's Vision Of The Inferno, Or Dante In Drum-Taps, Joshua Matthews

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

No abstract provided.

(In)Famous Cover Tunes Of 2014, Simon Orpana

The Goose

A cartoon and commentary by Simon Orpana.

"Nobody With A Good Car Needs To Be Justified": Materialism And Commercialism In Flannery O'Connor's Fiction, Maria Vallas

All Student Theses

Flannery O’Connor was writing in a time of great transition for American society. The 1950s brought with them a post-war economy that was creating a middle class that suddenly had disposal income and leisure time. To O’Connor, this translated into a culture that was becoming increasingly more distracted by the secular and material, and moving farther and farther away from the Christian ideal. This was not simply a cultural phenomenon to her – it was a danger, and more to the point, as a Christian writer, it was a call to arms. O’Connor’s work can be seen as a series …

Reconciling Christianity And Paganism, Susanna L. Mills

Student Publications

In her novel "Jane Eyre," Charlotte Bronte works to bring opposing ideas of Christianity and Paganism together to strengthen her protagonist, Jane. Bronte uses symbols of supernaturalism, nature, and the moon to highlight Jane's complex spiritual growth. This essay explores those symbols in conjunction with Christianity and their influences on Jane Eyre as she becomes an empowered woman.

“Their Song Filled The Whole Night”: Not Without Laughter, Hinterlands Jazz, And Rural Modernity, Andy Oler

Publications

This essay reads the rural Midwest as a modern space in which the sounds and material apparatus of early-twentieth-century jazz music compose the cultural field of Langston Hughes’s 1930 novel Not Without Laughter. It argues that Not Without Laughter does not attempt to supplant the more conventional urban modernities of Harlem and Chicago. Rather, the novel constructs a rural alternative that forms ambivalence through accumulation, both filling and exceeding the novel’s spaces and the experiences of its characters. Approaching Hughes’s novel through the sonic ambivalences of modern rurality evidences how some authors transgressed the supposed boundaries of the Harlem …

Family Frontiers: The Spage Age Fiction Of Marge Piercy And Ursula K. Leguin, Sue Norton

Articles

This article considers the ways in which feminist writers of speculative fiction reinvent family forms in ways that disrupt conventional narratives of family in literature.

The Regulating Daughter In John Updike's Rabbit Novels, Sue Norton

Articles

This article considers the ways in which John Updike creates female characters who suffer in some way so that their family units can remain intact. His Rabbit novels privilege the so-called nuclear family as an abiding family form, one which rests upon the sacrificial choices made by girls and women. It uses Family Systems Theory as a tool of interpretation in reading the texts and establishing their underlying ethos.

Straight Record And The Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters To Foreign Correspondents, Magdalena Bogacka-Rode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Straight Record and the Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters to Foreign Correspondents engages with Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War (1959), Virginia Cowles' Looking for Trouble (1941) and Josephine Herbst's The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs (1991) as documentaries of struggle. Documentary as a mode of writing and image making reveals dissonance, contradictions and varied perspectives which undermine the official historical record. The three writers, I argue, by republishing their Spanish Civil War (SCW) journalism in book form intended to set their record straight. This was motivated by their commitment to the 1930s struggle and the need …

A Voice Full Of Money: Metaphor And The Art Of Meaning, Kathryn V. Mccracken

Senior Honors Theses

The common definition of metaphor as a “comparison between two things that does not include the words ‘like’ or ‘as’” has, in the recent decades, lost the respect of serious students of language. Originating in Aristotelian thought, this “Comparison Theory” of metaphor is oversimplifying and therefore inadequate. By using examples to outline these inadequacies, a more accurate, more robust view of metaphor emerges. Far from being a mere literary flourish, the concept of metaphor—especially as metaphor is identified as the means through which symbols function—is at the very base of the general process of meaning conveyance through language.

In order …

Jean Sénac, Poet Of The Algerian Revolution, Kai G. Krienke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work presented here is an exploration of the poetry and life of Jean Sénac, and through Sénac, of the larger role of poetry in the political and social movements of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, mainly in Algeria and America. While Sénac was part of the European community in Algeria, his position regarding French rule changed dramatically over the course of the Algerian War, (between 1954 and 1962) and upon independence, he became one the rare French to return to his adopted homeland. I will argue, sometimes polemically, that Sénac was and should be considered a properly Algerian …

We Are Cowboys In The Boat Of Ra: Sonny Rollins And Ishmael Reed's Black Cowboy, Brian Flota

Libraries

No abstract provided.