Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Real Or Not Real: Fragmentation, Fabrication, And Composite Identity In The Hunger Games And The Mass Effect Trilogy, Tessanna Curtis

Masters Theses

As one glance at box office ratings from the past decade can attest to, twenty-first century Western society seems particularly fixated on coming-of-age stories. These stories reflect the quintessential search for identity, as explained by developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. As Erikson argues throughout his works, the fundamental task of the individual on his journey to becoming a healthy, mature adult is the formation of a personal identity and sense of self that is both unified and whole. What seems particularly ironic, however, is that these coming-of-age stories are released into a culture that is largely dismissive of Erikson’s theory of …

Reframing The Archive: Vietnamese Refugee Narratives In The Post-9/11 Period, Mai-Linh Hong

Faculty Journal Articles

This article considers how recent narratives about Vietnamese refugees engage with the Vietnam War’s visual archive, particularly iconic photographs from the war and ensuing “boat people” crisis, and contribute to present-day discourses on American militarism and immigration. The article focuses on two texts, a National Public Radio special series about a US naval ship (2010) and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again (2011), which recounts a Vietnamese child’s refugee passage. By refiguring famous photojournalistic images from the war, the radio series advances a familiar rescue-and-gratitude narrative in which the US military operates as a care apparatus, exemplifying a cultural …

What Is Really Funny: Humor Ahead Of Its Time In The Twentieth Century American Novel, Timothy Baffoe

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis sets out to examine a specific function that humor has played in twentieth century American literature and that is reflective of American culture today—that being a constant testing of boundaries of who and what are allowed to be considered funny. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) gives readers a woman whose struggle for a Black female voice lands her on an informal standup comedy stage. Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov walks a tightrope of taboo subject matter, encouraging readers to appropriately—though maybe uncomfortably—laugh at the inappropriate, and this decades before such routines like that of …

Between Life And Literature: The Influence Of Don Quixote And Madame Bovary On Twentieth-Century Women's Fiction, Victoria Tomasulo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project demonstrates the influence of two foundational novels in the Western canon, Don Quixote and Madame Bovary, on twentieth-century British, Italian, and Anglo-American women’s fiction. Both novels illustrate the dangers and pleasures of literary influence. Stylistically innovative, they anticipated concerns that were of import to feminist literary critics in the seventies and beyond: the transformative power of the reading encounter, its normative and subversive effects on gendered identities, and the need of individual writers to liberate themselves from the shackles of literary convention. Drawing upon textual and paratextual evidence such as interviews, journal entries, and essays, I argue …

The Strains Of Confessional Poetry: The Burdens, Blunders, And Blights Of Self-Disclosure, Lara Rossana Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When a provocative style of autobiographical verse had emerged in postwar America, literary critics christened the new genre “confessional poetry.” Confessional poets of the 1960s and ’70s are often characterized by scholars of contemporary poetry as a cohort of writers who, unlike previous generations before them, dared to explore in their work the personal and inherited traumas of mental illness, family suicides, failed marriages, and crushing addictions. As a result, the body of work these writers produced is often experienced as a collection of stylized, literary self-portraits. What can these self-portraits reveal to us about the connection between confessional poetry …

Genres Of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, And Community, 1970-1983, Meredith A. Benjamin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The desire to record lives and the conviction that such recordings would serve an important purpose for other women were the motivations behind much of the autobiographical writing in U.S. feminist writing of the 1970s and 80s. In Genres of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, and Community, 1970-1983, I argue that feminist writers in this period used autobiographical writing to create a sense of community among their readers: a new feminist public. Realizing the inadequacy of a sense of identification, these writers encouraged their audiences, in the words of Audre Lorde, to transform silence into language and action. While scholars …

Boone, Joy (Field) Bale, 1912-2002 (Mss 588), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 588. Papers of poet, editor and activist Joy Bale Boone, Elkton, Kentucky, relating primarily to her service as chair of the Committee for the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies at Western Kentucky University. Includes correspondence, Committee records, collected data on Robert Penn Warren, and photographs. Also includes audio and video interviews of Boone and colleagues.

Falling Though Space... Portrait Of A Poet From A Bird's Eye View, Christopher Kean

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

In his wartime writing, Falling through Space, Richard Hillary reveals the perspective of a Royal Air Force pilot which leads to a contemplation of existence between two zones: the tragic and the trivial. Aviation literature from this period, in fact, leads to contemplation of the opposing spaces of existence once left only to poets: earth and sky. The middle space between these two, between elevation and rooted humanity, is the topic of this paper.

Building from a series excerpts from literature, I will address the plight of the poet in particular, and of mankind in general. The unique aviator …

Stone: Walking Through The Burren, Nancy Ellen Miller

The Goose

Poetry by Nancy Ellen Miller

Nine Poems On The Death Of My Mother, Jaime Robles

The Goose

Poetry by Jaime Robles

Poetry Editorial: Seeing Words, Camilla Nelson

The Goose

Poetry Editorial by Camilla Nelson

A A Novel 40-45, Derek A. Beaulieu

The Goose

Poetry by Derek Beaulieu

Visual Poetry Responses To A Changing City-Scape, Andrew Taylor

The Goose

Poetry by Andrew Taylor

Wave Equations, Matt Martin

The Goose

Poster poem by Matt Martin

Three Poems, Scott T. Starbuck

The Goose

Poetry by Scott Tarbuck

Rapid Museum, Gary Barwin

The Goose

Poetry by Gary Barwin

Her Behind Him, Tim Brennan

The Goose

Poetry by Tim Brennan

The Yellow Line: Whose View Is It Anyway?, Harriet Fraser

The Goose

Poetry by Harriet Fraser

Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road Trip, Mari-Lou Rowley

The Goose

Poetry by Mari-Lou Rowley

Ictus/Curiad/Ignis/Prog, Rhys G. Trimble

The Goose

Poetry by Rhys Trimble