English Language and Literature Commons^™

Signifyin' Black Power: Soul On Ice And The Subversion Of Normative Whiteness, James David Fife

Theses and Dissertations

This study emphasizes the methodology of linguistic resistance in Eldridge Cleaver's best-known work, Soul on Ice. Through a process of signification, Cleaver works to redefine key words and concepts that form a web of racialist and racist thinking called normative whiteness. By emptying key terms, like those of "life," "liberty," and "property," Cleaver's text attempts to offer a new, less biased foundation on which a more inclusive and pluralistic American narrative can be written, a move that both makes his rhetoric significantly different from that of many contemporary resistance writers and positions him as an important link in a …

Regional Consciousness In American Literature, 1860-1930, Kelsey Louise Squire

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study establishes a conversation between regional literary theory, ecocriticism, and places studies as a necessary component of a more nuanced understanding of regionalism as depicted by mobile American authors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between 1860 and 1930, regional writers faced the challenge of making place relevant in an increasingly mobile world. In contrast to scholarly studies that situate the relevance of regionalism as a vehicle for a larger cause (for example, nationalism or feminism), or conversely, studies that focus on articulating an overly rigid "regional identity" of places or authors, I employ the term "regional …

Paule Marshall's Critique Of Contemporary Neo-Imperialisms Through The Trope Of Travel, Michelle Miesen Felix

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study examines Marshall's use of the trope of travel within and between the United States and the Caribbean to critique ideologies of Development, tourism, and globalization as neo-imperial. This examination of travel in Marshall's To Da-Duh, In Memoriam; The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; Praisesong for the Widow; and Daughters exposes the asymmetrical structures of power that exist between the two regions. In so doing, my study locates Marshall's concern about the imposition of power in the post-colonial period rather than exclusively in the Caribbean's colonial past. My close reading of these texts draws upon the vexed tradition of …

Hermeneutics, Poetry, And Spenser: Augustinian Exegesis And The Renaissance Epic, Denna Iammarino-Falhamer

Dissertations (1934 -)

One of the major claims this study makes is that Spenser desires to teach and cultivate a poetic reader--a reader who will employ interpretation and contemplation to expand the possibilities and places of textual meaning according to the tutelage of Spenser's text. The basis for Spenser's exegetical schema derives in large part from the works of St. Augustine and Richard Hooker. In works such as On Christian Doctrine and the Confessions, Augustine erects a Scriptural interpretative model founded upon charity and faith--a model interested in the process of exegesis as much as the end products of the analysis. Similarly, in …

Bad Girls And Biopolitics: Abortion, Popular Fiction, And Population Control, Karen Weingarten

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Amitav Ghosh And The Aesthetic Turn In Postcolonial Studies, John Su

English Faculty Research and Publications

This essay explores the "aesthetic turn" in postcolonial studies in light of the literary works of Indo-Burmese author Amitav Ghosh. While a renewed interest in aesthetic theories is apparent throughout the humanities in the past decade, it is particularly striking in postcolonial studies, where it holds out the possibility of blending the materialist/historicist and culturalist/textualist strands of postcolonial scholarship. Recent studies by Deepika Bahri, Nicholas Brown, Ato Quayson and others have been enormously promising; this essay argues for bringing their Frankfurt School-influenced aesthetic theories into conversation with other theories of aesthetics. Particular attention in this essay is given to the …

Thrifting, Angela Sorby

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Mars And Venus: Symbols Of The Chaotic And Conflicted Human Passions And The Reestablishment Of Order In “The Knight’S Tale.”, Olivia L. Blessing

Senior Honors Theses

During the Middle Ages, Europe experienced a period when philosophers attempted to separate and analyze the passionate and rational elements of the soul.  Some supported strict reason as the sole moral basis for living, while others looked to the tempestuous passionate emotions.  Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” portrays this conflict between reason and the passions through the depicted relationship between Mars and Venus and the uncontrolled passions of Arcite and Palamon.

Determining that a world controlled by passions results in chaos, Chaucer offers three different solutions—negating the passions, subjugating the passions to reason, and a balance between passion and reason. …

Tyranny, Marriage, And A New Market, William Holden

Anthós

This will be an explication of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography along with a discussion of its relationship to the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau in regards to the models of gender and womanhood painted by each thinker in his texts. First, I will offer a quantified taxonomy of several formal structures in Mill’s text, including a summary of the uses of the phrase “my father” alongside a summary of the instances of Mill’s claims of having read an author. Next, I give a summary of the uses of the phrases “my wife” and “my daughter” alongside a discussion of the …

Opus, 2010-2011, Issue Ix, Suny Geneseo English Club

Opus

Poetry & Prose
5 Oh No, Colleen Wilson
6 Conscious, B.L.O.
7 Capillaries Kelly Hendricken
Untitled Emily Withers
8 Mirror Imagination: Yes, You, Joe Flynn
10 Monster, Amanda Himmelmann
11 Forests Walter E. Murphy
12 Time Lizzy Johnson
13 Epilogue to a First Kiss, Anonymous
14 Willow Tree, Kristen Balschunat
A Distant Truth, Kristen Balschunat
Tasty Fruit Ripens, B.L.O.
16 One-Minute Fairy Tale, Adele Costa
17 To, Sincerely, Hannah Schmidt
18 Havana, 1986, Emily Withers
19 December, 2010, Stephanie Kaylor
20 A Relationship of Paper, Megan Nolan
22 take, Mike Ed Fowler
23 Invasion at an Occasion, Anonymous
26 Excerpt …

Language And Identity In Postcolonial African Literature: A Case Study Of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Abigail Guthrie

Masters Theses

Sociolinguists often research the development of language attitudes and the state of language within speech communities. Individual speakers reflect the status of their L1 language in both speaking and writing (Wa Thiong'o 1986, Showalter 2001), and the idea that writing can be used as a set of data that reflects an author's language attitude is the motivation for this research. Salikoko Mufwene (2001), one of the leading experts on creolization and the ecology of language, has argued that individual speakers of a language make daily choices that affect the future of their native tongue. Using the novel Things Fall Apart …

Word~River Literary Review (2011), John Quinn, Gary Pullman, Susan Nyikos, Steven Kunert, Denise M. Rogers, Bruce Wyse, Victoria Large, Kate Sweeney, Jeremy Beatson, Blase Drexler, Thea Cervone, Victor Hawk, Andrew Madigan, Ross Talarico, Akin Taiwo, Dianna Calareso, Jeffrey Arnett, Gail Radley, Gene Washington, Laurie Duesing, Brian R. Young, Anne Stark, I.M. Chapman, Natalie Ivnik Mount, Rebecca Leah Păpucaru, Katy E. Whittingham, Judy Shearer, Alex M. Frankel, Nina Schneider, Rosann Kozlowski, Norah Bowman-Broz, Maggie Wheeler, Jade Hidle, Susan Howard, Eddie Malone

word~river Literary Journal

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction of adjuncts and part-time instructors teaching in our universities, colleges, and community colleges. Our premier issue was published in Spring 2009. We are always looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published.

We define adjunct instructors as anyone teaching part-time or full-time under a semester or yearly contract, nationwide and in any discipline. Graduate students teaching under part-time contracts during the summer or …

Captivating Malaeska: Reading The First Dime Novel As A Captivity Narrative, Elisabeth Ziemba

All Theses And Dissertations

Regardless of the genre under which Malaeska was marketed, the cross-genre tropes and lessons can be seen which mark the novel as one that has been influenced by captivity narratives. Perhaps more so because of the subtle way it has been integrated into popular culture, the heritage of the Native American captivity tale remains even after physical Indian captivity has ceased, providing readers with a multilayered reading which asks them to think about the events of the time in which the story was written as well as the time in which the story is set, while critiquing the white supremacist …

"If God ... See Fit To Call You Out": "Public" And "Private" In The Writings Of Methodist Women, 1760-1840, Joanna Cruickshank

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In 1770, the renowned Methodist leader Mary Bosanquet (later Fletcher) published a letter of advice she had written to a young woman named Elizabeth Andrews. Amidst a flood of detailed advice about the life of faith, including recommendations about spiritual disciplines, reading matter, and marriage, Bosanquet urged her young friend:

Strive to be little and unknown; and remember that our Lord lived thirty years in private, and only three in publick, and that the word of God allows a woman, professing godliness, no adorning but that of a meek and quiet spirit. Strive, I say, to be little and unknown; …

Technoromanticism: Creating Digital Editions In An Undergraduate Classroom, Katherine D. Harris

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Mulk Raj Anand: Moving India Forward, Sandy Wheeler

All Student Theses and Dissertations

Mulk Raj Anand is an innovator in literature. He is one of the first Indian authors to write in English about the humanitarian dilemmas facing India during the mid-twentieth century. His compassionate objective is to produce an awareness of the cruelty and inhumane practices of untouchability and social class distinctions and to seek the enlightening prospects of progress and modernity. In his three novels Coolie, Two Leaves and a Bud, and Untouchable, Anand explores the lives of of the down-trodden. The first chapter of this project defines and discusses the Hindu caste system of India as well as its unfavorable …

"Undone By Murmurs Of Love": Traumatic Legacies And The Struggle For Personal And Communal Identity Formation In Toni Morrison's Trilogy, Fida Yasin

All Student Theses and Dissertations

Implications of racial oppression on personal and collective African American identity formation in Toni Morrison’s trilogy are explored in this thesis. Morrison reconstructs African American history in her trilogy, but she also enacts a cultural healing through content and form. Impossible choices are made by characters in Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise who are influenced by the racial trauma they experience and inherit. The legacies of oppression--traumatic memories, fragmentation, stereotypes and negative associations—distort the way these characters view themselves and one another. They are disoriented, isolated, and displaced. Characters recover from their past trauma— together—when they share their stories. …

Mapw Capstone Project, Carol A. Levine

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

Fiction and non-fiction work, short stories and one novel chapter.  Order of Content:

Reflective Essay
"No More Jesus"
"Puzzle Pieces"
"Little Shoes"
"Squeaky"
Nell
"Baby Blue"
"Stunning"
"Culinary Art"
"The Garden"
"A Snow White Van"
"My Hero"
"Small Deer"

Cold War Playboys: Models Of Masculinity In The Literature Of Playboy, Taylor Joy Mitchell

Humanities & Communication - Daytona Beach

“Cold War Playboys: Models of Masculinity in the Literature of Playboy” emphasizes the literary voices that emerged in response to the Cold War’s redefinitions of space and sexuality and, thus, adds to the growing national discourse of Cold War literary and masculinity studies. I argue that the literature Playboy includes has always been a necessary feature to creating its masculinity model; however, that very literature often destabilizes the magazine’s grand narrative because it presents readers with alternative models of masculinity. To make that argument, I presume five things: 1) masculinity, like femininity, is a construct; 2) the mid-century masculinity crisis …

Joel Faflak, Joel Faflak

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

My fields of interest are Romantic & nineteenth-century literature & culture; psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theory, & histories of psychoanalysis & psychiatry; theory & criticism; 18th- & 19th-century philosophy; cultural studies & popular culture; American film musicals.