English Language and Literature Commons^™

James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Us About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan

Scholars Week

James Baldwin writes about the importance of the representation of race in school classrooms in his essay A Talk to Teachers. Baldwin's discourse surrounding the representation of race in schools can be extended to the queer community and the importance of representation in the classroom of these marginalized communities. Combining Baldwin's essays and fiction with educational research, I plan on highlighting the importance of representation of marginalized communities in the classroom and the role that educators play in ensuring that all students feel seen in the classroom.

Entertainment Media Perceptions Of Minorities In Young Adult Adaptations, Kynnadie Bennett

Scholars Week

This is an exploration of stereotypical and racist portrayals of minorities, specifically African-American, Latinx, and Native American communities, in film and television in the past and how that has affected representation in film adaptations of young adult literature. Young adult literature is one of the highest-selling genres in literature, purchased by both young adults and actual adults. In recent years, young adult literature has been adapted into film and television series and while representation has improved since the early years of entertainment history, there are still problems in the industry: many of the stereotypes remain, some minorities lack representation, and …

Oulipian Codes, Wittgensteinian Games, Borgesian Labyrinths: The Potential Literature Of Gravity’S Rainbow, Stephen Haines

Scholars Week

This intertextual analysis discusses the multimodal links between Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Borgesian metaphorical imagery and story structure, Oulipian mathematic and textual experiments, and Wittgensteinian linguistic philosophy. This analysis also draws on the work of Katherine Hayles in Writing Machines in that it seeks to identify the ways in which a work such as Gravity’s Rainbow requires non-trivial engagement from readers, what Hayles calls “ergodic” engagement, thereby transcending many of the traditional conceptions and functional limitations of texts. The goal of this analysis is to attempt to demarcate Gravity’s Rainbow as a unique form of textual experiment, one both …

Imprisoned: Rehabilitate Society, Bailey Bennett

Scholars Week

As an African American woman who has witnessed family members incarcerated in addition to my father’s employment with the Department of Corrections, I have always been fascinated with the prison system. My passion for this complex subject has inspired my art and writing, urging my audience to interpret a different point of view. Through investigating the modern prison systems, in my writing, Imprisoned: Rehabilitate Society, I shed to light the true horrors lying beyond cold prison walls. By incorporating a renowned African American poet, Etheridge Knight’s poem, I cracked the surface in regards to the racial stigmas of incarceration. I …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: Edgar Allan Poe's Use Of Concealment, Alyssa Hubbard

Scholars Week

In his short stories “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe uses the act and outcomes of concealment as a way to deal with guilt and introduce consequence. By examining each of these examples, we can see that how and where Poe's narrators hide the bodies of their victims directly impacts their mental health and how quickly their crimes are discovered.

Hawthorne’S Beautiful Women And Hideous Men: Ecofeminism In “The Birthmark” And “Rappaccini’S Daughter”, Olivia Shelton

Scholars Week

This paper aims to compare Georgiana and Beatrice’s beauty through an Eco-feminist lens. It examines how the men in each story set unrealistic beauty standards for women in order to be dominant. The men use science to create these standards and destroy nature or the women’s natural beauty and they kill them in the process. This paper argues that Hawthorne addresses Eco-feminist ideas within “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” through the destruction of Georgiana and Beatrice. The paper includes background information, a definition, and other key ideas involved with Ecofeminism. The paper focuses on the association of men with society …

Exalted And Debased: Psychological/Sexual Conflict As Bildungsroman In Half Of A Yellow Sun, Anne Lance

Scholars Week

While many still view the Bildungsroman, novels of formation or coming of age stories, as the purview of stuffy formation novels like Dickens’ Great Expectations or Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, there is significant scholarship that suggests a recent revolution in the genre that centers women, people of color, and males in post-colonial or war-torn spaces.

My paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2006 novel Half of a Yellow Sun as an example of a Bildungsroman through the focalization of one of the main characters, Ugwu, as he endures two psychologically conflicting sexual experiences, one …

Victor Frankenstein, Mary Shelley And Prometheus In The Role Of Creator., Victoria Walker

Scholars Week

This paper tries to compare and contrast the fictional characters Victor Frankenstein, Prometheus, and the writer Mary Shelley and their role of creator.

Victor’S Dual Diagnosis: An Exploration Of Mental Illness In Frankensteinian Times, Elizabeth Tretter

Scholars Week

Victor’s Dual Diagnosis: An Exploration of Mental Illness in Frankensteinian Times

Before the advances of modern psychology, treatment of the mentally insane consisted of cruel and torturous methods that involved beating, starving, or bleeding patients often until the point of death. It was not until the late eighteenth century that a revolutionary kind of moral treatment was introduced by William Tuke, an English Quaker and founder of The Friends’ Retreat. Founded in 1879, the small retreat in York set the precedent for future asylums with their meticulous record keeping that included their own standardized diagnoses and symptoms of mental illnesses. …

Hawthorne: Heavy Handed?, Natalie Dueker

Scholars Week

Abstract

This paper will take a formalist approach and focus on the symbolism in numerous works by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The paper will not only discuss in detail Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, but will also discuss a select few of Hawthorne’s short stories such as “The Birthmark,” “Young Goodman Brown,” and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” This paper will cover the symbolism in the short stories and the novel, how those symbols affect or relate to the characters and how they affect or alter the story as a whole. Common symbolism found throughout Hawthorne’s …

I Know You Are, But What Am I? Hawthorne's Projection Within The Minister's Black Veil, Coral Serrano

Scholars Week

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Minister’s Black Veil” has been analyzed from various perspectives, but thus far in the published literature, very few have examined this work using psychoanalytic criticism. It is even more rare to find research over “The Minister’s Black Veil” addressing the use of psychological projection. Through the character of Mr. Hooper in “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Hawthorne projects his difficulties publicly expressing his criticism and opinion of religion because of the overshadowing actions of his forefathers. Evidence of this is laced within the short story: references to mental illness, the connotations of adjectives and other words …

A Critique Of Puritan Values And Social Restrictions, Laura Guebert

Scholars Week

This paper outlines and discusses Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter through the lens of feminist and social critiques. It attempts to draw attention to the fates of both male and females characters in the story according to their personality and status. Therefore, by examining the complex treatment and relationships between the four principle characters of The Scarlet Letter and their author, Hawthorne’s use of a feminist critique can be understood as a wider criticism of Puritan and, by extension, mid-nineteenth century social and moral restrictions and expectations.

"One Accord Of Sympathy": The Relationship Between Narrator, Reader, And Puritans, Brianna E. Taylor

Scholars Week

Ambiguous narration in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter creates a reader that is simultaneously an insider privy to uncertain narrative report and an outsider sympathetic to Hester’s ignominy. While current reader response criticism explores narrative techniques of ambiguity and sympathy in isolation, this paper analyzes how these techniques are used in conjunction to establish a relationship between narrator and reader. The narrator’s role as storyteller and gossip, accepting explanations of a rational contemporary audience and superstitious Puritans, both defies Puritan inflexibility and creates intimacy that includes readers in this community. At the same time, a sympathetic relationship with Hester distances …

Anne Of Green Gables: Childhood, Feminism, And The Canadian Story, Colin Carter

Scholars Week

The novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery (L.M. Montgomery) follows the touching story of Anne Shirley, a young rebellious red-headed orphan. Anne, who is mistakenly sent to siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, and is begrudgingly adopted. Through the quirky trials and tribulations that follow in the quiet provincial town of Avonlea, a story about childhood, personal growth, and the female experience begins to emerge. Anne of Green Gables presents three unique, distinct, and incredibly important narratives that have implications for today’s society. First, Anne acts as a proto-essentialist feminist. By explicitly rejecting the objectification and fetishtization of …