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Articles 1 - 30 of 90
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Reframing Mourning: Liberatory Grief In Post-Tragedy Chinese American Women’S Fiction, Sophia Li
Reframing Mourning: Liberatory Grief In Post-Tragedy Chinese American Women’S Fiction, Sophia Li
Honors Projects
My project approaches discussions of Asian American melancholia and mourning with a specific focus on contemporary Chinese American women’s fiction. Scholars such as David Eng, Shinhee Han, and Anne Anlin Cheng have long spotlighted the prevalence of depression among Asian American populations, particularly those with immigrant backgrounds, and they variously adopt psychoanalytic approaches to understand Asian American mental health and intersectional identities. Looking beyond psychoanalytic models, my project focuses on the works of Yiyun Li, Jenny Zhang, and K-Ming Chang to explore diverse forms of post-tragedy positionality. I read the authors paratextually, not only to locate them within legacies of …
The Ethiopian Student Movement And The Dilemma Of Eritrean Sovereignty, Liat G. Tesfazgi
The Ethiopian Student Movement And The Dilemma Of Eritrean Sovereignty, Liat G. Tesfazgi
Honors Projects
From the perspective of Ethiopian royalists, Pan-Africanists, Marxist internationalists, supports of union, and the broader international community, Eritrean nationalism revealed distressing fissures in many different arguments for preserving Ethiopian territorial unity– arguments not necessarily or explicitly problematic, but nevertheless in opposition to Eritrean demands for the right to national self-determination. For the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) specifically, Eritrean sovereignty demanded a reconfiguration of Pan-African unity that conflicted with Ethiopian exceptionalist historiography. Through an analysis of student politics at Haile Selassie University, from 1960-1974, this thesis seeks to complicate existing historiography on the ESM by examining the periodically divergent experiences of …
The Body Negotiating Unprecedented Movement, Mei Bock
The Body Negotiating Unprecedented Movement, Mei Bock
Honors Projects
A collection of poems exploring threads including the Lower East Side, immigration, stray animals, art, and Chinese-American identity.
Ethnicity And Territory: Cultural And Political Autonomy For African Descended Colombians Through Law 70, Ayana Opong-Nyantekyi
Ethnicity And Territory: Cultural And Political Autonomy For African Descended Colombians Through Law 70, Ayana Opong-Nyantekyi
Honors Projects
Colombia has the second largest African descendant population in all South America due to the transatlantic slave trade that stripped millions from their homeland and brought them to present day Colombia. While African descendants have been a part of the region’s history for over five centuries, it was not until 1993 with the establishment of Law 70 that the Colombian government acknowledged the culture and rights of African descendants. This thesis analyzes the historical, social, and political underpinnings of Law 70, its implementation, and aftereffects. I argue that Law 70 acknowledges a lived identity of rural African descended Colombians as …
Love Is Real & I Just Had Some For Dessert: Legacies Of Communal Care & Compassion In Asian Diasporic Women's Food Writing, Miki Rierson
Love Is Real & I Just Had Some For Dessert: Legacies Of Communal Care & Compassion In Asian Diasporic Women's Food Writing, Miki Rierson
Honors Projects
In this project I work to recover influential yet often erased Asian American female immigrant chefs and food authors from the mid-twentieth century to the present, situating their contributions in a deep-rooted tradition of diasporic women who used cooking as a means of communal agency and care. Immigrant Asian cookbook authors and chefs have long faced internal criticisms from their own diasporic communities of either inauthenticity or engaging in “food pornography,” to use writer Frank Chin’s term—a line of criticism that Lisa Lau has elaborated on as “re-Orientalism.”Though these criticisms should not eclipse the works themselves, I discuss and counter …
A Problem Best Put Off Until Tomorrow, Evan Albers
A Problem Best Put Off Until Tomorrow, Evan Albers
Honors Projects
Effective Altruism has led a recent renaissance for utilitarian theory. However, it seems that despite its surge in popularity, Effective Altruism is still vulnerable to many of the critiques that plague utilitarianism. The most significant amongst these is the utility monster. I use Longtermsim, a mode of thinking that has evolved from Effective Altruism and prioritizes the far-future over the present in decision-making processes, as an example of how the unborn millions of the future might constitute a utility monster as a corporate mass. I investigate three main avenues of resolving the utility monster objection to Effective Altruism: reconsidering the …
Church Space As Queer Place? Lgbtq+ Placemaking, Assimilation, And Subversion Within Progressive Faith-Based Spaces In Maine, Salina Chin
Honors Projects
In popular discourse, understandings of queerness and religiosity as antithetical proliferate. However, the political involvement of Portland, Maine’s First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Maine’s queer political movement points to a more complex relationship between the LGBTQ+ community and progressive religious institutions. Through participant observation, archival research, and semi-structured interviews with nine LGBTQ+ community members and informants, I reveal the crucial role of Portland’s First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Maine’s queer political movement from the late 1980s into the present day. On the one hand, progressive faith-based spaces across Maine provide safe spaces for queer political organizing. On the other hand, …
Searle’S Mind: Brains, Subjects, And Systems, Saul Cuevas-Landeros
Searle’S Mind: Brains, Subjects, And Systems, Saul Cuevas-Landeros
Honors Projects
Throughout this project, I ‘step into the Chinese Room’ presented by philosopher John R. Searle and develop the areas where the Chinese Room Argument succeeds. I have aimed to pick out where Searle has succeeded with the Chinese Room Argument and introduce how it fits in with his school of biological naturalism, as it seems that he already had some conception of it when presenting the Argument. From here, I introduce some of the primary arguments against the Chinese Room Argument because they do not fit with Searle’s overarching theme of biological naturalism. Particularly, Searle’s conception of systems and system …
Religious Negotiation And Identity Formation: Reading Material Religion In Oaxaca’S “Guelaguetza Oficial”, Rene Sebastian Cisneros
Religious Negotiation And Identity Formation: Reading Material Religion In Oaxaca’S “Guelaguetza Oficial”, Rene Sebastian Cisneros
Honors Projects
The Oaxacan Guelaguetza Oficial is a folk-dance festival in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico which takes place on the last two Mondays of July each year. This state-sponsored celebration of Oaxacan identity is intertwined within histories of Indigenous religious belief and Catholic everyday practice. The Guelaguetza Oficial can be traced back to late 19thcentury celebrations venerating the Virgen del Carmen Alto. Oaxaqueños today predominantly practice an Indigenous-Catholic tradition whose rituals, festive scripts, pantheon of popular saints, and immanent understandings of heavenly power over earthly events can be traced back to negotiations between Indigenous forms of popular belief …
Guarding Whiteness: Disability, Eugenics, And Rhetorical Agency In Southern Renaissance Fiction, Philip Carl Bonanno
Guarding Whiteness: Disability, Eugenics, And Rhetorical Agency In Southern Renaissance Fiction, Philip Carl Bonanno
Honors Projects
This project explores fiction from white authors in the Southern Renaissance, specifically William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers. By examining their work alongside some of the performers that appeared historically in freak shows of the South, chapter one investigates how physically enfreaked individuals (usually phenotypically white) have access to power and the powers of whiteness. Chapter 2 interrogates how the South pathologizes promiscuity as mental illness with words such as moronic or feeble-mindedness, and the ramifications it has for the stratification on class divides among Southern elites and “White Trash.” The chapter seeks to answer the question of why, …
Student Activism And Malaysian Politics, 1955-74: Revising The History Of The Malay Language Society (Pbmum), Song Eraou
Student Activism And Malaysian Politics, 1955-74: Revising The History Of The Malay Language Society (Pbmum), Song Eraou
Honors Projects
In the literature on student activism in Malaysia, the years from 1967 to 1974 are emphasized as vibrant years—students organized large-scale demonstrations, regularly asserted their opinions in the political arena, and even participated in electoral politics. This period was followed, however, with the imposition of strict laws in 1975 limiting freedom of speech and expression. Such laws were part of the broader containment policy pursued by the state after the May 13, 1969, racial riots, which allowed the state to stifle any form of political dissidence to ensure peace between different ethnic groups. One particularly active organization in this period …
Invisible Ailments: A Collection, Jane L. Godiner
Invisible Ailments: A Collection, Jane L. Godiner
Honors Projects
"Invisible Ailments" is a collection of short stories that trace the depth, breath, and sweeping range of lived experiences of people struggling with mental illness. While it is a work of fiction, the people in these stories might feel eerily familiar — to your friends, your family members, your loved ones, or, if you're brave enough to admit it, yourself.
Una Comprensione Computazionale Della Psiche Emotiva E Ordine Nelle Ballate Del Decameron: Stilometria E Elaborazione Del Linguaggio Naturale, Nothando Khumalo
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 …
Bodies, Memories, Ghosts, And Objects Or Telling A Memory, Natsumi Lynne Meyer
Bodies, Memories, Ghosts, And Objects Or Telling A Memory, Natsumi Lynne Meyer
Honors Projects
I think it started in December 2017, when my Mama sent me to Japan to take care of my grandparents, Baba and Jiji, alone. I had been to Japan almost every year since I was eleven years old, and several times before that too, but this was my first time without Mama. When Mama was there, Japan was filtered through her. I could poke bits of myself through her editing and approval. I could read street signs because of the way she read them, and I could understand my grandparents’ sighs from the timbre of her translation. That December, though, …
Vienna Secession, Bobby Murray
Vienna Secession, Bobby Murray
Honors Projects
‘Vienna Secession’ is a poetry manuscript broken into four distinct sections: “The Vienna Secession,” “Waltzes,” “Short Talks,” and “Other.” Most of the manuscript is in dialogue with Secessionist artists, or the ethos of the Vienna Secession. However, others, like the haikus, are exercises of form and responses to other contemporary poets, such as Robert Hass or Richard Wright. The manuscript explores different genres, including ekphrasis, prose, and experimental poems, like the ‘Waltzes,’ which employ 3/4 meter to emulate the Viennese waltz.
The heart of the project is its sonic awareness—pulling from W.H. Auden, August Kleinzahler, and other musically-oriented poets. Outside …
The Crossroads We Make: Intergenerational Trauma And Reparative Reading In Recent Asian American Memoirs (2018-2022), Josh-Pablo Manish Patel
The Crossroads We Make: Intergenerational Trauma And Reparative Reading In Recent Asian American Memoirs (2018-2022), Josh-Pablo Manish Patel
Honors Projects
This project extends reparative reading practices to recent Asian American memoirs, specifically trauma memoirs from the past five years (2018-2022) that detail personal trauma and communal, intergenerational trauma. Reparative reading is explored within five memoirs: Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know (2022), Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), Phuc Tran’s Sigh, Gone (2020), Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings (2020), and Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know (2018). In considering the reparative turn in Asian American memoirs, this thesis draws on and extends Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reparative frameworks and bell hooks’ theories on pedagogy and love. A critical analysis …
"I Remember!": Irish Postcolonial Memory In The Early Short Stories Of Seán O'Faoláin, Rebecca Norden-Bright
"I Remember!": Irish Postcolonial Memory In The Early Short Stories Of Seán O'Faoláin, Rebecca Norden-Bright
Honors Projects
Seán O’Faoláin (1900-1991) was an Irish writer, cultural critic, and editor of the literary magazine The Bell. He wrote prolifically throughout the twentieth century, and while his short stories are often anthologized, much of his work is now out of print. This project will examine O’Faoláin’s first two short story collections, Midsummer Night Madness (1932) and A Purse of Coppers (1937), within the context of the post-independence period in Ireland. The 1930s is a period often glossed over in both political and literary histories of Ireland, overshadowed by the Literary Revival and primarily characterized by deepening conservatism and political strife. …
James Joyce’S Prose Pedagogy: Language In Freirean Dialogue, Jack Mcdermott Wellschlager
James Joyce’S Prose Pedagogy: Language In Freirean Dialogue, Jack Mcdermott Wellschlager
Honors Projects
My project concerns the pedagogical nature of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Across the various styles and forms of Ulysses’ chapters, or “episodes,” I theorize the pedagogy of James Joyce’s prose by tracking the ways that the text demands readers participate in a Freirean dialogue. I will also discuss how Ulysses understands language as a practice of resistance: the novel’s characters have personal linguistic practices that help them open up the worlds that occupy them. I will appreciate the control these characters take of their world as I argue, through Paulo Freire’s work, that no true change occurs without the presence of …
"Know-Nothingism, Abolitionism, And Fanaticism:" An Analysis Of The Collapse Of The Second Party System In Maine, Justis Dixon
"Know-Nothingism, Abolitionism, And Fanaticism:" An Analysis Of The Collapse Of The Second Party System In Maine, Justis Dixon
Honors Projects
The 1850s were a tumultuous period in American politics, with a complete partisan realignment fundamentally shifting the balance of power away from the status quo and toward possibilities for change. This paper focuses on the collapse of the Second Party System in Maine, and understanding how we can explain this stunning and rapid shift. The varying factors can be placed into two broad categories First, ethnocultural issues were primarily responsible for much of the growing turmoil within and between the major parties throughout the 1840s, and accelerating greatly in the early 1850s with rising levels of immigration and the increasing …
Is Faith The Ultimate Divider?: The Intersections Between Religion And Political Behavior In The United States, Ryan Supple
Is Faith The Ultimate Divider?: The Intersections Between Religion And Political Behavior In The United States, Ryan Supple
Honors Projects
This thesis examines the complex relationship between religiosity and voting behavior in the United States. In a country where religion has diminished in importance over time, it seems rather fascinating that it still plays such a large role in the inner-workings of American politics. Chapter One analyzes the varying ways in which scholars have approached emergent political trends between religious groups, particularly with regards to political parties, voting behavior, and government representation. Chapter Two extends this analysis to the American National Election Studies (ANES), a national survey distributed to random samples of Americans during election seasons. The information from the …
Playing The Fool: Analyzing The Phenomena Of Iurodstvo In Contemporary Russian Cinema And Civil Society., Colby Silva Santana
Playing The Fool: Analyzing The Phenomena Of Iurodstvo In Contemporary Russian Cinema And Civil Society., Colby Silva Santana
Honors Projects
Of Russia's cultural and religious icons, the holy fool (iurodivy) is quite possibly the most significant one of contemporary times. The holy fool – a historical and cultural character that feigns insanity to produce moral and spiritual reflections and hide the purity of their souls – has left its traces over a significant portion of Russia's literary history, postmodern tradition, and socio-political thought. In its uniquely positioned role as a powerful form of institutional critique, today taking shape in modern-day political protest performance culture, the holy fool has often been utilized to interrogate the intertwined relationship of the Russian state …
Growing Pains: Toward A Coalition-Based Theory Of State Land Use Policy, Patrick Rochford
Growing Pains: Toward A Coalition-Based Theory Of State Land Use Policy, Patrick Rochford
Honors Projects
In the decades following World War II, mass suburbanization remade the American landscape. While suburbs accounted for 83% of the nation’s growth between 1950 and 1970, cities bled their populations and natural resources dwindled. Treating the postwar era as a critical juncture, this thesis examines the political history of twentieth-century state land use policy to illuminate how competing interests have shaped policy outcomes across the United States. Specifically, the paper seeks to explain the passage of statewide growth management and smart growth programs. After providing a history of American suburbanization, the paper considers an emergent challenge to the postwar growth …
#Ivfgotyou: Instagram Ivf Influencers As Social (Media) Support Systems, Susu Gharib
#Ivfgotyou: Instagram Ivf Influencers As Social (Media) Support Systems, Susu Gharib
Honors Projects
This paper details the ways in which IVF and infertility influencers on Instagram use their platforms to resist the silence surrounding reproductive difficulties. The analysis draws upon a thematic analysis of posts tagged with IVF-related hashtags and a semi-structured ethnographic interview with one influencer. Through these methods, I found that influencers build intimate publics through their platforms by sharing their journeys, interacting with followers, and reciprocal support. Within the context of the intimate publics, influencers are able to connect with others who understand their experiences, allowing them to break through the silence they may feel in their offline social groups.
From “This Revolution Is Neither Communist Nor Capitalist!” To “Long Live The Socialist Revolution:” The Deterioration Of U.S.-Cuban Relations From 1958-1961, Julia Lyne
Honors Projects
This thesis studies the deterioration of U.S.-Cuban relations from 1958-1961. Mainly drawing from primary sources from the National Archives, it seeks to answer and understand how and why relations deteriorated so rapidly. It pushes against the common belief that U.S.-Cuban relations were doomed from the start, instead highlighting in Chapter One Fidel Castro’s rise to power (and Fulgencio Batista’s fall from power) and revealing that the U.S. government was not entirely against Castro’s seizure of power. Chapter Two explores Castro’s first year in power and the (futile) attempts made by both governments to keep relations alive. Finally, it closes with …
A Conscious Image Of Liberation: Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Eta) In The Late Franco Regime, Through The Lens Of The Press, Sebastian De Lasa
A Conscious Image Of Liberation: Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Eta) In The Late Franco Regime, Through The Lens Of The Press, Sebastian De Lasa
Honors Projects
The rise of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the early 1970s coincided with the rise of national liberation movements across Europe, which largely were inspired by notable examples of resistance throughout the Global South in the decades prior. ETA’s growth over this period, and in the years prior, was heavily dependent on the image created of the organziation in the local, domestic, and international press, including through documents distributed by the group itself. By comparing ETA’s external presence to the group’s internal strife, it becomes clear that ETA made efforts to align itself with the popular revolutionary language of the …
Divinity School: A Novel, Ella Marie Schmidt
Divinity School: A Novel, Ella Marie Schmidt
Honors Projects
I wrote Divinity School, an Honors Project for the Department of English, under the auspices of my project advisor, Professor Anthony Walton, and my readers, Professors Marilyn Reizbaum, Ann Kibbie, and Aaron Kitch. Divinity School is a novel whose conflicts are religious, generational, and familial. Set mostly in Hoboken, New Jersey with vignettes in Manhattan, Vienna, the west coast of Ireland, and an anonymous New England college town, it is the story of one family and the open secrets that keep them apart. Hal Macpherson is a Divinity School professor uged into premature retirement by allegations of misconduct; his …
Re-Envisioning The Tropics: Nick Joaquin's Philippine Gothic, Ella Marie Jaman
Re-Envisioning The Tropics: Nick Joaquin's Philippine Gothic, Ella Marie Jaman
Honors Projects
This paper examines selected stories from Filipino author, Nick Joaquin, through a gothic lens. Drawing from recent development in Gothic studies, I work within a tropical gothic and postcolonial gothic framework to suggest a localized "Philippine gothic" represented within Nick Joaquin's work. Stories examined include the novel "The Woman Who Had Two Navels," as well as the short stories "Summer Solstice, Mass of St. Sylvestre," and "The Order of Melkizedek."
Minor, Ugly, And Meta: Feelings In Contemporary Korean American Literature, Kyubin Kim
Minor, Ugly, And Meta: Feelings In Contemporary Korean American Literature, Kyubin Kim
Honors Projects
In 2019, Korean American writer Cathy Park Hong published her memoir Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning in the midst of a turning point in Asian American politics. Hong describes minor feelings as “emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.” Used as a concept to summate the Asian American experience in white America as living in a country where one’s reality is constantly questioned and made invisible, minor feelings forges an affective framework to study minoritized, diasporic literature. …
Empire Of Horror: Race, Animality, And Monstrosity In The Victorian Gothic, Grace Monaghan
Empire Of Horror: Race, Animality, And Monstrosity In The Victorian Gothic, Grace Monaghan
Honors Projects
This project examines Victorian England through the analysis of three Victorian gothic novels: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903/1912), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). The end of the nineteenth century and the final years of the Victorian era brought with them fears and uncertainties about England’s role in the world and its future, fears that the Victorian gothic sought to grapple with, but inevitably failed to contain. In examining this genre, I draw on “Undisciplining Victorian Studies” (Chatterjee et al, 2020), which calls for the field of Victorian studies to center racial theory. As …
"Possessive Gentleness": Insecure Attachments In American Literature, Ella Pearl Crabtree
"Possessive Gentleness": Insecure Attachments In American Literature, Ella Pearl Crabtree
Honors Projects
“‘Possessive Gentleness’: Insecure Attachments in American Literature” applies psychological attachment theory to works of American Literature. Each novel examined—Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851), Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp (1856), and The Minister’s Wooing (1859) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Third Generation (1954) by Chester Himes, and The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison—describes the forces behind insecure attachment relationships between child characters and their caregivers. The first chapter of this project focuses on Stowe’s anti-slavery novels. It argues that the institution of slavery is in conflict with Christianity in these works, because it impedes disinterestedly benevolent mothering and …