Anthropocene Composition: Teaching Terminal Generations In The Pre-Apocalyptic Classroom,
2023
University of South Carolina
Anthropocene Composition: Teaching Terminal Generations In The Pre-Apocalyptic Classroom, John Michael Purfield
Theses and Dissertations
The Anthropocene is an era characterized by human alteration of the planet at deep geological levels and permeation of anthropogenic damage across all biomes. The primary crisis of this era is climate change, which is understood broadly as the anthropogenic disruption in weather patterns and global temperature averages caused by carbon emissions and other pollutants, as well as extractivism and terraforming (deforestation, monoculture farming, desertification and alterations of waterways, for example). Though popular media tends to frame climate change as a looming but always future problem, it is currently producing casualties, both human and nonhuman. The ongoing great extinction correlates …
A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture,
2023
University of South Carolina - Columbia
A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush
Senior Theses
This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …
After Erasure: Contingency And The Persistence Of Subjectivity,
2023
University of South Carolina
After Erasure: Contingency And The Persistence Of Subjectivity, Nathan Deprospo
Theses and Dissertations
My dissertation examines the relationship between contemporary posthumanist discourse in rhetoric and composition and the Hegelian dialectic. My basic premise is that the ethical and philosophical aspirations of posthumanist discourse—embrace otherness, improve social relations, foster inclusivity—are undercut by a persistent conservatism and destructiveness that runs throughout the social body. This is a Hegelian point: one should not treat social ills, such as racism, sexism, or classism, as merely unfortunate, cosmetic side effects of social organizations, but rather as fundamental human tendencies. For Hegel, there is a tendency towards exclusion, towards negating otherness, that is inherent in human subjectivity, and which …
'The Frank Exchange': A Historical Drama Novella,
2023
University of Rhode Island
'The Frank Exchange': A Historical Drama Novella, Ariel Finkle
Senior Honors Projects
I am an avid fan of historical fiction books such as The Royal Diaries. But given the recent popularity of more adult royal drama series like The Great, as well as impostor true crime shows like Inventing Anna, on this project I set out to create a historical fiction drama of my own. While searching for a real-life figure to base my story on, I happened to see a quick footnote at the bottom of an article on Catherine the Great that intrigued me. At the turn of the 18th century, an ordinary young Polish woman named Eva Frank managed …
“Speak For Yourself”: Ovidian Women And The Suppression Of Voice And Complaint In Metamorphoses And Heroides,
2023
University of South Carolina
“Speak For Yourself”: Ovidian Women And The Suppression Of Voice And Complaint In Metamorphoses And Heroides, Grayson Elizabeth Newman
Theses and Dissertations
Ovid’s portrayal and attitude towards women is one that is particularly puzzling and contradictory throughout his Metamorphoses and Heroides. Recent scholarship on Ovidian literature is only divided on whether or not Ovid’s intentions within these two works were to sympathize with the Roman woman’s experience or to reinforce the lack of female representation in Roman society; however, I argue that Ovid fails to achieve empathy for the Roman woman. In Heroides, these women are pining and tragic, often meeting some terrible fate shortly after being abandoned by their suitors and putting forth a complaint. Conversely, women in Metamorphoses …
Rhetorical New Materialism, Queers, And Cringe,
2023
University of South Carolina
Rhetorical New Materialism, Queers, And Cringe, Katherine Anne Schell
Theses and Dissertations
Cringe, the negative reflexive reaction we experience when we witness something embarrassing or awkward, has a bad reputation in the queer community. In online and physical queer spaces, there is a pervading belief that “cringe culture” must be antithetical to queerness, that no queer community could possibly achieve liberation until it has eradicated the threat of cringe. This thesis revises that cringe vs. queer positioning by reimagining cringe as its own rhythm of queerness and examining the productive aspects of cringe through engagement with thinkers like Karen Barad and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The thesis, formatted as a response to a …
Identity In Literacy Narratives: Toward Reflexive Pedagogy In First Year Writing,
2023
University of South Carolina
Identity In Literacy Narratives: Toward Reflexive Pedagogy In First Year Writing, Laiken Elizabeth Harrigan
Theses and Dissertations
An ongoing discussion for composition pedagogues is the relation of individuals’ identities and discourse histories in relation to academic discourses. In this thesis, I argue that academic discourse cannot be entirely separated from personal discourse, as individuals are always in conversation with their discoursal histories and identities. In order to better understand how students perceive their relationships to academic discourse, I analyze how First Year Writing (FYW) students experience the discourse of FYW— where they either intertwine their identities or we see their personal identities collide with the academic space. I used open coding to conduct a textual analysis of …
Hardly Working: The Labor Concerns Of Graduate Student Assistants In Writing Programs,
2023
University of South Carolina
Hardly Working: The Labor Concerns Of Graduate Student Assistants In Writing Programs, Lily Victoria Howard-Hill
Theses and Dissertations
The instructors of undergraduate writing courses are very often graduate students who exist in a space between student and teacher, subsequently shouldering a dual burden of responsibility. This is particularly the case in freshman writing and composition classes. Graduate students that hold assistantships and work in writing programs have a number of concerns related to their academic labor, specifically the benefits and compensation they receive in exchange for their work. To further illustrate these issues, this project offers the results of an IRB-approved study that highlights the tight connection between graduate student assistants’ working conditions, the financial and material benefits …
Nature As Culture: Ecofeminist Narratives Of Environmental And Colonial History,
2023
University of South Carolina
Nature As Culture: Ecofeminist Narratives Of Environmental And Colonial History, Sydney Leimbach
Theses and Dissertations
“Nature as Culture: Ecofeminist Narratives of Environmental and Colonial History” is a cross-cultural, comparative, feminist investigation of two films, The Nightingale and Wolfwalkers, and two books, The Giving Tree and The Overstory. The narratives are analyzed through a combination of ecofeminism and decolonial feminism, revealing the four narratives’ investment in the effects of colonization on the environment. The two chapters explore the association of women with nature, traditionally used as a subordinating position, instead as a condition of empathetic understanding with both the colonized and the environment. Further, these narratives use the association of women with nature as …
Communicative Kissing With Alien Poetry: New Muses In Neil Gaiman’S “How To Talk To Girls At Parties”,
2023
University of South Carolina
Communicative Kissing With Alien Poetry: New Muses In Neil Gaiman’S “How To Talk To Girls At Parties”, Leanna Ashley Herbert
Theses and Dissertations
The representation of women in the fiction of Neil Gaiman is a topic that seems to obsess scholars, critics, fans, and (likely) the author himself. It is imperative that closer scholarly attention be paid to the figure of the muse, a figure defined in contemporary culture by her representability, as she appears across Gaiman’s works. This thesis traces the evolution of m/Muses or muse-like figures in the fiction of Neil Gaiman, arguing that the short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” imagines an empowering evolution for those who are objectified or silenced by the assumption that they are …
Kurt Vonnegut, A Difficult Feminist: Investigating Female Characters In Bluebeard,
2023
University of South Carolina
Kurt Vonnegut, A Difficult Feminist: Investigating Female Characters In Bluebeard, Matthew Steven Medl
Theses and Dissertations
After a brief contextualization of Vonnegut’s work, this essay close-reads his 1987 novel, Bluebeard, and locates the feminism within. I argue that Vonnegut establishes women as agents of generative change, breakers of marital conventions, artistic sages, authors, expressionists, interlopers, and nonviolent activists. I primarily examine Circe Berman and Marilee Kemp, supplementing with evidence from Edith Taft and Dorothy, as well as wider scholarship.
Sites Of Peace And Pain: The Black Grandmother Figure In Toni Morrison’S Beloved, Jazz, And Sula,
2023
University of South Carolina
Sites Of Peace And Pain: The Black Grandmother Figure In Toni Morrison’S Beloved, Jazz, And Sula, Alexus Joannea Ray
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines how Toni Morrison captures the genuine lived unique experiences of Black grandmothers and their granddaughters throughout her novels and specifically in Beloved, Jazz, and Sula. My analysis takes a closer look at the complications behind Morrison’s grandmothers in order to demonstrate that, while she is strong, supportive, and family oriented, the Black grandmother figure can also be a person of peril. The main characters, Denver, Violet, and Sula must come to terms with the contradictions of strength and sacrifice that the novels insist are better left in the past. Drawing on Morrison scholarship and Black women’s …
Gothic Transformations And Remediations In Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction,
2023
Marquette University
Gothic Transformations And Remediations In Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Wendy Fall
Dissertations (1934 -)
My project considers the transformation of gothic characters as they move among different types of publications in the nineteenth century. As they meander from triple-decker novels to chapbooks, to theatrical scripts, to periodicals, and to penny serials, gothic stories and portrayals of people in them are altered by the length and technological capability of each form. They also mutate to reflect the tastes and ideologies of their changing audiences, and to hybridize genres under the popular influence of realism toward the mid-century. The mainstays of the gothic mode remain stable; these publications adhere to ambiguous or pluralistic ideologies, are obsessed …
Milton’S Learning: Complementarity And Difference In Paradise Lost,
2023
Marquette University
Milton’S Learning: Complementarity And Difference In Paradise Lost, Peter Spaulding
Dissertations (1934 -)
When we consider, in the vein of Golda Werman’s Milton and Midrash, the idea of Milton’s Paradise Lost as self-consciously responding to the Bible, the question of why he makes the changes and additions that he does comes to the fore. This dissertation explores the middle books of Paradise Lost as Milton’s midrashic interventions that, among other things, emphasize the presence of education in the Garden. These scenes shed some light on Milton’s own views of education. Specifically, these interventions show a theory of education that conceives of difference as non-combative, a distinctly non-Hobbesian view of difference. Using Aristotle’s four …
“The Development Of The Conceptive Plot Through Early 19th-Century English Novels”,
2023
Marquette University
“The Development Of The Conceptive Plot Through Early 19th-Century English Novels”, Jannea R. Thomason
Dissertations (1934 -)
My dissertation, “The Development of the Conceptive Plot through Early 19th Century English Novels,” reads these novels through the history of midwifery and reproduction to show how authors developed a coherent set of narrative features to challenge ideas about women’s agency in reproduction. Building on recent explorations of the maternal and feminist aspects of the novels, I further nuance the representations of women and reproduction in the novels. Nineteenth-century authors explored reproductive rhetoric, law, and medical practices, and their explorations appear as what I call “the conceptive plot”: a set of narrative features illustrating how different systems strip women of …
Designing "Writing For Health And Medicine": Course Arcs, Anchors, And Action,
2023
Marquette University
Designing "Writing For Health And Medicine": Course Arcs, Anchors, And Action, Elizabeth L. Angeli, Lillian Campbell
English Faculty Research and Publications
This article details how we developed a hybrid rhetoric of health and medicine and technical communication writing course in response to a call for a health sciences writing course. We anticipate that other institutions may be experiencing similar demand for these courses and thus introduce our process and course design as models for meeting this growing curricular need.
Capacitating Community: The Writing Innovation Symposium,
2023
Marquette University
Capacitating Community: The Writing Innovation Symposium, Jenn Fishman, Abigayle Farrier, Aleisha R. Balestri, Barbara Clauer, Bump Halbritter, Darci Thoune, Derek G. Handley, Gitte Frandsen, Holly Burgess, Lillian Campbell, Elizabeth L. Angeli, Louise Zamparutti, Jenna Green, Jennifer Kontny, Jessica R. Edwards, Jessie Wirkus Haynes, Julie Lindquist, Kaia L. Simon, Kayla Urban Fettig, Kelsey Otero, Margaret Perrow, Maria Novotny, Marie Cleary-Fishman, Maxwell Gray, Melissa Kaplan, Patrick W. Thomas, Paul Feigenbaum, Sara Heaser, Seán Mccarthy
English Faculty Research and Publications
The topic of this symposium, capacitating community, invites CLJ readers to consider what makes community possible. This piece showcases one means, small conferences, via a retrospective on the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national scope that has hosted writers and writing educators annually in Milwaukee, WI, since 2018. Through a quilted conversation pieced from hours of small-group discussion, twenty-nine participants across academic and nonacademic ranks, roles, and ranges of experience offer insight into the WIS as well as the nature and value of professional community.
Anti-Woman Invective On The Early Modern Stage: Abuse, Degradation, And Resistance,
2023
Western Michigan University
Anti-Woman Invective On The Early Modern Stage: Abuse, Degradation, And Resistance, Savannah Xaver
Dissertations
On the early modern stage, gendered epithets like “strumpet,” “mermaid,” “minx,” “hobby horse,” “courtesan,” “drab,” and “whore” are not just markers of misogyny. Instead, these insults harm the male user as well as their female target. My cross-playwright and cross-genre connections show the complex, wide use and impact of anti-woman terms. A wide-ranging study of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries reveals that gendered insults signify masculine mental decline in tragedies as well as comedies and tragicomedies. In tragedy, the increasingly violent language of male slur users – like, for example, the frustrated Othello, who declares, of his wife, …
Editorial,
2023
University of Northern Iowa
Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
The Medieval Mind Of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped A Great Mind By Jason M. Baxter,
2023
Chandler Preparatory Academy
The Medieval Mind Of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped A Great Mind By Jason M. Baxter, Josiah Peterson
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
In his new book, The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis, Jason Baxter identifies the medieval thought and practices, and many of the specific medieval authors and texts, just below the surface in Lewis’s popular writings and argues that Lewis “was not a successful modernizer of Christianity and writer of fiction despite the fact that he spent so much time studying old, dusty books, but because of them.” (6)
