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Partying Like It's 1925: A Comparison And Contrast Of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby And Azuela's The Underdogs, Sarah N. Valadez 2021 Chapman University

Partying Like It's 1925: A Comparison And Contrast Of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby And Azuela's The Underdogs, Sarah N. Valadez

English (MA) Theses

This work is an assessment of themes, ideas, and structure between two iconic novels published during the nineteen-twenties: The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela (originally published in 1915, re-written and redistributed in the 1920s, and then given a final version in 1925 that was translated into many languages). Both novels were written during times of great change, cultural innovation, and revolution. Many characters from both works also comment, observe, or partake in the politics and the seemingly accepted or tolerated social interactions of their daily lives. For the sake of cross-cultural understanding …


Old Industries, Old Conflicts: The Significance Of American Epic Novels, Arturo Alcazar 2021 Bridgewater College

Old Industries, Old Conflicts: The Significance Of American Epic Novels, Arturo Alcazar

Honors Projects

This essay focuses on three American epic novels: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and Underworld by Don DeLillo. More specifically, the essay examines the themes of ambiguity, redemption, good and evil, isolation, and violence as they are depicted in these three novels and what they indicate about America and its people and society.


Journeying To A Third Space Of Sovereignty: Explorations Of Land, Cultural Hybridity, And Sovereignty In Ceremony And There There, Jillian Eve Sanchez 2021 Chapman University

Journeying To A Third Space Of Sovereignty: Explorations Of Land, Cultural Hybridity, And Sovereignty In Ceremony And There There, Jillian Eve Sanchez

English (MA) Theses

In Native American literature, there is a discourse that solely focuses on the relationship between Indigenous people and the land. This relationship is vital to understanding the traditions, rituals, storytelling, and practices of Native Americans. The presence of settler colonialism changes the relationship, effectively changing the nature of cultural and spiritual relationships as well. Indigenous literature provides examples of the modern relationship Native people have with their land; an example of this is Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Tommy Orange’s There There Despite modernity, assimilation, and ways of life introduced by settler colonialism, Native people maintain a relationship to the …


Realism & Language: How Luis Alberto Urrea Uses Bilingualism To Elevate His Works Of Realism, Ashley Gomez 2021 Chapman University

Realism & Language: How Luis Alberto Urrea Uses Bilingualism To Elevate His Works Of Realism, Ashley Gomez

English (MA) Theses

The trajectory of writer Luis Alberto Urrea stems from autobiography, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, yet his works are not widely taught in academic settings, nor is there substantial scholarly work discussed on his published works. This thesis focuses on Urrea’s trajectory in order to situate him as a realist writer, as I discuss Urrea alongside Amy Kaplan and Ramón J. Guerra. Alongside this I will also focus on his most unique aspect of realist writing that sets him apart from other realist writers, his use of English and Spanish within his works that forms itself into bilingualism. I will look …


More Than Just A Fantasy: Literary Fantasy As An Architectural Tool, Kae Schwalber 2021 Syracuse University

More Than Just A Fantasy: Literary Fantasy As An Architectural Tool, Kae Schwalber

Architecture Senior Theses

Fantasy literature world building can suggest and support alternative paths for architectural practice using the super stimuli of fantasy “otherworlds” to promote and create more “placed” spaces and improve the wellbeing of communities. According to Edward Relph, the United States has had an issue with “placelessness” since the 1950’s, where building typologies are nationally distributed and rarely localized. Literary Fantasy has created worlds so desirable that they have permeated into a multi-billion dollar industry that reaches past literature, making the consumption of fictional worlds a central behavior in modern societies. The cultural importance and success of the genre is due …


Position: A Fiction Collection, Joelle Byars 2021 University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Position: A Fiction Collection, Joelle Byars

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The creative thesis “Position: A Fiction Collection” is composed of sixteen short and flash fiction stories. The critical introduction to this thesis looks at my journey as a writer that led to its genesis. I analyze the methods used in my writing process, consider the ways in which instruction and passive reading influences what drives me to write, as well as delving into how the personal informs the creative. I discuss the themes of my stories, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, toxic relationships, and mental illness, and how they emerged in this collection. A creative sample that touches on all of …


Ethnic Irony In Melvin B. Tolson's "Dark Symphony", Elizabeth Newton 2021 CUNY Graduate Center

Ethnic Irony In Melvin B. Tolson's "Dark Symphony", Elizabeth Newton

Publications and Research

This article historicizes musical symbolism in Melvin B. Tolson’s poem “Dark Symphony” (1941). In a time when Black writers and musicians alike were encouraged to aspire to European standards of greatness, Tolson’s Afro-modernist poem establishes an ambivalent critical stance toward the genre in its title. In pursuit of a richer understanding of the poet’s attitude, this article situates the poem within histories of Black music, racial uplift, and white supremacy, exploring the poem’s relation to other media from the Harlem Renaissance. It analyzes the changing language across the poem’s sections and, informed by Houston A. Baker Jr.’s study of “mastery …


Into The Abyss: Self-Destruction As Feminist Resistance In Ottessa Moshfegh’S My Year Of Rest And Relaxation And Han Kang’S The Vegetarian, Camille Bernt 2021 Dominican University of California

Into The Abyss: Self-Destruction As Feminist Resistance In Ottessa Moshfegh’S My Year Of Rest And Relaxation And Han Kang’S The Vegetarian, Camille Bernt

English and Creative Writing | Senior Theses

This paper is a comparative literary analysis of two contemporary novels: Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007) and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018). With a focus on self-destruction as a mode of feminist resistance, I explore the two novel’s overlapping themes, specifically the ways in which radical transformation offers a means to escape social and cultural oppressions impressed upon women. My inquiry into these processes aims to trace methods of resistance in response to patriarchal and anthropocentric ideologies, through forms of social deprogramming, the embodiment of vegetal and animal alterity and a recuperation of the maternal semiotic …


From Byronic To Gothic Blood Sucker: Subversion Toward A Non-Gendered Identity, Hannah Hoover 2021 East Tennessee State University

From Byronic To Gothic Blood Sucker: Subversion Toward A Non-Gendered Identity, Hannah Hoover

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Analyzing Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and linking trends of the Byronic hero that have merged into a variety of genres reveal that the hero is a mode of subversive gender expression, which has evolved within the Gothic through feminine desire. Delving into Bram Stoker’s Dracula will provide unique insight into the audience’s desires/expressions of gender. Finding the transition point from the monster vampire of Dracula to Stephanie Meyer’s desirous, sparkling boy-next-door in Twilight will track the trajectory of gender and sexual norms through time. From the foundational adaptation of the Byronic hero in Wuthering Heights to the repressed vampiric desire …


Dissipation In The 1920s: Disparate Presentations Of Alcohol Consumption In Selected Works Of Hemingway And Fitzgerald, Amanda Wilson 2021 University of Mississippi

Dissipation In The 1920s: Disparate Presentations Of Alcohol Consumption In Selected Works Of Hemingway And Fitzgerald, Amanda Wilson

Honors Theses

The objective of this thesis is to explore the ways in which Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald define the 1920s and, in particular, the American expatriate culture in Europe. Each author describes the culture of the “Lost Generation” in large part through alcohol consumption and dissipation. In their literary works, alcohol is portrayed as glamorous as well as destructive, as both curing and exacerbating post-WWI anomie. Through their chronicling of this era in fiction and nonfiction, each author memorializes their own participation in the culture along with their legendary consumption of alcohol. This study will concentrate upon selected short …


Intuition Of An Outsider: From Nothing To Voice In George Scarbrough’S Poetry, William Moore 2021 East Tennessee State University

Intuition Of An Outsider: From Nothing To Voice In George Scarbrough’S Poetry, William Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Long acknowledged as a committed poet of place, this thesis examines tones of outsiderness and alienation that characterize George Scarbrough’s poetry. Scarbrough draws on familiarity with his childhood in southeast Tennessee, and from an outsider’s outlook, a perspective veritably prompted by the rejection he suffered as a homosexual and lover of language, Scarbrough’s poetry addresses the daunting themes of fear and nothingness. Analysis of his poetry also reveals qualities of hope and endurance, a commitment to received forms, and Modern innovation. Through his poetic voice, culminating in the alter ego of Han-shan, Scarbrough provides vital insights into the human experience.


Final Master's Portfolio, Josue Salas 2021 Bowling Green State University

Final Master's Portfolio, Josue Salas

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Josue J. Salas' Master's Portfolio


The Ungovernable Novel: Towards A New Political Imaginary, Joseph Turner 2021 University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The Ungovernable Novel: Towards A New Political Imaginary, Joseph Turner

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The primary objective of my thesis is to provide an initial definition of what we could call the “ungovernable novel.” I borrow the concept of the “ungovernable” from the field of political theory, and I apply it to the theory of the novel by way of an engagement of Mikhail Bakhtin’s and Georg Lukács’ theories of the novel. Building on this theoretical foundation, I argue that our contemporary political imagination has reached a historical juncture: we must abandon the dystopian framework that we have inherited from the Cold War, and we must move in the direction of the ungovernable novel. …


B'Ars And Catamounts: A Study Of Davy Crockett Through Genre And Medium, Jack Fieweger 2021 University of Mississippi

B'Ars And Catamounts: A Study Of Davy Crockett Through Genre And Medium, Jack Fieweger

Honors Theses

This project seeks to investigate and discuss the changes and variations that have occurred to the mythology of David Crockett over the course of time. Initially appearing as a literary character in 1833, the likeness of Crockett has appeared in a myriad of different texts including: biographies, almanacs, plays, dime novels, comics, television shows, and films. The project attempts to discern how these different iterations of medium and genre altered the mythology of David Crockett. In order to methodologically understand these changes, this project makes use of W.T. Lhamon’s concept known as the Lore Cycle. Lhamon identified that lore diffuses …


An Exploration Of Voice, Kristyn Montgomery 2021 Bowling Green State University

An Exploration Of Voice, Kristyn Montgomery

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This combination of four pieces reflects an overarching theme of researching the ways that our foundations and experiences shape us, either by our own hands or by the hands of others. This is a final portfolio that was submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of English.


Rocky Waters: Exploring The Intersections Of Romance And Travel, Jessica Bragg 2021 Bowling Green State University

Rocky Waters: Exploring The Intersections Of Romance And Travel, Jessica Bragg

Honors Projects

The genres of romance and travel have been explored by several authors, but this 60,000-word novel provides a unique combination of the two by exploiting a younger demographic of characters and placing the setting of the story in a fascinating realm of this world: the Mediterranean islands. Despite possessing an extensive business background, this creative project has encouraged versatility, adaptability, and enhanced time management skills that will transfer into all other aspects of my life. Research regarding the history of the romance and travel genres took place during the Fall 2020 semester, and the weekly process of writing and revising …


Poetry Beyond The Page: A Case For Spoken Word Poetry In Florida's Secondary Classrooms, Sarah Matherly 2021 Liberty University

Poetry Beyond The Page: A Case For Spoken Word Poetry In Florida's Secondary Classrooms, Sarah Matherly

Senior Honors Theses

Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards, Florida’s most recent K-12 educational standards to promote literacy, lack the rising art of Spoken Word Poetry. However, Florida’s Department of Education should integrate Spoken Word into Florida’s Secondary curriculum. Spoken Word Poetry, by its definition, holds researched benefits that align with the B.E.S.T. Standard’s poetry recommendations and literacy-centered goals. In light of such benefits, Florida’s Department of Education should consider various Spoken Word poets and poems to include in Florida’s Secondary Curriculum, as well as explore the resources and integration methods included in this thesis for both teachers and students.


“You Never Get It Out Of Your Bones”: The Christ-Haunted Security Of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird And Go Set A Watchman, Corley E. Humphrey 2021 Liberty University

“You Never Get It Out Of Your Bones”: The Christ-Haunted Security Of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird And Go Set A Watchman, Corley E. Humphrey

Masters Theses

Harper Lee’s novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman emphasize the struggle of mid-twentieth century Southern identity as Southerners searched for security, and she does so particularly in her main character, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. Throughout the novels, Jean Louise fights to find a balance within herself as she learns to decide what to accept or reject from her Southern culture. Using New Historicism and Southern Female Gender Studies, this thesis analyzes the character development of Jean Louise “Scout” in the novels and the traits she consistently accepts—discrimination and respect, honor of family, grace—and the ones she …


'Wait, Twilight Is A Thing Again?': Examining The Ways In Which Different Social Groups Navigate The Complex Cultural Issues In Twilight, Veronica Buchanan 2021 University of Nevada, Las Vegas

'Wait, Twilight Is A Thing Again?': Examining The Ways In Which Different Social Groups Navigate The Complex Cultural Issues In Twilight, Veronica Buchanan

Undergraduate Research Symposium Podium Presentations

The four books and five movies in the extremely popular Twilight series give readers and viewers a lot to unpack, in both good ways and bad, and have led to fierce debates over the place the series should have in our culture, especially in regard to gender politics. However, most of the discussions of these texts and their cultural impact have tended to lack a robust, intersectional feminist perspective, one that attends to issues not only of gender, but also race, class, and sexuality. This research draws on both fan studies and feminist media studies to examine the various ways …


A Brief And True Report Of The Newfoundland Of Virginia, Thomas Hariot 2021 San Jose State University

A Brief And True Report Of The Newfoundland Of Virginia, Thomas Hariot

English 144 Class Projects

No abstract provided.


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