English Language and Literature Commons^™

Protecting Dixie: Southern Girlhood In Children's Literature, 1852-1920, Laura Anne Hakala

Dissertations

Most scholarship about girlhood in children’s literature tends to rely on national models of girlhood. My project complicates those models by demonstrating how region shapes distinct forms of American girlhood. In particular, I examine representations of southern girlhood in children’s literature published between 1852 and 1920, drawing on the four types of literature that most featured southern girls during this time period: abolitionist literature, Confederate literature, postbellum plantation fiction, and family stories. Using a historicist methodology and spatial analysis, I place these texts in relation to information about the spatial arrangements and protocols of southern domestic sites. By viewing girlhood …

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. …

A Document In Death And Madness: A Cultural And Interdisciplinary Study Of Nineteenth-Century Art Song Settings On The Death Of Opelia, Jennifer Leigh Tipton

Dissertations

In the nineteenth century the character of Ophelia transformed from a minor role in Hamlet into one of the great muses of the Romantic period. Ophelia’s rise to an archetype of feminine madness was not a result of Shakespeare’s pen alone, but of the accumulation of interpretations of her character from actresses, artists, critics, writers, musicians, and social attitudes toward women. This paper focuses on nineteenth-century interpretations of her death, specifically art song.

A brief survey of the nineteenth-century European cultural and social climate pertaining to Ophelia is included in the paper:

*Shakespeare in France and Germany

*Nineteenth-Century Actresses in …