Literature in English, North America Commons^™

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

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 …

Letters From Olive Fremstad To Willa Cather: A View Beyond The Song Of The Lark, Jessica Tebo

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1913, Willa Cather met opera-diva Olive Fremstad and the two formed a friendship that would span at least a decade. Fremstad has long been recognized as an inspiration for the character Thea Kronborg of Cather’s Song of the Lark (1915) but has not been portrayed as influential in any other aspects to Cather’s career. Letters sent by Fremstad to Cather have recently been located, and they reveal an ongoing and interdisciplinary dialogue between the two women that negotiates issues surrounding art and professionalism. I locate these letters within the broader context of Cather’s public and fictional statements about art …

Mythic Quest In Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, Graley Herren

Faculty Scholarship

Blonde on Blonde epitomizes Bob Dylan’s debts to the classics. The album depicts the mythic quest of a hipster-hero descending into the Underworld in pursuit of the Muse. The hero resembles Dylan but is augmented by the experiences of mythic figures like Orpheus and Odysseus. The singer encounters bizarre figures and wanders in exile through the “Lowlands” searching for the goddess—a figure inspired by Sara Dylan, but also a composite of the White Goddess, Persephone, Eurydice, and others. Dylan’s mythic adaptations are also informed by the syncretic work of T.S. Eliot, Joseph Campbell, and Robert Graves.

Silence Emerging From Birds, Rebecca Macijeski

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation represents the culmination of five years of creative activity in poetry. Included within this document are three main components: 1.) a critical introduction to my book-length manuscript of original poems complete to satisfy the requirements of creative writing within the English Department; 2.) a description of my creative activity reflected in that book-length manuscript, and; 3.) a sample of previously published original poems from the manuscript. I will describe each of these components in greater detail below.

The critical introduction to the creative work seeks to explore and examine various aesthetic and theoretical influences on my poems. The …

An Evening With Emily Dickinson, Meryl Altman

English Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Who Can Afford To Improvise? James Baldwin And Black Music, The Lyric And The Listeners [Table Of Contents], Ed Pavlic

Literature

More than a quarter-century after his death, James Baldwin remains an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics. In Who Can Afford to Improvise? Ed Pavlić offers an unconventional, lyrical, and accessible meditation on the life, writings, and legacy of James Baldwin and their relationship to the lyric tradition in black music, from gospel and blues to jazz and R&B. Based on unprecedented access to private correspondence, unpublished manuscripts and attuned to a musically inclined poet’s skill in close listening, Who Can Afford to Improvise? frames a new narrative of James Baldwin’s work and life.

The route …

“Strength Shed By A New And Terrible Vision:” The Organic Evolution Of The Blues And The Blues Aesthetic In Richard Wright’S 'Uncle Tom’S Children', Jeffrey J. Horvath

Student Publications

An exploration into the development of the "blues aesthetic" in the African-American literary tradition.

American Iv: The Man Comes Around As A Musical Memoir, Amy Bonsal

Undergraduate Research

Musicians are marked, measured and branded by the material they produce, and often how it pertains to their own life. Particularly, in the case of country and rock & roll icon, Johnny Cash, all eyes locked in on his American recordings. These albums were recorded as his health steadily declined, signifying his musical end, if not physical death, was looming. Therefore, when his album American IV: The Man Comes Around was released in 2002, it was clear Cash was reflecting back on his career. Upon analysis of this album, it is evident that Cash had wanted to create a lasting …

Undergraduate Research Programs And The Academic Library, Nancy Cunningham, Richard Pollenz Ph.D., Drew Smith, Mark I. Greenberg Ph.D.

Western Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Undergraduate research (UR) programs attract highly motivated students who often continue on to graduate/professional schools but may lack necessary information literacy skills. Collaboration with UR programs provides librarians new opportunities to help students develop these skills and work with specialized collections in the context of a research experience. In this webinar, librarians and UR administrators share their experiences in forging collaborations based on UR and library training resources, explain how information literacy skills programming has been embedded into UR, and demonstrate how this partnership has led to greater visibility of library services, collections and UR among all undergraduates.

Whence Comes Black Art?: The Construction And Application Of “Black Motivation”, Derrell Acon

Lawrence University Honors Projects

George Schuyler, in his tragically misguided 1926 essay for The Nation magazine, “The Negro-Art Hokum,” suggests that the only difference between Blacks and Whites is the color of skin, and that both races experience the same social, psychological and educational forces in America. He blatantly disregards American racism and inequality, and in his attempt to put forth his advocacy of color-blindness he merely projects and perpetuates the most racist of ideals within our country. Schuyler views the concept of Black Art very narrowly and insists on the impossibility of such an idea because of the supposed Americanness of the art. …

Courtly Love Elements In The Child Ballads: A Study In Origins, Fannie Lewis

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The traditional ballad, the genre of the above poetry, has been a subject of much controversy and speculation, especially regarding its origin. The problem of origin is not likely to be solved unless much more evidence is found. Among the many theories are communal authorship, and individual poet; humble and oral origin, and sophisticated and literary origin. Studies of linguistics, of ballad refrain, and of carole continue the attempt to discover ballad genesis. However, a very different approach perhaps can be used to determine the origin of some ballads, particularly the romantic ballads; that approach is to use the courtly …

Stephen Collins Foster & His Folk-Songs, Mary Chisholm

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Every American knows some of Stephen Collins Foster's songs, but not everyone who sings My Old Kentucky Home and Old Folks at Home realizes that it was he who wrote those songs. Of the two hundred songs and compositions which Foster published, at least fifteen are constantly sung. Since these songs voice emotions which are fundamental to mankind, they have become more important than the composer himself. For this reason they may be called folk-songs, and because they voice so truly the spirit of America, America is proud to claim them as her own.

The title of this thesis, Stephen …