Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Reading Romance As An Act Of Resistance, Amy K. Krug

English Faculty Publications

A podcast discussion about how popular romance represents many different populations, including people of color, people with disabilities, and people who are LGBTQ+. Reading these romances with diverse characters can be a powerful mode of resistance against current anti-diversity efforts becoming more prevalent in society.

Listen to the episode. The transcript is available for download.

New Suns: Fantasy And Science Fiction For A Better World, Jennifer Rosenstein

Social Justice Week

This event is inspired by the Octavia Butler quote "There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns." We will explore examples of fantasy and science fiction from the library collection that imagine worlds that are more just and varied. To work for a more just world we need to be able to imagine it. We will briefly present each book and explain how the world of the books presents a radical reimagining of some aspect of society.

Foreshadowed Cruelty: Mary Osgood’S Psychopathic Tendencies In Daniel Mason’S North Woods, Winston P. Kauffman

SPARK Symposium Presentations

In this essay, I examine the character of Mary Osgood in North Woods by Daniel Mason, arguing that her behavior reflects traits associated with psychopathy. While Mary and her sister Alice initially appear to represent a typical form of sibling rivalry, Mary’s cruelty, emotional detachment, and manipulation suggest something more troubling from the beginning. When Mary ultimately kills Alice, this shocking moment confirms the darker implications that had been subtly foreshadowed throughout the narrative. By drawing on psychological research on empathy deficits and psychopathic traits, I argue that Mary’s actions align with modern understandings of psychopathy. Mason uses this characterization …

Zero/Low Textbook Cost Syllabus For [39335 Eng 2100 - Htrf Writing I], Ju Ly Ban

Open Educational Resources

This class is a warm-up for the many writing assignments you will encounter, no matter your major. We will read, write, and talk through texts in different genres, learning how to (1) understand what a writing task is asking for (2) build clear arguments (3) find strong evidence and (4) manage time and writing anxiety. These skills will help you revisit, rethink, and expand your own resources.

You are the writer. (Yes, even if you use ChatGPT. We will talk about how to use it well, too.) And you already have your resources. Let’s begin in an imaginary living room—the …

On Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art And Energy Of American Comics, Mike Classon Frangos

Criticism

Petrochecmical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics by Daniel Worden. The Ohio State University Press: Columbus, 2024. Pp. 171. $34.95 cloth.

End Times: American Mortality, Death Materiality, And Social Death In The 1990s, Jordan A. Savage

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States in the 1990s was marked by pervasive representations of death in popular culture. As death imagery became increasingly visible in entertainment, there was a growing detachment from the embodied, biological realities of death, a tension intensified by the ongoing AIDS crisis. This project explores how death is politicized and how decisions about who lives and dies are shaped by power. I draw on a constellation of theoretical frameworks that collectively illuminate the operations of state-sanctioned death and social abandonment. These include Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, which examines the management of life by state power; Giorgio Agamben’s …

The Radical Potential Of Ecopoetics: Ecological Intimacy In Forrest Gander’S Twice Alive, Thomas Storey

Critical Humanities

Ecopoetics is a contested term, one defined by its capaciousness. Through its focus on deep ecology, it draws together the world system and the individual, the collective and the singular, and the global and the placed-based within its dialectical framework, without resolving any of these oppositions. Instead, the apparent contradictions underlying ecopoetics offer productive material for a poetic praxis that aims to foreground the complex connections that string together nature, culture, politics, and society. Forrest Gander’s Twice Alive engages with these contradictions in an attempt to foreground the intimacy of ecological thinking, and its basis in personal connections that are …

Harlem’S Avenues For Agency: An Exploration Of Black Female Agency In Angelina Weld Grimké And Zora Neale Hurston’S Short Stories, Jessica Ellen Hartenbower

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores themes of Black female agency in selected short stories by Angelina Weld Grimké and Zora Neale Hurston. Pushing back against the belief that the Harlem Renaissaince was a movement solely for male artists, Grimké and Hurston write short stories that center Black women and their experiences. Through the avenues of bodily autonomy, the using or silencing of voice, the opportunity and ability to make choices, issues of justice, retribution, and vengeance, the holding of authority, and being empowered or disempowered, I examine the female characters’ exercising of their agency to varying degrees. I also discuss how religious …

The Islamic Orient In Antebellum America: The Influence Of Edgar Allan Poe In Contemporary Arabic Literature, Sohaib Alkamal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation posits a comprehensive overview of the debate about Orientalism, particularly early American depictions of the Islamic Orient. The study investigates the antebellum American portrayal of the Islamic Orient, focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s Orientalist readings. While Said’s Orientalism concentrates heavily on aspects of power in West-East relations throughout history, this study expands on several aspects of Said’s book. This study provides a new approach to exploring the field of Orientalism by giving a voice to Arabic sources that are absent in Said’s Orientalism and rarely known to Western audiences. Such sources are medieval Islamic sources, which include phantasies …

“Eyes Can Be Blinded”: A Narratological Analysis Of Focalization In Sarah J. Maas’S A Court Of Thorns And Roses And A Court Of Silver Flames, Georga Mae Feek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the complex relationship between Feyre and Nesta, two prominent characters in Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) and A Court of Silver Flames (ACOSF). My analysis uses narratological concepts from three significant scholars in narrative theory: Gérard Genette, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, and Mieke Bal. I begin with a theoretical synthesis of narration and focalization and outline the various categories of types of narrators and focalizers. Then, I analyze Feyre’s focalization in ACOTAR and Nesta’s focalization in ACOSF. Through this process, I have developed rich character studies of Feyre and Nesta. My investigation of the …

Review Of The Medici Curse, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Interactive Walkthrough Of Richard Kostelanetz’S Library, Martin Glick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My project utilizes the visual novel game engine Ren’Py to create an embodied virtual walkthrough of Richard Kostelanetz’s personal library. Kostelanetz is a pioneering avante-garde artist, critic, and anthologist whose work spans multiple decades and artistic practices. This interactive experience introduces users to the astounding collection of 25,000 books that Kostelanetz has amassed in Ridgewood, Queens over his decades of publishing avant-garde literature. While scholars might be familiar with his anthologies such as Scenarios: Scripts to Perform (1980) and Texts-Sound Texts (1980), my project allows users to browse through sample pages of his original “Book Art”.

This New Media Object …

How To Walk On Water: Living Through The Absurd, Esther Du

Masters Theses

Set in a speculative world submerged by water, this thesis constructs a fragmented, nonlinear narrative that reflects on survival, memory, and displacement in the aftermath of catastrophe. Through three interwoven chapters—The Outcast, The Researcher, and The World—the project explores the emotional and psychological landscapes of individuals navigating a post-apocalyptic existence where the past is irretrievable and the future uncertain. Using an interdisciplinary form of visual storytelling, writing, and sound, the work draws from personal experience and collective trauma to examine how people reconstruct identity and meaning after loss. Rather than offering a definitive answer to existential …

“Somehow Form A Family”: Tony Earley’S Assertion Of Commonality To Highlight Difference, Emily M. Lewan

2024 Symposium

Tony Earley’s essay “Somehow Form a Family” presents a unique exploration of family life in America via the lens of satire. This paper delves into Earley’s adept use of exaggerated satire to illustrate the individual American family experience under the guise of complete commonality. Through employing formal analysis, television references, and biographical anecdotes, Earley develops a narrative that suggests universal experiences to be shared by all, only to reveal the diversity and complexity of every household. Insight from scholars Valentina Varinelli and Ayelet Kohn provides a deeper analysis of the implications of Tony Earley’s satirical approach. Their assessment highlights Earley’s …

Thomas Sutpen, Stephen Dedalus, And The Intersection Of Creation And Mortality, Layla A. Mcgovern

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper examines William Faulkner’s Thomas Sutpen and James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus as parallel creator figures who attempt to transcend their origins and combat mortality by establishing enduring legacies. After suffering humiliation regarding social hierarchy, Sutpen endeavors to create a material dynasty through land acquisition, property development, and the enslavement of non-white people, obsessively seeking to produce a white male heir in the process. Despite his efforts, Sutpen’s physical creation deteriorates, with his most enduring legacy being a distorted oral history beyond his control. Conversely, Dedalus rejects his Irish Catholic upbringing to escape the “nets” of “nationality, language, [and] religion” …

Healing Through Collective Memory: Exploring Psychological Trauma And Community In Toni Morrison’S Beloved And Audre Lorde’S “The Uses Of The Erotic”, Cassia Mcphilliamy '25

Student Research

My project “Healing Through Collective Memory: Exploring Psychological Trauma and Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic”” is motivated by the traumatic images of the experience in enslavement. The symbolism that Morrison uses in Beloved through the dual role Beloved plays as both a spectator and experiencing trauma firsthand. Morrison surpasses the generic gothic tropes of the ghost through Beloved’s ghostly presence at 124 Bluestone, and later her ability to physically haunt Sethe, forcing her to confront her trauma. Beloved’s appearance collapses the past and the present, forcing Sethe to face her past in …

Wulver In Appalachia, Wylan Blair

Persimmon Creek

A poem about a mysterious figure who comes to the aid of a mountain community.

Tsenacommacah, Wylan Blair

Persimmon Creek

This poem is about the area that was once called Tsenacommacah, the Powhatan people, and the horrors of the centuries that followed 1607.

"Kindred Shadows: The Family Resemblance Between Charles Williams’S Metaphysical Thrillers And Clive Barker’S Horror Visions", Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Articles & Research

Last year, during 2024, I underwent an extended phase of reading practically everything published by the horror writer Clive Barker. While reading the books, I kept noticing scenes and characteristics of his novels that made me think of Charles Williams’ supernatural thrillers.

Queerness In The Ability To Choose, Haley Kamola

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This presentation delves into examples of LGBTQ+ authors and characters within the choose your own adventure genre. With a primary focus on Anna Anthropy’s story game “queers in love at the end of the world” and Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In The Dream House, instances of queerness found within the choose your own adventure genre are analyzed. Anthropy’s story game depicts two women with ten seconds to live until the world ends. The story game itself only exists for ten total seconds before players are given the chance to restart and try again. Machado’s memoir retells her experience in an …