English Language and Literature Commons^™

A Choice To Make: The Portrayal Of Female Characters’ Agency And Emotion In Madeline Miller’S Circe And Anaïs Mitchell’S Hadestown, Abby Swartzentruber

English Senior Capstone

In the novel Circe and the musical Hadestown, Madeline Miller and Anaïs Mitchell create transformative retellings of selected Greek myths, where the narrative perspective is shifted to the women, allowing for a deeper examination of the complexity of these characters. Circe details the life of the titular goddess as she grapples with the tension between her exile and her agency, experiencing a complex web of non-linear emotions. In Hadestown, Eurydice must learn to overcome her pessimism to trust another, while Persephone must abandon her coping mechanisms and finally stand up to the abuses of her husband, Hades. Mitchell …

Chart Study, Abigail Franklin

English Senior Capstone

Chart Study is a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that recounts moments of my life and explores my interpretation of the world. It spans decades and continents, from the Midwest to the Middle East, while following the thread of uncertainty that has always wrapped around me. Themes of self-discovery, independence, and insecurity are prominent as I play with formal poetry and sectioned essays. The title refers to my father’s time as an aviator and is an homage to all of the characteristics and quirks he instilled in me that are explored more fully in the project itself.

"Everyone Learns, Nobody Changes": Images And The Ideal In Anna Karenina And Closer, Leah Kiers

English Senior Capstone

The main characters in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Patrick Marber’s Closer literally and figuratively surround themselves with images of themselves and others that define how they choose to see and be seen. Using the framework of Tolstoy’s What Is Art?, this paper evaluates how these images affect the characters’ relationships with one another. Tolstoy writes that art should enable humanity to pursue an ideal of unity with one another, but the characters’ ideals are more self-centered, making it so that the images they use prevent them from authentically connecting with each other. Proximity with suffering and death can tear …

Insomniac - A Collection Of Poetry, Fiction, And Creative Non-Fiction, Jason Abishekaraj John

English Senior Capstone

As the title would suggest, Insomniac is a multi-genre collection which represents a handful of my written works that were born during bouts of insomnia and depression. The poems I have placed in this collection revolve around my friendships with specific (and at times multiple) individuals. The creative non-fiction pieces focus on my experiences with depression, dissociation, suicide, anxiety, hypersensitivity, epilepsy, and self-harm in hopes that they might promote conversation. Lastly, the short stories are my own spin on Bhoot (Ghost) and ¬Shikari (Hunter) stories I hungrily devoured in my childhood. My hope is that each of these pieces can …

The Stories Already Written: An Intertextual Analysis Of The Book Thief And Belonging, Jenna Kortenhoeven

English Senior Capstone

Intertextuality is a theoretical notion which enables a critic to analyze the way a writer’s story is the sum of the stories the writer has read and which can examine how human identity is also constructed from reading. Within Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Nora Krug’s Belonging, the writers find their story and identity through reading, their relationship with words mirroring their relationship with themselves, others, and the world. The Book Thief details the story of Liesel Meminger, showcasing how her entire life is shaped by words and emphasizing how her growth as a reader leads her to …

The Pieces That Make The Self: Finding Balance Between Social And Individual Identity In Frances Burney’S Evelina And Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, Jenna King

English Senior Capstone

In their novels Evelina and Mrs. Dalloway, Frances Burney and Virginia Woolf pursue an understanding of the pieces of one’s “self.” Through the journeys of Evelina Anville and Clarissa Dalloway, Burney and Woolf explore how a woman’s identity is formed by both her social role and her individuality. Although the social settings examined in the two novels vary greatly due to differences in both time period and the main characters’ stages of life, Evelina’s and Clarissa’s stories are united by their shared goal of gaining understanding of and ownership over themselves. Ultimately, both Evelina and Mrs. Dalloway argue for …

Drawing Empathy: The Benefits Of Utilizing Graphic Memoirs In Secondary Classrooms, Hailey Simmons

English Senior Capstone

The use of graphic novels and graphic memoirs in the classroom is an active discussion in many schools. Some individuals who oppose using the genre with students argue that it does not provide enough depth to have an effect on the reader. By analyzing Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Nora Krug’s Belonging, this paper explains how graphic memoirs can provide depth for readers. As Spiegelman and Krug learn of their family history with the Holocaust and World War II, they utilize the techniques of representational art, the repetition of structural elements, and the use of color and shading to portray …

The Battle Of Wilson's Creek, Paulette Bane

Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Struggling To Thrive: Nyc Publishing Salaries In The Age Of Inflation & Implications For Diversifying The Publishing Workforce, Em Villaverde

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

This research delves into the conundrum of New York City’s publishing sector, where passion drives more than profit. This paper reviews the impact of inflation and rising living costs on entry-level book publishing roles within NYC, unraveling the implications for diversity within the industry.

The central question investigates how the combination of inflation and living expenses influences the feasibility of jump-starting a publishing career in one of the most expensive cities—and the largest publishing hub—in the US. The study spotlights not only barriers to entering the industry but also the exacerbated challenges faced by BIPOC professionals.
The research zooms in …

Primitive Mythology (The Masks Of God, Volume 1) By Joseph Campbell, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

Neil Gaiman's Elevated Fairy Tale: Childhood Trauma Through The Lens Of Postmodernism, Faith Adams

Student Works

In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman explores the influence of trauma on identity formation. In the sinister world of his liminal fantasy, Gaiman’s nameless narrator strives to assemble a comforting sense of identity in the midst of traumatic chaos. Viewed through a postmodern lens, Gaiman’s use of hypertextuality and non-linear storytelling undermines idealized views of objective truth and reality, ultimately suggesting that nothing in life can be reduced to a binary.

The Importance Of Reading In Jane Austen's Novels, Leah Rice

Student Works

Reading is a central theme of both Emma (1815) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), two of Jane Austen’s most celebrated novels. The characters are constantly reading books, comparing the sizes of their libraries, and endeavoring to respond to tricky situations based on their readings of them. Mr. Darcy claims that a lady’s education is not complete until she adds to all the usual accomplishments something “more substantial”: the “improvement of her mind by extensive reading” (27). Though reading is regarded as a source of knowledge and even wisdom, these novels are what Bonaparte calls “a map of misreading” (142). Elizabeth …

The Linguistic Reimagining Of Natural Elements In Gerard Manley Hopkins' Nature Sonnets, Leah Rice

Student Works

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Victorian poet and Jesuit priest now numbered among the major English poets. When the first edition of his poems was published posthumously in 1918 by his friend Robert Bridges, it “baffled more readers than it converted” (Martin 50). Nevertheless, despite this original reticence to accept Hopkins as a poet, the tests of time and scholarship has proven his depth and continued relevance of study.

Strategies Of Liberation And Empowerment In Maya Angelou's And Audre Lorde's Black Feminist Literature, Lydia Jernigan

Student Works

The progression of second-wave feminism in America saw Black feminist writers such as Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde utilizing literature, and notably poetry, to resist against their oppression, due not only to their gender but also to their race. Lorde states in her 1977 essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” that poetry, for women, “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” One of the aims of Lorde’s explicitly political poems—as …

“Þer Watz Mete, Þer Watz Myrþe, Þer Watz Much Ioye”: The Manipulative Sotilte Of Middle English Romance, Kelly Evans

English Theses and Dissertations

The Middle English sotilte and its Middle French counterpart, the entremet, refer to the elements during a feast that conjure wonder. Like “feast” and “banquet,” both terms have been used interchangeably, with the entremet coming to signify a sweet dessert at the end of a meal in modern usage of the term. In Middle English romance, the sotilte of the feast builds upon the connotations that “subtlety” carry—guile, artifice, craft, even deceit.

Perhaps the most well-known of all Middle English sotiltes is the sudden intrusion of the Green Knight during the Christmastide feast in Sir Gawain and the Green …

The Best Children's Books Of The Year [2023 Edition], Bank Street College Of Education. Children's Book Committee

Children's Book Committee

Includes more than 600 titles chosen by the Children’s Book Committee as the best of the best published in 2022. In choosing books for the annual list, committee members consider literary quality and excellence of presentation as well as the potential emotional impact of the books on young readers. Other criteria include credibility of characterization and plot, authenticity of time and place, age suitability, positive treatment of ethnic and religious differences, and the absence of stereotypes.

"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin

Honors Projects

The art of adaptation is a difficult process, and is often hard to please general audiences that have a connection to the source material. As a student who studies both English Literature and Film Production, the question asked through this study is what does it take to write a “successful” adaptation? What qualifies as “successful”? How does an adaptation balance the themes, characterization, and plot of a piece of literature with the continuous momentum and visual complexity that the medium of film requires, all in 120 pages or less? This study engages with these questions by actively practicing adaptation, adapting …

Consent In Conversation: Education Of Sexual Violence In Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Emily Benning

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Maya Angelou’s memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is just one of many titles challenged and banned in public schools for “sexually explicit” content. On page 71 of her 281 page autobiography, Angelou discloses that she was raped at 8 years old by her mother’s boyfriend, and despite it being followed with scenes that emphasize the value of healing through literature, public attention has been directed to the (non-consensual) intercourse itself as a reason for censorship. As censorship efforts have expanded in the past two decades, challengers have continued to add more ban-worthy qualities to the list …

Propp, Parables, And Paideia: What The Stories Of Jesus Teach Us About Cultivating Culture, Rachelle Bowman

Master of Arts in Classical Studies

The parables of Jesus are well-known and oft-repeated. They are commonly taught to children in Sunday school, but Jesus used them to reveal truth to his adult audiences. This paper explores the importance of Jesus choosing to use stories to teach adults, whether these stories qualify as folklore, and also whether they can be analyzed as literature. After drawing conclusions on these matters, this paper analyzes several of the parables of Jesus according to Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale and looks to see if Jesus told stories that fit within Propp’s proposed functions. Finally, this paper asks what can …

Trends In Young Adult Literature: A Quantitative Approach To Characterizing The New York Times Young Adult Bestsellers Of 2020, 2021, And 2022, Anna Wehmeier Giol

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Understanding how a book becomes a bestseller is one of the biggest mysteries in the publishing industry. This research paper focuses on YA bestsellers and uses a quantitative methodology to try to solve the mystery. Its main objectives are to (1) review the current trends in YA literature and (2) find patterns and similarities in the text of YA bestsellers. By building a dataset and analyzing the 175 books featured in the “Young Adult Hardcover” bestseller list of the New York Times for 2020, 2021, and 2022, the study shows that YA bestsellers share characteristics and patterns, such as the …