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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Ethnic Irony In Melvin B. Tolson's "Dark Symphony", Elizabeth Newton May 2021

Ethnic Irony In Melvin B. Tolson's "Dark Symphony", Elizabeth Newton

Publications and Research

This article historicizes musical symbolism in Melvin B. Tolson’s poem “Dark Symphony” (1941). In a time when Black writers and musicians alike were encouraged to aspire to European standards of greatness, Tolson’s Afro-modernist poem establishes an ambivalent critical stance toward the genre in its title. In pursuit of a richer understanding of the poet’s attitude, this article situates the poem within histories of Black music, racial uplift, and white supremacy, exploring the poem’s relation to other media from the Harlem Renaissance. It analyzes the changing language across the poem’s sections and, informed by Houston A. Baker Jr.’s study of “mastery …


The Narrow Road To The Deep North By Richard Flanagan, Patrick R. Sullivan Apr 2021

The Narrow Road To The Deep North By Richard Flanagan, Patrick R. Sullivan

Student Publications

A review of Richard Flanagan's novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This paper looks at the background, the themes, the story, and the contribution of this novel to the conversations on the Burma Railway, war, legacy, and love. The usage of the novel form by Flanagan contributes greatly to the power of his novel which becomes a major analytical point of this paper.


The Stolen Children: Their Stories: Aboriginal Child Removal Policy And Consequences, Peter U. Wildgruber Apr 2021

The Stolen Children: Their Stories: Aboriginal Child Removal Policy And Consequences, Peter U. Wildgruber

Student Publications

From 1910 to 1970, the Australian government embarked on a policy of Aboriginal child removal which sought to acculturate Aborigine children of mixed descent into white Australian society. The 1997 report, Bringing Them Home, records the individual testimonies of hundreds of victims of child removal and argues that prolonged familial separation caused irreparable damage to native Australian communities. Carmel Bird’s edited version of the report, The Stolen Children: Their Stories, was published in 1998 to disseminate the report's findings and advocate for legislative action. Her book includes the stories of seventeen individuals and responses to the original report …


Memory, Identity, And World Ii In Australia: Liz Reed's "Bigger Than Gallipoli", Christopher T. Lough Apr 2021

Memory, Identity, And World Ii In Australia: Liz Reed's "Bigger Than Gallipoli", Christopher T. Lough

Student Publications

This paper is structured as a review of Liz Reed's 2004 study Bigger Than Gallipoli: War, History, and Memory in Australia, an analysis of the Australian government's public commemoration of the Second World War from 1994-95. Critiquing certain aspects of Reed's methodology, I bring in some of Jill Ker Conway's insights on Australian identity from her 1989 memoir The Road from Coorain, as well as other scholars of historical memory and political theory. While Reed makes some important insights on the merits and deficiencies of political nostalgia, I argue that her book represents a missed opportunity overall.


“You Never Get It Out Of Your Bones”: The Christ-Haunted Security Of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird And Go Set A Watchman, Corley E. Humphrey Apr 2021

“You Never Get It Out Of Your Bones”: The Christ-Haunted Security Of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird And Go Set A Watchman, Corley E. Humphrey

Masters Theses

Harper Lee’s novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman emphasize the struggle of mid-twentieth century Southern identity as Southerners searched for security, and she does so particularly in her main character, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. Throughout the novels, Jean Louise fights to find a balance within herself as she learns to decide what to accept or reject from her Southern culture. Using New Historicism and Southern Female Gender Studies, this thesis analyzes the character development of Jean Louise “Scout” in the novels and the traits she consistently accepts—discrimination and respect, honor of family, grace—and the ones she …


The Library Of Appalachian Preaching: A Digital Repository Of Sermons, Robert Ellison Mar 2021

The Library Of Appalachian Preaching: A Digital Repository Of Sermons, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This poster was created for the March 2021 Appalachian Studies Association virtual conference. It introduced conference participants to the Library of Appalachian Preaching, a digital humanities project hosted at Marshall University. The Library offers online access to sermons and other addresses delivered within Appalachia, or elsewhere by preachers with ties to the Appalachian region. The poster provides an overview of all of the major elements of the Library. Information presented includes the three “phases” of the project; demographic information about the preachers; examples of the digitized sermons; and examples of biographical sketches and the User Guide, a Google …


Remix The Manuscript: A Chronicle Of Digital Experiments (2015-2020), Michelle R. Warren Feb 2021

Remix The Manuscript: A Chronicle Of Digital Experiments (2015-2020), Michelle R. Warren

Other Faculty Materials

Remix the Manuscript is a digital humanities research project centered around a single medieval manuscript, the Dartmouth Brut Chronicle (Rauner Codex MS 003183). This ongoing experiment with digital tools uses this one example to explore one broad question: How are the digital tools available today determining what we will know 100 years from now about things that happened 1000 years ago?


Alt Wars Of The Roses: A Guide To The Women In Shakespeare's First Tetralogy (Especially Richard Iii) For Fans Of Philippa Gregory's White Queen Series, Joanne E. Gates Jan 2021

Alt Wars Of The Roses: A Guide To The Women In Shakespeare's First Tetralogy (Especially Richard Iii) For Fans Of Philippa Gregory's White Queen Series, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Since The Other Boleyn Girl made such a splash, especially with its 2008 film adaptation starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, novelist Philippa Gregory has turned out book after book of first person female narratives, historical fiction of the era of the early Tudors and the Cousins’ War. (Gregory has an aversion to calling it "Wars of the Roses" but seems to be the sole voice against that classification.) With the film series of The White Queen released in 2013, we have what some consider a fuller pop culture alternative perspective on the women who intersect with the plays that …


The Bus Murals Of Anniston: Teaching The Freedom Riders History, Joanne E. Gates Jan 2021

The Bus Murals Of Anniston: Teaching The Freedom Riders History, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

PBS's American Experience makes available in streaming format its documentary of the Freedom Riders from the PBS website. With that and with a more detailed photographic slide show of the information panels on Anniston's Burning Bus murals, I seek to bring my students to an awareness of ways that history, especially the history of the violence that met the Freedom Riders outside Anniston, is worthy of a revisiting in today's times. I want to bring into my classroom an appreciation for the bus murals that depict the full history of the incident so that students attending Jacksonville State University can …


Animal-Human Vocabulary Builder, Domenick Acocella, Rene Cordero Jan 2021

Animal-Human Vocabulary Builder, Domenick Acocella, Rene Cordero

Open Educational Resources

The assignment helps students individually build a usable, expanding vocabulary of terms and concepts, enabling each to further contribute to the ongoing, evolving written, oral, and visual conversations centered on the use of and thought about animals for food, clothing, work, entertainment, experimentation, imagery, and companionship.


Review Essay: "America's Hometown" Revisited, Drew Lopenzina Jan 2021

Review Essay: "America's Hometown" Revisited, Drew Lopenzina

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.