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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America
“As Blind Men Learn The Sun”: Towards A Poetics Of Queer Mysticism In American Literature, 1860-1960, Bradley M. Nelson
“As Blind Men Learn The Sun”: Towards A Poetics Of Queer Mysticism In American Literature, 1860-1960, Bradley M. Nelson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation seeks to play with the similarity between the queer and the mystical, and in the process, defines something I call “queer mysticism.” I include four cardinal figures of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American poetry: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Robert Duncan. Beginning with Walt Whitman, I show how each of these poets bear witness to an experience of the divine that is both immanent and immanently queer. Through historical and biographical research, I uncover their poetic inspiration in popular modes of expression and in the esoteric and arcane. By establishing a connection with a few Catholic mystics …
She Speaks Her Truth: Black Female Self-Empowerment In African-American Centric Texts, Britt N. Seese
She Speaks Her Truth: Black Female Self-Empowerment In African-American Centric Texts, Britt N. Seese
Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects
A Master's Portfolio that looks into African-American Women in African-American literature and theatrical works.
Little Women, Little Houses: Authorship And Authority In Louisa May Alcott And Laura Ingalls Wilder, Katia Savelyeva
Little Women, Little Houses: Authorship And Authority In Louisa May Alcott And Laura Ingalls Wilder, Katia Savelyeva
Student Research Submissions
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House novels, share a place in the canon of American children’s literature as novels centered on female protagonists coming of age within an emblematic period in American history, respectively the duration and aftermath of the Civil War and the post-Homestead Act settlement of the Western frontier. Each text portrays the intertwined processes of girlhood and nationhood through the eyes of rebellious, gender-nonconforming protagonists, Jo and Laura, who each undergo an arc towards starting a traditional family and immersing themselves in normative national projects (respectively a philanthropic school for the poor, …
Colonial Prehistories Of Indigenous North America, Mark A. Mattes
Colonial Prehistories Of Indigenous North America, Mark A. Mattes
Faculty Scholarship
One of the most common inquiries received by Filson Historical Society librarians concerns the myth of Prince Madoc and the Welsh Indians. Of the myth’s many versions, the one most familiar to Ohio Valley History readers goes like this: Madoc, a Welsh prince escaping an internecine conflict over political rule at home, supposedly sailed to North America in the twelfth century. His force either landed at the Falls of the Ohio or made it there after landing further south and being driven north by hostile locals, possibly Cherokee people. Madoc and his contingent intermixed with Indigenous populations, whose fair-haired, blue-eyed, …
The Phenomenology Of It All, Justin M. Campbell
The Phenomenology Of It All, Justin M. Campbell
2019 Symposium
Who is consumed when we read? Does the reader consume the text or does it consume us? This essay explores the complex and possibly parasitic relationship between reader and text. This unique exchange of knowledge and ideas between reader and texts during this relationship is the phenomenology of reading. During this, the text is transformed via the consciousness of the reader from a passive, inanimate object to an active living breathing immortal entity that transcends both space and time. In doing so, the unhuman text becomes an active consumer of the human reader in the same way the reader believes …
Progressive Saxonism: The Construction Of Anglo-Saxonism In Jack London's The Valley Of The Moon And Frank Norris's Mcteague, Matthew John Soderblom
Progressive Saxonism: The Construction Of Anglo-Saxonism In Jack London's The Valley Of The Moon And Frank Norris's Mcteague, Matthew John Soderblom
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The purpose of my thesis seeks to uncover the constructed nature of the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity within two works of fiction. My thesis utilizes London’s The Valley of the Moon (1913) and Norris’s McTeague (1899) because they were published in a similar era. Both authors lived and wrote in the Bay Area during the Progressive Era of American politics. Therefore, there is political, stylistic, and regional proximity. Although Anglo-Saxonism has always been present in the United States, the construction of race was changing in the 1900s. The Valley of the Moon and McTeague both contain intriguing (and antiquated) notions of whiteness …
“There Was That In Her Face And Form Which Made Him Loathe The Sight Of Her”: Disfiguration And Deformity Of Female Characters In 19th Century American Women’S Literature, Kelsi E. Cunningham Miss
“There Was That In Her Face And Form Which Made Him Loathe The Sight Of Her”: Disfiguration And Deformity Of Female Characters In 19th Century American Women’S Literature, Kelsi E. Cunningham Miss
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Rebecca Harding Davis, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins Freeman challenge the way that society treats and views the disabled and deformed. Through different representations of the disabled characters, the three short stories by these authors reveal the realities that women faced in the 19th century in response to rigid beauty standards and expectations. The authors in this study address the marginalized position of the disabled characters and show how society’s attempts to “normalize” the women confine them to a fixed identity. Analyzing the texts in relation to disability studies and the authors’ perceived effectiveness of social charity will …
Huck Finn And The Tragedy Of Being Banned, Peyton Harris
Huck Finn And The Tragedy Of Being Banned, Peyton Harris
English Class Publications
Mark Twain once said, "I am perfectly astonished--a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d--ladies and gentlemen--astonished at the way history repeats itself." This opening line of Twain's speech at the Papyrus Club in Boston of February 24, 1881 is proof of his fascination with the patterns of humanity. As the already famous author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain's commentary on social hypocrisy and moral social maturation was well known. After writing this novel and confessing his interest in humanity, it is no surprise that Twain chose to once again delve into the world of fiction and produce what would become an instant classic …
Mind Against Matter: Isolating Consciousness In American Fiction, 1980-2010, Eric E. Casero
Mind Against Matter: Isolating Consciousness In American Fiction, 1980-2010, Eric E. Casero
Theses and Dissertations--English
Mind Against Matter uses cognitive literary theory to explore a set of contemporary texts that emphasize characters’ feelings of alienation and isolation from their social and material worlds. Focusing on novels by Nicholson Baker and David Markson, short stories by David Foster Wallace, and the film The Truman Show, I consider how these texts focus on characters’ individual, subjective experiences while deemphasizing their physical environments and social contexts. I argue that by privileging subjectivity in this way, these texts portray their characters as independent, to varying degrees, from their material and cultural surroundings. The texts isolate individual consciousness, causing …
Transnational Influence In The Poetry Of Sarah Piatt: Poems Of Ireland And The American Civil War, Amy R. Hudgins
Transnational Influence In The Poetry Of Sarah Piatt: Poems Of Ireland And The American Civil War, Amy R. Hudgins
Global Honors Theses
Sarah Piatt, a recently recovered nineteenth century poet, is best known, where she is known at all, as an American poet. While this label is certainly appropriate, it should not obscure Piatt’s decidedly international focus, or more precisely, her transnational focus, especially in regard to Ireland. Piatt’s verse, considered by some to be the best poetry of her time second only to the work of Emily Dickinson, is remarkable for its quantity and breadth, but more importantly, for its subversive use of genteel style. Though her poems are generally divided into four overlapping categories, the two thematic classes of her …
Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp
Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp
Faculty Publications
Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria-a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale-offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers.2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors.3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel.4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic, child-centered conversion …
Cultural Reclamations In Helena Viramontes’ “The Moths”, Ashley Denney
Cultural Reclamations In Helena Viramontes’ “The Moths”, Ashley Denney
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Recontextualizing Guy Endore’S Babouk In The Shadow Of Orientalism, Nathan Sacks
Recontextualizing Guy Endore’S Babouk In The Shadow Of Orientalism, Nathan Sacks
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
In Search Of America: Nature, Spirituality, And The Self In American Transcendentalism And Beat Generation Literature, Caitlin Cater
In Search Of America: Nature, Spirituality, And The Self In American Transcendentalism And Beat Generation Literature, Caitlin Cater
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
The Power Of Hoodoo: African Relic Symbolism In Amistad And The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Alicia M. Simmons
The Power Of Hoodoo: African Relic Symbolism In Amistad And The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Alicia M. Simmons
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
"Sleeping With One Eye Open": · Fear And Ontology In The Poetry Of Mark Strand, James Hoff
"Sleeping With One Eye Open": · Fear And Ontology In The Poetry Of Mark Strand, James Hoff
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Down And Out With Thoreau: Reversals Of Perspective And Paradox In Walden, Peter J. Capuano
Down And Out With Thoreau: Reversals Of Perspective And Paradox In Walden, Peter J. Capuano
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Salvation And Rebirth In The Catcher In The Rye And The Bell Jar, Erica Lawrence
Salvation And Rebirth In The Catcher In The Rye And The Bell Jar, Erica Lawrence
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.