American Studies Commons^™

Reviving Hysteria: The Nineteenth Century At The End Of The Twentieth, Christina Quintana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores popular and medical representations of female madness in two time periods: the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. I argue that 1990s American culture produced an abundance of texts, images, and narratives that revitalized the iconography and medical discourses of late nineteenth-century hysteria. Analyzing popular texts, films, and cultural touchstones of the 1990s, I explore how Victorian ideas about women’s minds—such as the inherent feebleness of the female brain and nervous system; the fatalistic, life-altering effects of female puberty; the association between hysteria and deviant female sexuality; and the implicit racialization of hysteria and female madness more …

Henry James And The Act Of Speech From Drama To Dictation, Mary Claire Brunelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the idea of speech as an act in the writings of Henry James for the purpose of analyzing the author’s relationship to drama and how it influenced his practice of typewriter dictation. It traces the intersections of biography and bibliography within James’s notebooks, letters, and fiction produced during the years between his dismissal of playwriting after the public rejection of Guy Domville in January 1895 and his adoption of dictation due to writer’s cramp in the fall of 1896, as he worked on What Maisie Knew. In advancing an affective methodology to discover the embodied reality …

"White Slaves Of California": Race, Religion, And The Railroad In Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton's The Squatter And The Don, Katie Buonanno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In The Squatter and the Don (1885), Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton depicts the decline of the Alamars, a patrician Californio family, in the years after California was annexed by the United States. This thesis explores the different rhetorical maneuvers Ruiz de Burton makes to place the Californios in a broad, enfranchising Anglo-American national paradigm. The novel negotiates the messy, competing histories of Spanish, Mexican, and American colonialism, ultimately making the case for the enduring presence of Spanish missionization in the region, as well as the cultural assimilability of the Californio population. While the novel has frequently been read as …

Review Of Emily Sun’S On The Horizon Of World Literature, Jing Yang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Chinese Ideas And American Politics: Confucius As A Guideline For Leadership, Alfred Hornung

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Chinese Ideas and American Politics: Confucius as a Guideline for Leadership", Alfred Hornung traces the influence of Chinese ideas on American politics with a focus on the works of Confucius. The more than 2.500-year-old impact of the Chinese philosopher on public conduct and his pursuit of virtuous perfection has served as a guideline for leadership emanating from China to Europe and America. For this trajectory of ideas, the historic and the new Silk Road play a decisive role. The exchange of goods along the land-based and maritime routes, which inform Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative, also …

All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’S Translation Of Shui Hu Zhuan And Its Effects On Her Writing Career, Zhihui Sophia Geng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’s Translation of Shui Hu Zhuan and its Effects on Her Writing Career,” Zhihui Sophia Geng focuses on Pulitzer Prize winner and Noble Laureate Pearl Sydenstricker Buck’s All Men Are Brothers, her translation of the classical Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan. She examines the reception of her translation and analyzes the significance of All Men Are Brothers to Buck’s literary career. By providing the first complete translation of Shui Hu Zhuan to an English-speaking audience, Buck made a significant cultural contribution to the United States and English-speaking cultural spheres. The …

Engaging China: Beckett’S Debt To Pound, Giles, And Laloy, Lidan Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Engaging China: Beckett’s Debt to Pound, Giles, and Laloy," Lidan Lin examines Ezra Pound’s influence on Samuel Beckett. In their dealings with China, Pound and Beckett are both indebted to such sinologists and cultural transmitters as Ernest Fenollosa, H. A. Giles, Louis Laloy, and Laurence Binyon who introduced Chinese culture, literature, and arts to the Western world through translation and their writings about China. Lin situates the Pound-Beckett connection in the broad cultural context of the early 20^th century. She argues that while modernism’s turn to China as a cultural paradigm was collectively brought about by …

Translation As Creative Writing: Rewriting The Chinese Maze Murders In Contemporary China, Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Translation as Creative Writing: Rewriting The Chinese Maze Murders in Contemporary China,” Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang examines four groups of selected writings centered on one of Robert van Gulik’s more well-known Judge Dee novels, The Chinese Maze Murders (written first in English but not published until 1956). Different from most publications on van Gulik and his novels, Zhang examines the impact of censorship and self-censorship on the writing, rewriting, and (re)adapting, “literal” and “liberal/free” translation of the Judge Dee stories traveling between Chinese and English, between China and the West, for Chinese and non-Chinese audiences. Focus is given …

Exotic Construction Of An Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’S Creative Translation Of Li Ch’Ing-Chao’S Ci-Poems And Its Influences, Yuqun Fu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “Exotic Construction of an Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’s Creative Translation of Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-Poems and its Influences,” Yuqun Fu discusses Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-poems and her identity as a woman intellect in the patriarchal and feudal Song Dynasty of China. Due to Kenneth Rexroth’s feminist perspective and Sappho complex as well as his own pursuit to excel in the hipster stylistics of the newly prospering Beat writers, Rexroth turns to the Eastern women poets to fuel his own cause, especially in his idiosyncratic way of interpreting and translating Li Ch’ing-Chao. His translation focuses on gender identity and …

Precarious Refugee: Self-Optimization And Neoliberal Rationality In Rawi Hage’S Cockroach, Shahab Nadimi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Precarious Refugee: Self-Optimization and Neoliberal Rationality in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach," Shahab Nadimi examines Rawi Hage’s Cockroach as an example of refugee literature in the light of current debates about neoliberal biopolitics and the idea of a new form of life. Refugees, who are neither identified as citizens nor totally as strangers, are forced to compete in unequal circumstances of economic mobility with other citizens, often leaving them in a condition of personal debts, unemployment, and mental distress. Nadimi investigates Cockroach’s depiction of psychological breakdown, suicidal attempts, and metamorphosis as symptomatic of and critical to the neoliberal …

The Post-Closet Home: Queer Domesticity, Enclosure, And Queer Southern Gothicism In Lee Mandelo's "Summer Sons", Andrew Dylan Dampier

Master's Theses

In current discussions of queer theory, terms such as “post-gay” leave room for misrepresentation. The premise behind this term serves a primarily cisgenderheterosexual agenda by promising the assimilation of queer individuals into the dominant society. For this reason, I prefer to align the term “post-closet” with the queer person’s journey towards, and past, such societal barriers while maintaining the significance of foundational queer theories. In his novel Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo depicts Andrew Blur’s journey through the grief-ridden confines of the closet as he seeks a new identity following the death of his best friend. Mandelo accomplishes this by juxtaposing …

On Salvation And Genre: Fast Sermons In Seventeenth-Century New England, Daniel Patrick Mcgee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The fast sermon is an important and overlooked genre in the literary history of colonial New England, one which complicates theories about American puritanism underwritten by the imprecise narrative construct of the jeremiad. This thesis will argue that preachers used fast sermons to shape their communities, respond to major events, and provide competing interpretations of Congregationalist doctrine throughout the seventeenth century. Borrowing from the methodologies of new formalist criticism and Louis Althusser’s theory of material ideology, it will examine common themes, motifs, and rhetorical demands in John Wheelwright’s 1637 Fast Sermon, Thomas Shepard’s 1645 Wine for Gospel Wantons, …

Settler Colonialism And Refusal Through Indigenous Eyes, Charlie Amáyá Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The educational system within the united states has benefited and continues to benefit from the structures and systems of settler colonialism. Yet, despite such colonizing goals of displacement, removal, and genocide, Indigenous Peoples are still here. This critical Indigenous qualitative research study sought to understand descriptions and interpretations of settler colonialism from the perspectives of Indigenous undergraduate students and how they have, refused settler colonialism while navigating their undergraduate journeys. Indigenous ways of knowing and ways of being were centered and cited in a manner that made this dissertation more than just a research study; it became a home where …

Lessons From A First Year Seminar: Teaching “Mean Girls” To Become “Nasty Women”, Elif S. Armbruster Phd

Feminist Pedagogy

This essay explores what happened in a First Year Seminar on "Nasty Women in American Literature" when a group of students, instead of embracing the strength and independence that the phrase "nasty woman" came to embody, turned into a group of "mean girls"--led by a "queen bee"--and dominated the course through alliance-building, gossip, and distraction. The Suffolk University English professor teaching the course explains the challenging environment that ensured and what she learned from the experience, enabling her to make important changes in her teaching of the course the following semester.

Archetypal Energies And Global Mental Health, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

As a keynote speaker at the Global Mental Health Conference 2024, held at Sophia University, Costa Mesa, CA, in-person and virtually, August 16-18, 2024, my topic was "Archetypal Energies As A Framework for Self-Empowerment and Well Being". The theme of this 2024 global conference was: Enlightened Minds, Compassionate Hearts, and Embodied Wisdom. To supplement my keynote address, I wrote this blog article titled "Archetypal Energies and Global Mental Health".

Reading Ecogothic Memory In Contemporary Southern Swamp Novels, Megan Caroline Brockhard Knight

Theses and Dissertations

The ecogothic is a lens through which to engage memory, southern constructivism and identity, environmental intervention, and the literature of the American Southeast. This project establishes a framework of literary criticism that defines the ecogothic, interprets memory as truth imagined, and identifies the position of memory in the environment as a construction with which it is necessary to grapple to understand identity. This framework, compiled of existing and original scholarship, is then applied to three contemporary swamp narratives written by three different southern women writers. The swamp setting creates a unique microcosm of gothic liminality, neither fully land nor water, …

Eco-Domestic Femininity: The Collapse Of Domestic And Wild In Southern Women’S Writing, Christina Xan

Theses and Dissertations

When the Agrarians set out to assert their definition of southern in I’ll Take My Stand (1930), they planted roots deep in the ground of the south that slowly wrapped its tendrils around its descendants. In the years that have followed, southern women have had to push back against these limiting boundaries. Their individual stories are linked by the communal lineage of the south, specifically the binary of domestic and wild. Traditionally, southern women have had to stay in the boundaries of the home, cultivating domesticity, ordering the space, and warming the hearth. The land itself, posed as opposite from …

The Disruption Of Kinship: Interracial Relationships, Displacement, And Marginalized Mixed-Race Families In Korean War Literature, Hyunwook Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The Korean War (1950–1953) left a profound mark on the Korean peninsula, its people, and their diaspora, with its impact still felt today. Korean War literature serves as a vital source for understanding the war's social and cultural ramifications, particularly for marginalized groups, including military sex workers, mixed-race children, and mixed Korean adoptees. Emphasizing the role of interraciality in their experiences, the dissertation delves into literary representations that depict encounters between Korean women and American soldiers, leading to the formation of novel mixed-race families both within military camp towns in Korea and domestic spaces in the United States. While much …

Place And Placelessness: An Ecocritical Approach Towards The Mountain Imagery In Country Music, Siyuan Ma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing upon cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s frame of place and placelessness, this ecocritical project explores how the mountain landscapes serve to construct regional, national, cultural, spiritual, religious, even racialized identities in various human societies. Using the U.S. country music as a primary example, I argue that what country music fundamentally draws from the imagery of the Appalachian Mountains is not the Anglo-Saxon ballad music or pastoral lifestyle of/from the mountains, but the powerful sense of place and placelessness (arguably only) the mountainous scenes are capable to provoke. This exploration serves to illuminate the commonalties between humanities of different cultures and …

Lg-Ms 143 Judith Tator Papers, Zephyros Quinn Craven

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Judith Tator was involved with a group called Sappho's Sisters in Maine. Sappho's Sisters appears to have operated in Maine

from at least 1989 to 2006. Papers include Sappho's Sisters t- shirt, photo transparencies of historical figures, a newsletter

with correspondences and memorials, an event flier, group photos, poems, a play script, song lyrics, group games such as "LESBO" bingo, and drawings.