English Language and Literature Commons^™

On Emily Dickinson, Katelyn Confer

2024 Symposium

The following paper will explore the relationship between Emily Dickinson’s poetry, the circumstances of her life, and the historical context in which she lived to glean an understanding of how her mental health influenced her work. Selected poems by Dickinson will be reviewed and analyzed, along with a brief overview of nineteenth century attitudes towards female mental health with a particular emphasis on the medical diagnosis of female hysteria.

Vol. 6 No. 1, Glen Goodknight

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

The Ecofeminist And Gaian Spirituality: Subverting The Patriarchal Discourse In Doris Lessing’S Selected Novels, Shereen Mohamed Safwat

Computer Science

Doris May Lessing (1919-2013) lived most her life on the veld of South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and came back to London in 1949. Her multicultural upbringing allowed her to gain a special connection with nature via her intuitive instinct. This article sheds light on three novels by Lessing namely, The Golden Notebook (1962), The Four-Gated City (1969) and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) that are to be tackled within the theoretical frame of ecofeminist and Gaian spirituality. This paper dives into the depth of the Gaian and ecofeminist spiritual realm in the selected novels. It explores the alternative path …

Diversity In Publishing: Does Author Identity Affect Author Treatment In The North American Fiction Publishing Industry?, Chloe Comeau

Academic Leadership Journal in Student Research

The fiction publishing industry has a long history of promoting only straight, white, cisgender voices in the books they publish and the staff they hire. This study employed the Delphi method to investigate the connection between author identity and author treatment in publishing. In a series of questionnaires, 11 participants answered questions and shared their experiences with diversity in publishing. The results indicated that sexism, homophobia, and racism all exist in the industry, and author identity impacts author treatment in North American fiction publishing. Moreover, the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality of authors combined with publishing’s long history of …

Tolkien: Voyage En Terre Du Milieu (2019), Ed. By Vincent Ferré And Frédéric Manfrin, Deidre A. Dawson

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Deidre A. Dawson, of Tolkien: Voyage en Terre du Milieu (2019) ed. by Vincent Ferré and Frédéric Manfrin

Ecologies Of Medieval Latin Poetics, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The concept of literary ecology is developed as an instrument for large-scale literary study by Alexander Beecroft (2015), for whom the metaphor emphasizes the great diversity of world literatures and the possibility of organizing this diversity into cultural types, analogous to the biologist’s ecotypes. For a study of Latin poetics, the most important typological distinction is between cosmopolitan and vernacular languages. Latin acquired an articulated body of stylistic norms (“poetics”) in antiquity as a vernacular language; subsequent developments in Latin poetics were conditioned by the language’s acquisition of cosmopolitan characteristics. I explore the consequences of that shift; texts discussed include …

Pathways Of Grief: A Contextualized View Of The Life Of Grendel, Jonathan Levitt

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper was presented at the New York Tolkien Conference.

Baruch College; New York, NY, June 15, 2024.

J.R.R Tolkien wrote his essay, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, in response to claims that the Anglo-Saxon poem was too simple and focused too much on the monsters. The essay defends the epic poem as a myth about Christian ideals set in a pagan world and decries its reputation as a historical document instead of the work of art it deserved to be. Tolkien’s motivation to rehabilitate Beowulf can be understood as a dual mission to defend his own work. When …

“There Is A Woman Concerned In This”: Female Gender Roles In The Novels And Adaptations Of Agatha Christie, Carrie Y. Hess

Waldo Library Student Exhibits

Throughout my dissertation, I analyze what Agatha Christie's 1934 Murder on the Orient Express and 1937 Death on the Nile and their 1970s and 2000s feature film adaptations suggest about the roles of mothers, female friends, and lovers. The underlying issue I speak to is how these texts, working off of a similar storyline, speak differently to these roles, especially when analyzed across time. Several key questions guiding my research and writing include: What does it mean to be a mother? Is she a savior, an avenger, or both? How does the violence associated with the one reconcile with the …

Long Time Since Prayer, Nick S. Boone

Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

A Collection Of Short Stories, Tryphena Lizzert Yeboah

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The short stories in this collection offer diverse and expansive realities of the human condition, particularly around the lives of women—their identities, bodies, emotions, and how they live and navigate a social order that is often constructed to dominate and undermine them. How can we complicate marginalized portrayals of women shaped by the male gaze and interrogate the patriarchal presumption of the African woman? What different approaches should be employed in capturing different aspects of her domestic and social life, how she defines and expresses autonomy, how she subverts gender norms, and her experiences of emotional and physical violence? These …

Estranged Temporality: How Time Tells Stories In Science Fiction, Phillip H. Howells

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

According to Darko Suvin in his influential critical treatise, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, estrangement in Science Fiction (SF) gives authors the ability to build worlds related to but distant from our own using specific metaphors. This dissertation takes up this term and applies it to the fulcrum of time in SF as a method of creating possible futures and imaginative pasts in order to illuminate the realities of the present. The realities of the present are congruent with the material circumstances of the past, and this can be seen in the kinds of SF worlds built by members of …

Exploring Masculinity In Shakespeare And Effectively Teaching Grammar In Context: A Portfolio, Madison Nadeau

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

I uncover and explore two models for masculinity in marriage in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar: one where it is an assumption and the other a constant fight. Additionally, I offer a teaching unit on characterization designed for a dual enrollment writing class that aims to teach grammar in the context of writing.

Sacred Symbols In A Secular World: Religious Imagery In The Works Of Jack London And Sylvia Plath, Kathleen Elizabeth Long

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to investigate and analyze the presence of religious symbolism in the novels of Jack London and Sylvia Plath, two authors whose atheist beliefs comingle in intriguing ways with this sacred imagery, offering rich ground for comparative analysis. Despite London’s fervent Darwinist beliefs, he injects subtle religious motif within The Call of the Wild, devoted to promoting atheist thought yet yearning for the grandiosity of myth. Similarly, Plath uses allusions to Judaism within her novel The Bell Jar, subverting classical religious tradition to associate it with themes of animal savagery. By studying these two texts, this …

Using Oral History To Explore The Migration Experience A Series Of Activities For Eng103: The Research Paper, Demetrios Kapetanakos

Open Educational Resources

This paper describes how I will implement an oral history component into my "ENG103: The Research Paper" course.

Contemporary Caribbean-American Literature: Identity Struggle For Caribbean Diasporic Subjects In American Racial And Cultural Contexts, Samirah Munahi Almutairi

English Theses & Dissertations

This study includes six contemporary literary texts (novels and short stories) that offer exemplary representations of identification process of the Caribbean diaspora situated within American context. The texts included in this study are: Disposable People by Ezekel Alan (2012), Now Lila Knows by Elizabeth Nunez (2022), Brother, I’M Dying by Edwidge Danticat (2007), “Cheap, Fast, Filling” in Ayiti by Roxane Gay (2011), Dominicana by Angie Cruz (2019), and “Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands” in How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs (2018). By studying representations of identity formation throughout the Caribbean-American literature, a postcolonial analysis integrated with cultural studies …

“[T]He Observance Of Trifles": Mapping Imperial Assemblages In Nineteenth-Century British Serialized Crime Fiction, Dana Joy Gavin

English Theses & Dissertations

This project investigates representations of the ecological and Imperialist relationships in a selection of serialized crime fiction texts: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures (appearing in The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly beginning in 1891). I examine serialized crime fiction published in the nineteenth century as a map of the ecological and Imperialist relationships established through the nineteenth-century British publishing industry. Serialized crime fiction was both popular and profitable, representing not only commercial success but one that tapped into the reading populace’s imagination. Readers craved serialized stories …

Dr. Maggie Vinter: The Early Modern, Now

Discussions

Dr. Maggie Vinter has been the specialist in Early Modern (pre-1800) literature and Shakespeare at Case Western Reserve University’s English Department for the last eleven years. Prior to that, she received her doctorate degree at Johns Hopkins University in 2013. In 2019, she published Last Acts: The Art of Dying on the Early Modern Stage (Fordham University Press), where she explored not only the theatricality and farcicality of death in the theater of the 15th and 16th centuries, but in the act of death as a whole. In particular, this research is based upon the existence of “death books,” which …

The Making Of A Survivor: Chopin's Use Of Identity And Rebirth In The Awakening, Amber L. Budd

The Confluence

In recent research of American literature, many scholars have read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and construed the novel’s ambiguous ending as an indication that the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, commits suicide after the ending. Scholars have developed this hypothesis due to contextual evidence, societal expectations at the time Chopin wrote the novel, and Edna’s perceived development of identity over the course of the novel. In this paper, I analyze the popular theories arguing for Edna’s suicide or survival and then examine those articles in conjunction with my own analysis of The Awakening. By doing so, I aim to prove that, …

Self And Tell: Exploring Identity Through Music, Logen Crandall

Honors Theses

My honors thesis is a five-song EP titled ‘self and tell’. It is considered an EP (Extended Play) because it is longer than one song but shorter than an album. As an English: Creative Writing major, I wanted to write something for my thesis that truly excited me. However, I was ignited by the thought of writing an essay, play, collection of poems, or work of fiction. As someone who has always had a passion for music and singing, I instead chose to use my knowledge of poetry and storytelling to write lyrics that followed a central theme from one …

Book Review Of Drawn Together By Minh Lê And Dan Santat, Simon Boonsripaisal

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Drawn Together, written by Minh Lê and illustrated by Dan Santat, depicts the story of a grandson and grandfather spending time in the afternoon together. Lê and Santat’s shared experiences and cultures influence the picturebook’s construction. The greatest strength in Drawn Together is the inclusion of family in the creation process. Lê’s meaningful words and phrases complement Santat’s colorful and energetic illustrations. The setting is in the grandfather’s house and away from the site of Thai restaurants and Thai Buddhist temples, to which most of the existing research on Thai Americans hones it on (Bao, 2015; Padoongpatt, 2017). Drawn Together …