Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Italian Australian Studies: A (Post)Colonial Perspective, Gerry Turcotte, Gaetano Rando

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This chapter introduces the volume and discusses related theoretical issues. This volume seeks to map an understanding of the Italian experience onto the broader picture of diasporic stories, though with an anchor in the Australian-Italian experience. It brings together key essays and testimonials that frame a picture of Italy’s rich legacy at “home”, in Europe more widely, and in the (post)colonial sphere, with a particular emphasis on the Australian experience. The essays collected here focus on the way an Italian Australian story has emerged and evolved in its own unique way. In some respects it might be possible to defi …

Expressions Of The Calabrian Diaspora In Calabrian Australian Writing, Gaetano Rando

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This chapter is an exhaustive study of literary works, memoirs, theatre and film produced by first and second generation Calabrian Australians.

Mai Lontan Dal Cuore — Manifestazioni E Trasmutazioni Del Rapporto Con Il Paese Di Origine, Gaetano Rando, Gerry Turcotte

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The field of Italian Australian studies is both diverse and dynamic. It has embraced topics from outside its “traditional” ambit and has identified new areas of concern to scholars in the field. This volume examines from a post-colonial perspective one of the many and varied cultural practices — the creation of literary texts — established by migrants from Sicily and Calabria who constitute the two major Italian regional groups in Australia. In re-creating aspects of their inhabited past in their new frontier thereby lessening the threat of loss and reconciling their past with their present, these migrants have created a …

Cronotopi Del Paese Natio E Di Quello D’Adozione Nella Poesia E La Narrativa Calabroaustraliana, Gitano Rando

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Il saggio di Gaetano Rando prende lo spunto dal lavoro fondamentale di Pasquino Crupi che maestralmente indica la strada non solo per lo studio della cultura letteraria calabroitaliana ma anche la produzione letteraria e culturale dei Calabresi nel mondo, Australia compresa. In contrapposizione agli studi precedenti sulla letteratura italoaustraliana che hanno trattato il fenomeno nei suoi aspetti globali il saggio di Rando propone un esame capillare dei tratti distintivi e delle esperienze localizzate che segnano la produzione letteraria degli scrittori di origine calabrese. Collegando tale produzione al concetto bakhtiniano del cronotopo che si basa sull’idea che le dimensioni spaziali e …

Realists And Reformers In The Nineteenth Century, Claudia Stokes

English Faculty Research

Amid the violence and tensions of contemporary globalization, it is perhaps unsurprising that American literary historians of the last decade have been preoccupied by literary transnationalism. As with the work of such critics as Anna Brickhouse, Wai Chee Dimock, and Kirsten Silva Gruesz (among many others), this field of research has carefully exposed the international contexts of American literature and put pressure on the nationalist borders that have always delimited literary history. Amanda Claybaugh’s new book, The Novel of Purpose, is a worthy contribution to this growing field of transnational literary history.

An Existentialist Interpretation Of Four Novels By Alberto Moravia, Megan Chiusaroli

Honors College Theses

This analysis seeks to explore the existential qualities in four novels by Alberto Moravia: The Time of Indifference, The Woman of Rome, The Conformist, and Boredom

Blasted’S Hysteria: Rape, Realism, And The Thresholds Of The Visible, Kim Solga

Department of English Publications

A curious blind spot remains in the critical response to Sarah Kane’s Blasted : the rape of Cate by Ian. In a play famous for its onstage violence, why is this rape, one of its pivotal moments of brutality, left unstaged? My article seeks to worry this lacuna by exploring the theoretical and historical dimensions of the ‘‘missing’’ in Kane’s play. I argue that Kane’s representation of Cate’s rape as missing signals both her engagement with the history of rape’s representation – an elusive, evasive history rather than an outrageous, in-yer-face one – as well as a deft understanding of …

El Impacto De "Viernes" En La Poesía Venezolana, William Martínez

World Languages and Cultures

This essay presents a historical review of the poetic production in Venezuela in the 30's and 40's. It reviews the role that "Viernes," a poetic group, had in developing the modern literary movements in Venezuelan literature. The impact that several members of the group had while in and then later after their departure from the group is examined. Equally, the poetic influences inherited by the group, both national and international, are discussed. Finally, the essay deals with the dissolution of the group and its impact in the literature of Venezuela and Latin America after World War II.

Abandoned To Lust: Sexual Slander And Ancient Christianity – By Jennifer Wright Knust [Review Of The Book Abandoned To Lust: Sexual Slander And Ancient Christianity By J. W. Knust], Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

The author argues that accusations of sexual depravity in early Christian literature, whatever their historical value, must be placed in the broader context of Greco-Roman rhetorical traditions in which charges of sexual deviance were stock elements of rhetorical slander. The first chapter, “Sexual Slander and Ancient Invective,” shows the degree to which the discourses of status and gender were intertwined in the Greco-Roman world. In this context, accusations of sexual deviance served the construction and maintenance of an elite identity understood as a male who is able to control his passions and avoid excess. In four subsequent chapters she tracks …

Living With Dying: Grief And Consolation In The Middle English Pearl, Karen A. Sylvia

Honors Projects

Analyzes the themes of grief and consolation in the Middle English poem, Pearl, and compares this work to Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy and Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess. Applies the five psychological stages of grieving identified by Kubler-Ross to the poem's Dreamer and concludes that, at the poem's end, the Dreamer has failed to finish the grieving process.

Toward Salvation: Italo Calvino’S Wakeful Phenomenology, May C. Peckham

Senior Honors Projects

“Lightness.” The word remains inescapable when attending to the mysterious work of Italo Calvino. It appears elusively in the texts of his novels and acts as a catalyst to many of his critical endeavors. Calvino addresses most explicitly this concept of lightness in his collection of lectures entitled Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Although these lectures were never delivered, they exist as a testament to the idea that “the boundless universe of literature” contains “new avenues to be explored, both very recent and very ancient, styles and forms that can change our image of the world” (Six Memos 7-8). …

La Double Vie De Baudelaire: Le Trouble Bipolaire Et La Dépendance À L’Opium, Kristen Murphy

Senior Honors Projects

Charles Baudelaire (April 9th, 1821- August 31st,1867) the nineteenth century French poet, was an eccentric and scandalous character who pushed the boundaries of decency and literature quotidianly. Today he is considered the father of the modernist literary movements and is well respected in literary circles. However, during Baudelaire’s lifetime, his great work Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) was censored by the French government, he was constantly bankrupt, attempted suicide once, and was an opium addict. Charles Baudelaire did not lead a cheerful life and his works show this darkness. In Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire constantly refers …

Perpetuality In Print: Musing Nature In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar, Kacey Silvia

Senior Honors Projects

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another …

The Power Of Ridicule: An Analysis Of Satire, Megan Leboeuf

Senior Honors Projects

Satire is an art form that has existed throughout recorded history. Examples of satirical work exist from long before the genre had even been defined, and this powerful tool for social critique is alive and well today, perhaps even more prevalent than ever. The use of absurdity and often humor to demonstrate the problems with a particular human behavior, vice, or social issue makes satire engaging and persuasive in a way that a direct statement of the facts is not. These qualities make satire the perfect tool for advocating social and political change in times of unrest. In recent years, …

Writers Of The Harlem Renaissance At Odds: Wright And Hurston's Different Approaches, Sarah L. Labbe

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This thesis speaks about “The Harlem Renaissance”, which is generally believed to have begun in the 1920’s, ending in the late 1930’s just before the Great Depression. During the Harlem Renaissance black people began to express themselves as a distinct culture. This expression took on many different forms; visual arts, music, literature, and theater. There were two general phases of the Harlem Renaissance. The first phase, 1921-1924, was the “Propaganda phase…to reveal the humanity of—and, thereby, validate—the African-American race through the strength of its arts and letters” (West 202). Thus this early stage was to show that blacks were feeling …

Writing And Imitation: Greek Education In The Greco-Roman World, Rubén R. Dupertuis

Religion Faculty Research

The imitation of a handful of accepted literary models lies at the core of the Greco-Roman educational process throughout all of its stages. While at the more advanced levels the relationship to models became more nuanced, the underlying principle remained the imitation of those authors who had achieved greatness. Quintilian explains the rationale as follows:

For there can be no doubt that in art no small portion of our task lies in imitation, since although invention came first and is all-important, it is expedient to imitate whatever has been invented with success. And it is a universal rule of life …

Book Review: Theodoret Of Cyrus, Randall L. Mckinion

Biblical and Theological Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Paraíso Perdido, Paraíso Inventado. La Idealización Del Paraíso En La Literatura Latinoamericana: Un Comentario A Manera De Observaciones, William Martínez

World Languages and Cultures

This essay attempts to present a commentary about the notion of paradise in Latin America, as a whole, with a quick review of literature produced in the last 500 years. The image of paradise arises with Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean. In his letters to the Spanish Crown, Columbus creates the myth of paradise in the Caribbean, an image that never existed and, yet, still appears today within Latin American Literature. In several literary periods the image is re-invented and transformed. The essay deals with the evolution of the notions of paradise, questioning, at the end, a possible future regarding …

Germany And Its Others (Fall 2007) (Whitman College), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This course was taught by Robert Tobin at Whitman College. Professor Tobin worked at Whitman for 18 years as associate dean of the faculty and chair of the humanities, and was named Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.

"In this course, we will be investigating how German culture has defined itself against its others: If Germany has defined itself in opposition to the East, is it Western? If Germany has defined itself in opposition to the South, has it escaped the legacy of Rome? Or is it a developed country? How did Germany's relationship to its colonies structure its self-image? …

The French Faulkner: Vision, Instrumentality, And Sanctuary's 'Lake Of Ink', Peter Lurie

English Faculty Publications

Like Edgar Allan Poe and the American film noir, William Faulkner enjoyed a critical reception in France that anticipated his American audience by several years. While not the first critics to admire Faulkner’s writing, readers like Maurice Coindreau, Andre Malraux, and Jean-Paul Sartre were among the earliest readers to recognize a particular quality to his fiction, one that, especially in the case of certain novels, evaded Faulkner’s contemporary American readers. As certain examples of this cross-cultural acceptance demonstrate, such as Baudelair’s translation of Poe in the nineteenth century and his exalting of Poe as a poetic genius, or Raymond …

The Fairy Tale (Spring 2007) (Whitman College), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This course was taught by Robert Tobin at Whitman College. Professor Tobin worked at Whitman for 18 years as associate dean of the faculty and chair of the humanities, and was named Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.

"In this course, we will study one of the most appealing and enigmatic literary forms in human history: the fairy tale. Although focused on the German tradition, we will strive for a sense of the international and intercultural context of the tales. We will approach the tales from a variety of perspectives - structuralist, historical, sociological, and feminist among others. In the …

Language, Gender And Identity In The Works Of Louise Bennett And Michelle Cliff, Nicole Branca

Honors Projects

Examines the writings of two female, Jamaican authors, Louise Bennett and Michelle Cliff. Bennett flourished during the period of de-colonization and independence for Jamaica, while Cliff came into prominence after Jamaican independence. Shows how both writers played an important role in helping Jamaica establish a national identity by focusing on multiple dimensions of what it means to be Jamaican, including issues of language, gender, and identity.

Childhood Trauma And Its Reverberations In Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

Novelist Bebe Moore Campbell was only five when Emmett Till was murdered on August 28, 1955. But in Your Blues Ain't Like Mine (1992) she seeks to answer the question that black teenagers in Mississippi, and indeed many people from all over the United States, asked after seeing the photograph of Till's mutilated and bloated body: "How could they do that to him? He's only a boy" (Dittmer 58). Campbell embraces the view that Lillian Smith expressed in Killers of the Dream (1949): "The warped, distorted frame we have put around every Negro child from birth is around every white …

"Twinned Brothers": The Parallel Personalities Of Timon And Hamlet, Amanda Machado

Honors Projects

Examines Shakespeare's play, Timon of Athens, in relation to Hamlet through a psychoanalytical and New Historical comparion of the two protagonists. Shows parallels between these characters in their behavior, illusions of reality, and inability to cope with loss of their illusions. Suggests that Timon may be a later reimagining of Hamlet.

The Man-Made Disaster: Fire In Cities In The Medieval Middle East, Anna Akasoy

Publications and Research

Considering the building materials and climatic conditions in the medieval Middle East, fires must have been a major problem. This article provides a first survey of sources which are relevant for studying the impact of fires in urban environments. Evidence can be found, for example, in historiographies such as Ibn Kathīr's The Beginning and the End, or in legal discussions. Most fires mentioned in these sources were caused during riots or war, or by accidents in markets. The article also analyses how far fires fit into the general pattern of discussions around disasters in medieval Arabic literature.