English Language and Literature Commons^™

Hit By Cupid's Arrow: Hidden Violence In Love Metaphors, Isis Dornbrook

Anthós

Love is an emotion that typically brings joy. However, the ways in which society talks about love suggest otherwise. The process of metaphor analysis makes the violence in societal expressions of love salient. Additionally, metaphor analysis shows that violent metaphors can inform the way people interact with one another throughout the stages of relationship formation, such as using metaphors to justify sexual and other types of physical abuse. Thus, this paper argues that metaphors, by shaping our attitudes and expectations about love, sex, and relationships, have observable social and cultural implications.

Passing Down: Nella Larsen's Questioning Of Eugenic Ideology, Sky R. Mcleod

Anthós

This article looks at Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing and examines how eugenic ideology of the time period are explored and critiqued through the story and characters. The novel follows two light skinned black women who grew up together and are reunited as adults. This reconciliation takes place under the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance where the expectations of New Negro womanhood mix with a growing wave of eugenic thought and practices. In the 1920’s many influential thinkers, including black leaders such as W. E.B. Du Bois, were convinced that the only way to move the human race forward was …

Data Visualization: Analyzing An Evidentiary Archive, John Kohlepp

Anthós

This paper summarizes my approach to analyzing the evidentiary archive of Lisa Mendelman’s article “Character Defects: The Racialized Addict and Nella Larsen’s Passing” as part of Dr. Brenda Glascott’s HON 399 class in the Portland State Honors College. My teammates for this project were Joshua Allen, Elizabeth Estrada Torres, and Daman McConnell—I thank each of them for the hard work and insightful analysis they contributed to our collective work.

The 1929 novel Passing by Nella Larsen is a Harlem Renaissance masterpiece touching upon New Negro aspirations and the societal and psychological minefield of managing (and transgressing) racial boundaries as they …

Gender, Fantasy, And Misogyny In The Age Of Innocence: A Character Study Of Newland Archer, Sonia Comstock

University Honors Theses

In this thesis, I’ll be analyzing Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence through a feminist lens, with a focus on the character of Newland Archer. Specifically, I'll examine who Archer is beyond a surface level, looking at his thoughts and fantasies and exposing his twisted, misogynistic outlook. I'll explore how his delusions affect the lives of the women around him, and how his behavior is reflective of the larger dynamic between men and women in society. Because the novel is written in close omniscient third person, the reader can both assess and align with Archer's mentality; the gap between the …

Among The Bedouins, A Knife Is Never Just A Knife: On Nourishment, Betrayal, And Finding Family Histories, Diana Abu-Jaber

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is an essay about family relationships from the perspective of a fiction writer, written in the context of the author's book, Fencing with the King.

Publishing In The Pacific Northwest, Kathi Inman Berens, Rachel Noorda, Nathalie Op De Beeck

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Overview of how 11 Pacific Northwest booksellers survived Covid, and continue to thrive after pandemic lockdowns have lifted. After many consumers shifted to online book buying, what techniques are these book stores using to attract and keep customers?

Space And Identity In J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times Of Michael K, Joshua Baker

University Honors Theses

Occupying colonial governments establish and maintain power through the demarcation and control of space, a process Sara Upstone terms "overwriting". In Life & Times of Michael K, Coetzee imagines the complication of establishing and maintaining a self-identity amid the strict control of space in post-apartheid, wartime South Africa, and it is this conflict of identity which comprises the novel’s subplot. The reader follows Michael K's odyssey over hundreds of miles in his quest to find the farm on which his mother was born and raised. His journey is repeatedly thwarted by state actors who enforce a strict control of movement …

Music: Modernist Remediation And Technologies Of Listening, Josh Epstein

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Excerpt:
Ludwig van Beethoven, if not exactly a modernist, offers ample fodder for modern artists looking to defend – or expand – their turf. While producing City Lights (1928), Charlie Chaplin responded to the newly popular ‘talkies’ by proclaiming that ‘Moving pictures need sound as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics’ (qtd. in Crafton 1999: 296).