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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Medias Res, Temporal Double-Consciousness And Resistance In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Roslyn Nicole Smith Nov 2007

Medias Res, Temporal Double-Consciousness And Resistance In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Roslyn Nicole Smith

English Theses

Dana, the Black female protagonist in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred (1979), finds herself literally and figuratively in medias res as she sporadically travels between her present day life in 1976 and her ancestral plantation of 1815 – two time periods that represent two converse concepts of her identity as a Black woman. As a result, her time travel experiences cause her to revise her racial and gendered identity from a historically fragmented Black woman, who defines herself solely on her contemporary experiences, to a Black woman who defines herself based on her present life and her personal and ancestral history …


Remapping And Renaming Ireland: A Postcolonial Look At The Problem Of Language And Identity In Brian Friel's Translations., Maria Laura Barberan Reinares Sep 2007

Remapping And Renaming Ireland: A Postcolonial Look At The Problem Of Language And Identity In Brian Friel's Translations., Maria Laura Barberan Reinares

Graduate English Association New Voices Conference 2007

Brian Friel‘s acclaimed Translations, suggestively written in English, captures the moment in the history of Ireland when the British, in a clear sign of imperial dominance, initiated the remapping and renaming of the Irish territory, generating a linguistic uncertainty that eventually led to the capitulation of the Gaelic language and placed the colonizing tongue – English -- on central stage. The fact that this contemporary Irish playwright in 1980 wrote Translations in English and not in Gaelic speaks for itself. But Friel‘s choice of English as the vehicle for his play is far from trivial, and to assume that this …


An Erratic Performance: Constructing Racial Identity And James Baldwin, Natasha N. Walker May 2007

An Erratic Performance: Constructing Racial Identity And James Baldwin, Natasha N. Walker

English Theses

This thesis analyzes James Baldwin's essays as a method for understanding racial identity and authenticity. By using Vetta Sanders-Thompson's racial identification parameters, I suggest that Baldwin's struggle with his identity as a black American is crucial to deposing the idea of a monolithic black experience, which opens up new ways of analyzing African American literature.