English Language and Literature Commons^™

Architecture Of The Mind : Narrative Time And Mental Space In The Graduate, Catch-22, And Carnal Knowledge, Monica Cecilia Winston

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis explores three of director Mike Nichols’s films produced during the New Hollywood period—The Graduate (1967), Catch-22 (1970), and Carnal Knowledge (1971)—in an effort to trace Nichols’s auteur signature as it relates to the depiction of the protagonist’s subjectivity and renders post-war male anxiety and existential dread. In addition to discussing formal film technique used to depict the mental space of the protagonist, how these subjective sequences are implemented in the film bears implications on the narrative form and situates Nichols alongside other New Hollywood directors who were influenced by art cinema. This analysis, like those posited by other …

"Gazing On Vacancy" : Charlotte Bronte's Critical Portrayal Of Church Life In Shirley, Emily Pataki Hamburger

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study endeavors to explore how the novelist Charlotte Brontë preferred inner religious experience to institutional religious conformity in her own life and how she promoted her own unique spiritual style in her novel Shirley (1849). Bronte was brought up in a religious home in an era obsessed with religion. Christianity seemed to have a stranglehold over small and large societal matters in Yorkshire, England where Shirley is set, but yet something within the spiritual community was lacking. The Luddite revolutions occurring in Yorkshire are a backdrop to the interior revolutions taking place in the minds of the characters Caroline …

Politically Correct Language In George Carlin, Alan Schultz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

American stand-up comedian George Carlin is notable for his long-standing popularity from the early 60s up until his death in 2008. In this paper, I examine George Carlin’s stance on politically correct language. Focusing on his three books Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, I show how his attempts to remove himself from a politically correct system ultimately fail as he adheres to his own ideals of language and morality. Using his texts and various work from Stanley Fish to support these claims, I show how Carlin ridicules the redundancies and hypocrisies …

“Mutually Exclusive” : Exploring Gender And Sexuality In Shakespeare’S Twelfth Night, Caitlin Moran Casey

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The thesis explores the treatment of gender and sexuality in William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, or What You Will. By examining Shakespeare’s exploration of gender identity and sexual fluidity, this thesis investigates the nature of these elements in relation to the overall theme of the text. While traditionally thought of as mutually exclusive elements, sexuality and gender are juxtaposed throughout the text, causing characters to reflect on their own identities.

Tension Within Immigrant Identity In South Asian And Asian Characters In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Everything I Never Told You, And Disgraced, Dania Abdelsalam

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis examines the ways American fiction in the past two decades marked a renewal of the study of the immigrant experience. By examining this renewal, I argue that the conversation is no longer focused on the treatment of assimilation but moves into the psychological shock that transpires after assimilation is achieved. This shock is a critical condition of belonging to two opposing identities. Using Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) and Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced (2012), I clarify that these works present protagonists from South Asian and East Asian …

“Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters” : The Monstrosity Of Gender Inversion In Bram Stoker’S Dracula, Natalie Diane Cottrill

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) has elicited a range of different interpretations from critics over the years. Readings range from covering issues of race and colonization to science and religion, and everything in between. These interpretations all feature different anxieties relevant to fin de siecle culture, a title given to the period of transition at the end of the nineteenth century wrought with anxiety and conspiracy about what might come next. One of the sources of this unease stemmed from the rapid change in what constituted women's social roles, as well as developing definitions of gender and sexuality. This socio-cultural concern …

Anti-Semitism In American Realist Literature: Edith Wharton’S Sim Rosedale - A Thorn In American Identity, Elizabeth Pantirer

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

How does canonical American literature from the early twentieth century reflect the American Jew and anti-Semitic sentiments? How do these novels portray the American Jew as a threat to American identity? In this thesis, I answer these questions and argue how American literature is a product of its culture demonstrating and reproducing fears and accepted ideologies. These fears perpetuated and solidified anti-Semitic stereotypes and alienated Jews from society. In my research, I examine how literature acts as a cultural product specifically homing in on particular anti-Semitic stereotypes which represent a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant fear of "otherness." This analysis will draw …

Magic In The Classroom: The School Story And The Implications Of Discipline In Harry Potter, Megan Thompson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Set against the history of the school story in children’s literature, the Harry Potter series reinvigorates the genre. Specifically, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone addresses the significance of socializing disciplines within children’s literature while also demonstrating the effects that education has on individuality and maturation through the roles of the characters throughout the series. Perhaps much of what lends Rowling’s work its magical ability as compared to the traditional school story is its free use of traditionalism, as seen in fairy tales, in its narrative style.

Rowling’s writing gestures towards the need for imagination in order to decode a …

"A" Is For Ambivalence : Hester Prynne's Conflicted Response To Motherhood In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Stephanie Morecraft Carlson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In this paper the author discusses the protagonist Hester Prynne’s conflicted response to motherhood in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The author examines Hester’s behavior towards her daughter, Pearl, as well as her relationships with her husband Roger Chillingworth and Pearl’s father Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester’s changing role in the town is also explored as she continues to quietly rebel against the patriarchy by making unconventional choices.

Making Meaning : Death, Dignity, And Dasein In Kazuo Ishiguro’S Never Let Me Go, Angel Katrina Tuohy

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis explores Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go, with a focus on the way the novel considers large questions concerning the “meaning” of human life and the nature of “human condition” as Ishiguro calls it in interviews discussing his novel, using language and terminology provided by phenomenologist and philosopher Martin Heidegger in his seminal work Being and Time. This thesis builds on these questions to consider the complex ways that the concept of “dignity” as shown through the experiences of clones who have socially predetermined lifespans complicates issues surrounding the inevitability of death, the uncanniness of …

Ride Of The Waelcyrges : Combating Notions Of Feminine Passivity And Monstrous Deviance In Anglo-Saxon Literature, Shaina Marie Strang-Wolf Tullo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This paper endeavors to trace the Anglo-Saxon literary figure of the waelcyrge through all twelve references to her throughout the Anglo-Saxon corpus, and culminates in an application of the waelcyrge trope to two problematic heroines in Beowulf, Modthryth and Hygd. Given the critical history associated with the waelcyrge, this paper attempts to write against the dominant assumption in Anglo-Saxon scholarship that the waelcyrge is a derivative of the Norse valkyrie. Instead, this paper is predicated on the notion that the waelcyrge represents uniquely Anglo-Saxon values that volley between the cultural shift that occurs in the mid-ninth century through the emergence …