English Language and Literature Commons^™

Our Technological Past And Future: From Predigital To Postdigital Apocalypses, Michael J. Paulus Jr.

SPU Works

An exploration of technological hopes and fears in apocalyptic literature.

Libraries And The Apocalyptic Imagination, Michael J. Paulus Jr.

SPU Works

Books and libraries figure prominently in apocalyptic and related forms of literature. The representations of libraries in these imagined, catastrophic futures reveal important roles libraries have had and continue to have in helping individuals, communities, and cultures find ways forward through time. This paper explores the long history of library eschatologies—including ancient apocalypses of the Dead Sea Scroll Library and the book of Revelation, modern apocalypses from Mary Shelley to Margaret Atwood, and the dystopian anti-libraries of Jorge Luis Borges’s Babel and Tlön—and highlights deep continuities connecting our historical memories, future expectations, and present experiences of libraries. In the apocalyptic …

Where Do They Go: Christian Faith And Belonging In Gay Literature, Samuel D. J. Ernest

Honors Projects

This exploration of Christianity, family, homosexuality, and running away in twentieth-century literature is divided into two essays. In the first essay, G. K. Chesterton’s “twitch upon a thread” provides a way of understanding the flight of Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and Jeanette in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. After they escape their mothers and home communities, Sebastian’s and Jeanette’s searches for a vocation eventually bring them back to where they started, in one sense or another. Sebastian finds his place within the Church, at a monastery; Jeanette travels back to her parents’ house …

There Will Be Violence: A Critical Analysis Of Violence In The Works Of Cormac Mccarthy, Matthew L. Robinson

Honors Projects

This discussion of McCarthy’s use of violence in his western novels will focus primarily on the books Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West and No Country for Old Men.

Both novels feature antagonists who use war and violence to impose a new societal order. They fail in the end – they cannot succeed so long as there are individuals who refuse to conform to a widespread acceptance of violence that follows Judge Holden’s doctrine of war. In McCarthy’s novels, violence is used to impose a new order of existence. The opposition of individuals cause these imposed …

Hybrid, Subversive, And Skeptical Performances Of Gender, Power, And Space In The Postcolonial Avant-Garde, Alyson T. Inouye

Honors Projects

In her one-woman play, Iraqi-American playwright and actress Heather Raffo performs the testimonies of nine resilient Iraqi women, emphasizing their diverse experiences of the American occupation and life under the Baathist regime. Near the end of the play, one of the soliloquies breaks down into incoherence: an instance of poetic rupture. There is revolutionary potential latent in this avant-garde technique, and by applying it to her urgent and immediate postcolonial context Raffo simultaneously enacts and demands a response of justice to the injustices attested to throughout. Through the poetic rupture of Layal’s textual/psychological breakdown, Raffo undermines the system that, by …

Isolation Of The Individual In The Novels Of Carson Mccullers, Adam Hutchinson

Honors Projects

A southern novelist of the mid twentieth century, Carson McCullers is often labeled as a Southern Gothic author, and her novels reflect the violence, grotesque characters, and dilapidated settings of the genre. However, while early interpretations of her work focused on the depravity of doomed characters, more recent analysis has opened up her work to a productive understanding of social change. Her characters are isolated from the rest of society, whether by race, religion, or sexuality, but rather than highlighting their own shortcomings, these isolating factors underscore a limitation within the social structures and the need for change. This essay …