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Articles 1 - 24 of 24
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
"Meatheads" Redefined: An Analysis Of The Union College Football Team, Michaela Wood
"Meatheads" Redefined: An Analysis Of The Union College Football Team, Michaela Wood
Honors Theses
This thesis explores the experiences and representations of the male football player. It provides an anthropological study of Union College football players and a film analysis of the sports film genre, revealing critical insights about relationships among bodies, diet preferences, and gendered stereotypes. These insights move beyond the “meathead” stereotypes that society constructs for the male football player. This thesis combines Anthropology and English to reveal that questions about hegemonic masculinity arise in the minds of the very athletes who embody the stereotypes of ‘the man.’ Moreover, sports films’ popularity lies in themes that entice men to acknowledge their emotions. …
Screwed? Interactive Interpretation Of The Turn Of The Screw, Ava Bowen
Screwed? Interactive Interpretation Of The Turn Of The Screw, Ava Bowen
Honors Theses
I began thinking about my thesis by wondering why we read, why we read the books we read, why we read a book the way we do, and how we read leads to different interpretations and opinions of a book. In my thesis, I have focused on figuring out how we can determine who we are based on the interpretations we make about a text. I have determined that one’s interpretation is based on their baggage which includes their memories, expectations, and imagination. A reader, either consciously or unconsciously, brings baggage to every text they read in order to come …
Singular Yet Shared: Willful Heroines And Their Willful Communities In Young Adult Fantasy, Shea Delehaunty
Singular Yet Shared: Willful Heroines And Their Willful Communities In Young Adult Fantasy, Shea Delehaunty
Honors Theses
The psychological theory of narrative identity posits that we create our identities based on a narrative life-story, and that adolescence is a pivotal moment in this process. Literature is one of the most familiar examples of narrative, so what, then, does the literature adolescents read teach them about identity as they construct their own narrative identities? What kinds of characters are portrayed and what can we learn about the adolescents influenced by those characters? This thesis is interested in these questions specifically as they relate to contemporary adolescent girls, who often grow up reading young adult (YA) high fantasy novels …
The Poetry Of Revolution: The Legacy Of A Written Rebellion, Eva Erickson
The Poetry Of Revolution: The Legacy Of A Written Rebellion, Eva Erickson
Honors Theses
In Solmaz Sharif’s debut poetry collection Look, she incorporates United States Department of Defense terminology in order to simultaneously revolt against forced erasure and reclaim words that were once used for violent and oppressive purposes. This thesis argues that poetry is an inherently politicized, revolutionary tool that possesses the ability to radicalize and incite rebellion against silencing, dismissive power structures. Sharif’s identity, as an Iranian-American immigrant woman, is omnipresent in her own interpretation of familial trauma at the hands of American imperialist forces. In addition, the events of the late twentieth-century Iranian revolution that resulted in the deaths of many …
Mapping The Queer Ephemeral, Mitchell Famulare
Mapping The Queer Ephemeral, Mitchell Famulare
Honors Theses
This thesis seeks to define/theorize and map the queer ephemeral, a cycle of emergence and reemergence of the queer subject within queer time. Straight time consists of the linear timeline where when one matures, attends college, attains a stable job, falls in love, marries, bears children, and lives happily ever after. Whether through movies, television, books, or our own guardians, time is presented to us as something stable, consistent, and reproductive; diverging off the conventional timeline brings societal pressures that isolate subjects who fall out of its fabric. As straight time facilitates the construction of some sort of ideal adult, …
"With Great Power...": Post-9/11 Politics In Superhero Comics, Tv, And Film, Caroline Ristaino
"With Great Power...": Post-9/11 Politics In Superhero Comics, Tv, And Film, Caroline Ristaino
Honors Theses
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 prompted the government to take drastic political action, such as the War on Terror, and inspired the American people to feel new cultural anxieties. Literature and popular culture also responded to 9/11 with attempts to make sense of such an unprecedented event. This thesis argues that superhero stories, both in comics and onscreen, are particularly well-suited to deconstruct and critique post-9/11 American society through their depictions of power and the question of how individuals with superpowers fit into society. Specifically, this thesis engages with Marvel Comics’ Civil War (2006-07), its film adaptation Captain …
What Do Women Want? The Feminist Pursuit Of Happiness, Hannah Ruth Ellen
What Do Women Want? The Feminist Pursuit Of Happiness, Hannah Ruth Ellen
Honors Theses
“What do Women Want?” My thesis asks whether women can genuinely seek freedom while also hoping for happiness. I look closely at how male theorists define happiness and liberty for themselves and for others, and in particular for feminized others. My two central chapters focus on theories of individual happiness, happiness sought through another or others, and the ways feminist thinkers reimagine happiness in relationship to women’s freedom. I apply feminist critiques to the concept of psychodynamic therapy as an anti-revolutionary tool designed to isolate and silence women into believing that coping with oppression is equivalent to genuine happiness. I …
Jane, Judith, And Gender Performance: A Butlerian Approach To Feminine Identity In Mansfield Park, Hallie Stone
Jane, Judith, And Gender Performance: A Butlerian Approach To Feminine Identity In Mansfield Park, Hallie Stone
Honors Theses
In this thesis, I take two complex works, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, and read them together to gain a deeper understanding of both. My cutting-edge psychoanalytic approach to understanding Jane Austen provides a profound insight into the impact of socially-constructed expectations on performances of femininity. Butler’s work exposes interesting insights into the psychology and feminine identity of both Fanny Price and Mary Crawford while Austen’s work exposes limits in Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Although Butler claims that gender is a body’s constant performance, I add that there is a relationship between gender performance …
Desire In The Bildungsroman: Construction And Pursuit Of An Ideal Self Through The Ideal Other, Ethan Watson
Desire In The Bildungsroman: Construction And Pursuit Of An Ideal Self Through The Ideal Other, Ethan Watson
Honors Theses
The Bildungsroman, or “novel of education,” has remained popular since Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. I examine this novel, as well as Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and Walter Moers’s Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures, focusing specifically on the relationships between the three male protagonists and the women that they encounter throughout their lives. Using the theories of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, literary critic René Girard, and feminist philosopher Judith Butler, I draw parallels between and contribute to the scholarly conversation of all three works (or in the case of Moers's recent fantasy, Rumo, begin …
Combatting Human Extinction: Biblical Archetypes And Environmental Apocalypse In Contemporary Dystopian Fiction, Elizabeth Hurley
Combatting Human Extinction: Biblical Archetypes And Environmental Apocalypse In Contemporary Dystopian Fiction, Elizabeth Hurley
Honors Theses
This project examines through recreations of Biblical archetypes the cause and effect of environmental apocalypse and potential human extinction in contemporary dystopian novels. The goal of this thesis is, in part, to argue that near-future dystopian fiction is speculative, since the fictional reasons behind the downfall are akin to Anthropocenic (that is, pertaining to the age of the Anthropocene, the contemporary world where humans have severely altered the Earth) environmental and ecological concerns. In examining The Year of the Flood (2009) by Margaret Atwood, Parable of the Sower (1994) by Octavia Butler, and The Maze Runner (2009) by James Dashner, …
Living Within The Margins: The Constitutional Culture Of Irish Life Law And Literature, Meghan Keator
Living Within The Margins: The Constitutional Culture Of Irish Life Law And Literature, Meghan Keator
Honors Theses
Serving as a stepping stone to asserting independence from British authority and oppression, the Bunreacht Na hÉireann, Ireland’s modern constitution, allowed the nation and its people finally to shape themselves by their own legal standards, customs, and norms. Yet, after years of oppression from forced British standards, Ireland began the search for its own distinct voice as a newly liberated, competitive country. This thesis explores how the Irish Constitution contributes to shaping a homogenous society that promotes normative views and behaviors that damagingly marginalize minority groups–who differ from such social standards. By examining the specific language, diction, order and structure …
The Children Who Became Men Overnight: Memories Of Love And Violence In Afghanistan, Jamaluddin Aram
The Children Who Became Men Overnight: Memories Of Love And Violence In Afghanistan, Jamaluddin Aram
Honors Theses
The three short stories in this collection present a reverse chronology of Afghanistan’s recent past: the decade of democracy, the Taliban era, and the civil war period. On the surface each piece portrays the experiences of everyday Afghan men and women and their hopes and dreams at times of war and relative peace. At a deeper level, the stories attempt to unpack Afghan politics, traditions, ethnic tensions, and the diverse bonds that unite the nation and allow its citizens to live together. My first chapter, “Namak Haram,” is set against the backdrop of the Taliban regime. Mohsen, an ethnic Hazara, …
The Ambiguity Of Antony And Cleopatra: Interrupting Phallocentric Schemes Of Objectification Through The Mutual Gaze, Sydney Paluch
The Ambiguity Of Antony And Cleopatra: Interrupting Phallocentric Schemes Of Objectification Through The Mutual Gaze, Sydney Paluch
Honors Theses
This thesis proposes an alternative to the male gaze, using Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of ambiguity in order to understand the subversive sexual politics underlying Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. The concept of the male gaze was first identified in feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which explains how film is explicitly constructed around the male gaze. Since the publication of Mulvey’s article, feminist theorists such as Linda Williams and Mary Ann Doane have attempted to construct a feminine counterpart to the male gaze. Unfortunately, these theorists have typically concluded that such …
A Monumental History: Stories Of The Berkshires, Kimberly Bolduc
A Monumental History: Stories Of The Berkshires, Kimberly Bolduc
Honors Theses
A Monumental History: Stories of the Berkshires is a creative-nonfiction work focusing on stories surrounding forgotten monuments in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts. The Berkshires exhibit a distinct regional culture that has set them apart from the rest of Massachusetts and indeed from the rest of the rural and urban United States. As one of the first American frontiers, the region was settled by self-reliant and determined pioneers who had to endure harsh environments, Native American unrest, wars, and political and religious disturbances and disagreements. Utopian communities like the Shakers would settle in the Berkshires, drawn by their promise …
A Gilded Cage: A Feminist Analysis Of Manor House Literature, Katelyn Billings
A Gilded Cage: A Feminist Analysis Of Manor House Literature, Katelyn Billings
Honors Theses
This thesis focuses on women struggling with social rules and gender restrictions in Victorian and Edwardian English manor houses. The culture of the manor home had an incredibly powerful impact on the female protagonists of the literary texts I analyze, and in this thesis, I demonstrate how it stifled the growth and agency of women. With the end of the age of the British Great Houses in the twentieth century, there was the simultaneous rise of the New Woman, an emerging cultural icon that challenged conservative Victorian conventions. With the values and ideologies surrounding the New Woman in mind, this …
'And I Am A Material Girl': How Aesthetics And Material Culture Fashion Femininity In Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence, From Text To Film, Avery Novitch
Honors Theses
This thesis explores the role of aesthetics and material culture in Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel The Age of Innocence and in Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film adaptation. In Wharton’s Old New York, material opulence is arguably the most essential aspect of culture. Newland Archer is the primary authority on fashion and taste within the narrative, and is thus charged with enforcing standards of socially constructed Victorian femininity with regard to his two romantic interests, May Welland and Ellen Olenska. Scorsese’s film uses mise-en-scène to echo the detail rich design aesthetic found in Wharton’s prose; however, the film’s abandonment of Newland’s distinctly …
What's "Really Real": David Foster Wallace And The Pursuit Of Sincerity In Infinite Jest, Henry Clayton
What's "Really Real": David Foster Wallace And The Pursuit Of Sincerity In Infinite Jest, Henry Clayton
Honors Theses
Throughout his literary career, David Foster Wallace articulated the problems associated with the profusion of irony in contemporary society. In this thesis I assert that his novel Infinite Jest promotes a shift from the reliance on irony and subversion to a celebration of the principles of sincerity. The emphasis on sincerity makes Infinite Jest a landmark novel in the canon of American fiction, as Wallace employs postmodern formal techniques, such as irony, metafiction, fragmentation, and maximalism, in the interest of promoting traditional, non-ironic values of emotion, community, and spirituality. I draw from works of postmodern theory and criticism to bolster …
“Listen To Many”: Intersectionality, Tragedy, And William Shakespeare, Anna Flores
“Listen To Many”: Intersectionality, Tragedy, And William Shakespeare, Anna Flores
Honors Theses
Centuries after his own lifetime, William Shakespeare dominates the Western canon and continues to have a profound effect on Western society. As the values of that society shift and social movements progress, so too must critical reception of Shakespeare's work. The purpose of this thesis is to reexamine Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1601), Othello (1604), and Antony and Cleopatra (1606) through a feminist lens in order to expose the larger societal issues addressed within the play. This thesis draws on Intersectionality, a modern branch of feminism, to discuss sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia within Shakespeare’s texts and the way in …
The Perception Of Literary Quality Differing As A Function Of Authorial Gender And Emotionality, Sarah Dean
The Perception Of Literary Quality Differing As A Function Of Authorial Gender And Emotionality, Sarah Dean
Honors Theses
Previous research suggests that gender acknowledgment yields significant consequences on subsequent judgments. In the current research, we examined whether gender of authorial names affected the perception of literary quality. Participants read a short story excerpt designated as male‐authored or female‐authored that contained either exaggerated emotional content or minimal emotional content. Following presentation of the passage, participants reported perceived quality and emotionality and then completed the 10-item short form of the Need for Affect Questionnaire (NAQ-S; cf. Maio & Esses, 2001) followed by the 18‐item Need for Cognition Scale (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao 1984). Results indicated that participants rated female authors …
Redefining The "Reality Picture" By Reassessing Feminist Themes In The Early Cyberpunk Works Of William Gibson And Philip K. Dick, Samuel J. Williams
Redefining The "Reality Picture" By Reassessing Feminist Themes In The Early Cyberpunk Works Of William Gibson And Philip K. Dick, Samuel J. Williams
Honors Theses
As a literary genre, Cyberpunk permits the existence of characters, plots, settings, and styles that challenge heteronormative perceptions of gender. The representations of women in Neuromancer, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and A Scanner Darkly highlight a progression towards feminist ideals. Despite this progression, critics have classified these early manifestations of the Cyberpunk genre as non-feminist works that perpetuate misogynistic themes. These critics assert that the female characters in each work are Othered and heteronormative. The previous analyses of these works fail to consider the fictional context of the female characters. In this thesis, I closely analyze the major …
Do You Believe? Peter Pan And The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz As Historical Artifacts, Tamara Stone
Do You Believe? Peter Pan And The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz As Historical Artifacts, Tamara Stone
Honors Theses
Scholars often analyze J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz biographically through the author, didactically, or as pure entertainment. While those interpretations provide insight, children's literature like Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz can also be analyzed as political and social commentary. Although children’s literature is often discounted as a lesser genre of literature, analyzing children’s works offers later generations a view into contemporary societal mores because the generally straightforward plotline allows for subtly incorporated commentary by the author. One can read Peter Pan as “simply a children’s story,” or note the …
The Monster In The Mirror: Challenging The Glorification Of Humanity In Human And Monster Literature, Hanna Squire
The Monster In The Mirror: Challenging The Glorification Of Humanity In Human And Monster Literature, Hanna Squire
Honors Theses
Earlier scholars have claimed that literary monsters merely serve the purposes of celebrating the human’s triumph over adversity. I contest this claim in my close analysis of Homer’s The Odyssey, the medieval epic Beowulf, and the Hannibal Lecter series of novels by twentieth‐century American author Thomas Harris. I show that each author uses monsters not to convey human dominance over their ability to defeat the monster but rather to reveal the monstrous flaws found within all of humanity: coveting, vengeance, and hybris. My analysis of these flaws shows how society’s willingness to admit our monstrosity progresses from Homer to Harris. …
Discovery Of Timbuktu: Geopolitical Rivalries And Myths, Katherine Van Meter
Discovery Of Timbuktu: Geopolitical Rivalries And Myths, Katherine Van Meter
Honors Theses
This thesis examines the exploration and discovery of Timbuktu primarily focusing on the travels and narrative of René Caillié the first European to publish his successful journey to Timbucku in 1828. Timbuktu since the thirteenth century had become a romantic mystery for Europeans and stimulated massive interest in its discovery by major geographical Societies. Through a mixture of primary and secondary sources I am able to analyze the geopolitical rivalries and myths surrounding Timbuktu that would instigate the travels of twenty-five English, fourteen Frenchmen, two Americans and one German which the majority of resulted in death. Examining Caillié’s published narrative …
When Mountain Meets Road: Mfankind's Connection To Nature Through Sublime Theory In Shelley's Mont Blanc And Mccarthy's The Road, Catherine Elliott
When Mountain Meets Road: Mfankind's Connection To Nature Through Sublime Theory In Shelley's Mont Blanc And Mccarthy's The Road, Catherine Elliott
Honors Theses
Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2005) is a strong example of how post-modern dystopian fiction has captivated the mass imagination. Contemporary scholars have discussed The Road thoroughly, commenting on the text's redemptive journey, post-apocalyptic message or cauterized terrain. However, I argue that McCarthy's novel is not merely a modern text with an alienating landscape. Rather, the story conveys a strongly sublime aesthetic, which is recognizable from nineteenthcentury British Romantic works such as Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc (1817). These texts have a shared obsession vvith the fictional representation and investigation of the sublime aesthetic and humankind's relationship with the natural world. …