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United States History

2015

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Articles 1 - 21 of 21

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Back To The Future: Student Time Period Analyses, Jordan Barge, Sarah Ebert, Anna Gaskin, Renay Gladish, Quinn Hamilton, Morgan Hanson, Hannah Markham, Mark Mclean, Callie Smith, Bertha Vega, Shelby Watkins, Jamie Weihe, Jillian Whitney Dec 2015

Back To The Future: Student Time Period Analyses, Jordan Barge, Sarah Ebert, Anna Gaskin, Renay Gladish, Quinn Hamilton, Morgan Hanson, Hannah Markham, Mark Mclean, Callie Smith, Bertha Vega, Shelby Watkins, Jamie Weihe, Jillian Whitney

Student Publications

This newsletter began with the Fall 2015 Honors English class. These students were challenged to initiate research over a topic they thought was interesting and show how it related to our campus, Stephen F. Austin State University. It is our hope that this cumulative research will help readers look at SFA a little differently.


Advocating For Mother Earth In The Undergraduate Classroom: Uniting Twenty-First Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, And Activism To Explore Our Place In Nature, Christina Triezenberg, Ilse Schweitzer Vandonkelaar Nov 2015

Advocating For Mother Earth In The Undergraduate Classroom: Uniting Twenty-First Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, And Activism To Explore Our Place In Nature, Christina Triezenberg, Ilse Schweitzer Vandonkelaar

Christina Triezenberg

Despite the growing evidence of humanity’s impact on the natural world and the urgent need to shape citizens who understand the impact that their choices and actions have on their local and global environments, colleges and universities throughout the United States have been slow to add environmental education as a core component of their undergraduate curricula. Harnessing our shared interest in environment issues and the humanities, we designed and taught an experimental course in environmental literature for the honors program at Western Michigan University that we hope will become a template of what is possible in postsecondary environmental education. Using …


“Inhumanly Beautiful”: The Aesthetics Of The Nineteenth-Century Deathbed Scene, Margo Masur Nov 2015

“Inhumanly Beautiful”: The Aesthetics Of The Nineteenth-Century Deathbed Scene, Margo Masur

English Theses

Death today is hidden from our everyday lives so it cannot intermingle with the general public. So when a family member dies, their body becomes an object in need of disposal; no longer can they be recognized as the familiar person they once were. To witness death is to force individuals to confront the truths of human existence, and for most of us seeing such a sight would fill us with an emotion of disgust. Yet during the nineteenth century, the burden of care towards the sick or dying was shared by a community of family, neighbors, and friends; the …


"Casting Aside That Ficticious Self.": Deciphering Female Identity In The Awakening 2015, Anne L. Dicosimo Nov 2015

"Casting Aside That Ficticious Self.": Deciphering Female Identity In The Awakening 2015, Anne L. Dicosimo

Master's Theses

Kate Chopin’s female protagonists have long since fascinated literary critics, raising serious questions concerning the influence of nineteenth-century female gender roles in her writing. Published in 1899, The Awakening demonstrates the changeability of the various representations of woman. In the nineteenth century, the subject of women may be divided into two categories: the True Woman and the New Woman. The former were expected to “cherish and maintain the four cardinal virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Khoshnood et al.), while the latter sought to move away from hearth and home in order to focus on education, professions, and political …


A Critical Analysis Of The Killer Angels, Andrea Nicholson Oct 2015

A Critical Analysis Of The Killer Angels, Andrea Nicholson

Student Writing

No abstract provided.


Bayard Vs. Drusilla: The Burden Of War And Legacy, Kate Shillingford Oct 2015

Bayard Vs. Drusilla: The Burden Of War And Legacy, Kate Shillingford

Student Writing

No abstract provided.


Changing Roles In William Faulkner’S The Unvanquished, Bailey George Oct 2015

Changing Roles In William Faulkner’S The Unvanquished, Bailey George

Student Writing

No abstract provided.


The (Dis)Ability Of Color; Or, That Middle World: Toward A New Understanding Of 19th And 20th Century Passing Narratives, Julia S. Charles Aug 2015

The (Dis)Ability Of Color; Or, That Middle World: Toward A New Understanding Of 19th And 20th Century Passing Narratives, Julia S. Charles

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation mines the intersection of racial performance and the history of the so-called “tragic mulatto” figure in American fiction. I propose that while many white writers depicted the “mulatto” character as inherently flawed because of some tainted “black blood,” many black writers’ depictions of mixed-race characters imagine solutions to the race problem. Many black writers critiqued some of America’s most egregious sins by demonstrating linkages between major shifts in American history and the mixed-race figure. Landmark legislation such as, Fugitive Slave Act 1850 and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) are often plotlines in African American passing literature, thus demonstrating the …


Bridging The Distances: Women Writers Exploring The Nightmare Of Vietnam, Christina Triezenberg Jul 2015

Bridging The Distances: Women Writers Exploring The Nightmare Of Vietnam, Christina Triezenberg

Christina Triezenberg

This essay seeks to challenge the now-common practice of excluding Vietnam-era antiwar verse from contemporary literary anthologies by exploring the works produced by professional and amateur female poets who, in many cases, had witnessed the war firsthand and reflected on their experiences in verse that depicts the often harsh realities of this still-contested conflict. By exploring poetry written by women who served in a variety of capacities during the war, this essay underscores the repeated attempts made by women writers to bridge the distances between the home front and the battlefront and offers a compelling argument about the importance of …


Capitalism And "Blithedale": Exploring Hawthorne's Response To 19th Century American Capitalism, Kyle G. Phillips May 2015

Capitalism And "Blithedale": Exploring Hawthorne's Response To 19th Century American Capitalism, Kyle G. Phillips

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

With the intensive migration of the American public from rural to urban settings in the mid-nineteenth century came many logistical problems. Chief among them was the contention that the city was a place fundamentally void of, or else lax with morals. The examination into these issues explores why Americans felt the city was a catalyst for immorality, specifically examining prostitution and the exploitation of the working poor. It seeks to answer these questions within the framework of the anchor text, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Blithedale Romance”.


Marriage And Gender: A History Through Letters, Victoria Kern May 2015

Marriage And Gender: A History Through Letters, Victoria Kern

Senior Honors Projects

Research on the evolution of marriage can be found quite easily, but the opportunity to see into the lives of married couples from the past is rare. Through the analysis of letters between my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, I provide a glimpse of what being married has meant throughout the 20th Century for heterosexual couples. Societal ideas about what makes a marriage ideal have changed over time, but they have always been closely linked with gender expectations (Berk, 2013), so a feminist approach to the analysis of the evolution of marriage is used with my family’s letters as a …


Creating Difference: The Legal Production Of Race In American Slavery, Shaun N. Ramdin Apr 2015

Creating Difference: The Legal Production Of Race In American Slavery, Shaun N. Ramdin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the legal construction and development of racial difference as considered in literature written or set during the final years of American slavery. While there had consistently been a conceptual correspondence between black skin and enslavement, race or racial difference did not become the unqualified explanation of enslavement until fairly late in the institution’s history. Specifically, as slavery’s stability became increasingly threatened through the nineteenth century by abolitionism and racial slippage, race became the singular and explicit rationale for its existence and perpetuation. I argue that the primary discourse of this justificatory rationale was legal: through law race …


“Strength Shed By A New And Terrible Vision:” The Organic Evolution Of The Blues And The Blues Aesthetic In Richard Wright’S 'Uncle Tom’S Children', Jeffrey J. Horvath Apr 2015

“Strength Shed By A New And Terrible Vision:” The Organic Evolution Of The Blues And The Blues Aesthetic In Richard Wright’S 'Uncle Tom’S Children', Jeffrey J. Horvath

Student Publications

An exploration into the development of the "blues aesthetic" in the African-American literary tradition.


Connecting Literature And History: Fitzgerald’S The Great Gatsby Museum Project, Adam Kotlarczyk Feb 2015

Connecting Literature And History: Fitzgerald’S The Great Gatsby Museum Project, Adam Kotlarczyk

Adam Kotlarczyk

Despite mixed reviews at the time of its 1925 publication, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has come to be one of the most widely taught American books and has become a popular candidate for the title of the “Great American Novel.” Uniquely intertwining social history, biography, and literature, the text challenges readers to understand the culture and history of the Jazz Age and to see its interrelationship with the lives and motivations of the characters, as well as with the author himself. This project encourages students to engage and work closely with one of the historical elements that influenced …


Adams County History 2015 Jan 2015

Adams County History 2015

Adams County History

No abstract provided.


Annotated Bibliography Of Elsie Singmaster’S Gettysburg Writings, Susan Colestock Hill Jan 2015

Annotated Bibliography Of Elsie Singmaster’S Gettysburg Writings, Susan Colestock Hill

Adams County History

Our fellow Adams Countian, Elsie Singmaster Lewars (1879-1958), was a well -known author of regional fiction during the first half of the twentieth century. She wrote about the people and places she knew first hand. She spent most of her first twenty years in an ethnic Pennsylvania German community, Macungie, Pennsylvania. Having descended on her father’s side from Pennsylvania Germans who settled in the eastern part of the state beginning in the eighteenth century, she understood “her people” because she lived among them. When she began to write for publication in 1905, her first characters and plots drew upon her …


The Vault At Pfaff's: An Archive Of Art And Literature By The Bohemians Of Antebellum New York., Edward Whitley, Robert Weidman Jan 2015

The Vault At Pfaff's: An Archive Of Art And Literature By The Bohemians Of Antebellum New York., Edward Whitley, Robert Weidman

Rob Weidman

The Vault at Pfaff's is an online collection of primary and secondary source documents about the community of bohemian artists, writers, journalists, actors, and critics who joined with Walt Whitman at Charles Pfaff's beer cellar in midtown Manhattan during the years 1855-65. While the Pfaff's bohemians have always held a small place in American literary history thanks to their association with Whitman, there are many unanswered questions about the impact that they had--either as individuals or as a group--on the literary, artistic, and theatrical culture of the antebellum United States. The mission of The Vault at Pfaff's is twofold: (1) …


Gi Jive: Us Soldiers' Writings And Post-World War Ii America, Amanda Lee Stevens Jan 2015

Gi Jive: Us Soldiers' Writings And Post-World War Ii America, Amanda Lee Stevens

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This work is a comprehensive study of American soldiers‘ writings during World War II as they related to personal and national postwar aims. The paper uses military and domestic publications along with a selection of memoirs and diaries published during and immediately after the war to create an overview of soldiers' ideological and material desires of postwar America.


Bluegrass, Bildung, And Blueprints: The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come As An Appalachian Bildungsroman, Leona Shoemaker Jan 2015

Bluegrass, Bildung, And Blueprints: The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come As An Appalachian Bildungsroman, Leona Shoemaker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come takes as its backdrop the American Civil War, as the author, John Fox, Jr., champions Kentucky's social development during the Progressive Era. Although often criticized for capitalizing on his propagation of regional stereotypes, I argue that the structure of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come is much more problematic than that. Recognizing the Bildungsroman as a vehicle for cultural and social critique in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century writing, this project offers an in-depth literary analysis of John Fox, Jr.'s novel, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, in which I contend the story itself is, …


"What, To A Prisoner, Is The Fourth Of July?": Mumia Abu-Jamal And Contemporary Narratives Of Slavery, Luis Omar Ceniceros Jan 2015

"What, To A Prisoner, Is The Fourth Of July?": Mumia Abu-Jamal And Contemporary Narratives Of Slavery, Luis Omar Ceniceros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Writing from a specifically Black postmodern perspective, former death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal composes his multimedia slave narrative as a postmodern Neo-slave narrative. From the Atlantic slave-trade to the United States prison-industrial complex, from Quobna Ottobah Cugoano to Mumia Abu-Jamal, the slave narrative exists as a critique against oppressive State powers and a collective affirmation of interiority and embodied significance. For Abu-Jamal, his incarceration is indicative of an ever-pervasive capitalist power-structure that in the past has, in the present is, and in the future will control designated groups of made marginalized masses in order that preeminent capitalist beneficiaries preserve elite …


Advocating For Mother Earth In The Undergraduate Classroom: Uniting Twenty-First Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, And Activism To Explore Our Place In Nature, Christina Triezenberg, Ilse Schweitzer Vandonkelaar Mar 2014

Advocating For Mother Earth In The Undergraduate Classroom: Uniting Twenty-First Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, And Activism To Explore Our Place In Nature, Christina Triezenberg, Ilse Schweitzer Vandonkelaar

Ilse A Schweitzer VanDonkelaar

Despite the growing evidence of humanity’s impact on the natural world and the urgent need to shape citizens who understand the impact that their choices and actions have on their local and global environments, colleges and universities throughout the United States have been slow to add environmental education as a core component of their undergraduate curricula. Harnessing our shared interest in environment issues and the humanities, we designed and taught an experimental course in environmental literature for the honors program at Western Michigan University that we hope will become a template of what is possible in postsecondary environmental education. Using …