English Language and Literature Commons^™

Representation Of The Mother’S Body As A Narrative Conduit For Wartime Themes In Saga, Bess Pallares

Student Research Symposium

“Representation of the Mother’s Body as a Narrative Conduit for Wartime Themes in Saga” examines how both diagetic and extradiagetic art creates a visual syuzhet to convey themes of interdependence and transgenerational memory in the comic book series Saga. My method of research was a narrative analysis of volumes 1-4 of Saga, particularly focusing on the artistic representation of two mothers’ bodies within the narrative and on covers of the books, as related to the themes and story. As a result, I found in the artistic syuzhet that the representation of two characters’ bodies as they interact …

Love, A Dream, Brittany A. Cordaro

Symposium of Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

“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 …

Patriarchy And The Protestants: A New Historical And Feminist Reading Of Marilynne Robinson’S Gilead, Jesse D. Lawhead

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

In her novel Gilead, Marilynne Robinson establishes a correlation between the presence of Protestantism and constricting gender roles women experience in the United States. Living in 1956 Gilead, Iowa, seventy-six-year-old Pastor John Ames begins writing to his seven-year-old son in a series of journal entries after he is diagnosed with a terminal case of angina pectoris. In these journal entries to his son, Ames records the histories of his reverend father, reverend grandfather, his own life, and present observations as the beauty of life continues to captivate him. Ultimately he hopes to “to tell [his son] things [he] might never …

A Daughter's Struggle To Individuate In "Einstein's Daughter", Matthew K. Werneburg

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Claudia Smith Brinson’s short story, “Einstein’s Daughter,” is a coming of age tale about a young girl who must delicately navigate her relationship with her mother in order gain independence. The protagonist, who narrates the story, remains unnamed and is defined mostly in reference to her mother’s lineage. The narrator begins the story with the concept that one’s biologically inherited character traits largely determine one’s future. Alluding to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the protagonist uses her extraordinary speed to travel back in time and explore the previous three generations of families on her mother’s side. She uses her observations to …

A Queer Poet In A Queer Time: John Milton And Homosexuality, Adam J. Wagner

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Scholar David Hawkes refers to John Milton as a “Hero of Our Time.” Milton’s written works, including his poetry and political treatises, contain cultural and theological insight applicable not only to his 17th Century English culture, but 21st Century American culture as well. As homosexuality continues to enter the public sphere in Western society, many scholars are uncovering past insights about how sexuality has evolved. Milton’s literary texts provide insight into his own sexual orientation and how people viewed human sexuality post-English Renaissance. Homosexuality is a broad topic, but Milton’s works give insight into three main areas—homosexual sex, sexual orientation, …

Jane Austen's Heroines--And Some Others, Neda H. Jeny

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

Jane Austen’s Heroines--and Some Others

Jane Austen is the earliest English novelist whose novels are still widely read today; in fact, they are becoming more popular all the time.

Of course, there are good reasons for this popularity. Apart from Austen’s creation of unforgettable characters, and her exquisite irony and sense of humor, there is one other thing I’d like to discuss today: her heroines could be called, in a sense, brilliant (and often unorthodox) adaptations of universally recognized types. For example, Elizabeth Bennet is so remarkable a character because she is, at the same time, a sort of Cinderella …

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 …

Postcolonial Disability In Mohesen Makhmalbaf’S Kandahar, Sukshma Vedere

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

Kandahar (2001), an Iranian film directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, details the journey of the protagonist, Nafas, to Kandahar to save her sister from committing suicide on the day of the solar eclipse. The film has gained recent attention by disability studies scholars for the representation of disability in Afghanistan; scholars have discussed the significance of prosthetics and international aid for the disabled in post-war zones of the Third World, but little has been said about disability as a postcolonial embodiment. I argue that Kandahar represents the postcolonial state as a disabled space both literally and metaphorically. It projects the veil …