Comparative Literature Commons^™

A Multiple Perspective Analysis On Urban Poverty In Developing Nations: A Case Study On Nigeria, Colonial Implications, And Modern-Day Outcomes, Julian Rivera-Williams

CMC Senior Theses

This paper will dissect urbanization and poverty in Nigeria as a case study of the challenges of underdevelopment and the lingering effects of colonialism in Africa. To draw a complete understanding of challenges faced by developing nations facing systemic underdevelopment, high poverty, and low productivity– nations like Nigeria, my research will uncover colonial impacts and post-colonial policies that initiated urban poverty and underdevelopment outcomes we see today. The purpose of my thesis is to encompass existing fragmented academia on the causes and consequences of underdevelopment and connect historical implications to current impacts of global development today including the influence of …

อยู่เหย้าเฝ้าเรือน : การต่อรองและการปรับเปลี่ยนความหมายของความเป็นชายผ่านตัวละครพ่อบ้านในนวนิยายเยอรมันร่วมสมัย, อรรถพล เตชะพันธุ์

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

วิทยานิพนธ์ฉบับนี้มุ่งศึกษาการต่อรองและการปรับเปลี่ยนความหมายของความเป็นชายผ่านภาพแทนของตัวละครพ่อบ้านในนวนิยายเยอรมันร่วมสมัยจำนวนสี่เรื่องที่ตีพิมพ์ระหว่างปี ค.ศ. 2007 ถึง 2013 โดยมีจุดประสงค์เพื่อสำรวจความตึงเครียดในสังคมเยอรมันระหว่างภาพลักษณ์ของรัฐที่ส่งเสริมนโยบายความเท่าเทียมทางเพศกับการดำรงอยู่ของอุดมการณ์ชายเป็นใหญ่ผู้หาเลี้ยงครอบครัวที่ยังคงฝังแน่นที่มีผลต่อบทบาทในครอบครัวของผู้ชาย วิทยานิพนธ์ฉบับนี้นำเสนอกรอบการวิเคราะห์ที่มองว่า การอยู่เหย้าเฝ้าเรือนของผู้ชายไม่ใช่เป็นเพียงการสลับบทบาทอย่างตรงไปตรงมา แต่เป็นการแสดงที่ซับซ้อนซึ่งตัวละครชายต้องสวมบทบาทของผู้ดูแลอันเป็นบทบาทที่ถูกตีตราทางวัฒนธรรมว่าเป็นพื้นที่ของผู้หญิง ผลการวิเคราะห์วรรณกรรมพบว่า นวนิยายได้นำเสนอกระบวนการสวมบทบาทดังกล่าวสองรูปแบบ รูปแบบแรกแสดงให้เห็นว่าการสวมบทบาทพ่อบ้านเป็นการแสดงบทบาทโดยผิวเผินและมุ่งตอบสนองต่อการตัดสินของสังคมภายนอกเกี่ยวกับความเป็นชายของตน การแสดงบทบาทในลักษณะนี้มักจบลงด้วยวิกฤตอัตลักษณ์และการหวนกลับไปยึดถือความเป็นชายแบบอำนาจนำเพื่อรักษาตัวตน รูปแบบที่สองแสดงให้เห็นว่าการสวมบทบาทพ่อบ้านเป็นการปฏิบัติที่มุ่งเน้นการกระทำงานดูแลซ้ำ ๆ และสร้างกระบวนการเรียนรู้ผ่านร่างกายที่เกิดจากการทำกิจวัตรประจำวันจนเกิดการซึมซับคุณค่าของการดูแลอย่างแท้จริง การปฏิบัตินี้นำไปสู่การเปลี่ยนแปลงตัวตนและส่งผลให้เกิดการประกอบสร้างนิยามความเป็นชายที่ยืดหยุ่นและครอบคลุมมิติของการดูแลเอาใจใส่

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"Gladly Wolde He Lerne And Gladly Teche": Balancing Humanity And Pragmatics In Teaching, Peter Steffensen

Quidditas

Teachers of AP courses have to balance passing on love of the subject matter and accomplishing the more pragmatic goals of the course. I have found that in the English classroom those two goals can complement one another when specific approaches are taken to teaching. This article explores those moments when humanity and pragmatics collide in the classroom and provides suggestions for navigating these sometimes conflicting goals.

Review: Out Of The Mouths Of Babes: Infant Voices In Medieval French Literature, Alani Hicks-Bartlett

Quidditas

Voicing a stirring call for readers to reconsider the silence and lacunae that are traditionally attributed to infancy, in her latest monograph, Julie Singer situates infancy as both an essential critical framework and an instructive, illuminative methodology through which a gaping archival silence can be rectified-that silence being literary representations of the medieval child, and specifically, the spoken life of the medieval child. As Singer argues, infancy and childhood entwine rather indiscernibly with each other in accordance with the medieval attribution of a longue dureé to infancy (Isidore of Seville, for instance, posited infancy as a stage lasting for about …

Review: Shaping Intellectual Disabilities In Early Modern England, Mardy Philippian

Quidditas

In Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern England, Alice Equestri has assembled an impressive collection of essays by researchers interested in early modern conceptions of intellectual disability. Like Hobgood and Wood's groundbreaking collection Recovering Disability in Early Modern England (2013) and Leslie C. Dunn's edited collection Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama (2020), Equestri's volume will benefit scholars for some time to come. Of use to both early career scholars and those well established in the field of early modern disability studies, Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern England invites readers into twelve individual studies of a diverse …

One Thing Leads To Another: A New Approach To Teaching Medieval Literature In The Twenty-First Century, Nicholas Markellos

Quidditas

Part of the problem with defining the "Middle Ages" stems from nineteenth-century historians' attempts to distinguish the Renaissance as a unique period that brought about modernity. In examining the literature of this period, however, it is clear that there was a certain element of queerness that surrounded this bewildering age. As a literature teacher, I found that my students do not always see these strange and important elements in the antiquated translations of the texts. To that end, I designed a new curriculum unit that approaches the reading of several medieval stories through a queer perspective, as well as a …

Medieval Old Age As Discourse: Conflicting Views And Perspectives In Pre-Modern German And European Literature From The Early To The Late Middle Ages, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

This article revisits and reviews the broad and intense discourse on old age in the medieval and to some extent early modern worlds and examines the major scholarly contributions to this extensive topic. The discussion of old age during the Middle Ages found expression in fields such as history, philosophy, medicine, theology, literature, the visual arts, pharmacy, and military studies. It is not that long ago that old age itself finally gained more interest in historical research, but we can by now rely on a number of well-researched monographs and edited volumes dealing with this highly complex topic. Previous scholarship …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award 2025

Kierra E. Burns

Dante And The Nine Worthies: Glory Or Fame?, Thomas L. Cooksey

Quidditas

In Paradiso 18, Dante is introduced by Cacciaguida, to eight martial heroes: Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, Roland, Charlemagne, William of Orange, Renouard, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard. Joined by Cacciaguida they form a group of nine, suggesting that Dante is playing with the topos of the Nine Worthies, popular in chivalric literature. While there are various prototypes, the canonical version of the Nine was codified by Jacques de Longuyon in his romance Voeux du paon (The Vow of the Peacock), appearing around 1312, a date tantalizingly close to the composition of the Paradiso. A comparison is instructive both …

"A Changed Understanding Of Our Present": Moby-Dick As Prophetic Ecological Activism, Katie Ann Schini

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale is a classic of American literature, spanning multiple genres and remaining culturally relevant nearly 175 years after its original publication. Though on the surface Moby-Dick reads as an adventure story of a man who experiences the whaling industry firsthand, Herman Melville’s text continues to invite new generations of readership through the framework of the twenty-first century climate crisis.

In this thesis, I position Moby-Dick as a text that can be used to understand our modern society’s current dispositions of ecological grief. My thesis operates at the intersection of three main literary critical theories: ecocriticism, affect, and …

Teaching Cuba In Georgia Today, Eric Kartchner

The Coastal Review

This essay details a college professor's approach to teaching a course on Cuban history and culture. The professor's pedagogical choices were influenced by Ada Ferrer's book, Cuba: An American History, and José Antonio Bowen's work on fostering independent thinking. The syllabus covered pre-Columbian Cuba, Spanish rule, the wars of independence, the Castro era, and significant cultural aspects like music and religion. The course emphasized multiple perspectives and encouraged student-led research, challenging preconceived notions about Cuba's complex relationship with the United States. The professor aimed to promote critical thinking and understanding through student-driven inquiry.

Mirrors Of The Reel: Black Women's Identity In American Cinema (2009-2024), Melanie-Penny Harrison

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study investigates whether white supremacy structures, embodied in Hollywood’s predominantly white leadership, drive negative portrayals of Black women in 31 mainstream American films from 2009 to 2024. Employing a mixed-methods approach—quantitative content analysis, qualitative content analysis (QCA), and narrative methodology—I code portrayals for racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, colorism, and internalized racism, classifying them as progressive (e.g., empowered roles), regressive (e.g., subservient stereotypes), or hybrid. Guided by Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, the analysis examines narrative structures, character agency, symbolism, and dialogue to uncover intersectional patterns (e.g., race, gender, class) across three periods: 2009–2013, 2014–2018, and 2019–2024. Across these periods, cultural …

Words And Stardom: Modernist Poetic Responses To Asta Nielsen, Karl E. Toepfer

Open Educational Resources

This essay discusses how four modernist poets portrayed the Danish movie star Asta Nilesen (1881-1972). German Hans Schiebelhuth (1895-1944) describes the "demonic" power of Nielsen's image to awaken dark aspects of his adolscent personality. For the Flemish poet Paul van Ostaijen (1896-1928), Nielsen's cinematic image provokes a radical shattering of language into extravagant "word-images." Danish writer Rudolf Broby-Johansen (1900-1987) linked Nielsen's image to a radical (Marxist) critique of oppressive sexual politics within a capitalist society. German Franz Behrens (1895-1977) composed a lengthy, expressionist ode to Nielsen from the perspective of one who actually worked as a screenwriter in the German …

The Deceptive Third Place: Comparing Steinbeck’S The Pearl To Modern Cell Phone Escapism, Christina Doublesin

Quest

Literary Analysis

Research in progress for ENGL 2333: World Literature II

Faculty Mentor: Anna Genneken, PhD

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Christina Doublesin’s “The Deceptive Third Place: Comparing Steinbeck’s The Pearl to Modern Cell Phone Escapism.” Christina wrote this essay for her term paper in my World Literature II course in the spring of 2023. The assignment allows students to choose a text we have read for class to be the focus of a critical analysis. I intentionally leave the direction of this analysis very open-ended with the hope that students will make connections that extend far beyond …

The Maiden’S Tower Of Femininity, Amrita Dhar

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This paper examines portrayals of femininity within “Maiden in the Tower” tales. It analyzes the means by which maturation, sexuality, reproduction, and female agency contribute to the shaping of femininity. Via Petrosinella by Giambattista Basile, Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm, and Tangled by Disney, the paper explores how variations portray historically unique interpretations of ideal, female traits that defy common assumptions. The evolution of perspectives across “Maiden in the Tower” tales help us grasp how gender ideologies are communicated and how women are socialized.

‘Fiery The Angels Rose’: The Romantic Prometheanism Of Tolkien’S Diabolical Characters, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

Milton’s Satan in the seventeenth century was hardly viewed as heroic, yet in his resistance to supreme authority and bold transvaluation of values (“Evil, be thou my Good”) he emerges as a sort of tragic hero for many Romantics such as William Blake or later Herman Melville. Like Prometheus, the subject of Percy Bysshe Shelley great poetic drama, Satan is a figure of noble rebellion against omnipotent force. Tolkien’s more ‘satanic” characters, such as Melkor, Sauron, and perhaps even Saruman, do not often strike readers as heroes, yet there is a sort of Prometheanism in each of them. Viewed from …

Modern Bodies: Globalizing Media Cultures And The Representation Of Ideal Beauty, Michelle Sun

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Senior Theses

This project aims to examine how the image of the “modern body” is constructed, imagined, modified, and sustained by globalizing media cultures in France, Japan, and the US—investigating how factors of race, age, health, class, and gender overlap and intersect to create a vision of “ideal” beauty across different times and spaces. Previous research has focused on particular topics, such as the rise of cosmetic surgery in East Asia or the politics of modern American beauty parlors. However, my goal in this project is to evaluate these diverse studies through a broader and more comparative lens, analyzing examples of French …

The White Peacock – A Masculinity Study, Katherine Pollert

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the feminist movement in England was making significant progress, effectively influencing the leading artists and scholars of the time to consider the nature of female oppression and to do their part to invoke change. Among these figures, D.H. Lawrence emerged as a provocative voice on gender and sexuality. To this day, his work remains a source of significant contention, often due to the controversial representation of gender and sexuality in his novels. For decades, feminist critics have debated Lawrence’s characterization of women, some accusing his work of misogyny, with others praising his careful …