English Language and Literature Commons^™

Ethics Of Counter Narrative In Delillo’S Falling Man, Qingji He

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ethics of Counter-Narrative in DeLillo's Falling Man" Qingji He analyzes Don DeLillo's counter-narrative in his post-9/11 novel Falling Man. The objective is to show how ethical dimensions function fundamentally in formulating an appropriate counter-narrative and why DeLillo's counter-narrative echoes views expressed in his "In the Ruins of the Future." He argues that DeLillo's counter-narrative entails the necessity of ethical consciousness and responsibility. It is Giorgio Morandi's still life paintings instead of media representation that become pivotal in Lianne's transformative and redemptive process after the terrorist attack. Similarly, David Janiak's performance art and Richard Drew's picture …

Jessie Fauset’S Not-So-New Negro Womanhood: The Harlem Renaissance, The Long Nineteenth Century, And Legacies Of Feminine Representation, Meredith Goldsmith

English Faculty Publications

Fauset’s texts offer a repository of precisely what critic Alain Locke labeled retrograde: seemingly outdated plotlines and tropes that draw upon multiple literary, historical, and popular cultural sources. This essay aims to change the way we read Fauset by excavating this literary archive and exploring how the literary “past” informs the landscape of Fauset’s fiction. Rather than viewing Fauset’s novels as deviations from or subversive instantiations of modernity, I view them as part of a long nineteenth-century tradition of gendered representation. Instead of claiming a subversiveness that Fauset might have rejected or a conservatism that fails to account for the …

Tobacco And Tar Babies: The Trickster As A Cultural Hero In Winnebago And African American Myth, Catherine Squibb

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the trickster character through the lens of his role as a cultural hero. The two characters that I chose to examine are from North American myth, specifically Winnebago Hare and Brer Rabbit. These two characters represent the duality of the trickster while simultaneously embodying the lauded abilities of the hero. Through their actions these two characters shape culture through the very action of disrupting societal norms.

“Carried In The Arms Of Standing Waves:" The Transmotional Aesthetics Of Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Billy J. Stratton

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and Aboriginal scholars and writers have forged alliances to initiate and support decolonization efforts and the reassertion of native survivance. Native and non-Native scholars have responded to modern challenges by reconceptualizing notions of peoplehood, identity, and nationalism. Following these intellectual contours, rather than conceiving of native culture as totalizing, static, and/or incommensurable—as always already foreign—responsive readings informed by the critical work of Gerald Vizenor can support more sophisticated understandings of native literary production while revealing sites of native transmotion. Through a thusly informed examination of the work of the Tlingit poet, Nora Marks …

The Linguistic Market Of Codeswitching In U.S. Latino Literature, Marilyn Zeledon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a multidisciplinary study that brings together the fields of literature, sociolinguistics, and cultural studies in order to understand the motivation and meaning of English-Spanish codeswitching or language alternation in Latino literature produced in the United States. Codeswitching was first introduced in Latino literature around the time of the Chicano Movement in the 1970s and has been used as a distinctive feature of Latino literary works to this day. By doing a close linguistic analysis of narratives by four different authors belonging to the largest Latino communities in the country (Chicano, Puerto Ricans, Dominican Americans, and Cuban Americans), …

Race Patriots: Black Poets, Transnational Identity, And Diasporic Versification In The United States Before The New Negro, Jason T. Hendrickson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the contributions of black poets in the United States before the New Negro / Harlem Renaissance Movement. Specifically, it focuses on their role in creating and maintaining a tradition of regional transnationalism in their verses that celebrates their African ancestry. I contend that these poets are best understood as “race patriots”; that is, they at once sought inclusion within the nation-state in the form of full citizenship, yet recognized allegiances beyond the nation-state on account of race through a recognition of shared African ancestry across borders. Their verses point to a shared kinship – be it through …

"The Imagination And Construction Of The Black Criminal In American Literature, 1741-1910", Emahunn Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation examines the origins of the perception of black people as criminally predisposed by arguing that during eighteenth and nineteenth-century America, crime committed by black people was used as a major trope in legal, literary, and scientific discourses, deeming them inherently criminal. Furthermore, I contend that enslaved and free black people often used criminal acts, including murder, theft, and literacy, as avenues toward freedom. However, their resistance was used as a justification for slavery in the South and discrimination in the North. By examining a diverse set of materials such as confessional literature, plantation management literature, (social) scientific studies, …

Tearing Down Walls And Building Bridges, Melba J. Boyd

Criticism

A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 by Cherríe L. Moraga. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. 280, 9 illustrations. $84.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Manzanar Murakami As Radical Mathematician, Logan Bishop-Van Horn

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

In Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, characters attempt to make meaning of the many complex structures in which they are situated. In his unique meaning-making process, Manzanar Murakami, a homeless Sansei, “conducts” the Los Angeles traffic with a silver baton from atop a highway overpass. In conducting his music, Murakami per- forms complex mathematics, finding meaning in connection by mapping the rhythmic flow of humans, machines, and goods. Through his baton, to the sounds of a beautiful orchestra, he translates precisely the relationships he sees before him. Murakami’s music and Yamashita’s fantastic images constitute a “mathematical realism,” a lens …

Chasing Ghosts: A Memoir Of A Father, Gone To War [Table Of Contents], Louise Desalvo

History

When literary biographer and memoirist Louise DeSalvo embarked upon a journey to learn why her father came home from World War II a changed man, she didn’t realize her quest would take ten years, and that it would yield more revelations about the man—and herself—and the effect of his military service upon their family than she’d ever imagined. During his last years, as he told her about his life, DeSalvo began to understand that her obsession with war novels and military history wasn’t merely academic but rooted in her desire to understand this complex father whom she both adored and …

African American Masculinity In The Wartime Diaries Of Two Vietnam Soldiers, Sharon D. Raynor

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "African American Masculinity in the Wartime Diaries of Two Vietnam Soldiers" Sharon D. Raynor discusses an unpublished diary (1967-68) written by her father, Louis Raynor with the diary (1965-66) of David Parks that was revised and published as a memoir. By contextualizing the traditions of African American autographical writing and wartime diaries, Raynor analyzes how African American masculinity permeates the autobiographical structure in the Raynor and Parks diaries as each soldier interweaves a collective experience with a unique personal experience in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam experience challenged their ideologies about racial politics, but affirmed their masculine …

The Fire This Time: Ta-Nehisi Coates’S “Between The World And Me”, Bill Yousman

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

In 1963, James Baldwin published his seminal The Fire Next Time. The first half of this foundational work was a letter to his nephew regarding America and race. In 2015 the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates published a letter to his son, also about America and race. The literary device employed is no coincidence. Toni Morrison has anointed Coates as the successor to James Baldwin, and while that is a heavy burden for any 40 year old to bear, it is one that he just might manage to handle with grace.

The (Dis)Ability Of Color; Or, That Middle World: Toward A New Understanding Of 19th And 20th Century Passing Narratives, Julia S. Charles

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation mines the intersection of racial performance and the history of the so-called “tragic mulatto” figure in American fiction. I propose that while many white writers depicted the “mulatto” character as inherently flawed because of some tainted “black blood,” many black writers’ depictions of mixed-race characters imagine solutions to the race problem. Many black writers critiqued some of America’s most egregious sins by demonstrating linkages between major shifts in American history and the mixed-race figure. Landmark legislation such as, Fugitive Slave Act 1850 and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) are often plotlines in African American passing literature, thus demonstrating the …

Balance Of Fragile Things By Olivia Chadha, Nicole Bartley

The Goose

Nicole Bartley reviews Balance of Fragile Things by Olivia Chadha.

Performativity And Jazz In The Fiction Of James Baldwin And Ralph Ellison, Drako P. Wells

Honors Theses

Since slavery in the seventeenth century, African Americans have been politically and economically oppressed in the United States. Even in recent times, it seems as if simply being black is enough to have a person criticized by society, convicted of crimes, or even killed. However, the frustration that oppression causes has, in many ways, catalyzed the evolution of African American culture and the African American identity. In this study, I examine how two postwar African American authors, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, portray the African American struggle with racial injustice and the means of overcoming its negative effects. In this …

Mediated Processes In Writing For Publication: Perspectives Of Chinese Science Postdoctoral Researchers In America, Mimi Li

Mimi Li

Sociocultural theory provides an explanatory framework for understanding human activity in the community of practice. This paper aims to address science researchers’ scholarly writing for publication processes from a sociocultural perspective. The author conducts a study via in-depth reflective interviews with three Chinese science postdoctoral researchers in America in an attempt to find their specific mediated actions and dynamic processes in writing for publication. In light of Engeström’s (1987, 1999) activity system, this paper, drawing on the interview data, explores the four mediating factors: objects/goals, artifacts, community, and roles, which afford and constrain the goings-on in the researchers’ writing for …

An Exploration Of Dual Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Maria D. Ramirez

All Student Theses

Having a dual identity is something that comes across in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. In this novella, the protagonist, Esperanza Cordero, tries to discover, create, and accept the complexity of her dual identity that is influence by her experiences with poverty, discrimination, classism, and gender expectations. Esperanza wants to overcome the oppression outside her community and the patriarchal society in her community by moving away from Mango Street and becoming a writer. She has to find a way to bridge the gap between both her American and Mexican identity. Through the character of Esperanza, Cisneros tells …

Mythological Influences On Southern American Authors, Natalie L. Hayden

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

A major influence upon many parts of society is that of Greek and Roman mythology. While there are several interpretations of what myths are, this study will define them as stories from Greek or Roman origins that seek to explain some natural or social phenomena or to provide moral lessons. Myths were especially influential during the Southern Renaissance, a period of literary reinvention in America during the 1920s and 1930s. Authors used myths to give deeper meanings to their works as they struggled with issues of race, religion, and social changes. Myths appeared in plot lines, as major symbols, and …

A Queen’S Reputation: A Feminist Analysis Of The Cultural Appropriations Of Cleopatra, Chamara Moore

Honors Theses

While there is no doubt that Cleopatra is considered a notable historical figure and popularly regarded character throughout modern media, there is a distinct pattern in her portrayal throughout time as a woman whose power is defined by her sexual promiscuity. Even throughout periods of powerful female monarchs, political change, and social progress her prowess as a leader has been assumingly attributed to her affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. The purpose of this study is to examine how literature and media has contributed to this sexualized reputation of a queen who yielded authority over such a prosperous nation. …

"Compulsion": The Fictionalization Of The Leopold-Loeb Case And The Struggle For Creative Control Of "The Crime Of The Century", Maria L. Zambrana

All NMU Master's Theses

When an artist releases a project into the global marketplace, it is difficult to say that it is “their” project from that point onward. Once an artistic work is made accessible to the public, it all but becomes public property as it is reinterpreted and re-released in different forms. In the case of literature, everything from plagiarism to unauthorized publishing can take place. Some methods of “stealing,” such as fan fiction, have less of an impact and can be viewed as harmless appreciation (as long as there is no profit being made). But other forms of theft, like the illegal …

Shifting Identity/Shifting Discourse: Re‐Naming In Contemporary Literature By Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, And Salman Rushdie, Jennifer Krengel

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Re­‐naming one’s self is an empowering act of self­‐definition; re­‐naming others is an attempt to codify, contain and censure identity. Re­‐naming emerges as a compelling theme in contemporary transnational literature, appearing in three notable texts: Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2000), Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (2002) and Salman Rushdie's memoir Joseph Anton (2012). These texts depict stories of diaspora, the forced migration or dispersal away from a homeland. Communities of diaspora negotiate between two cultures: an originary culture and the culture of the new geographic location. From these negotiations emerge a third, hybridized identity that reimagines the majority culture and challenges structural …

Out Of The Attic: Agency And Narratives Of Mental Illness By David Foster Wallace And Lauren Slater, Erin L. Mcleod

Honors Theses

Studies of Prozac Diary and Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir illustrate how Slater adapts conventions of fiction to the memoir form to create agency for the mentally ill subject. This study will apply this approach of narrative therapy to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest to determine if the autobiographical conventions of mental illness may be adapted to fiction. An analysis of these primary texts seeks to address issues related to the therapeutic dimensions of autobiography as these are complicated by the narrative conventions that distinguish memoir and fiction.

Myth Y La Magia: Magical Realism And The Modernism Of Latin America, Hannah R. Widdifield

Masters Theses

The similarities between Latin American magical realism and European surrealism have long been regarded as part of a shared, cohesive movement in literature and art. After all, they share certain nonsensical and fantastical traits that place both movements far away from the Realism that modernism, as a whole, refutes. But in light of postcolonial theory, it becomes more and more necessary to explore magical realism as a geographically and politically situated movement with its own unique value in discussions of Modernism; not an offshoot of surrealism, but a sister genre, born in the distinct atmosphere of a region trying to …

(Re)Constructing The Hybrid: Negotiating Transcultural South Asian Women's Subjectivity, Zoya Haroon

English Honors Projects

My project explores the transcultural South Asian woman as postcolonial hybrid subject. I do so by comparing two novels by transnational South Asian feminist authors (Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee and Anita and Me by Meera Syal) and using ethnographic work to complement my literary analysis of hybridity with the lived experience of South Asian women at Macalester. I contextualize my project within postcolonial and women of color feminist theory. Ultimately, I seek to contribute to the existing literature on transcultural South Asian women’s subjectivity and to place their experience alongside that of other women of color.

Honors project in English …

‘I Am Not Your Justification For Existence:’ Mourning, Fascism, Feminism And The Amputation Of Mothers And Daughters In Atwood, Ziervogel, And Ozick, Mitchell C. Hobza

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the complexities of mother-daughter relationships in twentieth-century women’s literature that includes themes about fascism and totalitarianism. Of central concern is how mothers and daughters are separated, both physically and psychically, in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Meike Ziervogel’s Magda and Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl. Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born provides the theoretical framework for considering maternity and the institution of motherhood. These separations occur through two modes: physical separation by political force; and psychical separation through ideological difference and what Rich terms as “Matrophobia.” The physical separation is analyzed through a synthesis of Rich’s theory …

“Shining” With The Marginalized: Self-Reflection And Empathy In Stanley Kubrick’S The Shining, Bethany Miller

English Seminar Capstone Research Papers

This paper examines Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece The Shining and how it references the history of violence against the marginalized in America.

Semantic Typology: New Approaches To Crosslinguistic Variation In Language And Cognition, Randi Elizabeth Moore

Arts & Sciences Articles

This article presents an overview of the goals and methods of semantic typology, the study of the distribution of semantic categories across languages. Results from this field inform theoretical accounts of syntax-semantics interface phenomena, as well as the nature of the relationship between language and cognition. This article discusses a variety of quantitative methods that represent recent efforts in semantic typology to (i) discover patterns in the distribution of independent variables and (ii) predict the distribution of dependent variables in relation to identified independent variables. Such methods include Multi-Dimensional Scaling, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, and Generalized Linear Mixed Effects regression analyses. …

“Against The Ebony Of Her Skin”: The Impact Of Harlem Renaissance Blues Culture And Literature On The Development Of Womanism, Maia Y. Rodriguez

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper will investigate the ways in which the music and writers spurred by the explosion of African American culture that was the Harlem Renaissance were responsible for propagating the rhetoric and fresh representations of African American womanhood that would later be incorporated into the theoretical framework of black feminism championed by critics like bell hooks and brought into fruition as the recognizable school of womanism by Alice Walker. I will argue, using the literature of “proto-feminist” Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston as well as the literature of womanist writers like Walker, that without the Harlem …

Struggling Towards Salvation: Narrative Structure In James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain, Darren Spirk

Student Publications

This paper argues that John Grimes, the protagonist of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, represents the struggle inherent in the path towards salvation and holds the potential ability to break down the binaries that create this struggle. Of particular interest is a similarity in the narrative framing of John’s story with Jesus Christ's, as told in the four Gospels. The significance of both their symbolic power is dependent on a multitude of narrative viewpoints, in John’s case the tragic pasts offered of his aunt, father and mother in the novel’s medial section. Their stories inform the …

Another Country: When Your Nation Doesn’T Consider You To Be A Citizen, William B. Daniels Ii

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

I plan to show how the characters in Another Country uncover the inherently racist and homophobic requirements for citizenship in a nation. The novel Another Country by African American author James Baldwin (1924-1987) exposes the fallible nature of hetero-normative and racial ideals that narrowly define a model citizen of a nation-state. The queer interracial relationships in the novel, particularly between the main character Rufus and his lover Eric, transgress the boundaries of nation, race, and sexuality, thus revealing the illusionary nature of categorizations that are defined and applied by nation-state apparatuses in order to discriminate and maintain uniformity. In addition …