English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Unsuccessful Harvesting Of Figs From Thistles And Other Failures Of Idealized Masculinity In Ella D'Arcy's The Bishop's Dilemma, Elizabeth Watson Christianson

Theses and Dissertations

Although confusion about the genre of New Woman Ella D'Arcy's only novella has resulted in a lack of scholarship, The Bishop's Dilemma can now be read as a social commentary that reaches beyond the New Woman subversion of the Victorian marriage plot, broadening the gender discussion at the fin-de-siècle. In this essay, I examine how D'Arcy uses Catholicism as a vehicle to create a unique space in the Catholic ritual of the confession that gives her reader privileged access to Victorian manhood. I argue that by placing her examination of masculinity in the context of the Catholic priesthood, D'Arcy renders …

The Realm Of The Real: Imitation And Authenticity In Edith Wharton's The Custom Of The Country, Brittany Brie Atkinson

Theses and Dissertations

Edith Wharton's 1913 novel The Custom of the Country reveals a national concern with defining and preserving authenticity in social and cultural life. A study of the novel through the lens of scholarship concerning the modernist obsession with "the real thing," including such seminal texts as Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity, opens up a broad discussion of authenticity and imitation as defined by Wharton's characters. This paper challenges the traditional interpretations of the much-abused term. First, I outline a brief history of the study of authenticity …

Footnotes, Issue 9, Spring-Summer 2011, Department Of English

Footnotes: Department of English Newsletter (2008-2012)

No abstract provided.

Imperial Boyhood: Piracy And The Play Ethic, Bradley Deane

English Publications

Representations of perpetual boyhood came to fascinate the late Victorians, partly because such images could naturalize a new spirit of imperial aggression and new policies of preserving power. This article traces the emergence of this fantasy through a series of stories about the relationship of the boy and the pirate, figures whose opposition in mid-Victorian literature was used to articulate the moral legitimacy of colonialism, but who became doubles rather than antitheses in later novels, such as R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island and Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Masculine worth needed no longer to be measured by reference to transcendent, …

Cell Phones From Hell, Steven Bruhm

Department of English Publications

Recently Hollywood has remade a number of movies from the 1970s, movies in which young women are terrorized by a murderer calling from a telephone located elsewhere in the house. In the remakes, the murderer uses a cell phone, which effectively destroys the sense of space and distance on which earlier horror films were predicated. In one way, these films gesture to Jean Baudrillard's idea of “the transparency of evil,” in that they depict the collapse between the speaking self and the technologies of monstrosity against which the self might be defined. In another way, though, the films proliferate sites …

Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma

Department of English: Faculty Publications

We were fishermen.

Father first called us so after he whipped us sore for fishing at the Ala stream in the summer of May 1995. Earlier that year, the bank had transferred him from our hometown of Akure to Yola, a volatile and violence-prone city in the north of Nigeria. Father wouldn't move us with him so he lived apart and visited only once in two weeks, always coming at midnight on Fri- days and disappearing at dawn on Sundays. Each time he returned, mother would detail how the house had fared in his absence - a breakdown of home …

Ecopoetics And The Origins Of English Literature, Paul Siewers

Faculty Contributions to Books

An ecocritical survey of early English literature, focusing on the "green world" trope.

More Human Trouble, Philip M. Weinstein

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Reasons To Anthologize Simms?, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Good Writing: The Problem Of Ethics, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article focuses on good writing in the English classroom. It mentions that the way to know if one has good writing is to see how the audience reacts to it. Writing professionals argue that good writers anticipate readers' reactions as they shape style, page design, and content and every aspect of their writing. It notes that one of the main goals in professional writing is to teach students to use of rhetoric tools to influence their audiences and to emphasize ethical decision-making.

Ibn Arabshah: The Unacknowledged Debt Of Christopher Marlowe’S Tamburlaine, Ahlam M. Alruwaili

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis suggests strong relations between Marlowe’s Tamburlaine I & II and Ibn Arabshah’s 1436 account of Tamerlane’s Life (‘Ajaib al-maqdur fi nawa’ib Timur: The Wonders of Destiny Concerning the Calamities Wrought by Tamerlane), clarifies controversial issues, and explains previously baffling allusions editors have pondered long. In general, the thesis enriches our understanding of Marlowe's wide ranging sources, im­plies a critique of western-biased source scholarship, and opens possibilities to re-evaluate eastern contributions to the Renaissance in general. The first chapter high­lights some well-recognized events in the play and in historical sources (the caging of Bayazid and ill-treatment of his …

The New Chicana Heroine: Representations Of Anzaldua's Mestiza Consciousness In Chicana Feminist Cultural Productions, Monica E. Montelongo

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis analyzes Gloria Anzaldúa‟s mestiza consciousness as a representation seen thematically in Chicana feminist cultural productions. Mestiza consciousness, defined in Anzaldúa‟s Borderlands/La Frontera, is a non-binary feminist ideology, which proposes a third space in female identity, explored in terms of gender, class, race, and sexuality identification. The representation of mestiza consciousness in Chicana feminist cultural productions is proposed as a new trope in Chicana\o cultural studies, which I term the “New Chicana Heroine.” The New Chicana Heroine is both a proposal and representation of a third space in female identity. An examination of several authors, artists, and filmmakers, spanning …

Death Becomes Her: Theodicy In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Jack K. Mallard

Theses and Dissertations

A study of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, particularly "The Sound of Her Wings" and "The Kindly Ones: Part 13," demonstrates its theological richness. The Sandman's ability to participate in theodicy becomes clear by framing that study within a framework provided by Ernest Becker's ideas about the terror of death and Karen Armstrong's observations of the historical utility of negative theology and compassion. The analysis of the formal characteristics of The Sandman shows the range of aesthetic possibility inherent in the comics form. Lastly, the study makes apparent the continued readerly desire for engagement with questions about God, transcendence, …

The Ecosemiosphere: Story And Region In Insular Medieval Literatures, Paul Siewers

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

Reflections on the interrelation of environmental humanities studies, physics and semiotics, as part of an international panel introducing ecosemiotics and biosemiotics to the North American ecocriticism communtiy at large.

The Conduit: A Creative Thesis, Rachelle Larsen

Theses and Dissertations

This is a high fantasy novel about Iníon Ríúil, a girl who discovers she has the ability to manipulate magic. Two weeks before Iní­'s seventeenth birthday, thieves attack their home and her grandmother is murdered. After her grandmother's death, Iní­ goes in search of the father she has never met and ends up joining the Magical Alliance, where she learns more about her unique skills. Iní­ is a full conduit, someone who possesses all four of the possible conduit abilities: shielding, absorption, transformation, and amplification. Because someone has been kidnapping other conduits, the Magical Alliance assigns guardians for her protection: …

More Than "Wisteria And Sunshine": The Garden As A Space Of Female Introspection And Identity In Elizabeth Von Arnim's The Enchanted April And Vera, Katie Elizabeth Young

Theses and Dissertations

Recent scholarly interest in Elizabeth von Arnim has related Elizabeth and Her German Garden and The Solitary Summer to the New Woman and Female Aesthete movements, concluding that von Arnim does not align herself with any movement per se. Rather, in these early works, Elizabeth advocates and adamantly defends her right to time in her garden, which becomes her sanctuary for reading and thinking. Little critical attention has been paid to von Arnim's later works; however, many of the themes established in von Arnim's early works can be traced through her later novels. In The Enchanted April Lady Caroline retreats …

Eng 4905-001: African American Youth Literature, Fern Kory

Summer 2011

No abstract provided.

Eng 5061-031: Topics In Literature And Literary Theory: Historicism, Randy Beebe

Summer 2011

No abstract provided.

Eng 3604-051: Authors And Readers Before 1800, Angela Vietto

Summer 2011

No abstract provided.

Course Schedule, English Department

Summer 2011

No abstract provided.