Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Poetically Embodied Out-Of-Body Experience, Natalie Sunseri

Honors Theses

The choreographic project Euphoric Dysphoria emerged as a response to the choreographer’s gender dysphoria and personal observations about the way that feminine-presenting people are perceived and approached in dance spaces, particularly in comparison to masculine-presenting people. The dance originated as a choreographic exploration of extreme femininity and masculinity, and it evolved into a manifestation of performative gender and experiential gender. The choreographer was guided by her poem “Uneven Envy” when developing movement and building relationships among the dancers. She considered the contributions of Judith Butler, a scholar who writes about gender manifesting in the body due to socialization, and Laura …

Execution By Alien (A Collection Of Poetry), Sara Emma Kahane

Honors Theses

The following is a collection of poems narratively depicting the childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death of a woman and her memories. I will analyze the poetry in meaning and form as well.

Empower! A Poetry Curriculum For The 21st Century Learner, Misty Maina

Honors Theses

By providing today’s high school students with a multimodal curriculum centered around critical inquiry, worldview, personal relevance, and by providing students will many opportunities to respond to these principles with their own writings, students will be empowered to engage with their learning and the world in meaningful and intentional ways. Empower! poetry curriculum is designed to help students ask questions about themselves, their immediate surroundings and influences, and about the world around them. Students will be encouraged to take the time and energy for deeper thinking and reflection as they engage with the activities of Empower! While there will be …

The Poetry Of Revolution: The Legacy Of A Written Rebellion, Eva Erickson

Honors Theses

In Solmaz Sharif’s debut poetry collection Look, she incorporates United States Department of Defense terminology in order to simultaneously revolt against forced erasure and reclaim words that were once used for violent and oppressive purposes. This thesis argues that poetry is an inherently politicized, revolutionary tool that possesses the ability to radicalize and incite rebellion against silencing, dismissive power structures. Sharif’s identity, as an Iranian-American immigrant woman, is omnipresent in her own interpretation of familial trauma at the hands of American imperialist forces. In addition, the events of the late twentieth-century Iranian revolution that resulted in the deaths of many …

Young Adult: A Poetic Exploration Of Modern American Life, Ellie Bixler

Honors Theses

Adrienne Rich, in her 1993 essay “Someone Is Writing a Poem,” writes “In a political culture of managed spectacles and passive spectators, poetry appears as a rift, a peculiar lapse, in the prevailing mode.” In this collection, I make my own attempt to part with the prevailing mode. I use my poetry as a means of engaging and contending with the American socio-political dialogue that often feels both deeply pervasive and largely inaccessible. Grounded in the thematic conventions of political and ecological poetry, this collection is an exploration of what it means and how it feels to come of age …

American Sissy: Original Poetry, Jonah Stokes

Honors Theses

The creative art of poetry is a complex form, yet the fundamental aspect of the poetic form is of experience. The experience of the poet as well as the experience of the reader reading a poem is what is defined as the crucial element of poetry in this creative endeavor. This study analyzes works of contemporary poets who successfully portray the art of experience in their work. Looking at Romantic and marginalized poets, this study seeks to understand the complexity of poetic experience. The introduction is followed by a series of poem's that emphasize the experience of the author.

Synthesis, Gari Eberly

Honors Theses

Synthesis is a scientifically-aware collection of poetry that explores how gender relations and race amalgamate to impact the maturation of an individual. Employing both sonnet and computer code, I reflect on my experiences as a mixed-raced girl growing up in central Pennsylvania, my growth through several romantic relationships, and how I currently navigate male-dominated spaces as a woman.

For the past four years, I have sought to bridge the gap between my two academic commitments: poetry and science. Both poetry and science exist as a means to ask and answer questions about the messy interactions that shape personalities and relations …

Beat The Church Crowd, Evelyn Alston Tyer

Honors Theses

Beat the Church Crowd is a collection of poems that explores a variety of topics and themes, from personal family legacy and natural disasters to bestiary, ekphrastic, and southern locale poems. It is divided into four sections: “Blue Danube,” “Anecdotes,” “Urban Legends,” and “Something Worth Protecting.” While the subject matter and forms of the poems vary, the common thread weaving each poem to the next is the slight touch of the macabre.

The Hair You Wished To Comb, Sarah Barch

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems exploring gender and trauma in Greek mythology by retelling classical stories in a female voice.

The Typewriter And The Literary Sphere: An Analysis Of Turn-Of-The-Century Literature, Emma K. Holdbrooks

Honors Theses

My thesis explores the typewriter’s impact on early 20^th century American literature. By providing authors with the means to produce work accurately and effectively, the typewriter changed the process of writing. Typewriters also created job opportunities for women, who often served as typists. The typist became the foothold position that changed America’s perception of women in the work force and helped usher in a new social concept, “the New Woman.” To illustrate my claim, I show how the typewriter allowed poets like E. E. Cummings to experiment with spacing. Cummings made the typewriter’s standardization of text and spacing into …

Tectonic, Rebecca E. Holifield

Honors Theses

Tectonic is a collection of original poems accompanied by a critical preface.

Entre Países, Jared Steiman

Honors Theses

This collection of original poems deals with the unique experience of transnational family, particular to the international and interracial tensions of the years 2014-2020. The works focus on intimate portraits of life in the United States South, the Mexican South, and the relationship between. Love and loss feature prominently. Injustice is sewn throughout. Accompanying the original poems are a number of translations of Octavio Paz and Rosario Castellanos, as well as a craft essay detailing the process of creating this body of work.

On The Question Of Thinking: A Study Of Heidegger's Later Philosophy, Shishir Budha

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the writings of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger to understand what “thinking” is and how thinking needs to be undertaken. I examine Heidegger’s commitments to phenomenology in his early writings, his revaluation of the meaning of truth in traditional Western metaphysics, his criticism of calculative thinking and scientific rationality, his diagnosis of the human alienation and homelessness, and his evocation of the redemptive power of art and poetry through which we can find our place in the world. By questioning through all these themes, I attempt to trace Heidegger’s path towards a deeper and more original …

To My Room’S Future Tenant, Abigail Garcia

Honors Theses

To My Room’s Future Tenant is an original collection of poems accompanied by a critical preface.

African-American Poetry, Music, And Politics, Tyler H. Macdonald

Honors Theses

The 2016 decision to award songwriter and musician Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature sparked a worldwide debate on the relationship between music and poetry and raised many questions about music’s place in literary canon. However, this debate is nothing new. Questions about the relationship between music and poetry have long been debated. Some scholars believe the two disciplines should be studied separately, while others prefer to consider the connections between the two.

My project begins with a question: if Bob Dylan’s songs can be considered poetry, what other forms of music might also be considered poetry? Rap implements …

Bildungsroman, Mary M. Spooner

Honors Theses

Bildungsroman is an original collection of poems exploring issues of womanhood, relationships, motherhood, and growth. The majority of poems in this collection are written in free verse; however, the collection also includes several formal poems. Bildungsroman is accompanied by a critical preface.

Blooming Lotus, Brian Nguyen

Honors Theses

While reflecting on my poetry chapbook, Blooming Lotus, I ask myself what I was trying to accomplish by creating the chapbook. I have always been interested in my East Asian culture, but growing up as an Asian American has resulted in some ignorance in regards to the topic. I wanted to explore more of my own heritage through the creation of this chapbook by writing poems inspired by East Asian culture. Not only did I want to expose myself to East Asian culture but I also wanted to expose my readers to it as well. Most of my poems required …

Beer Stein Poem, True Poem, Sick Poem, Erotic Poem, And Other Poems, Margaret Bower

Honors Theses

A collection of poems dealing with subjects like absurdity, strange love, and adulthood.

El Exiliado Dentro Del Exilio: La Experiencia De Luis Cernuda En Su Exilio Fuera De Espana, Trevor Martin

Honors Theses

The life experiences and the level to which assimilation is possible following a political exile can be modulated by many factors including the age, gender, ethnicity, religion, political ideologies and sexual orientation of the individual condemned to exile. Whereas, previous academic studies have been devoted to investigating the roles of many of these influences on the experience of exile, the role homosexuality plays has been almost completely neglected in the academic literature. This paper uses the great homosexual poet of The Generation of 27, Luis Cernuda, as a case study to explore the issue of how homosexuality affects the experience …

De La Inseguridad A La Estabilidad: Como Pablo Neruda Utiliza El Amor Y La Poesia Para Superar El Exilio, Marissa Peck

Honors Theses

This thesis explores exile and its effects on the lives of those who experience it. Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean poet of the 20th century, lived in exile for three years, during which he continued to write and publish his poetry. The negative and positive consequences of exile, such as the loss of identity and the experience of traveling and knowing others, respectively, can be seen clearly in the poetry of Neruda during and after his exile. Exile has a great effect on the personal life of the exiled and this logically is expressed in the exile’s work, especially for …

Moon Jellies, Christina Garbarino

Honors Theses

A collection of short poems.

Hurlement: Une Traduction Du Poeme « Howl», Emilie Arseneault

Honors Theses

I imagine that many people might wonder what a translation of the poem "Howl" of the famous American poet Allen Ginsberg. For me, the reason is obvious. A French translation of this poem is could contribute to the wealth of French literature, certainly. But my main goal is to recognize one of the great artists who has influenced multiple movements and at least three generations of American. The French will thus have access to this poem and this artist, influenced by French literary and philosophical movements that have even created an epidemic in the English language. The French surrealist movement …

A Poet Of The Sikhs: Aesthetic Embodiment In The Poetry Of A Young And Elderly Bhai Vir Singh, Todd Curcuru

Honors Theses

Bhai Vir Singh, famous 19^th and 20^th century Sikh poet, writer, and scholar is remembered for his great literary achievements and proliferation of the Pubjabi language. Raised in the Punjab, India after the fall of the Sikh kingdom to the British, Vir Singh grew up in a time of religious turmoil due to Western influence. Joining the Singh Sabha reformation movement, he dedicated his life wholeheartedly to return contemporary Sikh identity to its foundational roots as present in the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth.

Despite his desire to return to a fundamental Sikh identity, Bhai Vir Singh …

Island Voices, Sarah Hirsch

Honors Theses

A story that’s actually a series of poems, told somewhat by the people themselves but mostly as it is seen by the ocean, which narrates lovingly, scathingly, honestly, feelingly.

To Be Alive - Is Power: Fullers Feminine Ideal Realized In Dickinsons Poems, Emma A. Krosschell

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between nineteenth-century American feminism, transcendentalism, and poetry through an analysis of Margaret Fuller’s essay Woman in the Nineteenth Century in tandem with Emily Dickinson’s collected poems. Fuller presents an original type of feminist optimism influenced by the precepts of the American transcendentalist movement. Her essay employs the transcendental belief in the possibility for human semi-divinity in order to proclaim that women, rather than men, possess unique potential for transcendence. As a result, Fuller theorizes that with women’s social, sexual, and intellectual liberation, a certain ideal woman will be able to transcend not only women’s limited …

The Political Properties: Pro- And Anti-Augustan Readings Of Propertius Book Four, Matthew Angelosanto

Honors Theses

Propertius was a Roman elegist writing during the early years of Augustus’ reign as emperor. His fourth and final book of elegies has long confounded scholars due to its drastic shift in subject matter from love elegy to aetiology. So, too, did the poet’s political stance seem to change: vehemently anti-Augustus in his earlier books, a number of poems in his fourth seem to extol both the sociopolitical climate of Augustan Rome as well as the emperor himself. But should we take the poet’s words at face value? In light of his inexplicable change in political allegiance, this thesis examines …

Le Moi Double: Les Inconscients (Post)Coloniaux Chez Césaire Et Breton, Emma A. Krosschell

Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the poetic works of two French-speaking surrealist poets of the twentieth century, Aimé Césaire and André Breton. Despite their common point of surrealism, Césaire and Breton's poems differ because of their identities in a society afflicted by Western colonization. Using the literary theories of postcolonialism as a perspective for the analysis of Breton and Césaire's poems, I show that both men have a double consciousness based on the complicated influence of a colonizing society. Literary criticism of postcolonialism examines individual identities in colonial societies in relation to their symbolic position as "colonist" or "colonized." Césaire, a Martinican …

The Female Language Barrier: A Close Reading Of The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson And Adrienne Rich, Annmarie Faiella

Honors Theses

Historically, the First Amendment right to free speech was limited to certain groups. Language, although constitutionally guaranteed since 1776, has not always been a freedom for everyone. Among those at language's mercy are immigrants, slaves, and women. Women's speech was limited not by a lack of knowledge, but by a societal acceptance of women as inferior.

What then do women do to overcome this ever-present chasm? What women did in the nineteenth century, the 1960s, and are still doing today is: write more creatively. The tighter the restraint of language, the more inventive the woman must be to use it …

A Close Look At Two Poems By Richard Wilbur, Jay Curlin

Honors Theses

For the past three semesters, I have had the pleasure of studying the techniques of prosody under the tutelage of Dr. John Wink. In this study, I have read a large amount of poetry and have studied several books on prosody, the most influential of which was Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell. This splendid book increased vastly my knowledge of poetry, and through it and other books, I became a much more sensitive, intelligent reader of poems.

The problem with my study came when I tried to decide how to in­corporate what I had learned into a …

Reflections Of A Lost Harmony In Seventeenth Century Poetry, Cathy Perkins

Honors Theses

During the seventeenth century man continued to hold onto comfortable old of the "Elizabethan world picture," but the impact of the new science grew steadily. Donne and Wilton both used images from the old world view and the new discoveries; but in the final analysis they both rejected worldly system and turned to faith. Many seventeenth century poets turned to faith, perhaps as an answer to their despair. For Donne and Wilton the harmony was lost. In "The First Anniversary," Donne wrote that harmony had died and that the new ideas made everything questionable. Wilton's Adam and Eve fell from …