English Language and Literature Commons^™

Creative Storytelling In Environmental Science, Caroline Cheek

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Storytelling in the environmental sciences provides a creative method of scientific dissemination, contrasting with traditional formats such as research papers, news articles, and journal articles. Though traditional methods of scientific dissemination are valuable, creative storytelling offers another path to improve knowledge retention and consciousness toward the planet, particularly in elementary education. The objective of this creative project was to produce an elementary-level children’s fiction manuscript as an example of how environmental education can be integrated with storytelling. The writing process treated reading level, conceptual comprehension, and the avoidance of oversimplification as constraints equal to character creation, setting, plot, and fantastical …

Book Review: Flannery And Regina: The Andalusia Chronicles, Alexandra Beswick

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Power Of Story: Christian Writing That Brings Redemption, Mahayla Rishel

Masters Theses

Christian writers have the unique opportunity to not only evoke emotion but to share the transformational love of Jesus Christ through their stories. A Redemptive Character Arc is a writing structure for fiction that transitions a character from the lie they believe to the fruit of the truth. Its writing structure goes from Beginning, Doorway, Inciting Incidents, Reckoning, Moment of Change, to Results. The Beginning is the character’s backstory and the lie they believe. The Doorway is the character’s need for change and the point of no return. Inciting Incidents reveal the truth to the character through suffering. The Reckoning …

Monstrous Origins: A Biblical Anthropology Of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein And Bram Stoker's Dracula, Josue Lopez

Masters Theses

In their texts, Stoker and Shelley embody the Christian doctrines of the creation and the incarnation through their monsters, who invert the central tenets of Christianity. Frankenstein’s monster and its relationship to Victor Frankenstein are presented as a maladapted and gross mimicry of God’s creation of man in Genesis. Victor, in his attempt to create life, tries to play God, and his hubristic endeavor unleashes a monstrous being on creation. Likewise, Count Dracula’s vampirism is portrayed as a corruptive reduction of Christ’s incarnation and resurrection. For the regenerative vampiric body, resurrection is not a redemptive act but a curse. The …

Paradise Reimagined: C. S. Lewis’S Science Fiction Response To John Milton’S Paradise Lost, Andrew M. Fulbright

Masters Theses

This paper explores the literary dialogue between John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and C.S. Lewis’s science fiction novel Perelandra. Whereas Milton’s epic established the modern Western imagination of man’s fall in the Garden of Eden, Lewis sought to provide a distinct reimagining of the foundational narrative. Comparing the author’s depictions of both unfallen worlds, the nature of mankind’s innocence, and the act of temptation illustrates the dialogue taking place between Milton and Lewis. This analysis also highlights Lewis’s deconstruction of the romantic character of Satan, which critics of Milton find to be the biggest flaw in his poem. While …

From Inferno To Middle Earth: The Transformation Of Sin, Judgment, And Redemption In Dante, Milton, And Tolkien., Caleb L. Carrier

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, and J.R.R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings transforms the traditions of the Christina Epic and its understanding of sin, judgement, and redemption across historical and theological contexts. Using the New Historicist lens of literary criticism, this thesis considers how each author adapts the literary and religious traditions for their respective era. In tracing these connections, this thesis argues that the three works do not simply repeat Christian doctrine; they transform it through literary form, revealing how moral concerns evolve while continuing to shape the literary canon.

The Spitters Got Something To Say: Exploring The Literary Merit Of Hip Hop And It's Lyrics, Baffour Ofori-Danquah

Masters Theses

Hip Hop and Literature have existed side by side for years, but their public perception and accreditation is more akin to fire and ice. Literature has been exalted, honored, and revered for generations while hip hop is often cast aside as the ugly stepsibling. To those on the outside this is normal and just but to those who are truly familiar with both art forms this is unfair. Hip Hop and Literature have always been more alike than different, and their biggest similarity is their literary merit. Through the examination of rap lyrics as literature, decoding the meaning and function …

The Worm In The Garden: William Blake’S “The Sick Rose,” Allen Ginsberg’S “Sunflower Sutra,” And The Literary Origins Of Environmental Consciousness, Erin Blake

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This paper contends that William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” written in 1794 and Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra”, written in 1955, constitute the two most significant poems in a continuous tradition of literary environmentalism stretching from the first Industrial Revolution to the organized ecological movements of the post-war twentieth century. Reading Blake through an eco-critical lens, the paper demonstrates that the poem’s symbolic architecture infers a systemic critique of industrial capitalism’s assault on the living world, anticipating by more than a century the conceptual vocabulary of modern environmental thought. The paper then traces how Ginsberg, whose formative encounter with Blake’s voice …

Silent Awakening: Female Agency And Societal Moral Contradiction In Victorian Art And Literature, Jayden S. Crespo

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

The Victorian era was marked by rapid technological, religious, and societal modernization that impacted the art and literature of the time. Queen Victoria, whose name became an eponym for her sixty-three-year reigning period from 1837 to 1901, was a figure who demonstrated domestic propriety and moral responsibility during this time of rapid change. However, while social morality and familial traditional roles were highly esteemed, marital infidelity began to increase as prostitution rose in rapid numbers. With traditional ideals placing women on fragile angelic pedestals that would shatter with any sexual relations outside marriage, consensual or not, Victorian society was faced …

On The ‘Éowynization’ Of Sita In Ashok Banker’S And Amish Tripathi’S Ramayana-Based Fantasies, Sonali A. Chunodkar

Journal of Tolkien Research

The global popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings following Peter Jackson’s film adaptations led some English-language authors to adaptively retell Hindu religio-mythological epic narratives like the Ramayana in a Tolkienian fantasy vein. Ashok K. Banker’s eight-volumed Ramayana series, published from 2003 to 2012, is the first such fantasy series that displays a marked ‘Tolkienization’ of the Ramayana story. Both Tolkien’s and Banker’s respective fantasy series further left their discernable trace in Amish Tripathi’s four-volumed Ram Chandra Series, published from 2015 to 2022. This presentation focuses on the trajectory of a Tolkienian transformation of the …

Conference Chair's Introduction, Glen Goodknight

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Introduction by conference chair Glen GoodKnight.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Series Editor's Introduction, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

An introduction by the Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings Series Editor Janet Brennan Croft.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Music Subworlds, Disjointed Mind‑Style And Possible Selves In Hoda Barakat’S Ahl Al‑Hawā: A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis, Sarah M. Fayed, Amany Mohamed El-Shazly, Fatma Ismail

Computer Science

The representation of mental distress in fiction has been the subject of much research. Western fiction has produced numerous cognitive stylistic studies investigating how linguistic choices can serve as an effective analytical method; however, the use of cognitive stylistic tools to examine this phenomenon in Arabic remains much more limited. Furthermore, including theories such as mind-style, possible selves, and subworlds to assess mental distress is another under-researched area in Arabic fiction. Some notable work on these theories includes Emmott and Sanford (2012) on subworlds, Semino (2014) on mind-style, and Bak (2015) on possible selves and mental distress. This paper utilizes …

“And Why Here?” Reading Hong Kong In Nick Joaquin’S The Woman Who Had Two Navels, Raymon D. Ritumban

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Nick Joaquin (1917–2004) is a Filipino literary master and national artist whose numerous works include the prize-winning novel The Woman Who Had Two Navels (1961). Its plot revolves around the Manilan protagonist Connie Escobar’s flight into Hong Kong and her insistence that “she [has] two navels” (1). Her assertion is complicated by her request for Hong Kong-born-and-based Pepe Monson to perform “an operation” on them (1). While this curious premise has generated numerous analyses over time, the novel’s setting—that is, post-1945 Hong Kong—remains understudied. Addressing this gap, the paper offers a geocritical intervention examining the historical conditions and spatial production …

“To A Cupped Hand’S Size”: Reading Poetics Of Scale In Edith Tiempo’S Poetry, Thomas Leonard D. Shaw

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Edith Cutaran Lopez-Tiempo’s body of work, alongside her stature as Philippine National Artist for Literature, has generated substantial scholarship on the fertile imaginaries and intersections of formalist poetics, the institutionalization of the writing workshop, and Philippine poetry in English. Building on these contributions, I turn instead to Tiempo’s negotiation of self-fashioning, memory work, and imaginative practice as a way of articulating questions of scale in her oeuvre. By reading a selection of poems from several of her poetry collections, I argue that reading Tiempo’s sustained engagement with strategies of disclosure and scale, as well as her preoccupation with the intimacy …

“The River’S Tent Is Broken/Wasak Ang Kubol Ng Dagat”: The Modern And The Nation In Bienvenido Lumbera’S Ang Pagas Na Lupain, Susan Mila P. Alvarez-Tosalem

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

In 1971, Philippine National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera translated one of the most outstanding examples of world literature, T. S. Eliot’s modernist poem, The Waste Land, into Filipino. At the time, Lumbera had just earned his PhD from Indiana University as a Fulbright scholar. Naturally, his colonial education and aesthetic preference shaped his approach as a critic and scholar. However, Lumbera’s “radical transformation” became evident in 1968, in the midst of growing discontent with the neocolonial government (Veric 140). This paper underscores, therefore, the centrality of translation in world literature, especially in the context of a single “world literary system” (Moretti …

Essentializing The Ifugao For The National Allegory In F. Sionil Jose’S “The God Stealer”, Lioba E. Piluden

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Postcolonial writing in the Philippines turned towards the indigenous Filipino, “the tribal Filipino, or the poor Filipino least touched by colonial culture” (Roces 1994, 300) to become a vessel for an elusive national identity. One of the creatures to arise from this milieu of Philippine literature was F. Sionil Jose’s “The God Stealer” (1959), a short story often read as an allegory of Philippine-American relations or the Filipino native rejecting colonial power by returning to their roots. It is also Jose’s most anthologized short story. Despite readings of “The God Stealer” generally falling into the groove of postcolonial analysis, little …

Gender-Based Violence, Legal Protection, And Intersecting Narratives: A Conversation With Flavia Agnes, Barnana Baidya, Partha Bhattacharjee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Flavia Agnes is a leading advocate for gender justice because of her legal expertise in marital law, divorce, and property law and her activism as an Indian women’s rights lawyer. Her scholarly work on systemic and legal gender-based oppression has appeared in the journals Subaltern Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, and Manushi. Her book, My Story...Our Story of Rebuilding Broken Lives, released by her non-profit organization named Majlis, depicts how Agnes battled domestic violence while addressing the law’s restrictive abilities to offer protection. We conducted an interview through Google Meet with Agnes to discuss her work as a legal activist …

Sanitized For Public Viewing: Review Of William Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Allison Meyer

Best Integrated Writing

This review analyzes the Stratford Festival’s 2026 production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, directed by Antoni Cimolino, and argues that the production minimizes the play’s political and colonial themes. The article examines how specific production choices, including Caliban’s costume design, the comic treatment of Stephano and Trinculo, and Prospero’s final interaction with Ariel, obscure questions of power and colonization. Through detailed analysis of staging, characterization, and directorial decisions, the review evaluates the consequences of presenting Shakespeare’s play as a story of personal forgiveness rather than political conflict. It interrogates this erasure of colonial power struggles within the framework of the Stratford …

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2026 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.