Comparative Literature Commons^™

How To Walk On Water: Living Through The Absurd, Esther Du

Masters Theses

Set in a speculative world submerged by water, this thesis constructs a fragmented, nonlinear narrative that reflects on survival, memory, and displacement in the aftermath of catastrophe. Through three interwoven chapters—The Outcast, The Researcher, and The World—the project explores the emotional and psychological landscapes of individuals navigating a post-apocalyptic existence where the past is irretrievable and the future uncertain. Using an interdisciplinary form of visual storytelling, writing, and sound, the work draws from personal experience and collective trauma to examine how people reconstruct identity and meaning after loss. Rather than offering a definitive answer to existential …

A Reconstruction Of The Homeric Tradition In Early Greece, Aidan F. Hoey

Student Theses

This thesis discusses the centuries-long historiographical debate that is known to us as the Homeric Question. The identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dating from when the Homeric epic poems were composed, the Homeric diction, and the historicity of the Trojan War has puzzled scholars since Antiquity. Only by the twentieth century, scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord proved that the Iliad and Odyssey were orally composed. How the written form of the Homeric epic poems came about has become even more of a historiographic puzzle than it has been previously. Building off the …

Cmlit 101w Syllabus, Alexander Moudrov

Open Educational Resources

The syllabus for CMLIT 101W (Global Literatures 1) based on open-source materials.

Leaving The (Mother)Land: Nationalist Entrapment Of The Doubly Colonized Irish Woman In Joyce’S Dubliners And Boland’S Poetry, Blake Harrsch

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper explores how James Joyce’s “A Mother” and “Eveline” and Eavan Boland’s “The Lost Land” and “Mother Ireland” illuminate the gendered sacrifices underpinning Irish nationalism through the lens of double colonization. Joyce’s female protagonists are caught between personal desire and cultural obligation: Mrs. Kearney’s assertiveness leads to public dismissal, while Eveline’s paralysis reveals the psychic toll of conflating domestic labor with patriotic duty. Boland’s poems, in turn, demonstrate how both staying and leaving reinforce women’s entrapment within nationalist ideologies. In “The Lost Land,” the mother’s grief is naturalized as part of her expected role in preserving the homeland, while …

Creating Accessible Literature For Deaf Young Adults, Kailee Bates

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Access to literature in a person’s most accessible language is a human right. One that has been deprived from many members of the Deaf community, despite the growth of translated literature in other languages. Translators have yet to tackle the business of creating accessible American Sign Language (ASL) translations for older audiences, specifically for young adults. After the critical period of language development, less resources are tendered for older Deaf students. This project aimed to spread awareness of this need to several different people groups and emphasize the complexity of translating an English text into ASL. It did this by …

The Only Thriller J.R.R. Tolkien (Never) Wrote: Jungian Shapes Of Evil In “The New Shadow”, Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen, Bo Kampmann Walther

Journal of Tolkien Research

J.R.R. Tolkien's The New Shadow, a fragment set in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, offers a rich but often overlooked exploration of the psychological and cultural implications of peace following the defeat of Sauron. Although Tolkien abandoned the project, dismissing it as a mere “thriller”, the text presents significant insights into the dynamics of generational conflict, the origins of Evil, and the moral challenges of a post-heroic world. This paper examines The New Shadow through a dual lens: first, by contextualizing Tolkien’s depiction of good and evil within Christian ethical frameworks, and second, by applying Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological …

The Mariner And His Astronomer Father: Victorian Masculinities In Númenor, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

A number of authors have analyzed the relationship between Aldarion and Erendis in the Unfinished Tales work "The Mariner's Wife." The strained relationship between Aldarion and his father, Tar-Meneldur, fifth king of Númenor, is less frequently examined, with the exception of the elder’s exasperation concerning his son’s desire for seafaring and reticence in marrying – a necessity to carry on the line of Kings in the island nation. What most commentators do not seem to note is that Meneldur is an interesting character himself, not only as Tolkien’s only named astronomer but in how Tolkien’s depiction of this avocation may …

Introduction To Special Issue On Tolkien And Psychology, Kristine Larsen, Sara Brown, Christopher Vaccaro

Journal of Tolkien Research

This introduction to the special issue on Tolkien and Psychology describes the history of the University of Vermont Tolkien Conference, highlighting the 2024 conference from which these paper originated.

Riddles In The Dark (Of Space), Or, Further Adventures Romanticizing Astronomers’ Middle-Earth Identified Research, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

In this slightly expanded version of a paper delivered at Westmoot 2025 I explore scientists' creative use of Tolkien-related acronyms in scientific papers, and argue that, despite opinions to the contrary, many of these activities are beneficial for both Tolkien studies and the scientific culture.

Voices In The Borderlands: Reimagining Identity, Cultural Belonging, And Dystopian Spaces In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands And Viramontes’S “The Cariboo Café”, Oralia G. Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café” (1985) portray marginalized individuals navigating liminal spaces of identity, oppression, and survival. Borderlands/La Frontera and “The Cariboo Café” show how systematic violence and displacement shatter the self, pushing characters to navigate trauma in a dystopian space. Sonya, Macky, the café owner, and the grieving mother represent Anzaldúa’s concepts of borderland subjectivity, betrayal, and spectral haunting.

Sonya and Macky, two undocumented children, represent Anzaldúa’s borderlands subjects and reside in a state of nepantla, an in-between space of cultural dislocation. The café owner …

Entropy And Incarnation In The Duchamp Room: An Inquiry Into Aesthetic Time, Jesse Goodman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the posthumous installation of Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés, as a test case for how particularly historically situated artworks may or may not change over time. It begins with an overview of Duchamp’s biography, and his own theories of art’s relationship to temporality (which influenced the piece’s construction). It then moves through contrasting accounts of aesthetic time from Adorno and Robert Smithson. Section two works with Walter Benjamin’s writing on photography and aura to produce an account of estrangement between the piece and the viewing subject induced by the historical development of the artwork’s “translation” and “replication”—through …

Shakespeare’S Murderous World: Not A Doomed Reality, Afton Fay

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Dangerous Possession, Perilous Gaze, And Violent Control In "You Belong To Me," "My Last Duchess," And "Mont Blanc", Mackenzie Hughes

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Unmasking The Monkey Myth: The Coexistence Of Sage And Trickster, Marisa O'Malley

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

What Is Lyric Anyway?: Attempting To Define Lyric Using Elizabeth Barrett Browning’S “Sonnet 6” And Fiona Apple’S “I Want You To Love Me”, Fiona Smith

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Hands In David Copperfield As A Marker Of Character, Niall Mckenna

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

From Object To Architect: How Molly Bloom Designs Her Own Gaze In Joyce’S Ulysses, Mackenzie Hughes

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Home, Exile, And Displacement In The Lord Of The Rings And The Hobbit, Sarah Park

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

The Criterion (2025), Mackenzie Hughes, Emily Carbone, Marisa O'Malley, Gericho Louis Conge, Afton Fay, Fiona Smith, Gwyneth Morrissey, Niall Mckenna, Roan Brimacomb, Sarah Park, Madeline T. Zafon-Whalen

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

The Oppression Of Embrace, Gericho Louis Conge

The Criterion

No abstract provided.