Defining Heroinism: Heartthrobs Refining Heroines In 18th And 19th Century Women's Literature,
2022
Murray State University
Defining Heroinism: Heartthrobs Refining Heroines In 18th And 19th Century Women's Literature, Grace M. Gibson
Honors College Theses
This project will explore the emergence of “heroinism,” a uniquely feminine way in which early female authors approached the heroine’s journey. Barred by male expectations of female conduct both in society and literature, eighteenth and nineteenth century women daring to “attempt the pen” forged stories of heroines with conventions and tropes distinctly, though not entirely, separate from those told of centuries of heroes. I intend to track the ways in which these early tales of heroines told by women strayed from the traditional heroic plot, with unique motivations, mentors, trials, and rewards, but also how they were shaped and confined …
"I Need To Write About What I Believe": Journaling And Afrofuturism In Octavia E. Butler's Parable Of The Sower And Parable Of The Talents,
2022
Cleveland State University
"I Need To Write About What I Believe": Journaling And Afrofuturism In Octavia E. Butler's Parable Of The Sower And Parable Of The Talents, Shlana E. Sims
ETD Archive
Butler’s choice of using the diary of a young Black girl and of making that Black girl a leader is directly paralleled in real history via diaries, such as The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells. Butler’s use of the journaling technique via a Black woman ties the future to the past as the diaries of these influential Black women are read by later generations giving a glimpse of what dreams, hopes, and goals the women had for the Black Community. She further gives cautionary tales of “if-this-continues to-go-on” as a warning for the community to be on its guard, …
Triumph In The Suburbs: Richard Ford And The Spaces Of New Capitalism,
2022
Clemson University
Triumph In The Suburbs: Richard Ford And The Spaces Of New Capitalism, John Gorton
All Theses
In his 1986 book America, Baudrillard noted that “the most banal suburb…is more at the centre of the world than any of the cultural manifestations of old Europe.” My thesis argues that this monumental shift from the suburbs as enclaves at the outer edges of cultural urban centers to “the centre of the world” is at the heart of Richard Ford’s realist project in his Pulitzer Prize winning Bascombe series starting with The Sportswriter in 1986. Emergent twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature scholars have been interested in the schism between the fictionalized representation and the lived experience of suburbia — while …
Exploring The Scp Wiki: Community, Digital Horror, And Apocalyptic Fiction,
2022
University of Texas at Arlington
Exploring The Scp Wiki: Community, Digital Horror, And Apocalyptic Fiction, Justin M. Jones
English Theses - Archive
The SCP is a body of user-submitted fiction broadly classified as horror and often compared to other user-submitted horror such as Creepypasta. While these comparisons have been made in research and among the SCP community, the SCP seems to function differently than other such sites. Very little research has been done on the SCP and what exists examines it as a work of horror and as an example of emerging online folklore. This thesis further expands upon this research by examining how the unique community participating on the SCP Wiki shapes the text, how the SCP is not just a …
Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth,
2022
Duquesne University
Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth, Christopher Maverick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Since the 1938 introduction of Superman, superheroes have been ever-present in American popular culture. Indeed, with the modern preponderance of comic book movies dominating the American cinematic box-office, superhero fantasy is arguably the most important genre of fiction being produced in the contemporary moment. Peter Coogan, Kurt Busiek and many other scholars have discussed the prominence and relevance of the superhero fantasy as a genre. Still others, including Umberto Eco and Marco Arnaudo, have asserted that the superhero is not so much a genre and as it is the evolution of mythology. In Sex and the Superman, I argue …
Hurricane Girls,
2022
Louisiana State University
“I Suppose An Island Dweller Should Expect It To Be So”: The Contradiction And Drama Of Maternity And Islands In Caleb’S Crossing,
2022
Brigham Young University
“I Suppose An Island Dweller Should Expect It To Be So”: The Contradiction And Drama Of Maternity And Islands In Caleb’S Crossing, Shayla Frandsen
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
Islands have a long tradition of capturing human imagination and functioning as a space that nurtures both magic and mystery. As geographic locations, they seem to avoid easy taxonomy even while behaving easily categorizable: they exist as tourist fantasies separate from everyday landscape even while many operate as an othered land that is still “safe” enough to visit. They are isolated yet capable of nurturing strong cultural identity. They also act as autonomous entities while still being interconnected within larger natural structures, coastlines, and waterways. In these ways and more islands navigate as border spaces of inherent contradiction—contradictions which are …
Cover And Front Matter,
2022
Brigham Young University
Cover And Front Matter
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
No abstract provided.
To The Lighthouse Or To Mrs. Ramsay? A Study Of Materialization Through The Symbolism Of The Lighthouse In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse,
2022
Swarthmore College
To The Lighthouse Or To Mrs. Ramsay? A Study Of Materialization Through The Symbolism Of The Lighthouse In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse, Virginia Moscetti
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
In this paper, I argue that the “lighthouse” in Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse operates as a symbol for Mrs. Ramsay’s “self-hood” and for Mr. Ramsay’s obscure desire for sanctuary and domesticity in Mrs. Ramsay. Through this symbolism I further contend that Woolf renders the ambiguous processes associated with self-hood and desire materially legible and, in doing so, demonstrates how metaphor and symbolism reconstitute our material world into representation. Moreover, I argue that we can conceptualize the lighthouse symbolism revolving around and centered in Mrs. Ramsay in terms of T.J. Clark’s “dual figure”; a figure with two symbolic connotations …
Practicing Re-Enlightenment : Technology Revisited In The Age Of Climate Change,
2022
University at Albany, State University of New York
Practicing Re-Enlightenment : Technology Revisited In The Age Of Climate Change, Gyuri Kang
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
In the age of climate change, the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh asks whether humanity is prepared for the unthinkable nature of climate events. The Earth’s climate is changing faster than humans can expect and adapt. Ghosh warns that modern people are too deranged to imagine in what forms of changes are approaching. His term, derangement, suggests that humans are no longer able to imagine the future world shaped by climate change. The signals of the unexpectable realities of climate change, however, may be hidden in existing knowledge. Here, technology can help us access this hidden knowledge through its ability to …
A Discourse Analysis Of Cheers,
2022
Minnesota State University Moorhead
A Discourse Analysis Of Cheers, Paul Wiesenborn
Dissertations, Theses, and Projects
This paper analyzes the pragmatics features of the language in an episode of the sitcom Cheers to find out what second language learners need to know about the language of the sitcom and about the background knowledge informing it for that episode to be understandable to them and for it thus to be an effective as an instruction tool. To answer this question, the researcher transcribed the speech in the episode and used a speech act theory-based approach to identify and categorize deixis, locutionary forms, illocutionary types, and instances of reduction and types of indirect speech. Categories in these areas …
The Dream Of Property: Law And Environment In William T. Vollmann’S Dying Grass And Leslie Marmon Silko’S Almanac Of The Dead,
2022
Bucknell University
The Dream Of Property: Law And Environment In William T. Vollmann’S Dying Grass And Leslie Marmon Silko’S Almanac Of The Dead, Ted Hamilton
Faculty Journal Articles
This article describes how the law inflects the narration of environmental conflict in William T. Vollmann’s Dying Grass (2015) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991). By focusing on the legal common sense of settler colonialism—its emphasis on private property in land and its subjugation of Indigenous peoples to the guardianship of the state—the article explores the ways in which Vollmann’s and Silko’s novels present counternarratives to the law’s story of justified conquest. Combining a law and literature approach with ecocriticism, this article highlights the importance of the legal imagination in defining human-land relations in the United States. …
Character First: Defining And Methodizing Character Depth,
2022
Lawrence University
Character First: Defining And Methodizing Character Depth, Jeff Mason
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
This paper explores the definition of "depth" in characters and provides a radical new definition, supplemented by an applicable model. By looking into significant literary theory, contemporary works of story, and even elements of mathematics, this paper advances our understanding of characters and how they create meaning in stories.
Marriage And Relationships In Art Spiegelman’S Maus: The Erasure Of The Female Experience,
2022
BYU
Marriage And Relationships In Art Spiegelman’S Maus: The Erasure Of The Female Experience, Gretchen K. Picklesimer Kinney
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
In this paper, the author explores how Vladek’s focus on money, control, and independence creates an imbalance of power in his romantic relationships with Luica, Anja, and Mala. She explores Vladek’s motivations for continuing (or not continuing) these relationships, and how Vladek tries to maintain power and control. She analyzes how Vladek ignores the perspectives and experiences of these women to create his own biased narrative of the relationships.
Girlhood And Engendered Alienation In The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter And A Tree Grows In Brooklyn,
2022
LSU New Orleans
Girlhood And Engendered Alienation In The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter And A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Lauren C. Dolese
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Utilizing a girls’ studies perspective and materialist feminist lens, this paper seeks to put Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) in conversation with Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943). Besides being published in the early 1940s, both works feature young girls navigating class struggles, exploring their identities, and struggling against dominant ideologies specific to their time and place. McCullers’ and Smith’s novels depict how a patriarchal, capitalist society imposes upon young women a narrow, misogynistic view of themselves and the women around them—facilitating the social reproduction of oppression and alienation. In depicting these realities of …
Elis Gruffydd And The Welsh Historical Tradition,
2022
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Elis Gruffydd And The Welsh Historical Tradition, Ann Dobbs Riley-Adams
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Elis Gruffydd’s Cronicl is the longest piece of original prose ever written in the Welsh language, and the first example of writing by a Welsh author for a Welsh audience produced on the Continent. In 2018, Elis’s Cronicl was added to the prestigious UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register, one of only five such recognitions in Wales, giving the Cronicl globally recognized status. Despite this, Elis’s Cronicl is understudied, a “forgotten gem” most of which has never been transcribed, translated, or published in book form. Elis lived and wrote in the British military center and staple port, Calais, which …
A Hidden Window: Love And Insecurity For Peter And Clive,
2022
DePauw University
A Hidden Window: Love And Insecurity For Peter And Clive, Ian Smith '26
Best First-Year Seminar Writing
The concept that Peter Walsh’s views in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway are a hidden critique of her fellow Bloomsbury member Clive Bell’s incendiary essay Civilization is in no way innovative or groundbreaking, having been recognized and expanded upon by biographers and literary critics alike. However, this comparison is deceptively easy to extend to realms in which it does not apply. Woolf is first and foremost a novelist, and Peter Walsh is first and foremost a character in a novel. As such, Peter’s presence in Mrs. Dalloway should not be interpreted as a commentary on Bell’s Civilization, but rather as …
No Better Than Any: An Exploration Of Masculinity And Modes Of Violence,
2022
University of Texas at El Paso
No Better Than Any: An Exploration Of Masculinity And Modes Of Violence, Brian Daniel Lee
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
In these seventeen short stories, I attempt to elicit and unmask hegemonic structures for what they are: destructive, dehumanizing, and unnatural. In these stories, I have positioned seemingly benevolent or at least nonviolent male and female protagonists in worlds somewhat removed, but not foreign from our own. The stories are intended to convey a sort of bathetic majority response to the destructive forces at work in society. The purpose for these settings and largely nonplussed characters is to better trace the fault lines of the masculine hegemonic structures and to pull symbolic and systemic violence into an atmosphere where it …
Dismembering Monstrous Metaphors In Latinx Speculative Fiction,
2022
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Dismembering Monstrous Metaphors In Latinx Speculative Fiction, Danielle Garcia-Karr
Theses and Dissertations
U.S. public discourse and popular media are rife with monstrous metaphors of Latinxs. This thesis argues that these gothic monstrous metaphors construct an affective economy of fear, which results in material violence and the devastation of Latinx lives. I further argue that to intervene within this affective economy, Latinx authors write speculative fiction, employing critical race methodologies, to negotiate monstrosity in relation to citizenship. In other words, speculative Latinx authors disidentify with monsters and enact epistemic disobedience, problematizing the known and naturalized and delinking Latinx people from monstrous metaphors to interrupt cycles of fear and violence. In exploring this metaphoric …
Intensa: Writings In English And Spanish From A Feminist Immigrant,
2022
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Intensa: Writings In English And Spanish From A Feminist Immigrant, Nubia Sarahi Reyna Melendez
Theses and Dissertations
INTENSA: WRITINGS IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH FROM A MEXICAN FEMINIST is a bilingual work written in hybrid literature. The writings, in both English and Spanish, are free prose poetry and tell the story of its narrator through a feminist and immigrant point of view coming from a overwhelmingly majority catholic country, religion that does not view men and women as equals. The thesis details the narrator's life through a feminist point of view as well as her relationship with her mother, her personal relationships, what it means to be an immigrant and what it is like for her, and many …
