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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Final Master's Portfolio, Ayotunde Afolabi
Final Master's Portfolio, Ayotunde Afolabi
Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects
This portfolio explores themes of gender and race, identity representation, and agency within various literary texts. It encapsulates a series of analytical essays that scrutinize how these themes intersect and manifest across diverse literary landscapes, emphasizing the ways in which authors address and challenge societal norms and structures through their narratives. Each essay within the portfolio not only mirrors the engagement with these themes but also showcases the development of a theoretical approach that bridges classical literary analysis with contemporary issues of identity politics and social justice.
Early Black Poetry, Social Justice, And Black Children: Receptions Of Child Activism In African American Literary History, Tabitha Lashay Joy Lowery
Early Black Poetry, Social Justice, And Black Children: Receptions Of Child Activism In African American Literary History, Tabitha Lashay Joy Lowery
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports
In spite of the substantial amount of critical work that has been produced on the recovery of early African American literature in the last few decades, our representations of black authors are still limited. Current studies of early African American poets privilege the identification of African American literature with resistance to slavery. This identification has persisted and has made the field one-dimensional. My dissertation provides reception histories of four early black poets—Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, Frances Harper, and Paul Laurence Dunbar—to argue for and present an expansive understanding of African American literature. A thorough examination of these authors’ circulation …
Imagining The Archive: Speculation As A Tool Of Archival Reconstruction, Marieclaire Graham
Imagining The Archive: Speculation As A Tool Of Archival Reconstruction, Marieclaire Graham
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis examines a speculative methodological approach towards restoring silenced Black voices in the archive. First, I will discuss the reasons why this work is necessary, exploring the various patterns of muting, distortion, erasure, and disenfranchisement that Black communities experience within the United States in both physical and written forms. The use of speculation specifically addresses the dehumanization that has followed the Black experience in the United States from the earliest violent incarnation of slavery, and creating the foundation of this kind of silencing allows us to understand why speculation, as opposed to other methodological models for archive restoration, is …
Suffering And The Black Female Narrative In The Twentieth Century, Aquilah Jourdain
Suffering And The Black Female Narrative In The Twentieth Century, Aquilah Jourdain
Dissertations and Theses
Adventure, romance, and happiness are not large parts of the stories Black women tell. If we had to name ten mainstream literary novels released in the last 50 years that featured Black women central to the plot — and included the aforementioned themes — we would be hard-pressed to find them. Though there are real life accounts of love, joy, and adventure in the lives of Black women, why do we see these life experiences documented sparingly? In the stories written by andforBlack women, where can Black female readers find joy in their history and culture without elements of grave …
"Deceptive Intimacy": Narration And Machismo In The Works Of Junot Díaz, Ellen Elizabeth Hill
"Deceptive Intimacy": Narration And Machismo In The Works Of Junot Díaz, Ellen Elizabeth Hill
Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects
No abstract provided.
Wayward Women, Macho Men: Linguistic Construction Of Gender Binaries In Yxta Maya Murray's Locas And Denise Chavez's Loving Pedro Infante, Stephanie Tangman
Wayward Women, Macho Men: Linguistic Construction Of Gender Binaries In Yxta Maya Murray's Locas And Denise Chavez's Loving Pedro Infante, Stephanie Tangman
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Language labels and defines in order to enhance meaning and communication, but through these labels and definitions speakers are also conditioned to associate certain connotations with words and, therefore, their referents. While often harmless, linguistic conditioning can at times create unsavory associations with these referents. One of these instances occurs in gendered labels and conceptions of male and female bodies and purpose. Both Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas and Denise Chavez’s Loving Pedro Infante can be read through a lens that applies linguistic conditioning with gender theory in order to examine the reinterpretation of female archetypes in the Chicana imagination. It …
The Adolescent Grotesque: Transgressing Boundaries Of Female Sexuality In Edwidge Danticat’S Breath, Eyes, Memory And Jamaica Kincaid’S Annie John, Telia Bennett
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Adolescence is a transitory time in human development, characterized by internal and external bodily changes. Edwidge Danticat and Jamaica Kincaid employ the first-person narrative style in their respective debut novels, Breath, Eyes, Memory and Annie John, to amplify the female adolescent voice and provide unmitigated access to the female adolescent experience. During adolescence, the female body is in sexual flux – steadily losing its amorphousness as puberty runs its course. The adolescent female body peregrinates the biological threshold that distinguishes males from females. In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin describes the grotesque body as “a body in the …
A Queen’S Reputation: A Feminist Analysis Of The Cultural Appropriations Of Cleopatra, Chamara Moore
A Queen’S Reputation: A Feminist Analysis Of The Cultural Appropriations Of Cleopatra, Chamara Moore
Honors Theses
While there is no doubt that Cleopatra is considered a notable historical figure and popularly regarded character throughout modern media, there is a distinct pattern in her portrayal throughout time as a woman whose power is defined by her sexual promiscuity. Even throughout periods of powerful female monarchs, political change, and social progress her prowess as a leader has been assumingly attributed to her affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. The purpose of this study is to examine how literature and media has contributed to this sexualized reputation of a queen who yielded authority over such a prosperous nation. …
Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow
Honors Theses
How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.
“It Made The Ladies Into Ghosts”: The Male Hero's Journey And The Destruction Of The Feminine In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Catherine Ruth Schetina
“It Made The Ladies Into Ghosts”: The Male Hero's Journey And The Destruction Of The Feminine In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Catherine Ruth Schetina
Scripps Senior Theses
This thesis is a consideration of the intertextual relationship between William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. It considers the objectification and destruction of women and female-coded men in the service of the male protagonist's journey to selfhood, with particular focus on the construction of race, gender, and class performances.