American Literature Commons^™

Religion: A Repertoire Of Earth Ethics – A Study On The Ecospiritual Dimensions In Refuge: An Unnatural History Of Family And Place By Terry Tempest Williams, Nissi Karunya Ms., Shanthi K. Dr.

Between the Species

Ecological crisis, a contemporary reality has triggered a paradigm shift in human thinking and discourse. Greening of religion is a novel approach to the interpretation of religious literature. The purpose of this study is to identify how literature reflects religious ethics centred on ecology and it brings out perspectives of religion regarding environmental conservation. Through a close reading of the literary text Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams, this paper aims to validate how the ecological ethics of religions can be a solution to environmental crisis and how this ecological reformation in spirituality should …

The Impact Of Family Environment And Religion In Purple Hibiscus And Beloved, Thoa Phan

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the repercussions of slavery-induced dehumanization and trauma depicted in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and explores Kambili’s stifling home life characterized by her father’s rigid Catholicism in Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Morrison’s Beloved emphasizes the importance of personal engagement with the history of slavery so as to fully comprehend its horrors and overcome them. In Purple Hibiscus, the paper investigates the role religion plays in causing trauma, as Eugene’s strict adherence to Catholicism and dismissal of traditional rituals inflict both physical and psychological pain on his family. The complex and multifaceted depiction of religion in these novels …

Sacred Earth: The Role Of The Natural Divine Within Wendell Berry's "Manifesto", T. Greyson Gurley Ma

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Kentuckian writer and poet, Wendell Berry, is often associated with environmental literature and advocacy. However, often overlooked, much of Berry’s work is inherently religious in nature, specifically Christian. Berry’s poetry expresses many of his personal beliefs regarding life, spirituality, religion, interconnection, stewardship, and agriculture. In particular, Berry often uses characters to communicate these aforementioned personal ideas. This practice can be seen through his utilization of the character of the Mad Farmer within a great deal of his poetry, including poetry dedicated to the Mad Farmer himself. Although this character expresses many of the same beliefs as Berry, he is not …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

The Christian Right In Translation: Christian Conservative Discourse In Contemporary American Literature, Elizabeth Richardson Duke

English Theses and Dissertations

Religion in contemporary American politics and religion in contemporary American Literature: are they independent phenomena? Literary scholars have largely assumed so. Scholars have attended to nontraditional, liberal religion in postwar American literature, while overlooking how this literature represents and critiques the rise of the Christian Right. Since white evangelical and fundamentalist Christians allied with the Republican party in the late 1970s, Christian conservatives have transformed American politics. As the GOP’s most influential interest group, the Christian Right has set the terms for many of the last four decades’ most contentious and consequential debates. Historians, political scientists, and contemporary American writers …

Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky

Theses and Dissertations

This paper theorizes that authors, in an act I have termed “literary exorcism,” project and expunge parts of their identities that are in conflict with the overriding political agenda of their texts, into the figure of the villain. Drawing upon theories of power put forth by Judith Butler, I argue that this sort of projection arises in reaction to dominant ideas and institutions, but that authors find ways to manipulate this process over time. By examining a broad cross-section of English-language literature over several centuries, this phenomenon and its evolution can be observed, as well as the means by which …

Abdurraqib, Samaa, Iris Sangiovanni, Samar Ahmed

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Samaa Abdurraqib is a Black, queer, Muslim woman living in Portland, Maine. Abdurraqib was raised in Columbus, Ohio. She attend the University of Ohio, and later the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a PhD in English Literature. After graduating she worked as a visiting professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Next she went on to work the American Civil Liberties Union in Maine as a reproductive rights organizer. She now works for the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Her advocacy and organizing work has included places such as Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine, …

Flannery O'Connor's Protestant Grace, Emily Strong

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Flannery O’Connor has long been known for the didactic Catholic message in her literature. However, upon closer study we may find that there are Protestant themes in O’Connor’s portrayal of grace. This paper explores the differences between Catholic and Protestant grace, examines the Protestant themes that can be found in her texts “Greenleaf,” “Revelation,” and “The Lame Shall Enter First,” and offers possible explanations as to why these Protestant themes exist in her literature.

Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives Of (Ec)Centric Religion In The Works Of Faulkner, O’Connor, And Hurston, Craig D. Slaven

Theses and Dissertations--English

This project explores the ways in which key literary texts reproduce, undermine, or otherwise engage with cultural narratives of the so-called Bible Belt. Noting that the evangelicalism that dominated the South by the turn of the twentieth century was, for much of the antebellum period, a relatively marginal and sometimes subversive movement in a comparatively irreligious region, I argue that widely disseminated images and narratives instilled a false sense of nostalgia for an incomplete version of the South’s religious heritage. My introductory chapter demonstrates how the South’s commemorated “Old Time” religion was not especially old, and how this modernist construct …

Wrestling With Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry, Paul T. Corrigan

Paul T. Corrigan

In the current “secular age,” more and more people find beliefs and behaviors associated with traditional religion intellectually and ethically untenable. At the same time, many “postsecular” writers, both believers and nonbelievers, continue to write with religious or religiously-inflected forms, themes, and purposes. In the United States, postsecular poets “wrestle with angels” by engaging constructively and deconstructively with matters traditionally considered the domain of religion and spirituality. While the recent work of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, John McClure and others puts the concept of the postsecular at the cutting edge of various fields of study, including religion, sociology, and literature, …

Murton, Jessie Wilmore (Jones), 1886-1973 (Mss 439), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Collection 439. Correspondence, writings, scrapbooks, and financial records of Kentucky native and poet Jessie Wilmore Murton. Although born and raised in Kentucky, she spent most of her adult life in Battle Creek, Michigan. Her poetry and prose was published in several solo books and anthologies and appeared extensively in religious publications of the mid-twentieth century. The contents of Box 9 Folder 7 related to the League for Sanity in Poetry has been scanned and can be accessed by clicking on "Additional Files" below.

Organic Angels: Innocence, Conversion, And Consumption In The Antebellum American Novel, Laura Jean Schrock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Midcentury American novelists variously reworked the traditional conversion narrative to reflect a marked cultural shift in attitude towards human "nature," newly conceived as innocent and inclined to salvation. This liberalized aesthetic of conversion takes shape through the trope of the "organic angel," a developmental female figure whose journey from childhood innocence to saintly womanhood merges the processes of sexual maturation and Protestant conversion. Because she purifies self-interested desire by redirecting it towards spiritual ends, the organic angel provides a symbolic reconciliation of the young nation's budding imperial capitalism with its millennial expectations. While traditional emphasis on a maternal ethos at …

Wrestling With Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry, Paul T. Corrigan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the current “secular age,” more and more people find beliefs and behaviors associated with traditional religion intellectually and ethically untenable. At the same time, many “postsecular” writers, both believers and nonbelievers, continue to write with religious or religiously-inflected forms, themes, and purposes. In the United States, postsecular poets “wrestle with angels” by engaging constructively and deconstructively with matters traditionally considered the domain of religion and spirituality. While the recent work of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, John McClure and others puts the concept of the postsecular at the cutting edge of various fields of study, including religion, sociology, and literature, …

Ishmael's Doubts And Intuitions, Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

No abstract provided.

The Marriage Of Science And Religion, Saurabh Kumar '14

2013 Spring Semester

At the end of A Canticle for Leibowitz, written by Walter M. Miller, Jr., the dropping of Lucifer and the resulting repetition of past destruction displays that there is an inherent flaw in the book’s futuristic society. The technological and scientific revival of a world that once repudiated knowledge is remarkable. However, the divergence of science and religion has caused humanity to use the power that comes with knowledge as irresponsibly as it did in the Flame Deluge. Mendelsohn states that, in speculative fiction, “religion is repeatedly depicted as dangerous, diverging humans from the path of reason and …

Godly Heretics: Essays On Alternative Christianity In Literature And Popular Culture, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

"When computers freeze, they are "rebooted" and soon working properly again. Similarly, legendary thinkers throughout history have argued that Christianity should start fresh by recapturing the humanitarian spirit of Jesus' original message. These include such disparate individuals as Thomas Jefferson, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, and the religious leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Surprisingly enough, even classic television shows and films meant to be entertaining--Lost, Battlestar Galactica, It's a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day, Decalogue, and A Charlie Brown Christmas--are attempts to apply the basic principles of Christianity to modern times. …

Postcolonial Religion And Motherhood In The Novels By Louise Erdrich And Alice Walker, Kateryna Chornokur

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the works of the Native American author Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, Tracks) and the African American writer Alice Walker (The Color Purple). Originating from different cultural traditions, Native American and African American women writers address common themes in their novels because of their common colonial background. One of the main themes in their writings is that of religion. Despite becoming victims of Christianity used as a means of cultural colonization, both African American and Native American communities reinterpret it in terms of their traditional religious beliefs and create a new, unique hybridized form …

Besson, Luc (1959- ), Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

Originally published in Encyclopedia of Religion and Film. Ed: Eric Mazur. ABC-CLIO, 2011

"Besson, Luc (1959- )" by Marc DiPaolo

To see more or purchase works by Marc DiPaolo, visit his Amazon page here: https://www.amazon.com/Marc-DiPaolo/e/B004LV7W6Y%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Vampires, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

Originally published in Encyclopedia of Religion and Film. Ed: Eric Mazur. ABC-CLIO, 2011

Vampires by Marc DiPaolo

To see more or purchase works by Marc DiPaolo, visit his Amazon page here: https://www.amazon.com/Marc-DiPaolo/e/B004LV7W6Y%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Sublett Family (Sc 146), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 146. Bill of Charles Sublett for tanning calf skin, 1808; tax receipt (fragment) to Charles Sublett, Warren County, Kentucky, 1817; promissory note signed by William Sublett, 1826; three notes on religious doctrine; scrapbook of articles and poems about Kentucky and Kentuckians compiled by Paul H. Murphy, 1932.

Crack'd Archangel: Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, The Bible, And Religious Difference In Melville's Fiction And Poetry, Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

Abstract for December 28, 2009 MLA Paper published in March 2010 Leviathan

Melville And Religious Experience, Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

Abstract for Melville Society panel at ALA 2010 on Melville and Religious Experience (I was the organizer and chair) published in October 2010 Leviathan

The Romance Of The Holy Land In American Travel Writing, 1790-1876, Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

This book is the first to engage with the full range of American travel writing about nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine, and the first to acknowledge the influence of the late-eighteenth-century Barbary captivity narrative on nineteenth-century travel writing about the Middle East. Brian Yothers argues that American travel writing about the Holy Land forms a coherent, if greatly varied, tradition, which can only be fully understood when works by major writers such as Twain and Melville are studied alongside missionary accounts, captivity narratives, chronicles of religious pilgrimages, and travel writing in the genteel tradition. Yothers also examines works by lesser-known authors such …

Fade To Black: The Failure Of Sacrifice In Faulkner's Light In August, Peter J. Goodwin

Peter J Goodwin

Faulkner's Light in August examines the vexed and volatile relationship between religion, justice, and personal and national violence. Drawing on the work of Girard, Bataille, and Mauss, I unearth the symbolic and cultural roots of sacrifice in the novel, concluding that Faulkner was deeply critical of any admixture of church and state. Faulkner depicts racial lynching as the sin of a society thirsty for vengeance, recklessly appropriating scraps of both religious sacrifice and secular justice, and hence unable to realize the peace-restoring aims of either tradition.