English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Author Of A Fictional Slave Advertisement, Nathaniel Jablonski

The Criterion

Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad, describes the adventures of Cora, a runaway slave from a Georgian plantation. Although a historical entity, Whitehead’s railroad deviates from history’s figurative railroad to a physical one. While Whitehead’s interpretation of the underground railroad is divergent from historical fact, he still grounds his work with the inclusion of all but one authentic runaway slave advertisement. My focus within this essay is centered on Whitehead's final advertisement, which is for Cora. In examining the poster and the unique characteristics of Ridgeway (the slave-catcher), Homer (Ridgeway’s companion), Cora, and Terrance Randall (owner of the Georgia …

Shakespeare’S Staging And The Self In The Sonnets, Xiani Zhu

The Criterion

This essay examines the theatricality of Shakespeare’s young man sonnets and how he uses the “stage” as a shortcut to deliver abstract ideas such as the concept of beauty, time, and love that are otherwise difficult to express. On a micro level, he frames each individual sonnet as a stage, where each specific setting and scenario allows dramatic tension to arise between the characters on stage, and from there, abstract ideas and emotions are naturally presented without being directly stated. On a macro level, the entire young-man sonnet sub-sequence — being in love with a beautiful young man — itself …

“His Own Was Ampler:” Dickinson And Whitman’S Sunset Poetry, Devyn Forcina

The Criterion

Although they are utterly dissimilar poets, Dickinson and Whitman made sunsets frequent subjects of their work. Dickinsonian sunset poetry attempts to imitate the natural phenomena and evokes tension and competition. A kind of closure is forced upon her unwilling speaker, who struggles against the inevitable ending of the day. In contrast, Whitmanian sunset poetry sings and celebrates the finale of the setting sun and delights in the cyclical nature of time. While Dickinson acknowledges the temporary quality of a single sunset, Whitman rejoices in their immortal occurrence. Both poets preserve the imagery of sunsets as photographers would, while imbuing them …

Letting The Cat Out Of The Wall: Irrepressible Perversity In Poe, Kelly Gallagher

The Criterion

This paper examines several short stories by Edgar Allan Poe that feature the motif of immurement, the practice of imprisoning a victim within walls. Poe uses immurement in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to suggest psychological suppression as the narrators physically hide their victims while simultaneously hiding their own self-destructive natures, which he refers to as “perversity.” His stories “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Cask of Amontillado” convey that attempting to suppress one’s capacity for self-destruction only guarantees self-destruction. Poe’s motif of immurement demonstrates how human beings tend to ignore their inherent perversity, but his stories …

Injustice In Childhood: Jane Eyre And The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, Christian Barkman

The Criterion

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, are autobiographical novels narrated by the fictional Jane Eyre and the real Frederick Douglass. Both stories evoke an outpouring of pity for their respective narrator: Jane, for the unmerited abuses dealt against her by family and school administrators, but most of all Douglass, who reserves the greater portion of lament on account of his dreadful persecution under the evil of slavery. The environments Jane and Douglass inhabit throughout their childhood inflict an immense burden on their physical body and psyche. This essay specially examines the …

Women, Writing, And Storytelling In Medieval England And The Canterbury Tales, Sadie O'Conor

The Criterion

For a woman to succeed in an academic sphere, it is never enough for her to be clever-- she must be brilliant. “The Second Nun’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales explores the metaphorical brilliance (in sexual purity, intelligence, and faith) of St. Cecilia. The tale is also a mechanism for the Second Nun to advocate for her own vocation of “holy work,” for the sake of the learned religious women who preserved such writings. The themes of her tale are quite different from those espoused by the Wife of Bath, but the Wife also argues to have her voice …

Transforming Yourself Through English, Travis Bonwell, Joscelyn Bradbury, Christina Hudson, Jenna Sotin

2022 Symposium

The purpose of this project is redesigning Patterson Hall’s English and Philosophy billboard to inspire students to join the department. English and Philosophy are important, interdisciplinary skills that can transcend into various careers. By creating a thought-provoking billboard, we hope to inspire current and future undergraduates to choose an English or Philosophy Major.

One of the biggest obstacles these programs face is overcoming the preconceived notions surrounding them. By informing students of the countless interdisciplinary skills these programs teach, as well as detailing alumni/famous figures who do not immediately induce thoughts of English or philosophy, we can pull students from …

Nature, Magic, And Healing: How Leslie Silko Builds Her Native World, Ashton Q. Record

Student Publications

An essay examining how Leslie M. Silko utilizes the relationship between Nature and Native American Mystic Arts to create a full and vibrant world in her novel Ceremony.

Post(Al) Apocalypse: A Letter About Virginia Woolf's Fictional Letters, Ethan Widlansky

Pomona Senior Theses

I set out to write about eating distress in Virginia Woolf. I wanted to write about mothers, too, in her fiction and essays, because, as Chris Kraus puts it, “Mother is Food.” I began by investigating one of Woolf’s fictional letters, written in Jacob’s Room. There, the letter arrives at breakfast. This coincidence followed me into my other readings on mothering and food, so I decided to discuss Woolf’s fictional epistolary form for an entire chapter. And then, after winter break, an entire chapter became an entire thesis.

Generation(Al) Matters: Story, Lens, And Tone, Louise Weatherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

This essay tells a story of how “generation” came to matter in rhetoric and composition/writing studies; analyzes and advocates for “generation” as a lens through which to examine disciplinary studies and activities; and considers how we can productively engage in generational relations between individuals and groups. It adopts a framework of “hospitality” (adapted from Richard and Janis Haswell) to develop a concept of “cross-generational relations” as an aspirational category. An ethic of hospitality is proposed to facilitate respectful, productive relations among generational groups, which recognize and enact interdependence but allow for a wide range of stances and strategies of interaction …

Existential Orwell: Capitalism, Religion, And Philosophy, Eliza A. Morgan

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Orwell wrote in the same 1930s Europe as existentialist philosophers: most notably, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. We know, through his critique of Sartre’s “Portrait of an Antisemite” (Coombes 12), that Orwell was active in these circles, well enough to critically evaluate absurdist theories. As such, it’s long overdue to discuss how the concept of existentialism may have shaped Orwell’s beliefs, specifically in two of his contemporary novels, The Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. The purpose of this paper is to argue that existentialism, specifically the ideas of bad faith and absurdism, played a pivotal role for Orwell …

Femininity As Disability In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar., Shae Kirkus, Monika Shehi Herr

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Disability studies is often associated with the treatment of people with physical disabilities, which are defined as features of non-normative human bodies. However, analyzed through the lens of the classical idea of the ideal body, which was first and foremost male, femininity itself is also atypical and therefore confines women to the realm of being disabled.

Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical novel The Bell Jar shows how the feminine is a disability in and of itself. As Plath’s main character and narrator, Esther Greenwood, spirals into her own madness, her condition is only worsened by societal reactions to her declining mental health. …

Disablist Propaganda: Evil On One Hand, And A Hook For The Other, Lauren Reitz, Richard Murphy

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Despite its publication by J.M. Barrie in 1904, Peter and Wendy has attracted very little critical attention. Perhaps the story is so beloved for its adventure-packed plot, and sweet message about a boy who never grows old, that even scholars have trouble criticizing it—despite its obvious calls for analysis as film and literary adaptations continue to appear.

However, most concerning is an apparent gap in the analysis of the story’s disabled villain, Captain Hook, through a modern Disability Studies lens. The following textual analysis of Captain Hook will serve to call attention to the way his disability plays into his …

“Let Him Walk With You”: Telling Stories About Fifteenth-Century Men, And The Women They Left Behind, Rachel E. Moss

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In this article I use a blend of autoethnography and historical storytelling to explore the role of outdoor space in forming relationships between fifteenth-century men and their maintenance of hegemonic power. By weaving together three striking vignettes from late fifteenth-century England, constructed as creative retellings of the historical evidence, with autoethnographic notes on my own lived experience, I am able to fill in the gaps of the historical record and open up questions about the implications of what has been left out. I argue that the medieval cultural understanding of the outdoors as both spiritually and physically beneficial, as well …

“Their Eyes Met At The Same Instant”: The Queer Gothic And Triumphant Romance Of The Price Of Salt, Deirdre Price

Undergraduate Research Awards

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith is a seminal 20th century lesbian text famous for its suspenseful tone, slow burn romance, and narrow escape from the entrappings of the literary modes of mid-century lesbian pulp fiction. The novel provides its reader with a case study in the ways our dominant culture and narratives influence us and how we can push back against them, for it rejects the tendency held by much of English literature written prior to the last quarter of the twentieth century to punish the lesbian at the conclusion of her story for her deviance from the …

The Library Of Fiction: A Critical Edition Of Volume One (1836), Payton Marie Andreadakis, Joslyn Cristine Bishop, Catherine Ava Eliason, Marissa Nicole Fuller, Ariel Renae Hochstrasser, Jeanie Hope Jones, Elyse Christine Kunzler, Anna Sophia Lamb, Rebekah Olsen, Addison Paige Schenk

Student Works

In Summer of 2021, the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library acquired volumes one and two of a collection of short stories called The Library of Fiction, or Family Story-teller. The first volume of this collection, originally released in monthly installments published by Chapman and Hall beginning in April of 1836, contains 42 pieces of literature written by a number of Victorian authors. Some of these authors (like Mary Russell Mitford, Edward Mayhew, G. P. R. James, and W. H. Wills) were popular in their time but have been largely forgotten. This is not …

Bachelor Sketches Invisible Women In Irving’S Domestic Writings, Claudia Stokes

English Faculty Research

This essay examines Washington Irving’s domestic writings of the 1820s, and it argues that Irving devised the sketch as the literary genre of bachelorhood. In lavish, detailed sketches of numerous homes, Irving created a literary counterpart of the still life, but the effect of these sketches depended on the excision of women’s domestic labor and the portrayal of the home in a state of static readiness, with all housework already completed. Irving’s tales, however, often depict women’s hidden domestic activities and show the invisible labors that underlie his sketches. These tales, however, portray women’s housework as a source of terror, …

"Wearing A Mask To Each Other": Masculinity & The Public Eye In Victorian Sensation Fiction, Shannon Branfield

Theses and Dissertations--English

Sensation fiction, as a genre, offers a field to explore the ways in which ideologies of masculinity are negotiated, contested, and enforced. The Victorian man has no respite from social surveillance; the public is always watching, always evaluating the performance. As these sensation fiction novels build on each other, a portrait of male claustrophobia in response to unceasing surveillance is revealed. The pressure this constant scrutiny puts on Victorian men is immense and sensation novels derive many thrilling plot twists from the dramatic lengths men to which men must go to protect themselves from this gaze. These habits persist even …

How To Live Life All The Way Up Learning Life Skills From Literary Characters, Sue N. Mize

Theses and Dissertations--English

In this essay, using the theories of psychiatrist, Eric Berne and his script theory; psychoanalyst, Carl Jung and his archetypes and mandalas; as well as the Native American Medicine Wheel; and the Hindu notion of the kundalini, I analyze the psychological development of Adele Quested of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924) and Anna Wulf of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962). Adela Quested goes to India seeking the real India and while engaging the archetype of the Lover discovers her real Self. While in India she metaphorically walks the Medicine Wheel and discovers that to be …

Perilous Times: Reading The Apocalypse In Nineteenth-Century Black Women's Religious Writing, Brittany Sulzener

Theses and Dissertations--English

During the time of war, rebellion, and political upheaval in the early American nation, apocalyptic imagery featured prominently in the rhetoric of preachers, abolitionists, writers, and orators. As nineteenth-century, white, American men like George Lippard proleptically envisioned the ruins of America as a source of future longing for those looking back on a great nation, many Black religious women writing in the antebellum era imagined an apocalyptic event so cataclysmic that it would destroy and remake the nation. Apocalyptic discourse in the nineteenth century allowed Black women to eschew social constraints and deliver scathing critiques of the American sociopolitical landscape, …