“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed,
2023
Cornell University
“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson
Criticism
Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed’s work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new …
Black Best-Selling Books And Bibliographical Concerns: The Essence Book Project,
2023
University of New Orleans
Black Best-Selling Books And Bibliographical Concerns: The Essence Book Project, Jacinta R. Saffold, Kinohi Nishikawa
Criticism
On October 27, 2021, the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) sponsored the first in a series of virtual interviews about the Essence Book Project. Founded by Jacinta R. Saffold, the BSA’s inaugural Dorothy Porter Wesley Fellow, the Essence Book Project is a database of the books that appeared on Essence magazine’s bestsellers’ list from 1994 to 2010. In talking about the project with Kinohi Nishikawa, Saffold highlights how Black best-selling books contribute new paths of inquiry to bibliographical scholarship and explains why it is important to archive contemporary Black print culture. Presented in this article is a modified version of …
Trees And Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, And The Logan Elm,
2023
University of Louisville
Trees And Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, And The Logan Elm, Mark Alan Mattes
Criticism
Settler accounts of the Cayuga Native American Soyeghtowa (Logan), such as Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, interpret his famous mourning speech, “Logan’s Lament,” as the words of a melancholic, noble savage and vanishing Indian. This essay decolonizes settler accounts of Logan’s words and deeds such as Jefferson’s book by considering Indigenous relationships to a once-living memorial on Shawnee land in central Ohio, the Logan Elm, which nineteenth-century settlers apocryphally identified as the site of Logan’s speech. Drawing on scholarly work on Indigenous writing and historical media by Native American and settler intellectuals, as well as local …
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir,
2023
University of Denver
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir, Sarah M. Davis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy as works of life writing that leverage the epistolary form to engage their direct maternal addressees and audiences beyond them in revision and reconstruction of identity. Secondary audiences are considered in light of Michael Warner’s “Publics and Counterpublics,” and the social affordances of the epistolary form and self-constructive affordances of life writing are analyzed in tandem as a hybrid epistolary memoir form. Specifically, this project explores how the epistolary memoir form affords Vuong and Laymon opportunities for the process of personal, relational, and communal identity construction, …
International Student Orientations: Indian Students At American Universities Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
International Student Orientations: Indian Students At American Universities Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Param S. Ajmera
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical …
The Personal And The Planetal: Essaying The Ecological,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
The Personal And The Planetal: Essaying The Ecological, Eric Dean Wilson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“The Personal and the Planetal: Essaying the Ecological” investigates contemporary American personal essays in an environmental mode in order to illuminate the boundaries between “self” and “planet.” It does so with an eye toward ecological devastation—namely, the violent effects of global warming—because I sense that thinking about the essay can help us better understand the ethical problems of climate change. Part of our climate crisis is a failure to recognize the boundaries of the personal and what I call the “planetal” (in an attempt to defamiliarize it from the more common “planetary”). Using a method that I call “the ecological …
Emancipatory And Retributive Labor: Conflicting Representations Of Enslaved Labor In Us And Caribbean Literature, 1830–1855,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
Emancipatory And Retributive Labor: Conflicting Representations Of Enslaved Labor In Us And Caribbean Literature, 1830–1855, Michael Druffel
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Emancipatory and Retributive Labor follows the development of a concept that I call emancipatory labor as it appeared in the US and Caribbean during the period 1830 to 1855. Emancipatory labor is a subversive tactic in which enslaved people in the United States and Caribbean redefined a portion of their labor in capitalist terms. Re-theorizing a portion of enslaved labor stakes a claim to agency and humanity according to Western, humanistic logic. Examples of the types of labor being redefined include selling commodities, hiring time, and working “extras” for wages. I use enslaved person Lunsford Lane’s 1842 narrative as a …
Whose Imagination Are We Living In?: An Examination Of Feminist Utopia Through The Lens Of Pragmatism,
2023
CUNY Bernard M Baruch College
Whose Imagination Are We Living In?: An Examination Of Feminist Utopia Through The Lens Of Pragmatism, Mia A. Gindis
Student Theses and Dissertations
Pragmatic feminism is a philosophy which utilizes and merges the fundamental concepts of pragmatism, such as its emphasis on pluralism and lived experience, with feminist theory in hopes of inciting social change. The main goals of pragmatic feminism are to recover the work of women who were influential in the popularization of American pragmatism but were also excluded from the history of philosophy, to analyze the “canon” of lauded pragmatist philosophers through a feminist lens, and to yield pragmatist philosophies as a weapon for contemporary feminist activism. In my study, I argue that feminist utopian literature can be a serviceable …
Cinematic Camouflage,
2023
University of New Mexico - Main Campus
Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez
English Language and Literature ETDs
There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …
Diasporic Women’S Mutability In South Asian Postcolonial Literature,
2023
CUNY Hunter College
Diasporic Women’S Mutability In South Asian Postcolonial Literature, Tasnim S. Halim
Theses and Dissertations
Though Western scholarship tends to homogenize South Asian experiences, researchers and novelists shed light on different classes of South Asian postcolonial and migratory women who experience mutability, or the internal and external changes as a trauma response after British colonial rule ended and the 1947 Partition abruptly fractured national identity. Though this mutability has positive and negative transformative qualities, it also allows women characters the power to remove themselves from cycles of oppression, work towards healing, and transforming their physical bodies from sites of repressed trauma to sites of expression and agency. What binds them is not only their physical …
Sweat Equity: Lynn Nottage's Radical Dialectic Of Deindustrialization,
2023
Chapman University
Sweat Equity: Lynn Nottage's Radical Dialectic Of Deindustrialization, Jocelyn L. Buckner
Theatre Faculty Books and Book Chapters
"Lynn Nottage has devoted her career to researching and telling stories of Black individuals and communities with expressed interest in laborers, advocating for their agency, humanity, and legacy. In her second Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sweat, Nottage dramatizes more recent US history, illuminating the lives of workers marginalized by the deindustrialization of the Rust Belt in the early 2000s. Sweat is emblematic of Nottage's sustained effort to deploy playwriting as activism and stand in solidarity with those whose stories she chooses to tell. As a constant theme in her works, Lynn Nottage's stories align with marginalized workers' efforts and histories, …
Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory,
2023
Chapman University
Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory, Rebekah Izard
English (MA) Theses
Fantastical narratives such as fairy tales and magical realist literature utilizes fantastic and intangible spaces to unpack that which is often beyond the limitations imposed on our understanding by reality: the stunting experience of individual and generational traumas. This study aims to contribute to the current literary discourse’s understandings of fantastic literature and its subgenres as a tool for healing from trauma through the application of ontological notions of Selfhood and Otherness supplied by 20th century philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, and the notion of Orientalism by postcolonial scholar, Edward Said. The dialogue generated by these schools of thought provide a space …
"Enlightened Motherhood": Frances Ellen Watkins Harper And The Conception Of Black Womanhood,
2023
Clark University
"Enlightened Motherhood": Frances Ellen Watkins Harper And The Conception Of Black Womanhood, Christina Rose Walcott
History
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an influential nineteenth-century activist and writer. She was active in the antislavery lecture circuit and the suffrage movement. She developed a conception of Black womanhood through her writing that culminated in a richer understanding of equal rights in the United States. This thesis reexamines her work from an interdisciplinary standpoint. She developed her vision of Black womanhood over time through the character of the enslaved mother in the Antebellum era, the nuances of freedom during the Civil War and Reconstruction era, and finally through home as a personal space and as a nation in the …
The Strong Black Woman ≠ Superwoman: Shattering Stereotypes Of Strength In Black Literature,
2023
Old Dominion University
The Strong Black Woman ≠ Superwoman: Shattering Stereotypes Of Strength In Black Literature, Tricia Inez Thomas
English Theses & Dissertations
That the Black woman must be strong in order to endure the oppression she has been forced to withstand is a double-edged sword that equally contributes to both her dehumanization and willpower to survive. This project interrogates the patterns and characteristics that contribute to the schema of the strong Black woman through the examination of cultural texts foregrounded in biblical scriptures against literature written by prominent Black women through Beyoncé. Specific tropes explored include the jezebel, the mammy, and the sapphire with a conclusion that these harmful and dehumanizing stereotypes have cultivated a fallacious assumption of supernatural strength and resiliency …
Becoming “Living Matter”: Alive Things In Octavia Butler’S Xenogenesis Series,
2023
Utah State University
Becoming “Living Matter”: Alive Things In Octavia Butler’S Xenogenesis Series, Zackary Gregory
All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023
This project seeks to explore the ways Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy complicates humans' understandings of subjectivity and human exceptionalism by challenging the concept of Otherness. Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series focuses on adaptability and acceptance of the nonhuman Other by depicting a forced encounter between humans and an alien species called the Oankali. Characters within the series grapple with a dynamic understanding of themselves, having to renegotiate the concept of the Other as they deal with intelligent nonhuman Beings and animate objects. Further, characters in the series are coerced into accepting the transformation of humanity into something other than human as …
Disrupted Ambitions And Unmasked Identities: An Analysis Of Doubleness In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar And Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man In Cold War America,
2023
University of New Mexico
Disrupted Ambitions And Unmasked Identities: An Analysis Of Doubleness In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar And Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man In Cold War America, Laura Anderson
English Language and Literature ETDs
This thesis conducts a literary analysis on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) with a primary investigation on the protagonists and their convergence of identity in Cold War America. One of the critical discourses evaluated throughout the project’s literary analysis includes the protagonists’ complications of doubleness. This essay argues that since these two texts sit between W.E.B DuBois’s “Double Consciousness” and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1988 theory on intersectionality, these protagonists are forced to contend with an identity crossroads. Secondary to the context of this analysis is the use of “post-war” and “Cold War,”; neither are …
Building Bibliographically,
2023
Clemson University
Giving Voice To The Body: Slam Poetry In The Poet X,
2023
CUNY Queens College
Giving Voice To The Body: Slam Poetry In The Poet X, Stefanny Leung Yu
Student Theses
When the world silences her, can slam poetry become her voice? Elizabeth Acevedo, an author and poet, uses her beautiful piece of slam poetry to explore how language can empower marginalized voices, speaking on behalf of those who are usually silenced. The Poet X is a verse novel that narrates the powerful story of a young Afro-Latina girl, Xiomara Batista, who navigates the intersecting pressures of school bullies, family issues, religious conservatism, patriarchal rules, and racialized body politics in her Harlem community. This research engages with Acevedo’s work to focus on how slam poetry serves as a powerful outlet and …
Strategies Of Liberation And Empowerment In Maya Angelou's And Audre Lorde's Black Feminist Literature,
2023
Lipscomb University
Strategies Of Liberation And Empowerment In Maya Angelou's And Audre Lorde's Black Feminist Literature, Lydia Jernigan
Student Works
The progression of second-wave feminism in America saw Black feminist writers such as Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde utilizing literature, and notably poetry, to resist against their oppression, due not only to their gender but also to their race. Lorde states in her 1977 essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” that poetry, for women, “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” One of the aims of Lorde’s explicitly political poems—as …
Pecan Grove Review Volume 21,
2023
St. Mary's University
Pecan Grove Review Volume 21, St. Mary's University
Pecan Grove Review
Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.
