American Literature Commons^™

Disrupted Ambitions And Unmasked Identities: An Analysis Of Doubleness In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar And Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man In Cold War America, Laura Anderson

English Language and Literature ETDs

This thesis conducts a literary analysis on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) with a primary investigation on the protagonists and their convergence of identity in Cold War America. One of the critical discourses evaluated throughout the project’s literary analysis includes the protagonists’ complications of doubleness. This essay argues that since these two texts sit between W.E.B DuBois’s “Double Consciousness” and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1988 theory on intersectionality, these protagonists are forced to contend with an identity crossroads. Secondary to the context of this analysis is the use of “post-war” and “Cold War,”; neither are …

Sherwood Anderson And The Industrial Corruption Of Midwestern Individualism, Hudson Rice

Senior Honors Theses

Sherwood Anderson’s literary Midwest reflects many of the idealistic characteristics resulting from the region’s frontier, agrarian origin. The most prominent of these characteristics is the region’s emphasis on and appreciation of human particularity. His novels Winesburg, Ohio and Poor White document the region’s unique relationship with individual particularity and how this particularity clashed with a new industrial lifestyle. The two novels reflect the Midwest’s unique understanding of individuality and offer an explanation for why the region’s response to an industrial cultural overhaul was so damaging for the Midwest’s identity, as the traditional identity was supplanted by an industrial one.

Discovering Dune: Essays On Frank Herbert’S Epic Saga., Edited By Dominic J. Nardi And N. Trevor Brierly, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

G. Connor Salter reviews Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga, edited by Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly, considering its new contributions to studies of Frank Herbert's work. Essays included fit into four categories (Politics and Power, History and Religion, Biology and Ecology, and Philosophy, Choice and Ethics) and range from Herbert's use of ecology in Dune to how game theory may help explain certain characters' apparent ability to see the future. Discovering Dune also includes an appendix which contains the only up-to-date bibliography of Herbert's work (primary and secondary sources).

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …

Masculine Desire And Feminine Imitation: Contextualizing Heterosexual Relationships In Sister Carrie, Jennifer L. White

Master of Arts in Classical Studies

Theodore Dreiser is generally considered one of the greatest American naturalist authors across the genre. His depiction of life is gritty and harsh, his characters at the mercy of their natural impulses and their unforgiving environment. However, there is also a sentimental element to Dreiser’s work, especially in his portrayal of romantic relationships. In the face of unrelenting adversity, there is a glimmer of possibility in the longing for meaningful human connection, if only under different circumstances. While Dreiser’s naturalistic approach suggests that such relationships can never be truly fulfilling due to either the innate frailty of the participants or …

Writing Mississippi Delta Heritage: The Literary Creation Of Place, Maureen T. Richmond

Student Theses and Dissertations

Since the late twentieth century, scholars of Heritage Studies have spoken of the processual nature of cultural inheritance, claiming that even the most respected traditions are often composed of memory, imagination, and fragments of history combined and artfully assembled. This contemporary analysis of heritage as an ongoing construction or creation shares points of similarity with the process of literary creation. Both blend the observation of fact with the operations of imagination to construct a desired reality. Both can be used to construct a sense of place. Using the paradigm of heritage constructionism, this dissertation examines fiction in the form of …

Religion: A Repertoire Of Earth Ethics – A Study On The Ecospiritual Dimensions In Refuge: An Unnatural History Of Family And Place By Terry Tempest Williams, Nissi Karunya Ms., Shanthi K. Dr.

Between the Species

Ecological crisis, a contemporary reality has triggered a paradigm shift in human thinking and discourse. Greening of religion is a novel approach to the interpretation of religious literature. The purpose of this study is to identify how literature reflects religious ethics centred on ecology and it brings out perspectives of religion regarding environmental conservation. Through a close reading of the literary text Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams, this paper aims to validate how the ecological ethics of religions can be a solution to environmental crisis and how this ecological reformation in spirituality should …

Music Lessons, Cecilia-Rose Louise Bender

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

music lessons is a digital chapbook that explores the relationships between James Baldwin’s writing and Beauford Delaney’s paintings through music. From Delaney’s “Composition 16” (1954-56) to Baldwin’s “The Uses of the Blues” (1964), their collaboration with the core elements of jazz music gives their work rhythm and melodic contour that any/body can vibe with. Absorbing the influences of artists Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and putting them to paint and text, music lessons demonstrates how music not only transforms the ways we experience and move our bodies but also the ways that we perceive space, relationships, and time. What’s …

American Literatures After 1865, Scott D. Peterson, Amy Berke, Robert Bleil, Jordan Cofer, Doug Davis

Open Educational Resources Collection

This work was created as part of the University Libraries’ Open Educational Resources Initiative at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

A web version of this text can be found at https://umsystem.pressbooks.pub/ala1865/.

This book is an anthology of American Literatures After 1865, a new revision of the open educational resource entitled Writing the Nation: A Concise Introduction to American Literature 1865 to Present. It contains works that have been newly introduced to the public domain and provides direct links to reading materials that can be borrowed for free from Archive.org.

Babel Blackness: The Aesth-Ethical Turn In Post-Colonial Translation, Emanuela Maltese

Living in Languages

“How do we make art in an ethical way?” (Marlene NourbeSe Philip) is the leading question lying at the basis of this article, which inspired by the story of the unauthorized Italian translation of Zong! seeks to investigate on the ethics of translation and propose a new turn in translation studies, namely a black aesth-ethical one. The proposal here examined is indeed informed by both aesthetics, and ethics. It presents translation as a practice, that draws on recent debates on black aesthetics, with specific reference to the Afro-optimism (AO) of cultural theorist and poet Fred Moten (2013, 2018, 2019) and …

Archy And Mehitabel, Don Marquis

Zea E-Books Collection

Archy and Mehitabel are two inimitable characters — a philosophical cockroach who types out free verse correspondence by dive-bombing the keys and an insouciant feline dancer out to take life for all it is worth, ever the lady and “toujours gai.”

Created by Don Marquis and popularized in the New York Sun and New York Herald-Tribune 1916–1922, their best-loved exploits and musings are captured in this marvellous collection of 48 episodes, and illustrated with 29 cartoon drawings by George Herriman. Archy sees the universe at an entirely different angle, and humanity is measured against its miniature insect reflections. We meet …

Anthology On Racism, The Black Experience, And Privilege, Marshall University Society Of Black Scholars, Marshall University Office Of Intercultural Affairs

Marshall Books

RACISM IN YOUR LIFE

The depth, impact, and experience of “racism” in our personal lives is a story that we do not often tell. These are predominantly private matters, only occasionally shared and with only certain people in our lives. Unfortunately, many people in our world are unaware of its full existence and do not know the truth about the experiences of racism in our daily lives. Without knowledge of these truths, society, including university leadership, cannot make adequate advancements to address these demoralizing experiences of people of color. In this anthology, writings on this subject will bring clarity, truth, …

The Impact Of Family Environment And Religion In Purple Hibiscus And Beloved, Thoa Phan

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the repercussions of slavery-induced dehumanization and trauma depicted in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and explores Kambili’s stifling home life characterized by her father’s rigid Catholicism in Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Morrison’s Beloved emphasizes the importance of personal engagement with the history of slavery so as to fully comprehend its horrors and overcome them. In Purple Hibiscus, the paper investigates the role religion plays in causing trauma, as Eugene’s strict adherence to Catholicism and dismissal of traditional rituals inflict both physical and psychological pain on his family. The complex and multifaceted depiction of religion in these novels …

Elizabeth Robins Portrays Working Women In Suffragette Literature: A Reflection Through The Lens Of The 2015 Film, Suffragette, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

I place the 2015-released film Suffragette within a context of the efforts Elizabeth Robins made to document and, by witnessing, to advocate, the early phases of the British Women’s Suffrage Movement in England. Robins wrote and participated across margins. An expatriate American living in England, she had no personal advantage to gain with a franchise. In her late forties and in ill health, she took perhaps only "safe" opportunities to thrust herself into the fray. But as Jane Marcus points out, with her research on the play that became Votes for Women, she took efforts to experience how working-class …

Facets Of Feminist Biography, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This is a brief overview of how I continue to be engaged with research on Elizabeth Robins in the context of other women writers, post-retirement. The presentation's subtitle might be phrased as "From my study of the one-woman show in graduate school to creative and poetic approaches as emerita researcher." I maintain the Elizabeth Robins Web at JSU and have presented two papers (virtually at recent SAMLA conferences) since leaving the classroom. I outline several of my creative approaches to women's biography through my academic career. I am particularly interested in the format of several poetry collections that piece together …

“I Don’T Want To Cook”: Reconfiguring The Domestic Space In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Rida Leonard

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In the scholarship that considers ways in which the concept of domesticity features in the lives of black and white women in history, there is less discussion of how these women’s unique challenges led them to alter the traditional domestic space. This dissertation first assesses a range of nineteenth-century American newspapers to understand the prevalent social milieu and then closely analyzes select literary texts of the time, to argue that the distinct racial circumstances that framed black and white women’s struggles enabled them to reform the domestic space as needed. Analysis of the nineteenth century press reveals that while white …

The Word According To Flannery O'Connor, Eamon Maher

Articles

In her relatively short life (1925-1964), one that was greatly curtailed as a result of being diagnosed with lupus (a disease from which her father also died in 1952), Flannery O’Connor managed to leave behind a literary legacy that continues to fascinate scholars and general readers alike. This is all the more surprising when one considers that the work consists of just two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960), along with 31 short stories.

Writing New Normals: A Study Of American Pandemic Fiction In The Wake Of Covid-19, Riley E. Droppleman

Gaines Fellow Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the aspects of pandemic fiction that extend beyond the illness itself. In this thesis, I show that while the disease that spreads is a large focus of pandemic fiction, the truths that spring from these novels reveal larger societal issues, such as class hierarchies, racial inequalities, and failings of the government to fight the pandemic. In fact, pandemics act as catalysts for the uncovering of these societal ills, and the authors of pandemic fictions bring these greater faults of society to the forefront of their novels. I analyze three novels from the …

Indigenous And Western Sciences In Carlos Hernandez's The Assimilated Cuban's Guide To Quantum Santeria, Joy Sanchez-Taylor

Publications and Research

This chapter examines Carlos Hernandez’s The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria as an example of how authors of alternative futurisms can draw on Indigenous knowledge to destabilize Eurowestern perceptions that Western science is more modern and rational than Indigenous knowledge. Joy Sanchez-Taylor argues that Hernandez combines references to Santería and quantum physics to demonstrate parallels between Indigenous knowledge and Eurowestern “rational” science. Ultimately, references in Quantum Santeria to ideas of spiritual healing and nonlinear time demonstrate how authors like Hernandez are working to restore Biskaabiiyang, or a return to self, within science fiction.

Before They Could Be Saved: Aids Voices Before Protease Inhibitors, Julian J. Willis

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to explore writing during the start of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. States. This time period encompasses the early 1980s to mid-1990s before Protease Inhibitors were FDA approved which was the medical breakthrough drug that helped turn an HIV diagnosis from a death sentence to a chronic condition. This thesis will be an examination of three themes: “Gay White Cis Male Experience of HIV/AIDS”,” Marginalized Identity Experience of HIV/AIDS” and an exploration of two plays written during the height of the AIDS epidemic that were later turned into HBO productions: The Normal Heart …