Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Havens And Covens: Pregnancy, Witchcraft, And Female Power In Cotton Mather’S “Retired Elizabeth”, Brittney A. Hatchett

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Over the decades, scholars have been holding two adjacent conversations about witchcraft and gender in Cotton Mather’s works that surprisingly have not been put in dialogue. On the one hand, they have examined Mather’s witchcraft ideology and motivations for involving himself in the Salem witch trials. On the other hand, scholars have discussed how Mather seeks to exert control over women spiritually and physically. However, no one has yet explored how these conversations might converge. I suggest that we can see how Mather intertwines discourses of witchcraft and gender in the section titled “Retired Elizabeth” in The Angel of Bethesda. …

“She Didn’T Know I Was In The Room”: The Effects Of Hatfield’S Illustrations On Readers’ Interpretations Of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Mason Repas

The Downtown Review

When Charlotte Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," was first published in New England Magazine in 1892, staff illustrator Joseph Hatfield created three realistic-style images to accompany the text. Research suggests that Gilman had no control or influence over these images, which altered readers' perception of her story about the dangers of the rest cure for female hysteria. While Hatfield faced artistic limitations and his intentions are not discoverable today, the choices and details in his illustrations support interpretations of the short story as a piece of horror fiction in which his cohesive series of images is a more reliable …

Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory, Rebekah Izard

English (MA) Theses

Fantastical narratives such as fairy tales and magical realist literature utilizes fantastic and intangible spaces to unpack that which is often beyond the limitations imposed on our understanding by reality: the stunting experience of individual and generational traumas. This study aims to contribute to the current literary discourse’s understandings of fantastic literature and its subgenres as a tool for healing from trauma through the application of ontological notions of Selfhood and Otherness supplied by 20th century philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, and the notion of Orientalism by postcolonial scholar, Edward Said. The dialogue generated by these schools of thought provide a space …

Poetry Analysis Of Gwendolyn Brooks, Chloe Bard

Student Writing

This paper is a literary analysis of three poems by written by Gwendolyn Brooks that address the overarching theme of motherhood.

The Postmodern And The Personal In Edna St. Vincent Millay’S Aria Da Capo, Roxanne Rankin

Munn Scholars Awards

Aria Da Capo, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1919 play, has thus far been largely ignored in literary criticism. This essay, through a historical survey of Millay’s previous critical reception followed by a close reading of Aria Da Capo, attempts to explain and then bridge this gap in academic scholarship. A postmodernist reading of the play will then illustrate why Millay’s work still confounds scholars today and how Aria Da Capo specifically continues to be relevant more than 100 years after it was first produced.

Adrienne Rich And Women's Confinement, Marissa Weber

Student Writing

Adrienne Rich's poems "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law," "Living in Sin," and "From a Survivor" weave a tale of the average American housewife expressing her discontent with her day-to-day and searching for a way out. All three poems contain themes of societal oppression scaled to a personal level, and the varying conclusions speak to the harsh reality of being a woman in the mid-twentieth century. Rich's career as an activist defined her poetic style, and her feminist pieces have remained relevant decades after they were originally published.

Intimate Danger: Louise Glück And Women’S Lack Of Romantic Power, Daniel Rose

Student Writing

In her three poems centered around Persephone, Glück uses mythology to expose the lack of power women often have within their intimate relationships.

The Feminist Gothic Journeys Of Shirley Jackson, Grace Sanko

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Bodies Of Silence And Space: Victimhood, Complicity, And Resistance In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Sana H. Mufti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the complexity of resistance and the conditions of power for women in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Using feminist theory, theories of neoliberalism, and Dominionism, this thesis works to understand the ways in which victimhood and complicity influence resistance in totalitarian regimes. I argue that neoliberal ideologies skew understandings of freedom, agency, and power in a way that ensures individuals, specifically women, remain trapped in the system. Focusing on reproduction, I examine how Gilead controls women’s bodies and reproductive abilities to ensure a future for itself. The Eve-Complex is one way that the state integrates itself …

Queer Ecologies: A Final Syllabus/Zine Product Of Our Independent Study, Yeh Seo Jung, Ray Craig

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This zine is the product of our independent study course Queer Ecologies, which is an exploration of bio-social systems using a queer and feminist theoretical lens. We aim to look critically at knowledge formation and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable relationships between science, nature, and ourselves. While queer theory most directly interrogates the normative structure of heterosexuality both in humans and in biology more broadly, these studies include analyses of hierarchy, power, and value. Queer Ecology can be used to examine phenomena such as climate change, extinction, pollution, species hierarchies, agricultural practices, resource extraction, and human population …

Novelizing The Feminist Biography, From Nancy Milford's Zelda To The Present: What Are The Ethics Of Sourcing?, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This presentation arose out of two parallel tracks: the desire to novelize my own feminist biography of Elizabeth Robins and the awareness -- especially made acute in the essay on Emma Tennant's two treatments of the Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes material by Diane Middlebrook, "Misremembering Ted Hughes" -- that for a novelist to base fiction on historical subjects risks not merely critical exposure; it also has its ethical and sometimes legal complications.

Anyone of a certain age remembers or can mark the impact of Milford's study of Zelda Fitzgerald, published 1970, the finalist in several book awards and scores …

Conceive And Control: Cultural-Legal Narratives Of American Privacy And Reproductive Politics, Emily Naser-Hall

Theses and Dissertations--English

Law and literature share a foundation in narrative. The literary turn in legal scholarship recognizes that the law itself is a form of narrative, one that simultaneously reflects socio-cultural norms and creates social and political regulations with a complex matrix of power. Cultural narratives from the 1950s to the mid-1970s pertaining to reproductive politics, domesticity, and national identity both produce and are productive of legal rulings that govern and restrict private acts of sexuality and speech. The Supreme Court used cases concerning sex and reproduction to enumerate, explicate, and complicate the right to privacy, which appears nowhere in the U.S. …

Multilingual Experimental Literature And Transnational Feminist Solidarities: Erín Moure And Kathy Acker, Melissa Tanti

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The impulse toward multilingual writing has arisen as a prominent trend in contemporary women’s writing. Criticism and notions of the literary have to respond to, among other things, the fact that "we live in a world where a significant portion of the population is at least partially bi or multilingual" (Camboni 34). To be responsive to the "increasing multilingualism of writers necessitates new strategies for reading the polyvocality of texts" (Eagleton and Friedman 3). This paper considers the ways multilingual writing creates, “small scale modes of listening” (Maguire xix) that tune the reader to languages, identities, and cultures under erasure. …

“I’Ll Tell You No Lies”: An Exploration Of Trauma, Memory, And Violence Against Women In North Carolina Murder Ballads, Madison Ava Helman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation explores trauma, memory and violence against women in Western North Carolina murder ballads “Tom Dooley,” “Poor Omie Wise,” “Poor Ellen Smith,” “The Ballad of the Lawson Family,” and “Frankie Silver.” I posit that these ballads were influenced by prescriptive societal conceptions of femininity, which in turn influenced societal ideations of violence against women. Using folklore performance theory, I analyze the text and context of these ballads and their subsequent histories, eventually arriving at a template for polyvocality that incorporates multiple ballad variants and encourages diverse performances.