Comparative Literature Commons^™

Queer Hope And Asexual Desire In Nella Larsen's Passing And Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Jeremy Buckner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This project examines Nella Larsen’s Passing and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse together as queer artifacts in hopes of shedding new light on how race and sexuality can be reexamined across national modes of thinking. Although these writers’ backgrounds provide them with different bodies of knowledge, Larsen’s Irene and Woolf’s Lily have much more in common than might first appear. For one, even if racialization is more explicit—and presents more of an obstacle—for Irene, race is an important factor for both characters. Additionally, Irene and Lily both express profound discontent with marriage, Irene in her marriage to Brian and Lily …

Fergus Of Galloway: A New Translation For A New Audience, Emily J. Aguayo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation focuses on one text – Li romanz de Fergus – an Arthurian romance composed in Old French in the early thirteenth century by a mysterious author named Guillaume le Clerc. I have learned as much as I can about this romance and have looked at it from every angle possible. The scope of my research is narrow and deep because it focuses on one text, its author, and its subject matter. I have created a new theory about the identity of the author, Guillaume le Clerc, based on historical documents such as the Acts of Lordship from Scotland, …

The Rhetorical Use Of The Lower Classes In Three Primary Accounts Of The First Crusade, John Hannon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the rhetorical use of the lower classes in three primary accounts of the First Crusade: Albert of Aachen, the Gesta Francorum, and Raymond of Aguilers — specifically with an eye towards the proper maintenance of the order of society through everyone performing their assigned role. Through a close reading of these three texts this study demonstrates how the three authors engage with and uphold versions of the idealized three orders model of medieval society. Though there is nuance between each source, broadly, each of the authors presents the lower classes as a force that needs to …

True Crime Adaptations And How The Public Surveils, Laura Nothstine

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

True crime adaptations have become increasingly popular in the past few decades, but their existence reaches back several centuries. They have taken many forms, including stage dramas, graphic novels, and true crime podcasts. Examples of these adaptations— particularly the play Arden of Faversham, the graphic novel From Hell, and modern true crime podcasts—illustrate the selective process used to create true crime adaptations. That process chooses to foreground certain aspects of crimes while others are left behind, which changes audience understandings of the crime. By understanding the nuances of these adaptations, the potential effects they create in audience perceptions become clear. …

Translation And Migration, Utopia And Dystopia: Representations Of The Labor Of Cultural Mediation In Fictional Eastern Europe And The Real Us-Mexico Border, James L. Richie Iv

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

With the publication of Moira Inghilleri’s book, Translation and Migration (2017), the linguistic act of translation and the social phenomenon of migration have been linked in the world of interdisciplinary studies, yet this linkage may obscure the relevance of works in which only one phenomenon (translation or migration) is presented. A case study in which a work exploring migration can be contrasted with a work exploring the function of translation may reveal in one another the social forces that condition both practices. In Lucas Pope’s independently created video game Papers Please (2014), the player embodies a border patrol agent in …

"Quiero Ser Hombre": Grito De Libertad Y Afirmación Feminista En La Obra De Carmen De Burgos Y Julia De Burgos, Lizely M. Lopez Cordero

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

A las escritoras Carmen de Burgos (España) y Julia de Burgos (Puerto Rico) las separa un mar, las clases sociales y el tiempo. Aunque ambas escritoras comparten un apellido que está lejos de parentesco alguno, el denominador común que las une es la transgresión. Una transgresión definida por su desafío a las normas sociales impuestas a la mujer y por penetrar esos espacios que les eran vedados, mediante su producción literaria y el activismo social y político. Las muestras claras de estos actos de transgresión y subversión quedan reflejadas en la última obra de Carmen de Burgos, Quiero vivir mi …

Etude De La Bruyère Et De Youssouf Amine Elalamy : Peindre Les Mœurs D’Une Société, Fatima_Zahrae El Moatacime

Dirassat

Writer of several works of short form, Youssouf Amine Elalamy has a work written in Moroccan Arabic تقرقيب الناب which literally means chatter. This work depicts individuals in portraits inspired by Moroccan society. Like the famous classical philosopher La Bruyère, Elalamy depicts society in various fragments, devoted to different human types. تقرقيب الناب has countless points in common with The Characters. In Elalamy work, like La Bruyère, each portrait is introduced by the first name of the character described. Except that with Elalamy we are dealing with double portraits, he builds them in diptychs. The writer adds to the …

Etude Sémantique Des Isotopies Dans Le Discours Des Femmes D’Aît Znassen En Chantant Eṣ-Ṣǝff, Naima Boujemaaoui, Mohammed Kembouche, Mohammed Elbouziki

Dirassat

This article takes stock of a reflection on the different isotopic relationships woven in the song of women eṣ-ṣeff by Aît Znassen. This reflection is essentially based on the analysis of five isotopies, namely generic, specific, mixed, inherent and afferent isotopies. The study of these isotopies has shown that, although they have points in common insofar as they are all based on the recurrence of one or more semes, they have, in exchange, points of divergence, due to the fact that each of them has a property that distinguishes it from other isotopies. This analysis also made it possible to …

Déréalisation Du Monde : Simulacre Et Facticité Dans La Société Marchande Moderne. Etude Du Phénomène À La Lumière Des Œuvres De Michel Houellebecq, Omar Benjelloun

Dirassat

The Western world today employs an ignominious strategy to induce individuals to favor form over substance, appearance over meaning, and purpose over being. Reality should be wrapped up, truth concealed, authenticity discarded in favor of rapacious advertising that has one and only objective: to induce society to consume.

Discours Romanesque, Médiation Et Vivre-Ensemble, Ahmed Bouftouh

Dirassat

This article is concerned with an intercultural mediation whose three poles are the novelistic discourse, the literary critic and the audience. In other words, by calling upon theoretical contributions from semiotics and ethical criticism, we intend to see what a literary criticism dedicated to living together would consist of. More precisely, we first highlight the focal points that the literary critic, being in a median position between a work of fiction and its potential receiver, would be expected to make explicit. In a second step, we show how a work on textual values would be necessary for a successful intercultural …

Le Discours Sur La Modernité Dans L’Œuvre D’Abdelwahab Meddeb, Azzelarab Touda

Dirassat

Any discourse on modernity involves the way of being, thinking and creating and remains strongly linked to the political, ideological and cultural climates that saw it born and evolve, hence thoughts and expressions managed, ipso facto, either in the relationship of fidelity to genealogical belonging, or in that of hospitable overcoming with regard to the other. However, strangely, the discourse on modernity of the writer-poet and essayist Abdelwahab Meddeb is driven by a faithful infidelity with regard to his auroral scene. This duality permeates the Meddebian work of dyonysism and apollinism under the aegis of modernity which frames, at …

Discours Institutionnel Dans L’Espace Universitaire Marocain : De La Réforme À La Transformation, Mohammed Essbai, Mohammed Atmani

Dirassat

The Moroccan university has undergone successive reforms targeting the architecture of training, curricula and teaching practices. Each time, a different discourse is used to give a new breath to the desired change. In 2021, the university space is hosting a program to accelerate the transformation of the ecosystem, known as the ESRI 2030 Pact. Discursively, each departmental initiative is presided over by new concepts that reflect the directions advocated by decision makers in the sector.

Casar Student Discussion Series #7: Censored Classrooms - Should Parents And Community Members Have A Say In Restricting Certain Books In Schools, Based On Factors Such As Religion, Age Appropriateness, And More?, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

Every semester, CASAR AUC holds miscellaneous student debates discussing the hot controversial topics in the US, Egypt and from around the world in hopes of raising awareness about these topics & broadening the perspectives of our students as they learn to engage in fruitful discussions as they share different opinion on the topic being deliberated.

On April 10th 2025, at this CASAR Student Discussion event #7 in light of the current book bans in the US happening from Trump's administration, we debated this question: 'Censored classrooms: Should parents and community members have a say in restricting certain books in schools …

What Is A Nation? Colonial Legacies, Identity, And Reclaiming In Métisse Autobiographical Narratives – A Case Study Of Sugar And Slate And Garçon Manqué, Thaïs Maëlle Autin

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines the question of national belonging in autobiographical narratives of second-generation immigrant métisse women. I study the similar aesthetic manner in which individuals with different regional and cultural influences grapple with concepts of identity, gender, racism, exile, and negotiation, and the way in which the authors anchor themselves in a broader familial and national heritage. I argue that such an enterprise can be understood as part of the alternative heritage wave, based on Andrew Higson’s theory. The texts put in question traditional understandings of nation. Doing so opens the possibility of engaging in a dialogue that expands the …

The Role Of The Church In The German Democratic Republic: Examining The Representation Of Christianity In The Novel Einer Trage Des Anderen Last Within Its Cultural And Historical Context, Arden Remnant Gewirtz Levine

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The attitude towards the Protestant Church in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) changed overtime and was not homogenous during the approximately forty years of the GDR’s existence. This thesis will use this established cultural and historical context in order to analyze the representation of Christianity in the novel Einer trage des anderen Last, written by Wolfgang Held. The premise of the novel is two men diagnosed with tuberculosis are forced to share a room in the Sanatorium, however, one is a protestant pastor and the other is a member of the Volkspolizei (the People’s police). Through their distinct ideologies …

Shakespeare’S Early Histories And The Construction Of Government, Paul Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Shakespeare’s first tetralogy has been treated as an account of the reinvention of government, especially a Hobbesian reinvention demonstrating how authoritarian government forces order out of chaos. This article argues that, though Hobbesian elements present themselves, Shakespeare employs subtexts available to his time and place to speak of how orderly government is constituted: that is, he relies on accounts of the Fall from perfection into chaos and the return from it through divinely blessed kingship that are present in syncretic readings of Ovid and the Bible. The two subtexts give order to the progress from Fall into chaos and back …

Death Becomes Us: The Consumptive Body In Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature, Jennifer Marie Mcmahon

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the impacts of nineteenth-century tuberculosis epidemics on gothic literature published between 1842 and 1872. In this period of time, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States and in Europe, killing an estimated one in seven people. Using theoretical lenses of psychoanalysis and material ecocriticism, this project considers borders between material bodies—specifically those between bacterial agents and humans—to be illusory and socially constructed. The first chapter focuses on the ways in which representations of tuberculosis, and its associated entanglement with the environment, appear in the work of two authors from the United States: Edgar …

Ritual As Resistance: Orality, Identity, And Soviet Kazakh Childhood In Sayin Muratbekov’S The Smell Of Wormwood, Dana Akhmerova

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay analyzes The Smell of Wormwood (1967), a short novel by Soviet Kazakh author Sayin Muratbekov, set in a Kazakh village during World War II. The narrative centers on Ayan, a nine-year-old orphan with a physical disability, who copes with trauma and marginalization by becoming a storyteller for the village children. Focusing on the role of Kazakh folklore—particularly storytelling and initiation rituals—I explore how these cultural forms shape the novel’s characters, structure, and central conflict. Drawing on Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner’s theories of ritual, I argue that Ayan’s storytelling creates an informal liminal space through which the …

Beware The Wandering Woman: Depictions Of Female Spatial Transgression In Athenian Public Dramas Of The 5th And 4th Centuries Bce, Anne E. Mcgrath

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This paper explores how ancient Greek literature and culture construct autonomous, mobile women as threats to the ideological and spatial order of the polis. Referencing mythological precedents and closely reading Classical texts, I propose the category of “excepted women” to address the threads of female transgression woven throughout this extensive literary corpus. Focusing on figures who transgress imposed spatial boundaries, I examine how such women are positioned as disruptors of gendered norms and civic stability, thus reflecting deep cultural anxieties about female agency and movement into spaces coded as masculine. The paper engages theoretical frameworks from Althusser and Butler to …

The Tragic Outlaw Hero In Modern Egyptian Fiction: A Case Study On Naguib Mahfouz’S "The Thief And The Dogs", Manar Ellethy

Regards

This article examines the outlaw figure in modern Egyptian fiction

through the lens of the conceptual framework of social banditry and classical

tragedy. It offers a unique angle of analysis of one of Mahfouz’s most prolific

works that emerges in times of growing political anxiety following the Egyptian

Revolution of 1952. Reading the 1962 film adaptation of Naguib Mahfouz’s The

Thief and the Dogs directed by Kamal El-Sheikh as a projection of the socio-

political uncertainty of the post-revolution Nasser era, this paper considers the

outlaw figure within the condition of social alienation. Using the conceptual

borders set by Eric …