Genres Of Labor: Wageless Work And The Aesthetics Of Stagnation,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
Genres Of Labor: Wageless Work And The Aesthetics Of Stagnation, Martin A. Jensen
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Genres of Labor identifies and explores a little-acknowledged fact about labor—that it appears to us in highly conventionalized forms that are subject to evaluation, appraisal, and interpretation. I call this appearance the “aesthetic” dimension of labor, and I show how it increasingly comes into view in the period since 1973, as a contracting economy pushes off work onto unwaged realms of human activity. In chapters on Andy Warhol’s The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), and Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days (2001), I demonstrate that literary texts participate in …
Marriage Stories: Legal Reform And The Novel In France And Britain, 1780–1860,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
Marriage Stories: Legal Reform And The Novel In France And Britain, 1780–1860, Tatiana Nunez-Bright
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“Marriage Stories” analyzes connections between novelistic form, marriage law reform, and portrayals of virtue in texts by, among others, Stéphanie de Genlis, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sophie Cottin, Claire de Duras, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac, Sophie Doin, George Sand, Anne Brontë, and Gustave Flaubert. I argue that the novel was less concerned with abolishing or even critiquing marriage than it was with delineating “good” from “bad” unions, which in turn reflects contemporary discussions about marriage’s role in response to burgeoning social movements. My first chapter considers the epistolary novel in relation to the idea of spouses existing as “one body” culturally …
Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21st-century poets and their 20th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …
The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, And Disgust In The Work Of Virginia Woolf And Zinaida Gippius,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, And Disgust In The Work Of Virginia Woolf And Zinaida Gippius, Yelizaveta Shapiro
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, and Disgust in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Zinaida Gippius examines how the discourses of degeneration, eugenics, and sexology shaped representations of women’s bodies in British and Russian modernist literature. Focusing on the writing of Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), I challenge the longstanding argument that both authors attempted to escape the material body by resorting to androgynous tropes. I argue that the material female body takes center stage in both Gippius’s and Woolf’s work and functions as a powerfully paradoxical entity: one that generates disgust and enables oppression while housing …
Exploring The Matriarchal Past To Forge A Modern Identity: Maternal Origins In Woolf And Ihimaera,
2023
Brigham Young University
Exploring The Matriarchal Past To Forge A Modern Identity: Maternal Origins In Woolf And Ihimaera, Kirsten W. Burningham
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
Though the writings of Virginia Woolf and Witi Ihimaera are “incommensurable” in many ways, I find “commesurablilities”––the kind of commensurabilities the Susan Stanford Friedman seeks out across the planetary landscape of modernism––in the way they negotiate a new creative identity in a modern environment with the bang clash of history and present ringing in their ears. I see this commensurability in at least three key features: 1) Woolf and Ihimaera each gave birth to new literary movements: Woolf was mother to high British Modernism with experimental techniques such as free indirect discourse and the relegation of plot to the background; …
#Metoo And Literary Studies: Reading, Writing, And Teaching About Sexual Violence And Rape Culture,
2023
Indiana University - Bloomington
#Metoo And Literary Studies: Reading, Writing, And Teaching About Sexual Violence And Rape Culture, Gabrielle Stecher
Feminist Pedagogy
No abstract provided.
Frights And Forests: The Hellish Landscape Of The Dark Forest, From Sleepy Hollow To The Forest Of Arden,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Frights And Forests: The Hellish Landscape Of The Dark Forest, From Sleepy Hollow To The Forest Of Arden, Minna Nizam
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
This paper seeks to explore forest settings in fantasy, and its hellish landscapes. From the headless horseman in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, to the frights and horrors of mythical creatures in fantasy settings placed in forests. The purpose of this study is to dive deep into the fear of the forest, its early days in storytelling, to more modern renditions. Sources used will be primarily books, and texts within books, such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Lord of the Rings, and much more.
Mythopoeic Awards Discussion,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Mythopoeic Awards Discussion, David Lenander, David Emerson
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
No abstract provided.
Seven Minutes In Hell: Hells In Fantasy Games,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Seven Minutes In Hell: Hells In Fantasy Games, Nyssa Gilkey
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Join Nyssa Gilkey on a tour through several different fantasy video game depictions of hell. We’ll spend about seven (-ish) minutes looking around each hell or underworld before moving on, touring Helheim in God of War and God of War: Ragnarok, Hades and Elysium as portrayed in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey DLC, and the Duat of ancient Egypt in Assassin’s Creed: Origins DLC. With sufficient time and interest, we can tour other fantasy depictions of hell. Participants will be able to ask questions and discuss throughout the journey.
The Image Of Satan In Evangelical Children’S Fantasy,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
The Image Of Satan In Evangelical Children’S Fantasy, Melody Green
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Over the last few decades, niche publishers have presented several children’s fantasy series marketed as being “in the tradition of Lewis and Tolkien.” These publishers, however, are neither British, nor are they Anglican or Catholic. They are instead American Evangelical organizations, providing a space for faith-informed stories that wander somewhere between allegory and parable. Within the pages of these texts can be found not only the expected Christ-figures, but there are also Satan-figures and hellish landscapes much more likely to reflect concepts from Dante, Milton, and medieval witch-hunting guides than from the Bible, the text that evangelicals claim to be …
Hell As An Exploration Of Sin: A Comparison Of Alan Moore’S Providence To Dante’S Inferno,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Hell As An Exploration Of Sin: A Comparison Of Alan Moore’S Providence To Dante’S Inferno, Zachary Rutledge
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In Alan Moore’s graphic novel Providence, Robert Black travels Lovecraftian New England and suffers a series of horrifying encounters—each an allusion to a Lovecraft story. These encounters contain direct references to various sins and taboos, thereby making explicit much of the sublimated sexuality in Lovecraft’s works. Therefore, Black’s journey constitutes not only a trip through Lovecraft’s mythology but also reads as a cataloguing of sins reminiscent of Dante’s passage through the levels of sin in Inferno. This paper identifies and explores the similarities between Dante and Black as examples of those who descend to the underworld along with a …
Political Demons: Society As Hell In Hellblazer And Sandman,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Political Demons: Society As Hell In Hellblazer And Sandman, Andrew Burt
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In the Hellblazer and Sandman comic book universes, hell depends on the writer’s worldview and often on the decade in which they are writing, appearing as a twisted version of a dreary regular world. Thus, this hell is often related to the contemporary Western political and cultural landscape as seen through Judeo-Christian conceptions of hell, demonology, and fears of everlasting torment and damnation, just like Dante’s Inferno and many other representations for centuries. In creating a hell that mirrors the modern world and accounts for contemporary folklore about the supernatural, the creators humanize the character’s quests and reify the fruitlessness …
Panel: The Rings Of Power Season 1: Underworlds, Overworlds, And Ocean Worlds,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Panel: The Rings Of Power Season 1: Underworlds, Overworlds, And Ocean Worlds, Tim Lenz, Leah Hagan, Grace Moone, Pablo Guss
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Now that the first of five planned seasons of Amazon’s big budget Second Age adaptation The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has aired, we will provide a retrospective of Season 1. We will compare Tolkien’s Second Age writings with the realized version in the show, including how the writers and showrunners have interpreted certain specific passages from the texts, and where significant departures were made for sake of adaptation. We will highlight themes of the season, as well as specific characters, relationships, and settings that have resonated with audiences, and speculate on where the series could potentially …
Who The Hell Is Helen Of Sparta?,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Who The Hell Is Helen Of Sparta?, Nyssa Gilkey
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The rising popularity of Greek mythology is due in some part to female authors such as Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes lending a fresh perspective to the Homeric tradition. However, these female authors tend to actually reduce the importance of one of the most important female characters of the Trojan War: Helen. Helen of Sparta has been an enigma to writers throughout the last 3000 years, her story changing with each iteration and era. Since Homer’s Iliad, the most beautiful woman in the world has been victim and villain, strong and weak willed. She has chosen husbands, and been …
Pullman’S Problematic Paradise: Dissolving Into Dust,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Pullman’S Problematic Paradise: Dissolving Into Dust, David E. Isaacs
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In the His Dark Materials trilogy, Phillip Pullman has openly positioned himself as the anti-C.S. Lewis who attempts to embed the gospel of atheism through his fantasy novels. Pullman recasts classics such as Paradise Lost and Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven & Hell so that humans triumph over the oppressive Authority by learning that sinning is simply enjoying life. This paper will specifically explore Pullman’s depictions of the underworld and his alternative vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in The Amber Spyglass, examining Pullman’s attempts to assure readers that by rejecting Christian views of the final translation, one can …
Hellish Landscapes In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Legendarium,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Hellish Landscapes In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Legendarium, Willow Dipasquale
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium is rich with magical and mythological elements—enchanted rings, powerful wizards, stories told long ago—and near-Biblical struggles of good over evil, power over life and death, and the inexorable passage of time. The Halls of Mandos in Valinor even have echoes of the “afterlife,” serving as a liminal place for the spirits of Elves to await their next destination. Interestingly, though, a “hell” in the classic sense (that is, a spiritual region of eternal torment and suffering) does not seem to truly exist in Tolkien’s imagined worlds. However, Tolkien does fill those worlds with hellish landscapes: Utumno and …
Planes Of Oblivion In The Elder Scrolls,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Planes Of Oblivion In The Elder Scrolls, Michael Barros
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The planes of Oblivion from The Elder Scrolls (TES) series are not explicitly Hell; they are any dimensions of reality which are not under control of the Aedra, the benevolent spiritual entities. As a result, these planes may be totally unknown, pleasant, chaotic, or horrifying, depending on who is in charge, reflecting the personality of its ruler. These planes are at the heart of the franchise, and the intrusion of the planes of Oblivion and its inhabitants is a constant in the series. The planes of Oblivion are a reimagining of Hell as a place of potential, rather than evil. …
Persephone Bites: Consumption In The Underworld,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Persephone Bites: Consumption In The Underworld, Erin Sledd
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
If you know one thing about Persephone, it is that she was abducted by Hades, held captive, and ate pomegranate seeds in the Underworld. Although Demeter rescued her daughter, she had to return for several months each year as a consequence of consuming the “Fruit of the Underworld.” But tasting those succulent ruby red seeds was not the first time she succumbed to desire—according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter II, the first thing Persephone “bites” is a lure. Hades sets a trap: a flower with “one hundred stems of fragrant blossoms.” When Persephone grasps a stalk of this …
Only In Dying Life: The Production Of Hope And Peace,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Only In Dying Life: The Production Of Hope And Peace, Taylor Johnson Guinan
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Unlike fantasy authors of previous generations like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien who wrote depictions of an afterlife that mirrored their personal faiths, modern children’s fantasy authors of the last thirty years, such as Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phillip Pullman, Rick Riordan, J.K. Rowling, Jonathan Stroud, and Garth Nix, often merely use religious concepts as a way to depict the land of the dead. In their depictions, the land of the dead is a dark, terrible, and uninviting place. However, rather than ending on that dark point, these authors transition from fear to a sense of peace, acceptance, …
Through Sauron’S Eye: Hell, Arda Unmarred, Arda Marred, And Arda Healed According To The Maia Formerly Known As Mairon,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Through Sauron’S Eye: Hell, Arda Unmarred, Arda Marred, And Arda Healed According To The Maia Formerly Known As Mairon, Cameron Bourquein
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
From the beginning of Tolkien scholarship Mordor has been analyzed in light of its Hellish iconography; from the perspective of the narrative voice, what constitutes “Hell” in Middle-earth may seem clear. But what is Hell to Mordor’s chief inhabitant? What is Hell in Sauron’s Eye? The Rings of Power has brought Sauron into the spotlight by interpreting him not as depersonalized evil but as a character in his own right. Actor Charlie Vickers has shared how he developed this character for the screen, adapting characteristics taken directly from Tolkien’s own writings: Sauron’s love of order and his desire to “heal” …
