English Language and Literature Commons^™

"Black History Is Black Horror": Hauntology And Cultural Trauma In 20th And 21st Century Black Women's Gothic Horror, Destini S. Beckwith

Theses

Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturistic, gothic horror, neo-slave narrative Kindred (1979) vividly illustrates the story of a woman, Dana, involuntarily time-traveling from her home in 1976 Los Angeles, California, to a plantation in 19th-century Maryland. The interactions that she has with her ancestors, such as Alice, a free Black woman, and Rufus, a white man who enslaves Alice, leave Dana mentally and physically scarred. The 20th-century novel is meant to graphically reflect on the horrors of enslavement and the mental and physical effects that Black people endured/still endure because of it (i.e., grief, racial violence, and post-traumatic stress disorder). Furthermore, the novel’s …

A Multidimensional Framework For Burnout Resilience In Adults, Anthony Martinez

Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection

This paper explores burnout as a growing public health concern and argues for a multidimensional framework to build resilience in adults. Drawing on contemporary research, the paper defines burnout as a response to chronic stress that undermines emotional, mental, and physical well‑being. It examines how the integration of physical, mental, and spiritual practices can mitigate burnout and enhance long‑term resilience. The analysis highlights the role of physical activity in regulating stress responses and improving mental health, the importance of mental health practices such as self‑regulation, cognitive reframing, and meditation, and the impact of spiritual practices, including prayer and positive religious …

Gun Control In The United States Of America, Blessing Crowder

Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection

This paper examines the issue of gun control in the United States by analyzing the relationship between firearm accessibility and gun‑related crime, including homicide, suicide, and accidental deaths. Drawing on historical examples, scholarly research, legal cases, and public opinion data, the paper argues that restricting access to firearms can significantly reduce gun‑related violence. It explores how firearms often fall into unauthorized hands, the role of mental health and impulsivity in violent outcomes, and the disproportionate risks firearms pose in racially charged environments. The paper also addresses opposing arguments centered on self‑defense and deterrence, evaluating legal precedents and ethical justifications for …

Generative Ai As Artificial Audience, Chrystina Scoglietti

Distinguished Student Scholarship Collection

This paper examines generative artificial intelligence as a distinct communicative development that reshapes rhetorical practice and composition pedagogy. Situating generative AI within a historical framework of communicative revolutions—including primary orality, literacy, and secondary (digital) orality—the paper argues that generative AI constitutes a new form of literacy rather than a mere extension of digital media. By producing near‑human language and creative output in direct response to user input, generative AI functions not only as a compositional tool but also as an artificial audience to which rhetoric must be tailored. The analysis explores how this shift challenges traditional assumptions about audience, persuasion, …

Bias In The Wires: Epistemic Harms Of Linguistic Homogenization In Ai-Asisted Writing, Sarah Smith

2026 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents & Media

Hundreds of millions of users now rely on AI-generated writing for ideation, drafting, and revision. As models make linguistic decisions about their writing, they create preferences that extend to users, reshaping our capacity to articulate who we are in ways that are just beginning to be understood. By drawing on research in computer science, psychology, ethics, and sociolinguistics, this paper traces how LLMs acquire and transmit linguistic bias. Users internalize AI preferences, subtly homogenizing linguistic decisions in ways that impact communities unevenly. This constitutes a form of algorithmic epistemic injustice, which harms writers through deflated credibility and the loss of …

What Common Themes Are Challengers Trying To Silence And What Would Be Lost Without Them?, Corrine H. Martello

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

This research paper aims to analyze the controversies surrounding The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, three commonly challenged books that are often found in high school English classes, in order to answer the question “what themes in these books are challengers trying to silence, and what would be lost without them?”. It will be broken into four sections, Alienation, Mental Health Struggles & Trauma, The Loss of Innocence, and Exploring Identity, which are common themes presented in all three books. …

Dark Critiques Of Victorian Identity: The Picture Of Dorian Gray And The Turn Of The Screw, Shania T. Inshan

Student Theses and Dissertations

My thesis highlights the relationship between beauty, art, and identity through a gothic lens using The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I argue that beauty and art fail to sustain innocence and life itself through an exploration of the progressively corrupt identities of the central characters in each novel. Additionally, I find that both authors challenge common conventions of art, beauty, adolescence, and gender of 19th-century British society and expand the list of factors that comprise identity. James’s narrator diverges from the model of the ideal governess and Wilde’s …

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, Vol 34, No. 2, The Sinclair Lewis Society

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter

"Following Up with Conrad," review-essay on Writers Like Us: My Life with Sinclair Lewis, by Barnaby Conrad, with Barnaby Conrad III, by Frederick Betz

Teaching "He Loved His Country" by Shaun F. Richards

In Memoriam: George Capsis by Sally E. Parry

Inside the Network of American Foreign Correspondents in Interwar Europe: A Review of Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War, by Deborah Cohen. Random House, 2022. by Bernhard Wenzl

A Dr. Martin Arrowsmith: 2003 by Samuel J. Rogal

Palmer House Sold

Famous Last Words From Sinclair Lewis by Tad …

Irotas 2026 Version 1, English Department-Winona State University

Irotas

Irotas is an annual student journal of the arts created and published by Winona State University students. Irotas is a sibling journal to the Satori Student Literary Magazine. This is the Irotas created in 2026. there are three versions of the 2026 Irotas.

Editors:  Elena Armstrong, Lydia Domaille, Shaela Eriksen, Jenifer Frick, Linda Hang, Eva Hodnick, Sarah Huderle, Dylan Jackson, Charlie Lund, Kendra McClure, Camden McDonald, Jade McElmury, Linda Moua, Reagan Roesler, Callie Sahlstrom, Allen Wedekind

McClure, Grace Emiliusen, Benjamin Hagen, Brandon Tellers, Jacinda Lundeen, Lupema Celis Castillo, Kylee Binning, Caleb Reed, Anastasia Piltingsrud,  Koda Mueller, Caleb Reed, Gracia Sonderup, …

Irotas 2026 Version 2, English Department- Winona State University

Irotas

Irotas is an annual student journal of the arts created and published by Winona State University students. Irotas is a sibling journal to the Satori Student Literary Magazine. This is the Irotas created in 2026. there are three versions of the 2026 Irotas. This is a 2026 issue version 2.

Authors: Marissa McClure, Alysen Endres, Mandie Schmidt, Holly Foss, Allen Wedekind, Sarah Schmidt, Calista Escobar, Linda Moua, Jacinda Lundeen, Caleb Reed, Ella Page, Kendra McClure, Cora Waterman, Benjamin Hagen, Amity Collins, Mazin Abdel-Magid, Libby Crum, Elizabeth Tischler, Elly Herrick, Kat Beekman, Lupema Celis Castillo, Linda Hang, William Mahowald, Lydia Domale, …

Irotas 2026 Version 3, English Department-Winona State University

Irotas

Irotas is an annual student journal of the arts created and published by Winona State University students. Irotas is a sibling journal to the Satori Student Literary Magazine. This is the Irotas created in 2026. there are three versions of the 2026 Irotas. This is version 3.

Editors: Allen Wedekind, Callie Sahlstrom, Camden McDonald, Charlie Lund, Dylan Jackson, Elena Armstrong, Eva Hodnick, Jade McElmury, Jenifer Frick, Kendra McClure, Linda Hang, Linda Moua, Lydia Domaille, Reagan Roesler, Sarah Huderle, and Shaela Eriksen

Authors: Sarah Huderle, Kylee Binning, Lupema Celis Castillo, Kira Kainz, Elizabeth Tischler, Calista Escobar, Caleb Reed, William Mahowald, Linda …

Icarus’S Fall: Villainization In Wicked, Star Wars, And The Untamed, Laura Renfroe

Honors Theses

When looking back on the most beloved, yet infamous, villains of popular culture, one can note an abundant rise of prequels and backstory-driven media exploring the paths that villain characters take that lead them to their tragic fall. Some of those stories include John M. Chu’s Wicked, George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and Chen Jialin and Zheng Weiwin’s The Untamed, each of which explores protagonists who are labeled as “wicked” and depicted as fallen to the “dark side.” While these characters are often studied in existing literary research, there have yet to be explicit ties …

Queer Okayness & The Modernist Influence: A New Form Of Queer Poetics In Ocean Vuong’S Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Sophia Behnke

Audre Lorde Prize

This paper analyzes poems from Ocean Vuong's 2016 debut collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, as a contemporary evolution of queer modernist poetics from the early twentieth century. Using conceptual frameworks from Sara Ahmed and Audre Lorde, the author argues for the cultural power of poetics as an inherently queer art form which artists are constantly redefining. By studying how prominent lesbian and queer modernists disrupted heteronormative ideals through non-conformist poetic strategies, the author develops a comparison to Vuong's work as a contemporary queer poet who both draws from past forms and develops a more nuanced understanding of queerness …

2026 Greenleaf Review-- Better Days (No. 39), Sigma Tau Delta

The Greenleaf Review

No abstract provided.

Separate But Found: An Ontological Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Byron Haynes

Posters - 2026

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, separation becomes the ideal solution for African American women to recover their humanity and build a future. These women understandably harbor for their oppressor and would be unable to foster a coexistence with them, given their suffering after being the victims of sexual assault, lynchings, hard labor, substandard living circumstances, and death regularly. By illustrating the methodical methods in which women are dehumanized under Whiteness, this essay examines how each woman reclaims their humanity through the separation of Whiteness in their lives through Baby Suggs’s preaching, Sethe’s choice to kill her daughter, Denver’s exploration of reality …

Ruby's, Clarissa Sigale

English Honors Projects

Ruby's is a realistic fiction novel that follows the complex lives and relationships between a group of small town Nevada sex workers.

The first five chapters follow a unique cast of characters. Digo, who has given up on his dreams of being an artist and is terrified of honest emotional conversation, falls into a messy relationship with Samir, a disabled drag queen who wears his heart on his sleeve. Meanwhile, Faun grapples with the news of her abusive mother's death as well as her relationship with her still-alive father.

Yarrow is the perfect place for messy people in a messy …

Literary Colonization And Locating Avenues Of Subversion In Bobby Flores-Villasis' Suite Bergamasque, Michael Aaron C. Gomez

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This paper examines four short stories included in the collection titled Suite Bergamasque, written by multi-awarded Negrense playwright and fictionist Bobby Flores-Villasis. A materialist reading situates Villasis within the canon of Philippine literature in English and analyzes the way his stories formally render the class antagonisms of history through the interconnected narratives of Dumaguete City’s sugar elite. Finally, this paper also contends that the political imagination of Villasis’ work exhorts contemporary Dumaguete writers to critically examine inherited hagiographies in order to describe fully the conditions that have shaped the city into its contemporary formation, particularly the phenomena of gentrification …

"Staged” Discussion (Activity), Lytton Smith Ph.D.

School of Arts & Sciences

This activity was developed by SUNY Geneseo Professor Lytton Smith during the spring 2026 semester.

Learning Objectives

• To help students identify their own ‘default’ or habitual behaviors in teamwork settings
• To help students name and value alternative behaviors they will try out in future teamwork settings.
• To disrupt establish power dynamics within the classroom in order to allow different voices and learning styles to emerge as contributors in the second half of a semester (when patterns can have become ingrained: the same voices start the conversation each discussion, etc.)

Historic Shrouds: A New Voice For Shakespearean Women, Ashleigh E. Weinstock

Global Tides

This article presents, and seeks to remedy, the argument that Shakespeare’s female characters are deprived of equal representation as complex humans through narrative gaps, action relegated to offstage scenes, and reduced opportunities for direct-to-audience speech, mirroring the social hierarchies of early modern gender, which continue to be reflected in modern society.

While this critique is not new, this essay argues that the criticism of these theatrical inequalities is insufficient to remedy their harms. Instead, this author proposes a performance-based, generative model of restorative justice termed the Historic Shroud, which seeks to give voice to sidelined female characters by placing …

Acknowledgments And Author Biographies

Emerging Writers

An editorial note of acknowledgement along with author biographies.