Arts and Humanities Commons^™

From Erotic Conquest To The Ravishing Other: Imperial Intercourse In Shakespeare's Drama And Anglo-Spanish Rivalry, Eder Jaramillo

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation examines how shifts in Anglo-Spanish relations from attraction to fear fashioned early modern cross-cultural encounters in imperialist terms. In discussion with recent inter-imperial studies of Mediterranean rivalries, I argue that as Anglo-Spanish relations engaged in what I refer to as imperial intercourse, one country’s expansionist ambitions become a double-edged sword, namely as said country is subsequently haunted by the threat of invasion from other rivals. This dissertation focuses on dramatic and colonialist texts representing the threat of invasion in the trope of the ravishing Other—a term with a play on words that illustrates the shift in …

Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

“Aspects of Character” uses quantitative evidence to trace new timelines in the literary history of characterization. The guiding premise of this work is that digital libraries and mathematical perspectives can shed new light on the practices used to configure fictional people. Using texts from the nineteenth to twenty-first century, this dissertation analyzes how different aspects of characters have transformed throughout history, coordinating quantitative experiments with the critical perspectives of literary scholars. This project begins by analyzing the characterization used in works of fiction that were reviewed by prestigious publications. This first experiment pushes back on a historical truism about “well-crafted” …

The Meaning Of Peace: William Faulkner, Modernism, And Perpetual Civil War, Jason Luke Folk

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Much of scholarship regarding the presence of war in literary modernism has foregrounded psychic trauma endured by veterans of World War I. The returning soldier is often figured as representative of the war’s infiltration of the homefront. The common argument claims that the erosion of the distinction between war and peace (as well as private and public) is a mirror image of the veteran’s wounded psyche. This thesis, however, argues that peace and war in the West have always been indistinct. The body politic is, in actuality, constituted by a perpetual civil war. Furthermore, the novels of William Faulkner, because …

Inscribing The South For Harper's Weekly In 1866, Ashlyn Stewart

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The top weekly publication in the nineteenth-century United States, Harper’s Weekly, faced a new challenge after it had survived the Civil War: what would keep readers subscribing to the periodical in peacetime? To maintain their remarkably large readership, the editors looked southward and produced abundant content about the Reconstruction South for its primarily Northeastern readership. A noteworthy portion of that content was a series of powerful illustrated articles known as “Pictures of the South,” which ran from April to October 1866. Seasoned war correspondents Alfred R. Waud and Theodore R. Davis travelled through the rapidly rebuilding South on behalf of …

What She Became?, Sarwa Abdulghafoor

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

WHAT SHE BECAME? is a thesis comprised of a thirteen- page introduction and 35 poems. As is evident from the title, the poems are about the poet’s unsettling personal and creative journey, as well as her personal movements, her traumatic childhood, her individual and cultural backgrounds. The author takes her readers through the experiences of women in war-torn Iraqi Kurdistan from the early 80s to the present day. Her poetry gives you a glimpse of life under a patriarchal regime that attempts to stifle women’s voices. The introduction dives deeper into her own personal history as a female Kurdish writer, …

"You Have Witchcraft In Your Lips": Sensory Witchcraft In Shakespeare's Antony And Cleopatra And Macbeth, Hannah Kanninen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Scholarship on witches and witchcraft within Shakespeare’s plays has been a popular subject for many scholars. But one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters has not yet been integrated into this scholarship: Cleopatra from Antony and Cleopatra. Although scholars have often noted her “witchiness,” none have argued for an interpretation of Cleopatra as a witch. This is because traditional definitions of witchcraft have not been able to include Cleopatra. In comparison, Lady Macbeth from Macbeth has often been cited as the fourth witch in the play. But this interpretation relies upon examining Lady Macbeth’s perceived masculinity, which subsequently also makes her …

The Art Of The Game: Issues In Adapting Video Games, Sydney Baty

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

On the face of things, movies and video games are similar mediums. Both engage extensively in visuals and audio, both can indulge in speculative fiction, and there is a healthy amount of sharing of inspiration and content. However, this does not guarantee successful adaptations from one form to another. Movies adapted from video games are notorious for being simply terrible, but little academic attention has been paid as to why these adaptations in particular seem so unsuccessful in every way, from audience reception, critical response, and monetary returns. This issue is based on fundamental differences in the medium. Games are, …

The Motions Of Burying, Jessica Poli

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

THE MOTIONS OF BURYING is a thesis comprised of 52 pages of poems and a five page introduction that explores personal connections to physical space and landscape. The poems included in this manuscript are representative of the places I’ve called home: the woods of Pennsylvania, where I grew up; barns and pastures in Central New York, where I spent several years working on small family farms; and the wide sky over Holmes Lake in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I now reside.

I Know These Things & Other Lies, Jordan Elliott Charlton

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

I KNOW THESE THINGS AND OTHER LIES is a thesis comprised of an Ars Poetica essay and a collection of poems. The essay addresses my history with poetry, thoughts on how I view the act of writing, my reading inspirations, and how this collection began to be formed. The poems in this collection delve into the realities of black identity to observe the tensions between speech and silence, between memory and perpetuity. These poems address my cultural and personal history and take aim at the silences attributed to masculinity, black masculinity specifically. A sample of these poems is included here. …

Woven, Adrienne Christian

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Woven is a collection of love poems about people of African descent, all of which feature clothing in some prominent way.

The why of what one wears runs deep. This creative work explores that connection.

Advisor: Kwame Dawes

Thresholds Of Curating: Literary Space And Material Culture In The Works Of Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, And Willa Cather 1870-1920, Lindsay N. Andrews

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation explores the polycentric intersections between material and literary culture in four case studies spanning 1870-1920. Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Willa Cather are four women whose work reflects a capacity to defy the genre-specific boundaries for which they are canonically renown. Harriet Prescott Spofford was an important contributor to the interior design movement in the early Gilded Age following challenges to finding publication resources for her fiction within a male-dominated publishing community. Edith Wharton’s ties to material culture are well known, but less attention is granted to the ways in which her own expertise …