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, …
"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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
Wakara's Waterscapes: Storytelling, Cartography, And Rhetorical Sovereignty On The Shores Of The Green River,
2023
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Wakara's Waterscapes: Storytelling, Cartography, And Rhetorical Sovereignty On The Shores Of The Green River, Abbey O'Brien
Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)
In the mid nineteenth-century, Wakara, a prominent Ute leader, witnessed the invasion of his homeland by Mormon settlers and mountain-men. He met the scouts and explorers who were sent out to examine the land and waterscapes, and who drew maps along their way. It was those same maps which were eventually used as tools to justify colonial expansion all across the Utah territories, Wakara’s home. But Wakara resisted. Employing his understandings of the roles that cartography and the written word played in Mormon and settler discourse, Wakara created his own maps in order to assert his Indigenous authority over the …
The Postmodern And The Personal In Edna St. Vincent Millay’S Aria Da Capo,
2023
West Virginia University
The Postmodern And The Personal In Edna St. Vincent Millay’S Aria Da Capo, Roxanne Rankin
Munn Scholars Awards
Aria Da Capo, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1919 play, has thus far been largely ignored in literary criticism. This essay, through a historical survey of Millay’s previous critical reception followed by a close reading of Aria Da Capo, attempts to explain and then bridge this gap in academic scholarship. A postmodernist reading of the play will then illustrate why Millay’s work still confounds scholars today and how Aria Da Capo specifically continues to be relevant more than 100 years after it was first produced.
Beloved & The Erotics Of Temporal Mutilation,
2023
Beirut Arab University
Beloved & The Erotics Of Temporal Mutilation, Ruba Habli
BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior
'Snatched and yanked' the readers begin a journey in Beloved’s extravagant and meandering narrative—a narrative filled with repetitions and returns that mutilate time beyond recognition. This paper aims to map time in Beloved, to understand its narrative insurgence, and feel the foreign terrains it leaves the reader in. I depend on Peter Brooks’ essay “Freud’s Masterplot” to contextualize the patterns of repetitions and returns that mutilate time in the text through a psychoanalytic understanding. Crucial to the psychoanalytic understanding of the narrative is the comprehension of narrative desire, precisely how the death instinct can be at work in the narrative. …
Steam And Environmental Justice In An Interdisciplinary Context,
2023
Colorado School of Mines
Steam And Environmental Justice In An Interdisciplinary Context, Paula Farca, Alina Handorean, Jürgen Brune
The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal
This course proposes an interdisciplinary perspective, envisions unique synergies between environmental justice concepts and STEAM projects on mining, and aims to solidify a foundation based on justice, equity, equality, and empathy for STEM students and faculty. Our (S)TEAM made of professors in three academic departments underscores interdisciplinary and diversity connections through an interdisciplinary team-taught course, units on environmental justice related to mining, teaching of literary texts, and STEAM projects. We also involved faculty, alumni, and our campus and city community through STEAM exhibits.
