James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Educators About Queer Representation, 2025 Murray State University
James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Educators About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan
Honors College Theses
This is an extended analysis of James Baldwin's "A Talk to Teachers" about how to bring representation into the classroom. I use Baldwin's other essays and fiction along with educational research to look into the way Baldwin understands education and the importance of bringing healthy queer representation into the classroom. I provide both theoretical observations along with practical implications of what this means for educators in the classroom and what they can do to help all their students feel seen, represented, and welcome in the classroom.
Ekphrasis: An Exploration Of Poetry Inspired By Art, 2024 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Ekphrasis: An Exploration Of Poetry Inspired By Art, Caitlin Cacciatore
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“Ekphrasis: An Exploration of Poetry Inspired by Art” is an Open Educational Resource (OER) that occupies the underdeveloped niche of freely available teaching and learning materials about the interdisciplinary poetic medium of ekphrasis. Ekphrastic poetry is a form dating back to Book XVIII of the Iliad, experiencing a revitalization in the latter half of the 18th century, when demand for written descriptions of paintings was in high demand, and again taking on a new, modern meaning in the early 19th century, with poems like John Keats’ 1819 “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Ekphrasis is …
Defying Normativity: Reclaiming A Narrative Of Queer Resistance In Young Adult Literature, 2024 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Defying Normativity: Reclaiming A Narrative Of Queer Resistance In Young Adult Literature, Christopher Morabito
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
At the heart of this dissertation lies a single question: how Queer is Queer Young Adult Literature? As many scholars have argued, Queerness is, in many ways, a literacy, and literature is one of the greatest sponsors of Queer Literacy. While there is certainly no one comprehensive definition of what it means to be queer, it is also true that the general understanding of queerness has changed quite drastically in the last few decades. What was once used as a term to describe someone who is outside of social conventions has slowly begun to lose its sense of “otherness,” and …
The Redemption Of History: Poetics And Politics In The Modern Epic, 2024 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
The Redemption Of History: Poetics And Politics In The Modern Epic, Giacomo R. Bianchino
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation, “The Redemption of History: Poetics and Politics in the Modern Epic.” provides a materialist theory of the modern epic, focusing on the way that the poets deployed this form towards political ends. Building on theories of the epic going back to the German Romantics, it argues that the modern form is predicated on the idea that it has departed from the conditions that made the ancient form possible. It examines the way that writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century developed the idea that the immediacy of the social “totality” expressed by the ancient epopee was …
“I Don’T Want To Be Human”: The Neurodivergent Reader Response To Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries Series, 2024 Grand Valley State University
“I Don’T Want To Be Human”: The Neurodivergent Reader Response To Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries Series, Rachel S. Anderson
Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture
This article explores how readers have responded to the Martha Wells series The Murderbot Diaries by identifying the titular character as neurodivergent and the recent ways in which the author has responded to questions about the character—and herself—as potentially autistic. While initially resisting this reader-supplied diagnosis, Wells has more recently acknowledged a neurodivergent identity. By examining Murderbot’s sense of self and relationship with the humans around it, this article will explore our current society’s relationship with human/machine intelligences and how we define such concepts as “neurotypical” and “human.” Specifically, this article will examine how the concept of a “governor module” …
Eng 155: Introduction To Literary Studies, 2024 City University of New York (CUNY)
Eng 155: Introduction To Literary Studies, Joseph Donica
Open Educational Resources
An OER syllabus covering the ways humans have read and continue to read literature from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives. An emphasis is placed on the application of critical thought to writing expository essays and responding to readings.
With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, 2024 Whittier College
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 …
Generational Awareness Of Folk Figures In The American Midwest, 2024 University of South Dakota
Generational Awareness Of Folk Figures In The American Midwest, Addison L. Jensen
Honors Thesis
The popular folklore of a region can clearly reflect how its citizens understand themselves and their nation. The goal of this study was to determine the number of individuals who can be considered “well-versed” in traditional folklore and to speculate on the possible reasons for the differences in recognition that arise. Five figures (Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Annie Oakley, and Rip Van Winkle) were selected to serve as a representative sample of folk characters that have been historically significant to the country. An online survey of 279 Midwesterners and interviews with various age groups in South Dakota, found …
Standing On The Front Porch Of To Kill A Mockingbird, 2024 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Standing On The Front Porch Of To Kill A Mockingbird, Anna Mclain
Honors Theses
This thesis is an examination of the front porch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. After providing background on the practical functions of the front porch in the South, I argue that this space serves as a synthesis between perception and reality in Lee’s novel. My thesis is divided into three sections that each explore different characters on the front porch: Boo Radley, Southern women, and Scout. Analyzing specific scenes with these characters on the front porch, I consider how the space exposes various tensions in the novel and highlights Lee’s larger themes.
Jane Austen And A Biographical Study Of The Historical Narrative Process, 2024 California State University, San Bernardino
Jane Austen And A Biographical Study Of The Historical Narrative Process, Serena Young
Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations
Jane Austen, beloved national literary icon of Great Britain, is world-renowned for her fiction. Biographers have attempted to authentically piece together her life and often, try to connect her narrative to when and how her fiction was written, as well as point out circumstances within her personal life and speculate their influence on her work. Literary analysts and critics that have examined the historical narrative process, Hayden White and Kevin Gilvary, have found that the way in which a historical account is presented plays a significant role in how history is understood and perpetuated. When examining Jane Austen’s life, many …
Final Master's Portfolio, 2024 Bowling Green State University
Final Master's Portfolio, Savannah Packman
Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects
This portfolio uses Marxist and feminist film theory to analyze various forms of visual media. It analyzes Mark Mylod's film The Menu (2022), Julie Taymor's film Across the Universe (2007), the historic V-J Day Kiss photograph, and popular TikTok videos. This portfolio focuses on the impact of capitalism in the political and economic sphere. It also analyzes images of women throughout history and critiques how these images have been used to formulate the American body politic.
Fantastical Fate: Contemporary Works Depicting Enlil, 2024 Chapman University
Fantastical Fate: Contemporary Works Depicting Enlil, Daylen Motamed, Marissa Becher
Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters
It is known that the creation of Gods is prevalent, and almost essential to worldbuilding in fantasy novels. Some examples are the dwarves' Durin in Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings and Djel of the Fjerdans in Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse novels. However, there is one popular god present in many modern fantasy series; the God of fate. In Ancient Mesopotamia, a God of fate was named Enlil. Enlil is known as the king of all Gods, as well as the God of wind and air. He decrees the fates and his word cannot be changed, as Enlil guards the tablets …
Stretching The Hard-Boiled Detective: From Hammett And Chandler To Paretsky And Himes, 2024 William & Mary
Stretching The Hard-Boiled Detective: From Hammett And Chandler To Paretsky And Himes, Chloe Moore
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis investigates transformations of the hard-boiled crime fiction genre by analyzing the works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and how authors Sara Paretsky and Chester Himes adapt and manipulate the genre to suit their intentions and voices. By examining the construction of Hammett's Continental Op and Sam Spade, and Chandler's Philip Marlowe, the foundation is laid for understanding the defining characteristics of a hard-boiled detective in the 1930s and 40s. This thesis then explores how Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski and Himes' Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones adapt these qualities to suit new demographics of detectives: a white woman …
Book Review: Afternoons With Harper Lee, 2024 Georgia State University, Dunwoody
Book Review: Afternoons With Harper Lee, Lindsay G. Wong
Georgia Library Quarterly
No abstract provided.
With Great Power: Using Comics To Facilitate Discussion Of Systemic Oppression In Higher Education Literature Classes, 2024 Clemson University
With Great Power: Using Comics To Facilitate Discussion Of Systemic Oppression In Higher Education Literature Classes, Keri Crist-Wagner
All Dissertations
Undergraduate student participation in general education classes constitutes a point of struggle for many educators, especially when it comes to lessons centered around systems of oppression like racism, sexism, or heterosexism. Using both constructivism and counter storytelling as theoretical frameworks, this multi-method phenomenological case study explored the experiences of undergraduate honors students in a semester long general education literature class. The purpose of this study was to 1) explore how comics can be used as a pedagogical tool in higher education classrooms to facilitate discussion of systems of oppression, 2) assess the ways in which students interacted with comics, and …
Cloaked Trannies On The Silver Screen: "Evolutionary Derangement" And Cronenberg's Approach To Shaping A Critical Mindset Towards Trans Bodies, 2024 Clemson University
Cloaked Trannies On The Silver Screen: "Evolutionary Derangement" And Cronenberg's Approach To Shaping A Critical Mindset Towards Trans Bodies, John David Hunter
All Theses
This thesis engages David Cronenberg’s 2022 film, Crimes of the Future, analyzing the text through the lens of Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensten) as a transgender allegory. Through this, the project investigates the way in which Cronenberg’s text visually creates a Deleuzian language of the body, which is the body of becoming. This queer analysis of the film does so by utilizing the perspective of the trans body, through the character of Tenser, which more clearly illustrates the human body as one which is in a continual process of evolution. Following in the footsteps of scholars such as Susan …
Gentleman Death In Silk And Lace: Death And The Maiden In Vampire Literature And Film, 2024 East Tennessee State University
Gentleman Death In Silk And Lace: Death And The Maiden In Vampire Literature And Film, Emily Wilson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis contains an examination in the psychosocial significance of Hans Baldung Grien’s “Death and the Maiden” art motif, created during the Renaissance period following the Black Death, and its resurgence in the vampire fiction genre of both literature and film. I investigate the motif in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) as well as their film adaptations by Francis Ford Coppola (1992) and Neil Jordan (1994), respectively. By examining the presence of the motif in art, literature, and film, I found that the common threads across all investigated works were the dominant social …
Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, 2024 Kennesaw State University
Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell
Master's Projects
There is something quintessentially human about ghost stories, yet particular regions tend to be more powerfully associated with haunted folktales than others. One of the regions is the southeastern United States. In fact, these oral traditions appear to have influenced the area's best-known literary subgenre: the Southern Gothic.
Why is the South considered haunted? Are there particular qualities in historical events that make them more likely to engender ghost stories? What makes the South's folkloric spirits so powerful that they appear even in modern literature? Most of all, what connects the region's history and folklore with the Southern Gothic? By …
Written In Blood: The Cultural Work Of Family, Sexuality, And Race In Adaptations Of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, 2024 Bellarmine University
Written In Blood: The Cultural Work Of Family, Sexuality, And Race In Adaptations Of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, Ariana Alvarado
Undergraduate Theses
Anne Rice’s gothic novel “Interview with the Vampire” (1976) has not only stood the test of time as a cult classic, but has continued to be told and retold through a film adaptation (1994) and recent AMC television production (2022). Looking through the lens of adaptation theory and the ideas of Nina Auerbach in Our Vampires, Ourselves, this presentation highlights how both the original novel and subsequent adaptations use the figure of the vampire to represent the social changes of the era of its creation, particularly in regards to queerness and sexuality.
'Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Gazer'?: Beauty, Power, And Disability Examined Critically In Jane Eyre And Other Classic Literature, 2024 Ouachita Baptist University
'Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Gazer'?: Beauty, Power, And Disability Examined Critically In Jane Eyre And Other Classic Literature, Abigail Powers
Honors Theses
This thesis shares how the desire to read classic texts like Jane Eyre more critically inspired the creation of a reading guide that walks through the process for those who are interested, but not necessarily trained, in analyzing classic literature, promoting active consumers and, ultimately, enriched lives.