American Literature Commons^™

Mixed Race-Politics And Homi Bhabha’S Third Space Theory In Charles Chesnutt’S “The Wife Of His Youth” And “The Sheriff’S Children”, Gabrielle Sanford

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Creating A Monster: Attachment Theory And Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Hannah Jackson

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 20 Fall 2018

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Writer Re-Written: What Really (Might Have) Happened To Atticus And Scout, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Wild Abandon: Postwar Literature Between Ecology And Authenticity, Alexander F. Menrisky

Theses and Dissertations--English

Wild Abandon traces a literary and cultural history of late twentieth-century appeals to dissolution, the moment at which a text seems to erase its subject’s sense of selfhood in natural environs. I argue that such appeals arose in response to a prominent yet overlooked interaction between discourses of ecology and authenticity following the rise and fall of the American New Left in the 1960s and 70s. This conjunction inspired certain intellectuals and activists to celebrate the ecological concept of interconnectivity as the most authentic basis of subjectivity in political, philosophical, spiritual, and literary writings. As I argue, dissolution represents a …

Meeting At The Threshold: Slavery’S Influence On Hospitality And Black Personhood In Late-Antebellum American Literature, Rebecca Wiltberger Wiggins

Theses and Dissertations--English

In my dissertation, I argue that both white and black authors of the late-1850s and early-1860s used scenes of race-centered hospitality in their narratives to combat the pervasive stereotypes of black inferiority that flourished under the influence of chattel slavery. The wide-spread scenes of hospitality in antebellum literature—including shared meals, entertaining overnight guests, and business meetings in personal homes—are too inextricably bound to contemporary discussions of blackness and whiteness to be ignored. In arguing for the humanizing effects of playing host or guest as a black person, my project joins the work of literary scholars from William L. Andrews to …

Literary Didacticism And Collective Human Rights In Us Borderlands: Ana Castillo's 'The Guardians' And Louise Erdrich's 'The Round House', Tereza M. Szeghi

English Faculty Publications

There is now a sizable body of scholarship on the relationship between human rights and literature. James Dawes suggests that the work of human rights is largely a matter of storytelling ("Human Rights in Literary Studies"). Joseph Slaughter contends, in turn, that "literary works and literary modes of thinking have played important parts in the emergence of modern human rights ideals and sentiments, as well as in the elaboration of national and international human rights laws" ("Rights" xiii). More specifically, in her oft-cited Inventing Human Rights, Lynn Hunt argues that contemporary human rights thought derives from the rise of …

Disarming “Nature” As A Weapon: A Queer Ecosemiotic Reimagining Of Futurity And Environmental Ethics Through Memoir, Sam Lauer

Master’s Theses

In this thesis, I posit that the need for an active, conscious, and radical queering of ecocriticism as a literary and cultural theory has arisen in light of the postmodern problematization of “nature” and the “natural,” along with the queerness of society, culture, and science. The way we understand “nature” (in life and in texts), whether of physical environments, inherent selfhood, or normalcy, begs to be appropriately informed by discourses and realities of queerness in order for both social and environmental healing to take place. I have analyzed three works of queer creative nonfiction—memoirs—to illuminate the ways in which the …

“Jailed On The Charge Of Sodomy”: A Same-Sex, Interracial Marriage In 1888, Adam Yeich

Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature

Adam Yeich explains and presents an Ohio newspaper report of a same-sex, interracial marriage in 1888 in Arkansas. This article includes the full text of the newspaper report, an introduction explaining its significance, and a bibliography.

Douglass’ Reply To A. C. C. Thompson’S ‘Letter From Frederick Douglass,’ As Reprinted In The Anti-Slavery Bugle: A Critical Edition Of Both Letters, With A Summary Of Maryland’S Fugitive Slave Laws, Kayla Hardy-Butler

Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature

Kayla Hardy-Butler presents a famous letter by Frederick Douglass, as it was published in Ohio, with the letter that prompted it. This edition also includes a summary of Maryland slave statutes from the time to better explain the day-to-day experience of slavery debated in this correspondence.

“When One Shingle Sends Up Smoke”: The Summit Beacon Advises Akron About The Epidemic Cholera, 1849, Elizabeth Hall

Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature

Elizabeth Hall explains the American cholera epidemic of 1849, with special attention to how cholera afflicted Akron, a booming canal town in Northeast Ohio. The article presents the full text of 1849 Akron newspaper articles on cholera and explains how their mix of good and bad information was published right before scientific breakthroughs in cholera research.

Female Cyclists: Two Essays From The 1869 Hancock Jeffersonian, Paige Zenovic

Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature

Paige Zenovic introduces and explains two nineteenth-century essays from the Findley, Ohio Hancock Jeffersonian on the subject of women riding bicycles from the time when they were first being introduced to Ohio.

Fear And (Non) Fiction: Agrarian Anxiety In “The Colour Out Of Space”, Antonio Barroso

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This literary and sociological study examines H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” alongside New England agricultural societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as their members faced socio-political change. Anxieties expressed in the short story reflect fears of communities facing erasure at the hands of a reservoir project. Patterns of historical American rural communities facing destruction in the name of progress as well as modern communities facing similar threats show the endurance of Lovecraft’s specific brand of fear.

Haunted Mississippi: Ghosts, Identity, And Collective Identity, Hailey Cooper

Honors Theses

This thesis wrestles with the duality of the terms haunting and ghosts in relation to Mississippi and its collective identity and narrative. Ghostlore and haunted tourism provide insight into shared cultural constructs and indicate an absence of certain perspectives from more generally held ideas of identity. Analyses of ghost stories from around the state explore these hauntings of history and ghosted narratives, so it is ghosts v. ghosted and hauntings v. haunted. I use ghost stories from Natchez, MS to explore postsouthern spaces and performances of southernness and the narratives around female apparitions to study the role of southern womanhood …

A Modernized Fairy Tale: Speculations On Technology, Labor, Politics, And Gender In The Oz Series, Zachary Hez Hollingsworth

Honors Theses

On the surface, L. Frank Baum's Oz series would appear to merely be fourteen books of inventive children's fantasy, but in truth Baum communicates several personal progressive beliefs to his youthful audience through the use of his fantastical world upon closer examination. For my research, I reread every book in Baum's original Oz series and made note of any potentially relevant allegorical or metaphorical themes. Once I started to notice a trend of themes regarding technology, labor, politics, and gender, I settled on these themes to be the overall focus of my thesis's discussion. I read as many academic essays …

Reevaluating Religion: A Case For Inclusivity Of Lgbtq Christians In The Church, Amber Erin Dupree

Honors Theses

This thesis project is focused on understanding the discrimination that is rampant amongst Southern churches regarding their LGBTQ members and offering solutions to this problem that has occurred throughout the many generations of Christianity. In order to understand this discrimination, three books were consulted for the research aspect of this project. The three books include the following: Sweet Tea by E. Patrick Johnson, Don't Be Afraid Anymore by Troy Perry, and Our Tribe by Nancy Wilson. A Questionnaire was also given to people who identified as Southern, Christian, and LGBTQ in order to gain an understanding of the current sentiments …

Review Of John James Audubon: The Nature Of The American Woodsman, By Gregory Nobles, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When we think about American ornithology, John James Audubon is often the first name that comes to mind. As evidence to Audubon’s lasting ability to enrapture readers, it bears repeating that an original Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America sold for an astounding $11.5 million in 2010 (2). Yet, for a man who produced such stunning and memorable visual and literary work on the avifauna of North America, some of the important details of his life and origins have remained highly contested. Even though Gregory Nobles’s new biography is not explicitly tied to the study of the Great Plains, …

Border Ends: Anti-Imperialism, Settler Colonialism, And The Mexican Revolution In U.S. Modernism, Bradley Flis

Wayne State University Dissertations

From 1910-1920, the Mexican Revolution became a source of anxiety, interest, and inspiration to those who paid attention to its political turmoil as reported in the popular press. It would lead to the reinvigorating of a debate about U.S. intervention in the political affairs of Mexico, indeed, for some, the question was one of annexation. Responding to a growing imperialist culture in the U.S., William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, John Reed and Max Eastman of The Masses were among those who looked to modernist aesthetic practice to critique military and economic expansionism in Mexico.

This dissertation explores that discursive interplay …

Freedom At The Freak Show: Carnivalesque Imagery In The Fiction Of Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor And Katherine Anne Porter, Virginia Mccarley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the function of the circus and the sideshow in the work of Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Katherine Anne Porter, arguing that all of these authors employ Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of the carnivalesque as a reaction to and against the expectations put on them as women who are pressured to conform to the Southern ideal. In the first chapter, I argue that Eudora Welty uses the carnivalesque to reveal the performativity of normalcy in both “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies” (1937) and “A Memory” (1937). These performances, in the first story particularly, offer a critique of …