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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Reason For The Rampage: Aggrieved Entitlement And White Masculinities, Amira Silverman
A Reason For The Rampage: Aggrieved Entitlement And White Masculinities, Amira Silverman
Sociology Senior Seminar Papers
As mass shootings events continue to occur with alarming frequency in the United States, scholars search for explanations, turning frequently to a dynamic referred to as aggrieved entitlement to explain why shooters are so often white men. This study attempts to continue work expanding the concept of aggrieved entitlement and its applicability across continuums of violence by proposing a preliminary quantitative measure for the dynamic. Survey data from the 1996 General Social Survey is utilized to create an index of aggrieved entitlement which is then compared with sex, race, region, and religion. It is hypothesized that on an index of …
The Philosophy Of Environmental Revolution: Walden, The Unabomber, And Finding Existential Purpose In Nature, Seth Westerman
The Philosophy Of Environmental Revolution: Walden, The Unabomber, And Finding Existential Purpose In Nature, Seth Westerman
English Honors Theses
The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski shares a unique overlap in philosophy with beloved American author Henry David Thoreau. This paper analyzes Kaczynski’s manifesto and message in comparison with ideas found in Thoreau’s Walden. Both writers present the rise of industrialization in their contemporary periods as an urgent problem, and write the return to a more primitive life within nature as a solution for the existential anxieties brought upon by modernity. Also discussed are the ethics of their revolutionary actions, and environmental revolution as a whole.
"Wake Up In Moloch:" Modernity, "Howl," And The Beats' Spiritual Quest, Felix Freeland
"Wake Up In Moloch:" Modernity, "Howl," And The Beats' Spiritual Quest, Felix Freeland
English Honors Theses
This capstone seeks to shed light on the spiritual nature of the Beat Generation's philosophy, using Ginsberg's poem "Howl" as a primary text. By first comparing Beat spirituality to the transcendental poetry of Whitman and then comparing their belief to Kierkegaard's idea of Faith, I demonstrate that Beat spirituality is a reaction to and protest against the ethics of secular, American Modernity.
"You Your Best Thing”: The Anti-Colonial Power Of The Mind In Black And Chicanx American Literature, Grace Keir
"You Your Best Thing”: The Anti-Colonial Power Of The Mind In Black And Chicanx American Literature, Grace Keir
English Honors Theses
In the year 1987, two of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, Toni Morrison and Gloria Anzaldúa, published what many consider to be their respective magnum opuses: Morrison’s Beloved and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. In these groundbreaking texts, Morrison and Anzaldúa boldly confront the complex legacies of American imperialism and slavery, examining the effect colonization has had on their respective communities, ancestors, and selves. In this essay, I argue that literature emerging from marginalized communities within the United States can and should be considered among global postcolonial texts; Morrison and Anzaldúa illustrate the ways …
Carpenters: A Short Story Collection, Grace Keir
Carpenters: A Short Story Collection, Grace Keir
English Honors Theses
This collection of four short stories explores the interfamilial dynamics and internalized traumas of womanhood across three generations of mothers, sisters, and daughters. In doing so, these stories confront the raw, painful, and beautiful lives and experiences of women and girls.
Adapting To Adaptation: Turning Ya Literature Into Television, Adam Weinreb
Adapting To Adaptation: Turning Ya Literature Into Television, Adam Weinreb
English Honors Theses
I have always loved film and television, whether for casual consumption or academic pursuits. Throughout my time as an English and American Studies double major (and almost a Media and Film Studies minor), I have opted to study film and TV at every chance I could. In my junior year I began writing my own film, and I completed that film in the first half of senior year. When entering my final year of the English major and faced with making a decision surrounding my capstone, I was simultaneously deciding whether or not to pursue graduate studies in screenwriting. As …
Human Monsters/Monstrous Humans: Victorian Gothic Constructions Of Unnamed Monsters In Wuthering Heights And The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Madeline Bonin
English Honors Theses
This capstone centers around the production of monsters in the genre of the Victorian Gothic. I specifically examine Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and Mr. Hyde from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. By exploring the structure of these Gothic works, I argue that monsters, specifically the monsters that fall under Maria Beville’s definition of the unnamed monster, are beings that embody and challenge the categories of person, animal, and thing. I argue that these characters’ Otherness is the catalyst for this inability to be categorized by investigating the ways that …
The Other Eve: How Reading Lilith Reveals The Maternal Gothic, Emma Berkowitz
The Other Eve: How Reading Lilith Reveals The Maternal Gothic, Emma Berkowitz
English Honors Theses
“The Other Eve” uses the figure of Lilith to inform a new way of analyzing and reading Gothic novels. After a detailed survey of the mythology of Lilith, I show how she appears in the novels Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Dracula by Bram Stoker. Discovering Lilith in these novels uncovers a mode of the Gothic that I call Maternal Gothic which uses threats to maternity and anti-maternal figures to excite and scare the reader.
Within A Farewell, Elsa Schollmaier
Within A Farewell, Elsa Schollmaier
English Honors Theses
This lyric nonfiction capstone grapples with identity, loss, innocence, love, and the ways of the world (much like all other literary works). I see the influences on my mind without judgement, feigning to understand where exactly the ideas originate. I realize no story can be just mine, so I live within the area of uncertainty, or, may I say, the farewell to certainty.
Origin Of Doubts: The Victorian Quest For Proof And Radical Manifestations Of Spirit, Holly O'Byrne
Origin Of Doubts: The Victorian Quest For Proof And Radical Manifestations Of Spirit, Holly O'Byrne
English Honors Theses
Victorians critics have deemed the nineteenth century in England “a crisis of faith.” In the face of dissatisfaction with the Church of England, people rejected organized religion and turned to alternative spirituality like Natural Supernaturalism and Corporeal Spiritualism. The motivation for this paper began with the questions: why were people leaving the church and what were they finding in these other spiritual practices? I argue that the question of belief, for Victorians, became a question of proof. Darwin’s 1859 publication On the Origin of Species presented a theory about the world through a scientific argument containing a hypothesis, evidence, and …
Local, Jane Barnes
Local, Jane Barnes
English Honors Theses
"Local" is a collection of poems broken into five sections: Locale, Catholicism, Maman, Death & Ghosts, and an epilogue. This collection explores the particular milieu of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and focuses on my experiences attending a Catholic school there and the deaths and losses I dealt with during that time. A number of these poems follow a long, narrative style and employ a confessional tone; the locale of rural Pennsylvania is present, either directly or indirectly as an undercurrent, in every piece. It was heavily influenced by Gwendolyn Brooks' work cultivating a poetic locale in her works, such as "A Street …
Dirty London: How Victorian Filth Formed The Urban Detective, Hannah Curtis
Dirty London: How Victorian Filth Formed The Urban Detective, Hannah Curtis
English Honors Theses
This capstone focuses on the prevalence of physical dirt and moral corruption in Victorian London. By examining the methods of the Victorian detective, this work illuminates the connection between moral and physical filth. Works examined Include A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Blue Harbor (A Linked Story Collection), Sam Florsheim
Blue Harbor (A Linked Story Collection), Sam Florsheim
English Honors Theses
Blue Harbor is a series of linked stories about the lives of people from a fictional town on the coast of Maine. These stories focus on the strangeness of small town life and the emotional, human moments that lead to personal growth.
A Social Change-Maker And A Dreamer: Olive Schreiner’S Figures For An Ideal Future, Jessica Ampel
A Social Change-Maker And A Dreamer: Olive Schreiner’S Figures For An Ideal Future, Jessica Ampel
English Honors Theses
Social activist, theorist, and author Olive Schreiner dreamed and demanded that others dream as well. Living in the Victorian era, a time of extreme change but also rigid cultural values, she dreamed about an ideal future characterized by gender equality, sexual equality, and racial equality not just in her own “homes” of England and South Africa, but globally. However, for Schreiner, dreaming was not enough; we must act on our dreams in order to make the necessary social change to reach an ideal future. Schreiner acted on her own dreams for social change throughout her life by theorizing, joining important …
A Social Change-Maker And A Dreamer: Olive Schreiner’S Figures For An Ideal Future, Jessica Ampel
A Social Change-Maker And A Dreamer: Olive Schreiner’S Figures For An Ideal Future, Jessica Ampel
Periclean Honors Forum Scholar Award Winners
Social activist, theorist, and author Olive Schreiner dreamed and demanded that others dream as well. Living in the Victorian era, a time of extreme change but also rigid cultural values, she dreamed about an ideal future characterized by gender equality, sexual equality, and racial equality not just in her own “homes” of England and South Africa, but globally. However, for Schreiner, dreaming was not enough; we must act on our dreams in order to make the necessary social change to reach an ideal future. Schreiner acted on her own dreams for social change throughout her life by theorizing, joining important …
Embodying Everyman: Allegory In Medieval And Contemporary Performance, Cara Geser
Embodying Everyman: Allegory In Medieval And Contemporary Performance, Cara Geser
English Honors Theses
Many scholars and theater artists accuse the Middle English morality play Everyman of being "tedious," "dry," or just plain "boring" due to its overt literal, religious, and dramatic allegory. However, when allegorical modes are placed in the theatrical sphere, an inherently fictional space curated for the purposes of exploration, allegory can yield discovery through personal interpretation achieved through theatrical meaning-making. This paper provides a deep examination of allegory, specifically in performance and in Everyman, arguing in favor of its relevance through prompting reevaluations and yielding subsequent revelations.
Repressing Deviance: The Discourse Of Sexuality In The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde And The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, Olivia Blake Mendlinger
Repressing Deviance: The Discourse Of Sexuality In The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde And The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, Olivia Blake Mendlinger
English Honors Theses
Michael Foucault postulates that Victorians of the late nineteenth century were experts at repressing their sexuality. This repression is especially evident in the passing of the Criminal Amendment Act of 1885, also known as the Labouchere Amendment, which outlawed homosexuality in Victorian England. However, as with any subjugated topic, there will be those that fight against the ruling power. The genre of the Victorian Gothic provides an outlet of deviance for the sexually “Othered,” as a place of protest against Victorian repression. Gothic writers showcase war within man’s soul when repression forces those labeled as “Other” to become dark monsters …
A Ray Of Moonlight Falls: Casting Light On Oscar Wilde's Dissident Decadence, Hannah Rose Sacks
A Ray Of Moonlight Falls: Casting Light On Oscar Wilde's Dissident Decadence, Hannah Rose Sacks
English Honors Theses
This thesis follows the work of Oscar Wilde, tracking his poetic prose in conjunction with his dissidence against societal expectations in the late Victorian era. Works analyzed include The Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome, The Happy Prince, De Profundis, and others.