Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons^™

Blind But Seeing: Post-Clinical Medicine In Jose Saramago's Blindness, Matthew J. Ftacek

All NMU Master's Theses

This project examines José Saramago’s Blindness (1996) in the context of two other narratives focused on plagues and epidemics – Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947) – each written at different points in time during the development of clinical medicine as chronicled by Michel Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic. The paper draws heavily upon Foucault’s work on clinical medicine, as well as a number of different theories of medical history, government policy, and cultural attitudes towards health and illness. The goal of the project is twofold: first, to examine how …

'Those Who Cling In Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues And Memories Of An Elder Day': J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns And Elves, Andrew Scott Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Abstract

Those Who Cling in Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues and Memories of an Elder Day' J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns and Elves

Dr. Andrew Higgins

In this paper I will explore how several historic, literary and mythic associations of the Finnish people with elements of magic, the supernatural and the 'other' influenced J.R.R. Tolkien in imbuing the character and language of his own Elves with a similar quality of magic and 'arresting strangeness'.I will explore several characterisations of the Finns, the People of Kalevala, Tolkien would have encountered in his early study of the Kalevala, several Old Norse and …

Junot Díaz’S The Brief, Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao And Its Punishment Of Failed Gender Performances, Bruno Yupanqui Tovar

Masters Theses

Junot Díaz’s renowned novel, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Oscar Wao), presents the brief and wondrous life of its main character, Oscar Wao, but also describes the exceptional lives of Lola and Belicia, his sister and mother, respectively. While the story’s title asserts an enthusiastic tone to the lives of Oscar—and the females in his family—the story actually reveals the victimization and demise of these characters. Though Díaz offers the spell of Fukú americanus, a Dominican superstition, Feminist Theorist Judith Butler provides a more advantageous, concrete explanation for the subjugation of these characters. Butler argues that culture dictates …

The Library Under The Sun: Knowledge And Vanity In Umberto Eco’S The Name Of The Rose, Elizabeth Lamont

Masters Theses

Umberto Eco’s debut novel The Name of the Rose is so saturated with theoretical conversations and allusions that it can be read as a work of critical theory almost as much as it can be read as the wonderful detective novel that so many people have enjoyed. This thesis approaches the novel accordingly, engaging with the theoretical questions and ideas presented in the novel and evaluating them based on a biblical worldview. The central theoretical questions in the novel revolve around what can be known and how. Many critics have argued that the novel answers these questions of epistemology in …

Rogues In The Postcolony: The New Picaresque And The Making Of Modern India, Stacey Balkan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rogues in the Postcolony looks at Indian picaresque novels that respond to and productively complicate dominant historical narratives by adapting formal conventions of the picaresque novel and by foregrounding the experiences of historically obscured figures, or “rogues.” The project is structured in such a way as to read colonial and postcolonial India through the lens of marginalized persons such as poppy farmers and, more recently, the citizens of Bhopal who continue to struggle with the toxic legacy of the Union Carbide fertilizer factory in their city. I argue that the unreliable narration and non-teleological structure of the picaresque form parody …

To Build A Better Textbook: Developing A Literature Curriculum For Today’S Christian Schooling, Abby L. Cockrell

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis explores the educational philosophy and the creative process behind the creation of a new textbook and curriculum. The goal of this new textbook and curriculum is to help persuade high school students to view literature as an avenue of life-long learning. The plan to develop this textbook and curriculum is built on five objectives: a recognition of the need for holistic education, the implementation of differentiated teaching methods, the cultivation of student interest, the reflection of diversity within classrooms, and the integration of modern technology. This plan will be proposed in the creation of a textbook for use …

Regimes Of Prestige And Power: Transnational Authorship And International Acclaim In Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, Kyle Eveleth

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This essay will examine the reception of Rutu Modan’s international-award-winning graphic novel Exit Wounds (2007) in the massive cultural centers of the United States and France by situating its success within the inter/transnational dynamics of the contemporary comics market, or what James English would term an “economy of prestige.” My essay reconsiders Exit Wounds beyond its popular status as an international phenomenon—that is, one that crosses national borders but which maintains distinctions between those nations it enters and its home state—by considering it a transnational work—one which blurs the lines between nation-states in its form, function, and reception. To do …

At Home In The Free-Market World: The Neoliberal Cosmopolitan Man In Salman Rushdie's Fury, Mary J. Nitsch

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article offers an exploration of the concept of cosmopolitanism in Salman Rushdie's novel, Fury. Through both Rushdie's and his protagonist's cosmopolitanism, the ambivalence of the position is revealed in particular through the latter's (un)easy access to global commodities and problematic exploitation of women. The economic and gender exploitations oddly converge in Solanka's latest creative project, the success of which glosses over the problematics of class and gender privilege. Ultimately, the protagonist’s cosmopolitanism truly impedes any critique cosmopolitanism might afford: he is readily swept up in the rising tide of the 90s financial boom and the frequently misogynist sexuality …

Readers In Pursuit Of Popular Justice: Unraveling Conflicting Frameworks In Lolita, Innesa Ranchpar

English (MA) Theses

This thesis examines the competing frameworks in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—the fictional Foreword written by John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and the manuscript written by Humbert Humbert—in order to understand to what extent the construction manipulates the rhetorical appeal. While previous scholarship isolates the two narrators or focuses on their unreliability, my examination concentrates on the interplay of the frameworks and how their conflicting objectives can be problematic for readers. By drawing upon various theories by Michel Foucault from Power/Knowledge and Louis Althusser’s “On Ideology,” I look into how John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and Humbert Humbert use authoritative voices to directly …

The Adventure Of The Immortal Detective: Adaptation And Audience Investment In The Cases Of Sherlock Holmes, Corey Hayes

Masters Theses

In the last ten years, popular culture has seen a number of visual interpretations of the character and cases of Sherlock Holmes. From the films starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law to the BBC show Sherlock and the CBS show Elementary, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective is currently at the forefront of the public mind. However, these new on-screen interpretations of the character represent merely the tip of the Holmes iceberg, and the dedication of their fans is just a continuation of the intense popularity that Doyle’s detective has enjoyed since his earliest appearances in print. All of …

“First-Rate Eddication”: The Educational Roles Of Merlyn And Dumbledore, Carissa Johnson

Masters Theses

The Once and Future King (1957) and the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) are Bildungsroman stories of young, orphaned boys, Wart and Harry, who endure extraordinary circumstances and become wise, mature, and heroic. The transformation that they undergo is the effect of strong education from their teachers, the wizards Merlyn and Dumbledore. This thesis uses progressive educational theory to demonstrate the model these wizards employ. This study also utilizes a study of discourse grammar and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to discuss the nature of Wart’s and Harry’s education. Because of the moral education demonstrated in the stories, reading them …

“The Languages Of Other People”: The Experiences Of Tutors, Administrators, And Students In A South African Multilingual Writing Center, Nicole Bailey

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography, conducted at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, conveys the experiences of tutors, students, and administrators in a multilingual writing lab. As the number of both multilingual and international students in American universities increases, more writing centers in the United States have begun to explore the idea of multilingual tutoring. This study offers implications for establishing American multilingual writing centers based on data that emerged from observations and interviews conducted at Stellenbosch. Several themes emerged from the data that have important implications for American centers. First, there must be a clear understanding of what defines a multilingual writing center. …

Contemporary Vietnamese Fiction Written About The War From The Gender Perspective, Thai Phan Vang Anh

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

The nature of every war is the same, whether in Asian countries, in Vietnam or anywhere else. However, in reality and literature, war always brings many faces, depending on which aspects and which perspectives it is seen and explained. From the gender perspective, we believe that under a certain aspect “a war has a female face”. Contemporary Vietnamese fiction describes war from the view of “feminine disposition”, realizes women’s beauty during and after war and condemns the brutal destruction of war from the fate of women. From the feminist perspective on war, contemporary Vietnamese fiction also mentions the instinctive desire, …

A Passage From Brooklyn To Ithaca: The Sea, The City And The Body In The Poetics Of Walt Whitman And C. P. Cavafy, Michael P. Skafidas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This treatise is the first extensive comparative study of Walt Whitman and C. P. Cavafy. Despite the abundant scholarship dealing with the work and life of each, until now no critic has put the two poets together. Whitman’s poetry celebrates birth, youth, the self and the world as seen for the first time, while Cavafy’s diverts from the active present to resurrect a world whose key, in Eliot’s terms, is memory. Yet, I see the two poets conversing in the crossroads of the fin de siècle; the American Whitman and the Greek Cavafy embody the antithesis of hope and dislocation …

Ceasing To Run Underground: 20th-Century Women Writers And Hydro-Logical Thought, Annie M. Cranstoun

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Starting from two central ecopoetic convictions—the constitutive role of environment in human experience (and vice versa), and text’s ability to connect with the world—this dissertation then moves in a different direction from most ecocritical projects. Instead of looking at the ways literary representation flows back into nature in the forms of attitude, praxis, and policy, this study focuses on the earlier part of the loop: the emergence of text from environment, particularly its aquatic parts, via the faculty of the imagination. In its scrutiny of images that spring directly from matter and its faith in the concept of a personal …

Front Matter, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Contents, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Gender And Power In Waiting For Godot, Ryan Wright

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Reader's Complicity: Universality In Waiting For The Barbarians, The Laramie Project, And The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, Aubrey Kosa

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Blind With Superstition, Cursed With Illusions: Masculinity And War In Bierce’S “Chickamauga”, Salina Patterson

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.