Breaking The Boundaries Of The Binary: Non-Normative Gender Expression And Rebellion In 19th-Century Literature,
2025
Bucknell University
Breaking The Boundaries Of The Binary: Non-Normative Gender Expression And Rebellion In 19th-Century Literature, Anna Marie Wingard
Honors Theses
This thesis explores non-normative expressions of gender in three nineteenth-century novels: Valperga (1823) by Mary Shelley, The Hermaphrodite (c. 1846) by Julia Ward Howe, and The Awakening (1999) by Kate Chopin. Each novel’s protagonist displays gender expression that rejects nineteenth-century British and American ideals and is consequently exiled from society and faces death. The project diagrams trajectories of gender expression and identity by tracing adherence, failure, and consequences to illustrate how non-normative gender expression directly leads to social exclusion and death. The findings of this literary analysis suggest that nineteenth-century understandings of gender were rigidly policed and the novel served …
James Baldwin’S Connecticut Decade, 1954-1963,
2025
Connecticut College
James Baldwin’S Connecticut Decade, 1954-1963, Andrew Lopez
Information Services Staff Publications and Presentations
No abstract provided.
Shakespeare’S Portia: A Feminist Icon But Figure Of Hierarchy,
2025
Mississippi State University
Shakespeare’S Portia: A Feminist Icon But Figure Of Hierarchy, Rowan G. Feasel
Endeavors: Mississippi State Undergraduate Research Journal
In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Portia achieves a level of agency that few Shakespearean women do with her wealth and wit despite having to conform to her father’s wishes for her marriage with the casket test. Through dressing as a man during Antonio’s trial, Portia even assumes a physical appearance that reflects her skill in gaining influence and gives her more power over the men. Because of her ability to assert control in her home and the courtroom, literary critics often present Portia as a feminist icon. However, Portia restricts other characters like the Prince of Morocco and …
Dystopian Politics In The Hunger Games Series,
2025
Missouri State University
Dystopian Politics In The Hunger Games Series, Tristan Hogan
Graduate Theses/Dissertations
Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series takes readers to a fictional country known as Panem that hosts an annual nationwide celebration in which adolescents compete in a battle to the death. In this analysis, I approach this book series with a Marxist lens to argue that the capitalistic system in Panem satirizes American culture in the early 21st century. Every novel in the series, through this theory, can be read as what scholars identify as a “critical dystopia,” a defamiliarized version of our culture, upheld through institutions and social participation in a way that satirizes ours. I argue that the …
Mythopoesis And Gendered Power: An Akan Perspective On Stacy Waite’S A Real Man Would Have A Gun,
2025
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Mythopoesis And Gendered Power: An Akan Perspective On Stacy Waite’S A Real Man Would Have A Gun, Akua Agyeiwaa Denkyi-Manieson
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Review of Stacy Waite’s A Real Man Would Have a Gun, challenges traditional Akan gender roles and critiques the societal structures that limit women’s power.
When The Baobab Trees Bow Before The Iroko: Chinua Achebe And His Literary Heirs In African Fiction: The Case Of Chigozie Obioma, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, And Noviolet Bulawayo,
2025
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
When The Baobab Trees Bow Before The Iroko: Chinua Achebe And His Literary Heirs In African Fiction: The Case Of Chigozie Obioma, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, And Noviolet Bulawayo, Akua Agyeiwaa Denkyi-Manieson
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The Akan of Ghana have a proverb that translates, “When a thing is not placed in its rightful place, it will fall down,” and “Respect must be accorded to whom respect is due.” They also say, “The one behind walks in the footsteps of the one in front.” These Akan proverbs capture the literary journey encountered in the works of Chigozie Obioma, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and NoViolet Bulawayo in The Fishermen, Purple Hibiscus, and We Need New Names, respectively. Their narratives reflect an undeniable acknowledgment of the literary path cleared by one man often hailed as the …
Fiesta On Shuffle,
2025
Long Island University
Fiesta On Shuffle, Tristan William Niskanen
Selected Full-Text Master Theses 2021-
This thesis is a linked short story collection about a character named Thom, told in first person. In 52 short pieces, Thom travels around different places on a seemingly aimless journey. It is almost a mix of a “man goes on a journey” & a “stranger comes to town.” The 52 short stories are structured like a shuffled deck of cards, with four distinct suits. Each suit has a minor story arc for Thom. In Hearts, he’s on a search for love. In Diamonds, he’s on a search for treasure. In Spades, he’s on a search for enlightenment. In Clubs, …
‘‘I Am Not This, Not Here, This Time’’: Claudia Emerson’S Infusion Suite As A Compelling Account Of The Lived Experience Of Cancer,
2025
University of Mary Washington
‘‘I Am Not This, Not Here, This Time’’: Claudia Emerson’S Infusion Suite As A Compelling Account Of The Lived Experience Of Cancer, Chris Foss
English & Linguistics Articles
Claudia Emerson’s Infusion Suite section within her poetry collection Impossible Bottle is a significant contemporary literary representation of cancer. In this twelve-poem sequence, Emerson dispenses with the typical martial metaphors so often used to represent this lived experience. Instead, she focuses on more mundane everyday moments in a way that acknowledges and respects the humanity of all those at the treatment center—especially that of the patients. Emerson refuses to airbrush out the daunting, debilitating aspects of cancer, but she also preserves space for light and life.
The Leaf That Tapped: Literary Still Life In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf,
2025
Claremont Colleges
The Leaf That Tapped: Literary Still Life In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf, Willa Frank
Pomona Senior Theses
Literary still life is a vital element of Virginia Woolf’s writing which recurs in almost all of her novels. Through these passages, she attends to the object world, portrays the animation of nonhuman entities, and adapts the aesthetic movements of her time present in modernist still life to the page. In this adaptation, Woolf’s literary still life becomes defined not by its stasis but rather by the rhythm she creates through the layering of these passages, one of the gathering and releasing of stillness. In this thesis, I propose literary still life as a way of thinking about the object-focused …
Narrative (In)Completion In Chaucer’S The Canterbury Tales And Woolf’S The Waves,
2025
Pomona College
Narrative (In)Completion In Chaucer’S The Canterbury Tales And Woolf’S The Waves, Ananya Ramkumar
Pomona Senior Theses
I examine how narrative and personal completion manifest—and are continually unsettled—in The Canterbury Tales and The Waves. Though separated by centuries and written within vastly different literary traditions, both texts explore the tension between fragmentation and wholeness: the ways in which stories and characters can be constructed from partial, shifting materials, and the ways in which the illusion of completeness can mask deeper absences (holes). Drawing on Woolf’s own theories of reading and character—and her sense that readers instinctively create “rickety and ramshackle” wholes from scattered impressions—I will consider how each text engages with the paradox of narrative closure. …
Codec-M: The Multi-Lingual Manosphere Subcorpus Of The Corpus Of Digital Extremism And Conspiracies,
2025
Bolante.NET
Codec-M: The Multi-Lingual Manosphere Subcorpus Of The Corpus Of Digital Extremism And Conspiracies, Rachel Mccullough, Daniel Drylie, Mindl Barta, Cass Dykeman, Daniel Smith
English Faculty Publications
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General warned the public of the current “loneliness epidemic” and its potential consequences on physical and mental health. One possible consequence of this epidemic is the growth of a movement defined by loneliness and isolation: the incel (“involuntary celibate”) movement. This warning presents a worrying glimpse at the future, as the incel movement, along with other parts of the manosphere, is one that espouses violently misogynist rhetoric which is intrinsically linked to right-wing extremism. While linguistic studies have been conducted on the speech of incels and other constituent movements of the manosphere, few of these …
Hierarchies Of Violence, Victimhood, And Remedy In The Pursuit Of Women's Rights After War,
2025
University of Denver
Hierarchies Of Violence, Victimhood, And Remedy In The Pursuit Of Women's Rights After War, Marie Berry, Milli Lake, Sinduja Raja, Soraya Zarook
English Faculty Publications
Recent postwar recovery efforts have paved the way for reforms that advance women's participation in politics, inclusion in the economy, and access to justice. In this article, we show how a singular emphasis on gender reforms after war that are inattentive to other societal cleavages can leave various forms of marginalization in the shadows. Subnational interviews on the reverberations of gender reforms in five postwar countries expose three hierarchies that structure access to rights for war-affected communities. We reveal which violence is privileged, whose violence is privileged, and which responses are privileged from the perspectives of differently situated war-affected women, …
Toward A Decolonial Digitality: On Seb Franklin's The Digitally Disposed,
2025
Old Dominion University
Toward A Decolonial Digitality: On Seb Franklin's The Digitally Disposed, Travis Alexander
English Faculty Publications
[Introduction] If the long hot summer of 2020 marked a season of racial reckoning, it was also—now visible in retrospect—a moment for processing with the relation between digital technologies and power. 8:46 after all names not only an event, a murder, but the title of a short digital film. A film, moreover, that has found decisively counterposed audiences in its ongoing afterlives. A forensics of police violence, on the one hand, 8:46 also avails, in the shadier corners of the dark web, the pleasures of a snuff film. In this way, 8:46 is emblematic of a broader, and, perhaps, terminal …
Analog Digital Frame: User Centered Design In Arts-Based Neighborhood Resilience Modeling,
2025
Old Dominion University
Analog Digital Frame: User Centered Design In Arts-Based Neighborhood Resilience Modeling, David Robledo, Sydney F. Walker, Zlatka Rebolledo Sánchez, Richard Nickel
English Faculty Publications
We explicate a mapping of digital documents through computer machinery as an analog frame for Research and Design in neighborhood environmental literacy, within an applied interdisciplinary ecosystem theory. In the arena of communicating localized climate phenomena and solutions, the design of communication frameworks has provided a core methodology to map climate adaptive conclusions as analogs for actionable community interpretive media. In this experience report, we articulate User Centered Design (UCD) in project research and development, while reporting on difficulties and solutions in shaping an analog digital frame to integrate student driven research and design with mentor based interdisciplinary project theorization. …
Between Science And Fantasy: Dirt In Kingsley’S Fairy-Tale Vision,
2025
University of Texas at El Paso
Between Science And Fantasy: Dirt In Kingsley’S Fairy-Tale Vision, Sandra M. Alba Jimenez
Student Papers (English)
No abstract provided.
Dismembering The Final Girl: Examining The Shifting Trope In Contemporary Horror Films,
2025
The University of Akron
Dismembering The Final Girl: Examining The Shifting Trope In Contemporary Horror Films, Abby Divine
Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects
This research explores gender representation in horror films as it moves away from representation shaped by the male gaze and, instead, showcases social values related to current feminist movements. While the horror genre is largely considered to be lacking complex messages or social commentary, many contemporary horror films actually utilize well-known tropes to cultivate a larger discussion on social issues. With the rise of the slasher film in the 1970s and 1980s, the character of the Final Girl was popularized. These final surviving female victims are usually defined by a constricting set of rules; however, newer trends in horror films …
Nonfiction Forms In Contemporary Poetry By Black And Asian American Writers,
2025
Eastern Michigan University
Nonfiction Forms In Contemporary Poetry By Black And Asian American Writers, Elizabeth J. Mitchell
Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations
Writers experiment with form inside poetry for various reasons, including a desire for play. Creating poetry is a creative process that involves experimentation. This research highlights poetry that adapts established nonfiction forms into poetry forms, examining poetry published in 2000-2024 by Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander American (AANHPI) writers and Black writers (writers of African ancestry) within the United States. For writers of color especially, nonfiction forms can provide a different way of entering into conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, identity, power, privilege, and authority. This research examines poetry by A. Van Jordan, Franny Choi, Alison C. Rollins, …
To Be Loved Is To Be Seen: Gazing As A Form Of Interpretation In The Turn Of The Screw,
2025
Columbus State University
To Be Loved Is To Be Seen: Gazing As A Form Of Interpretation In The Turn Of The Screw, Yasmin Mezayek
Theses and Dissertations
The heated discourse that would follow Henry James’s novella “The Turn of the Screw” centered on whether the ghosts were real or not. With Shoshana Felman’s groundbreaking article “Turning the Screw of Interpretation” a new-found focus on the ambiguities, as opposed to finding a singular, definitive meaning of the novella would usurp the Freudian and anti-Freudian arguments. With the governess’s sight being the main source of debate, reading the novella through the Lacanian lens of the Gaze, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic offer unprecedented explanations and arguments for the governess’s behavior. Given the contemporary shift to discussing the ambiguities of …
Inoffensively Alice: Gender Politics In The Alice Series,
2025
University of Maryland, College Park
Inoffensively Alice: Gender Politics In The Alice Series, Eirian Gail Wells
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Contents,
2025
University of South Carolina
Contents
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
