Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons^™

Sauron, Seduction, And The Queering Mechanism Of The Ring, Mercury Natis

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

It has often been argued that Sauron is barely present in the Lord of the Rings, existing as a villainous presence on the margins of the narrative. This paper will argue that Sauron is actually present throughout the entire narrative, as manifested in the Ring, and through the Ring’s presence as a queering device. The Ring acts out Sauron’s seduction mechanism, a defining character trait as portrayed in the Silmarillion. It is this seduction mechanism that allows the Ring to act as a queering agent throughout the narrative. Ring-lust is inherently queer as it projects a male-presented character’s seductive powers, …

Asexualities, Aromantics, And Autists In Epic Fantasy By Tolkien And Goddard, Robin Anne Reid, Rory Queripel

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The Mariner (and his wife): Rethinking Aldarion’s (A)sexuality Rory Queripel

“Aldarion and Erendis” (Unfinished Tales) is a rare example in Tolkien’s work of a marriage gone severely awry. Many readings of the tale apportion blame to Aldarion, who is seen as “unwilling” to make the marriage work (Fitzsimmons, 2015), cruel and unfeeling towards Erendis, who herself is characterised as resentful and unaccepting (Rosenthal, 2004). However, these readings rely on an assumption of a cisheteronormative and, more importantly, allosexual relationship between the couple.

This paper proposes an alternate view of Aldarion and his role in the story, suggesting the possibility that …

Closeted Gays Take Hide, A Lamia Has Been Untied: Bbc Merlin And Queer Experiences Beyond Queer Joy, Anna Caterino

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

A decade after its finale, online fandoms have started labeling Merlin (2008-2012) as “date your bully 101” (theroundbartable), a story written by people “giving each other blowjobs while they talk about how much they deserve servants” (vhagarswattle). In light of the most recent models of queer representation, such takes are to be expected. Even so, Merlin is not a mere case of “hoyay” (Kohnen 201-2012) nor does it engage in queerbaiting or use the “Bury Your Gays” trope. The text is tied to the socio-political landscape of the late 2000s which serves as foundation for the show’s tragedy and, although …

Our Flag (And Spaceship) Means Queer: Monstering The Majority Culture, Sara Brown, Kristine Larsen

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Although the television series Our Flag Means Death presents on the surface as a romantic comedy, it is enhanced by mythic elements that infuse the narrative with a clear sense of the fantastic. Here, the pirates exist in a Secondary World that openly draws upon the Primary (both in terms of historiography and legend); hence 18th-century piracy and British colonialism can interact seamlessly with human-to-animal-transformations (paying homage to the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone) without seeming either disconcerting or anomalous – all co-exist comfortably in Faerie. OFMD both inverts and deconstructs mythopoeia; the Primary World myths of the Gentleman …

Gazing Queerly: The Art And Text Around Saruman’S Non-Normativity, Christopher Vaccaro

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The queer is often defined by its relation to normativity. Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal situates queerness in opposition to normalcy, even gay normalcy. Karma Lochrie’s Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t deconstructs a monolithic hetero-normativity. Within the fantasy genre, protagonists frequently reside in a queer relation to normative communities. J. R. R. Tolkien quite often depicts his major characters within his mythopoeic framework as in some way outside of the normal; they’re often odd, fringe outsiders in relation to the larger community to which they are a part. The texts of his legendarium present this queerness fairly clearly—so …

Tolkien’S Queer Landscape: Three Papers On Middle-Earth’S Heterotopias, Will Sherwood, Marita Arvaniti, Mariana Rios Maldonado

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The following papers will explore Tolkien’s queer landscapes of Middle-earth: from Arda’s highest peaks and hidden underbellies, to her liminal, fae places, using the lens of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias.

Marita Arvaniti will introduce the panel and discuss Tolkien’s Faerian Drama and its relationship to the much-maligned Tom Bombadil episode, focusing on the queer figure of Tom Bombadil himself and his heterotopic domain.

Mariana Rios Maldonado will analyse the Barrow-downs, Dead Marshes, and Paths of the Dead as symbolic sites of death created during harrowing moments in the history of Middle-earth. These are no-places: spaces of Otherness containing the evil and …

Welcome And Announcements, The Mythopoeic Society

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Join us for a screening of the Welcome and Announcements video in the 'Track 1' room, and have a cup of coffee before we get started!

When Language Fails: A Critical Analysis Essay Of Kathryn Stockett’S The Help:, Evan Mccreary

Black Album Mixtape

A critical analysis essay of Kathryn Stockett's New York Times Bestselling book, The Help, and it's subsequent film adaptation, and how in recent years, particularly following the murder of George Floyd, the story has been used as a classroom tool for teaching students about racism and its effects. Written by a Black student in a primarily white school community, this essay was written as an antithesis to the ideology that the book and movie exceed their intended intentions of being a beneficial teaching tool to youth.

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

When Communities Fall: A Critical Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Sula, Sami Saigh

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

When women dare to self-actualize they frequently face barriers that tear their spirits down, leading to guilt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy. For the lineage of women in Toni Morrison’s Sula, these consequences are fatal for everyone. As these factors thwart fundamental social development, communal collapse becomes easier, leaving entire cultures vulnerable to erasure. Whether self-determination is expressed through promiscuity or properness, paradoxical moralism leaves no room for either. This essay explores how Morrison offers a retrospective look from the graveyard of a town while illustrating the impact of the loss of friends, lovers, and communities.

Double Consciousness, Mirrors, And The Children Within Them: A Conceptual Reading Of W. E. B. Du Bois's "As The Crow Flies", Adeline Navarro

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This research essay argues that W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crow from his magazine column “As the Crow Flies” is a figurative device for double consciousness and examines how aspects of double consciousness are present in the frequent motifs of dialectic doubleness in the column. Drawing from scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, this essay explores how the Crow functions as a mirror that children can use to realize their own double consciousness and thus see themselves. This insight into Du Bois’s news column provides a further understanding of the significance of accessible, multicultural children’s literature.

Richard Wright, Native Son, And The Rhetorical Framing Of The Black American Experience, Malcolm Oliver Ii

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration into Richard Wright’s rhetorical framing of the black American experience to further understand the impact and influence of language on black Americans within the progression of society. If we revisit 20 th century black American protest literature with a critical view through the lens of Perceivable Rhetoric, my original contribution to the field, we can further understand the messaging and implications within the genre that help us understand why the 21 st century black American experience mirrors much of what was written during the 20 th century. With respect to the aforementioned, Native Son, the …

Differentially Unwell: On Mimi Khúc's "Dear Elia", Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

[...] Inviting readers to reclaim the stigma of unwellness and collectively to "tend to our unwellness, together," Khúc approaches unwellness as a crucial resource for subverting the "wellness and unwellness" dichotomy entirely. After all, the opposite of "wellness" is not "unwellness"; the opposite of "wellness" does not exist. The opposition itself is an artificial framework, one that reductively harms more than it dialogically helps. We need to move away from these simplistic dualisms, Khúc suggests, and towards more generous, trauma-informed epistemologies. [...]

The Capacity Of An Unfaltering Duress: America's Lost Love Stories, Seth Shimmelfarb-Wells

English Honors Papers

This thesis interrogates the imbrication between negative subjectivity and the fiction writing of Gayl Jones. In doing so, this work reimagines conceptions of intimate and interpersonal love, community, and retributive violence in the face of conditional (anti)Blackness. Through an engagement with contemporary scholars of Black Studies and with the help of the abundant archive of Black music, this project aims to prioritize, reproduce, and heed to Black Artistic registers of feeling that embrace duress, destruction, and madness. Through her literary performance, Jones reproduces and fabulates moments of Black social life that expand and simultaneously shatter our conception of a given …

Describing Dictee, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

The visual images in Dictee are famously captionless. They resist straightforward explanation. In writing image descriptions of the images in Dictee, I have tried to preserve the "captionlessness" of the original. The point here is not to explain the pictures—an image description is not identical to a caption—but to make Dictee more accessible to readers who are blind and visually impaired. I realize, of course, that in trying to make Dictee's captionless images more "legible," I have inevitably "mistranslated" Dictee as it was originally designed to be experienced. Its captionlessness is lost in translation despite my efforts to preserve it. …

How Intersectional Identities Affect Queer Self-Consciousness In Passing And Other Novels, Lee Mckennon Kassay

Longwood Senior Thesis Proposal

No abstract provided.

A Legacy Of Labor: Maternity Narratives In 1960s And 1970s North American Life Writing, Katelynn Ann Vogelpohl

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Abstract

A Legacy of Labor: Maternity Narratives in 1960s and 1970s North American Life Writing

Katelynn Ann Vogelpohl

The phenomenon of maternity has been repeatedly described as an event that shakes the very foundations of social and physical identity. As the flesh of the pregnant person literally divides to produce new life, one subject becomes enclosed within another, dramatically affecting the pregnant person’s sense of self and causing a confluence of intense, and often conflicting, feelings. In North America, there are two dominant, and seemingly opposing, discourses on pregnancy and childbirth: the institutional medical discourse and the natural childbirth discourse. …

“Why Blackness, Black Girl?:” Discovering Multilocal Blackness In Wonderful Adventures Of Mrs. Seacole In Many Lands And Americanah, Sydney A. Ware

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In “Why Blackness, Black Girl?” I argue that as a consequence of imperialism, Western Blackness has an interdependent relationship with whiteness, resulting in the domination of Western Blackness over non-Western Blackness. Tensions between both groups are usually portrayed by Western media as divisive. I pose Multilocality as a theory to reconcile this tension. I use Taiye Selasi's concept of the multilocal, and her Three Markers (3 R’s) to identify where hybridized identities are local to and how they can connect to each local space. I expand Selasi’s concept into a theory called Multilocality, and added a fourth marker that I …

Countering Dominant Narratives In Community: The Many Voices In Spoken Word Poetry, Natalie Raquel Acuña

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In this project I research the counternarratives within spoken word poetry by authors of color (i.e., Rafeef Ziadah, José Olivarez, and Denise Frohman) and how they resist the dominant narratives that are broadcast towards a larger audience. I analyze categories of counterstory through the following paired themes: immigration/citizenship, and joy/trauma. I delve into the heavy importance of community within my project in the realm of spoken word poetry. A lot of poetry is going against dominant narratives, community within this discourse gives a sense of belonging and relatability to the experience of the spoken word performers.

The Persistent Voice Of The Colonizer: Troubling A Mascot’S Settler-Colonial Past, Linda J. Kuckuk

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The legacy of settler-colonialism permeates American culture. Remnants of westward expansion remain in our societal divides, political differences, environmental inequities and economic inequalities. Conversations about decolonization, gentrification, and other ongoing practices that precipitate and uphold colonialism are notably found in literature, art, social structures, icons and symbols. Mascots that rely on stereotypes or caricatures can contribute to negative perceptions and reinforce discriminatory attitudes, making it necessary to reevaluate and change representational practices. In this analysis I apply historical, textual, and visual methods to explore Cal Poly Humboldt’s mascot Lucky Logger and identify how this character is a “persistent voice” by …