English Language and Literature Commons^™

God Is Dead... Now There Danceth A God In Me. Bringing Modernist Darkness To Light Through The Apollonian And Dionysian Dichotomy, Kendall Stephenson

English Theses - Archive

Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy can be seen at work in the texts of canonical modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Rainer Maria Rilke, William B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, and it is in the balance of these two Greek deities that modernist literary characters affirm life, thus reversing the typically negative interpretations of modernist literature. My aim is to show how the primordial, divergent elements of the Apollonian and Dionysian reveal themselves across the field of modernist literature and synthesize to create moments of truth, mental equilibrium, and life-affirmation amongst its …

One Foot In The Grave: The Zombie's Consumption Of American Film, Ronni M. Davis

English Theses - Archive

American film has chronicled the evolution of the zombie mythos for nearly eight decades. Originally constructed as a projection of the plight of the enslaved population of Haiti, the zombie as introduced to American film remains a symbol of societal anxieties. I argue that, to reflect the changing zeitgeist, the zombie shifts into three general forms. The Haitian Zombi is generally a passive creature subject to the will of its creator; it reveals desire to control people that either pose a threat or that have something that the creator covets and is otherwise unable to attain. The Extraterrestrial Zombie represents …

Resisting Commodification (With Friends!): Facebook And Consumer Culture, Wilton S. Wright

English Theses - Archive

Is participating in the Facebook phenomenon (or can it become) politically resistant - even revolutionary? Or are social networking websites merely another form of commodified capitalist consumerism? In this thesis, I investigate the commodified/commodifying aspects of Facebook, as well as its political potential. In order to establish a common understanding of the problems created by contemporary capitalism, in the first chapter I use Guy Debord's theory of the Society of the Spectacle to provide a framework for evaluating the incessant commodification of contemporary culture. I then examine previous attempts to overturn the capitalist system and discuss possible reasons for their …

Digitalism: Towards A Theory Of Digital Rhetoric And Composition, Jared Chambers

English Theses - Archive

In this thesis, I argue that the text and the textual are inherently digital and, thus, have properties that are information theoretic in origin. From that premise, I use an interdisciplinary approach to construct a theory for the reading and deconstruction of digital works and their viewers, which I then use to form a method for the analysis, composition, and reading of texts "digitally."The first two chapters introduce the relation of digital philosophy and information theory to textual works, which leads into the third chapter's ontology of digital works and their audience. Chapters four introduces the power of simulacrum in …

John Clare And The Art Of Politics, Jason N. Goldsmith

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Jason Goldsmith's contribution to Volume 30 of the John Clare Society Journal. Article focuses on Clares poem, 'Don Juan' and its place in the University classroom.

Visual Rhetoric And The Promotion Of Scientific Ideas: The Strange Case Of The Prion, Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In the field that investigates infectious brain diseases such as mad cow disease, the verbal and visual packaging of scientific visuals associated with identifying the agent, prion, its processes, and structure served the community ritual of establishing belief in a highly unorthodox phenomenon. Visual promotion fed into cultural expectations of single agents and simple processes, even though the actual agency and disease process have proven highly complex and perhaps unknowable.

Language, Geography, Globalization: Susana Chavez-Silverman’S Rejection Of Translation In Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories, Ania Spyra

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The ephemerality of Susana Chavez-Silverman's desires for a very specific scent, remembered well although smelt only once on a stranger in passing, meets the disappointment of the un-searched for, the inauthentic, the reality of cheap cologne. Maybe precisely for its lack of fulfillment the search remains a quest, and the latter term does not seem too exaggerated for as frivolous a search as this one, because it functions as a metaphor for many other searches.

Notes On Contributors

Short Story

No abstract provided.

"Shrinking Historicism": Review Of Dale Townshend, The Orders Of Gothic: Foucault, Lacan, And The Subject Of Gothic Writing 1764-1820, Edward Jacobs

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Poet, In One Last Desperate Attempt To Please His Public, Lays On The Blarney, Louis Phillips

Bryant Literary Review

The words in this poem are quite ordinary.

Bride And Groom, Charles Harper Webb

Bryant Literary Review

Piece by piece, the china slips from soapy hands.

Friends drop the crystal wine-glasses;

Morning Report With Other Disturbances, Stephen R. Roberts

Bryant Literary Review

You might want to head to work a bit early this morning.

Sowing The Seeds, Janet Proulx

Bryant Literary Review

Grandfather would sit in a rocker by the window

smoking a pipe and gazing upon his bountiful garden

Robots, Joseph Scott (J.S.) Kierland

Bryant Literary Review

The Major drove north along 95 into the oncoming darkness. The sun hung low over the desert behind him,

Moving Beyond This Moment: Employing Deleuze And Guattari's Rhizome In Postcolonialism, Robert Larue

English Theses - Archive

The aim of this project is two-fold: to discuss the limits of Frantz Fanon's postcolonial theories, and to then present a possible model for turning "the `thing' colonized [into] a new man" (Wretched 2) by liberating "him" from Fanon's desire for inclusion. Or, to put this in other terms, this investigation seeks to highlight one of the most limiting factors in Fanonian postcolonial theory: Fanon's grounding in European humanism. The goal is not to criticize Fanon's theories, but to point out the limits of them so that these limits can be addressed in order to further the theories' effectiveness. By …

Sleeping Beauty: The Reality Of Harmful Images Of Women Within The Film Industry, Noretta A. Morales

Whittier Scholars Program

This senior project is composed of three parts: a screenplay, essay, and journal. The purpose of this senior project is to provide a perspective of how women are treated within the film industry and women’s obsession with beauty and sexuality, as well as how the media portrays women. It focuses on the pressures that women deal with in the film industry and the construction of beauty and sexuality concepts. Drawing from articles, journals, books, and interviews, the project attempts to provide the various sides and aspects of how women give in, or not, to the stress of conforming to the …

The Dissonant Bible Quotation: Political And Narrative Dissension In Gaskell's Mary Barton, Jon Singleton Ph.D.

Faculty Research and Publications

Religious language exerted multivalent force in Victorian society, as this case study of Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton, Chartist political protest, and the weaponization of the Bible in contemporary social struggle makes clear. Scholars have established that different classes read the Bible differently; but I demonstrate how Gaskell makes the Bible read in several different ways for the same reader. Gaskell makes Bible quotations dissonant through her use of character and narration, in order to challenge the boundaries of readers’ political sympathies. This study shows how any religious utterance escapes the control and political interests of any class—and how its conflicting …

Review: Vivian Shipley All Of Your Messages Have Been Erased, Christine Stewart-Nunez

English Faculty Publications

In All of Your Messages Have Been Erased (Louisiana Literature Press, 2010) award-winning poet Vivian Shipley anchors readers deep in the emotional waters of devotion. And Shipley delves into the most complicated kindsdevotion to principle in the face of death, devotion to lover despite adultery, and devotion to one's own particular vision of the world. Shipley gives us Holly Stevens' fastidious protection of her father's memory and work, Paula Hitler's painful attachment to her brother, and Papusza's commitment to her Romani community even in exile, just to name a few. By bearing witness to "how firmly the heart roots before …

Front Matter - Table Of Contents

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Greyhounded, Robert Ficociello

Short Story

No abstract provided.