American Literature Commons^™

"O Lost Moon Sisters" : Feminist Revisions In Diane Di Prima's Loba, Chelsea Megan Mathes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In her master work, Loba, Diane di Prima revises a variety of traditionally malecentered narratives from a feminist viewpoint in the long tradition of feminist revision that is a cornerstone of Second Wave Feminism. This thesis examines five of the revisions of Christian, Jewish, and Greek stories present in Loba: The Virgin Mary, Eve, Lilith, Helen of Troy, and Persephone. Di Prima revises these stories to include the full— physical, spiritual, and emotional—experience of the woman, often from her own point of view, to give the woman agency over her own story and subvert the woman-as-object tradition present in male-authored …

Survivor’S Guilt And The Ethics Of Remembering In Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Slave And Cynthia Ozick’S “The Shawl”, Ryne Menhennick

All NMU Master's Theses

The focus of this thesis is an analysis of post-Holocaust Jewish-American literature with a specific emphasis on texts set in Europe. In particular, I examine how Jewish-American authors who lived in the United States during the Holocaust address issues of trauma and survivor’s guilt through fiction. Informed especially by Theodor Adorno and Elie Wiesel, I examine the ethics of fictionalizing the Holocaust. Furthermore, this thesis considers both trauma theory and the psychology of grief to investigate the ways in which the Jewish-American community at large responded to the cultural destruction perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Chapter One analyzes …

Terrorists, Zombies, And Robots: The Political Unconscious, Thematics, And Affectual Structures Of The Post-9/11 American Fear Narrative, Nathanael J. Cloyd

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the post-9/11 American fear narrative across media and genre. First, it proposes the concepts of the fear narrative, the primary fear theme, and the secondary fear theme. Second, it proposes that the fear narrative has a long tradition in American culture, in which its themes have adapted and evolved in historically sedimented layers of development. Third, it proposes that American fear themes change depending on its historical context of production, its cultural regime, its genre, and the form of media in which it is expressed. To help uncover the political unconsciousness of the American fear narrative, it …

The Charles Chesnutt Archive: Charles Chesnutt And The Black Community Who Aided Him, Bianca Swift, Bianca Swift

UCARE: Research Products

A pioneer of African American literature and the first to reach a national audience with his writings, Chesnutt wrote nine novels, eighty-five short stories, and more than seventy essays and speeches. As a prolific writer Chesnutt often interacted with other black intellectuals and academics including; W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Walter F. White, and Kelly Miller. This poster makes the argument that his connections to these figures aided him in his writings and his presence in history. As well as comparing his standing in history as a black person speaking about race to the 21st century view through poetry.

The Problem Of Completeness In Henry James's The Spoils Of Poynton, Gary Totten

English Faculty Research

James’s essays on art and exhibitions written between the 1870s and the end of the century illustrate his attention to the composition of the art exhibition within the space of the gallery or museum. James’s perception of art exhibit design and effect inform his representation of Mrs Gareth’s art collection and its setting in The Spoils of Poynton (1897). As James looked to art and the art exhibit for models to represent ‘the workings of the novel’, The Spoils of Poynton suggests the impossibility of artistic ‘completeness’ within the realistic aesthetic.

The Figure Of The Animal In Modern And Contemporary Poetry By Michael Malay, Brian Bartlett

The Goose

Review of Michael Malay's The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry

Fire And Snow: Climate Fiction From The Inklings To Game Of Thrones By Marc Dipaolo, Jamie Campbell Martin

The Goose

Review of Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones by Marc DiPaolo

A Damn Short Prayer, Beth Jane Toren

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This poster presents a transcript poem created with murder tales in oral history recordings. Leveraging the creative arts of storytelling, transcript poetry and visual orality, the poster brings light and music to Appalachian storyteller voices in tales of shady murders.

The handout presents the poem with visual orality methods juxtaposed beside Standard English orthographic transcription, enabling a visual comparison, a link a video with graphic text and the original voice recordings, and brief readings about concepts and methods.

Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile Home Parks And Americans’ Tenuous Right To Place. By Esther Sullivan. Berkeley: University Of California Press, 2018. Pp. Xiv+264. $85.00 (Cloth); 29.95 (Paper)., Ranita Ray

Sociology Faculty Research

Traditionally, ethnographers of urban poverty in the United States have tended to write about the everyday lives, tentative morality, and curious practices of the "poor" as if poverty were a suprise outcome of illusive structures and intensely complex behaviors of the poor. ... See full text for complete abstract.

Park Blues Langston Hughes, Racial Exclusion, And The Park Ballad, Margaret Konkol

English Faculty Publications

This chapter draws attention to the lack of parks and nature recreation amenities during the 1920s and 1930s in predominantly African American city neighborhoods through Langston Hughes’s political poetry, specifically his blues-inflected ballad “Park Bench,” as well as “Chicago’s Black Belt” “Restrictive Covenants,” and “One Way Ticket.” Through the figure of the tramp/vagrant/bum, “Park Bench” voices a protest against inequality mapped into city space. Asserting that access to nature should be a fundamental condition of a democratic society, the poem situates the park bench as a charged site for public dialogue. The chapter argues that this poem and other Hughes …

Motions Like Sleep In Robert Penn Warren’S “Lullaby”, Cameron Fontes

Robert Penn Warren Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

Intercessory Power: A Literary Analysis Of Ethics And Care In Toni Morrison’S Song Of Solomon, Alice Walker’S Meridian, And Toni Cade Bambara’S Those Bones Are Not My Child, Kelly Mills

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine post-Reconstruction literature as an intercessor that creates a common memory among readers and activates them as ethical agents who can move through retributive violence rather than enact violence. With the increase of racial violence in the United States, it is essential to find ways to end the cycle of retributive violence and establish a justice system that does not marginalize individuals but forges connections in the midst of oppression. This literary analysis engages three novels—Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Alice Walker’s Meridian, and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child: …

“Where Inner And Outer Meet”: Dissociation And The Creative Process, Joseph Shoulders

Robert Penn Warren Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

Correspondence With The Season Of Autumn, Seth Nevin

Robert Penn Warren Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

American Novels Amidst The Rise Of New Media: Emergent Publics And Forms, Sarah Ruth Jacobs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines long-term shifts in the quantities and demographics (namely the race and educational attainment) of twentieth-century American literary readers alongside the rise and popular consumption of new media (namely television and the internet). The twentieth and twenty-first centuries are testament to a great expansion in the numbers and demographics of literary readers, and in turn an increase in the variety and intended audiences of literary publications. Examples include the rise of “middlebrow” readers and books in the 1940s and the rise of African-American, feminist, and countercultural small presses in the 1960s and 1970s. However, even as the variety …

The Bioethical Significance Of “The Origin Of Man’S Ethical Behavior” (October 1941, Unpublished) By Ernest Everett Just And Hedwig Anna Schnetzler Just, Theodore Walker Jr.

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

Abstract –

E. E. Just (1883-1941) is an acknowledged “pioneer” in cell biology, and he is perhaps the pioneer in study of egg cell fertilization. Here we discover that Just also made pioneering contributions to general biology and evolutionary bioethics.

Within Just’s published contributions to observational cell biology, there are substantial fragments of his theory of ethical behavior, a theory with roots in cell biology. In addition to such previously available fragments, Just’s fully developed theory is now available. This recently discovered unpublished book-length manuscript argues for the biological origins of ethical behavior (evolving from cells to humans, within a …

Writing And Well Being: Story As Salve In The Work Of (More Than) Two Updikes, Sue Norton

Books/Book Chapters

Analysis of the work of David Updike and Linda Updike in relation to John Updike.

Mary Ellen Miller: In Memoriam, Frank Steele

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.

Editorial Preface, Joan Romano Shifflett

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.

James A. Grimshaw, Jr.: In Memoriam, William Bedford Clark

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.