Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Timeless Moments: Russell Kirk, Charles Williams, And Stephen King On The Afterlife, Camilo Peralta

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

What happens to us after death is one of the oldest and most difficult questions. Even the standard response of many Christians, that we go to either Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, can only partly satisfy, because while we experience the passing of time in a linear manner, those places are said to exist completely outside of time. How, then, can it make sense to speak of “going” to Heaven or Hell after death? Must we not always and forever be there—even during our lifetimes? Russell Kirk, a Catholic historian from Michigan who often speculated about the afterlife in his fiction …

The Impact Of The Gut-Brain Axis On Alzheimer’S Disease, Elissa Wakim

Best Integrated Writing

Elissa’s review for the Graduate Biomedical Review focuses on the links between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain; the gut-brain axis and the development of Alzheimer’s disease. As a student in the Microbiology and Immunology Masters Program Elissa was particularly interested in the gut microbiota and their connection to neurodegenerative disease. She tidily reviewed the literature and wrote a fascinating and compelling piece of work.

Best Integrated Writing 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. This is the first issue after a 5 year hiatus.

Gender And Orality In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Nessa Ordukhani

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This essay explores the intersection of postmodernism and multiculturalism in Toni Morrison's novel, Song of Solomon. It delves into the destabilization of historical metanarratives by postmodernism through the theories of Jean-François Lyotard, which challenges the notion of a singular truth and questions who constructs popular historical narratives. The essay discusses the role of the victors, particularly white males, in shaping history and the process of legitimation through which historical facts are determined. It examines how Morrison's novel offers an alternative history that highlights African American perspectives and challenges the dominant white narrative. Additionally, the essay explores the tension between multiculturalism …

George R.R. Martin And The Fantasy Form (2019) By Joseph Rex Young And Tweaking Things A Little: Essays On The Epic Fantasy Of J.R.R. Tolkien And G.R.R. Martin (2023), By Thomas Honegger, Andrew Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Andrew Higgins of George R.R. Martin and the Fantasy Form (2019) by Joseph Rex Young and Tweaking Things a Little (2023) by Thomas Honegger

Developing And Sustaining A Graphic Scholarship Collection For Academic Libraries, Stewart Brower, Toni Hoberecht, Zane Ratcliffe, Bethie Seay

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

In early 2021, the Schusterman Library at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa satellite campus took a new step towards building a culture of interest by creating the Graphic Scholarship Collection. This new endeavor is a curated collection of graphic novels, primarily non-fiction, aligned with the academic programs on campus, as well as promoting University initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion. A new organizational structure for the collection materials and their circulation metrics will be examined in detail. There will also be consideration of the challenges of selection and acquisition by a mixed team of selectors, some of whom have no experience …

Detroit Poet Laureate: A Local And National Necessity, Rosemary O'Meara

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

From 1981–2020, Detroit officials appointed a city-recognized poet laureate. Though the position has been vacant since the 2020 death of Naomi Long Madgett, this essay advocates for reinstatement of a Detroit poet laureate to help spotlight important Detroit artists and to ensure that the words and ideas of Detroiters are sustained and celebrated. A poet laureate would continue to uniquely serve Detroit to help preserve its complex history and contribute to a literary canon specific to the city.

Double Consciousness, Mirrors, And The Children Within Them: A Conceptual Reading Of W. E. B. Du Bois's "As The Crow Flies", Adeline Navarro

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This research essay argues that W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crow from his magazine column “As the Crow Flies” is a figurative device for double consciousness and examines how aspects of double consciousness are present in the frequent motifs of dialectic doubleness in the column. Drawing from scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, this essay explores how the Crow functions as a mirror that children can use to realize their own double consciousness and thus see themselves. This insight into Du Bois’s news column provides a further understanding of the significance of accessible, multicultural children’s literature.

Women, Animals, Food: Planetary Perspectives On The Non-(Hu)Man, Samu/Elle Striewski

Comparative Woman

The paper comparatively reads Mahasweta Devi’s Pterodactyl, Pirtha, and Puran Sahay (1995) and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood (2009) to trace the ways in which both novels show the complex intertwinement of the climate crisis with gender, class, race, subalternity, anthropocentrism, and veganism. Bringing together Gayatri C. Spivak’s notion of “planetarity” with ecofeminist philosophy and literary criticism, the article proposes a planetary ecogender reading of the two texts and their representation of the non-man, non-human, and non-subject. Building up further on Jacques Derrida’s critique of carno-phallogocentrism, the pedagogy of a relational ethics of “nurturing” is hence presented …

Review Of Empire And Environment: Ecological Ruin In The Transpacific., Hanyue Li

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

A Book Review on Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific.

Review Of Beyond The Icon: Asian American Graphic Narratives By Eleanor Ty, Maite Urcaregui

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Re-Visions: Examining Narratives Of Asian American Mental Health, Kenji Aoki

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This paper examines the intersection between Asian American mental health and resilience tropes. While research has acknowledged that Asian Americans have disparate mental health gaps regarding mental health stigma and how Asian American young adults are the only racial group in which suicide is their leading cause of death, there has been limited study that attempts to directly convey Asian American voices beyond broad statistical or cultural generalizations. To supplement ongoing research and Asian American livelihoods, this essay conjectures and attempts to illuminate the histories, mental illness, and health narratives of Asian Americans, the good, the bad, the ugly, the …

Monstrous Matrilineage In Chinese American Literature, Leina Hsu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In this paper, I explore the monstrous relationships between Chinese American mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Bone by Fae Myenne Ng, and Severance: A Novel by Ling Ma. I employ monsters as metaphors and motifs that illustrate the womens’ genealogical trauma and resistance. By putting Chinese American matrilineages in a monstrous context, I elevate them as alternative knowledge sources that haunt the margins of Western society. In The Joy Luck Club, ghosts reveal the invisibility and survivor mindset of Chinese American immigrant mothers. For Bone, skeletons represent the unspoken trauma that plagues Chinese American …

Memory, Politics, And Literary Imagination In Viet Thanh Nguyen’S The Refugees, Jian Zhu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Despite the official conclusion of the Vietnam War, the struggle for remembrance and recollection endures. Within the pages of The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a transnational lens through which to examine the formation and contestation of collective memories between the United States and Vietnam. Despite its military defeat, the United States appropriated anti-communist ideology during the Cold War era to assimilate the refugee community, leveraging a discourse of “freedom and democracy” as a means to reshape historical narratives. In stark contrast, Vietnam commemorated its revolutionary struggle against imperialism through the establishment of museums, statues, and public cemeteries within …

The Modular Fiction Of Ken Liu, Elizabeth Lawrence

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Ken Liu is an influential translator of Chinese-language science fiction and an award winning author of original speculative fiction as well. His readers routinely observe that Liu draws on his Chinese heritage for world building and plot development. Less remarked upon are parallels between Liu’s creative process and modular production within Chinese literary and material culture. In this article, I explore these parallels through Liu’s wide-ranging fiction. The intent is not to pigeonhole Liu as a distinctly Chinese or Chinese American author – he has rejected such labels himself – but to universalize models of Chinese creative expression.

Course Design As Critical Creativity: Intersectional, Regional, And Demographic Approaches To Teaching Asian American Literatures, Thomas X. Sarmiento

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay offers a theoretical and reflective exploration of critically informed acts of creativity expressed in my course design for and teaching of Asian American literatures at a predominantly white, public land-grant, Midwestern university. I argue that teaching is both a creative and critical activity as it generates new ways of knowing and being through an assessment and curation of extant literary texts and scholarly discourses. Given my geographic, scholarly, and personal orientations, my course features intersectional, regional, and ethnically diverse perspectives that aim to queer what “Asian America/n” signifies. I hope my situated pedagogical insights inspire other scholar-teachers to …

David Henry Hwang’S Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography And Parody On Racial Stereotypes, Quan Manh Ha, Jacob Christiansen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Hwang’s play Yellow Face (2007), a dramaturgically inventive work, combines multiple narrative forms into a plot that blurs the distinction among social science, social commentary, and fiction. The play is simultaneously self-mocking and self-examining in its representation of the Asian American experience in theatre. It both examines Hwang’s own racial identity and boldly redefines conventional theatrical forms as the playwright places himself at the center of a highly embarrassing, fictional racial controversy in order to scrutinize the performativity of an Asian American identity. This article argues that Yellow Face is fictitious autoethnodrama as it acerbically parodies racialization.

"Loving You No Matter What You Do": Ai's Dramatic Monologues, 1970s Asian American Feminisms, And Reproductive Justice, Catherine Irwin

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay makes visible the 1970s involvement of Asian American and Women of Color feminists in reproductive justice. Grounded in the Asian American feminist praxis of remembering, this essay analyzes how three dramatic monologues by the Asian American mixed-race poet Ai engage with the discourses of reproduce justice set forth by Asian American and Women of Color activists leading up to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Using an Asian American feminist lens, this paper argues that the speakers in Ai’s monologues utilize these discourses circulating about abortion and women’s health care to construct images of the treatment of dispossessed …

In Praise Of Limes, Poets, And Mentors: A Conversation With Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Noelle Brada-Williams, Elizabeth Asborno

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Twelve: Counting Our Blessings, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Aaldp Cover Volume 12, Joanne Lamb

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Every Tongue Got To Confess: Zora Neale Hurston As Afrofuturist, Nicole Huff

Third Stone

To understand Hurston’s influence on the black speculative practice and engagement in Afrofuturist practice, we must first understand the period she was working within— the Harlem Renaissance.

Visual Afrofuturism And Dieselfunk In The Works Of Tim Fielder, Justin Wigard

Third Stone

Tim Fielder is, first and foremost, a visual Afrofuturist. This distinction is significant in understanding Fielder’s corpus, who works as an illustrator, cartoonist, concept artist, and even animator. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi alongside Jim, his twin brother, Fielder has become an ardent advocate, pioneer, and creator in the 21st-century Afrofuturist movement, creating visual representations of Black people overcoming past, present, and future systems of oppression, all within fantastic and speculative settings.

Octavia Butler: What Is Vision But Speculation Persevering?, Michael Stokes

Third Stone

Octavia Butler ends her short essay on writing, “Furor Scribendi” with a single word: persist. Her work and contribution to science fiction broadly and afrofuturism has been her work envisioning a multiplicity of futures--and what is vision but speculation that persisted? This annotated bibliography tracks several of Butler’s novels and short stories which were written as acts of speculation and which have persisted as key narratives for authors at the intersection of disability studies and Black women’s speculative practices.

Negative Estrangement: Fantasy And Race In The Drow And Drizzt Do’Urden, Steven Holmes

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This essay introduces the concept of negative estrangement to help understand current cultural interventions into the norms of depicting fantasy races. First, this essay builds on Shklovsky’s concept of estrangement to describe the literary practice of negative estrangement, wherein artists craft “more evil” foes based on hybridized amalgamations of stereotypes to create antipathy toward a subject, be it monster or fantasy race. This practice is sometimes used in service of confronting the issue of race and racism, despite seeming to reify or rearticulate racist stereotypes.

This essay builds on Tolkien’s argument in favor of creating “more evil” foes to exemplify …

Review Of Bitstreams: The Future Of Digital Literary Heritage, Kara Watts-Engley

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Literary production has always been tied to specific developments in technology. This has become all the more apparent since the advent of personal computing and our digital media age. How might an awareness of technology’s impact then affect the future of literary creation, critique, and preservation? For Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage, this is among the core questions of literary, archival, and bibliographic studies in the contemporary digital media age.

“Pristine Truth” Ecopsychology: The Natureness Remedy

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

As was best seller predicted by ecological science experts in 1949, (2a) most educated people today recognize that in personal, social and environmentally hurtful ways our senselessly abused lives increasingly are breaking our world. Although no core cause or remedy for this catastrophe is known, this “Natureness” article makes both available. Sadly, by continually omitting its special “Pristine Truth,” all the knowledge in the world can’t stop modern humanity’s suicidal mismanagement of Nature’s life as it flows around and through us. (2) Instead, our present-day conquer-Nature worldview teaches us to excessively disconnect from, exploit and illegally war against Nature’s flow …

New Coyote (Qomu'tsau) Stories: "About Time"

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

~The River~ (Poem By Raymond Carver)

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

"[...] Felt the hair rise as something touched my boot. Grew afraid at what I couldn’t see. Then of everything that filled my eyes— that other shore hung with heavy branches, the dark mountain range behind. [...]"

Recognizing Freedom: Zitkala-Ša's Fight For Native Citizenship, Camille J. Karpowitz

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Minority groups protesting and petitioning for civil rights have been fundamental to United States history. Before the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Zitkala-Ša, a Native American rights activist, positions herself as a voice for Native citizenship. Within the native community, however, the issue of citizenship was not as easily advocated for, due to past injustices perpetrated by the United States government. As a result, Zitkala-Ša has been labeled an assimilationist or one who connect to either Natives or Americans.

While her advocacy for citizenship does not go unnoticed by scholars, it is often ignored in her works outside of political …