English Language and Literature Commons^™

Diversity In Adaptations For Young People: Dahl's The Witches, Elizabeth Garri

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

This project considers the role adaptations play both as reflections of their hypotexts and as independent works. Here, I examine three adaptations of Roald Dahl's The Witches in the context of broader conversations about diversity in children's media. 

The Effect Mental Health Portrayals In Television Shows Have On Viewers, Cade Kinzel

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

The goal of this study was to research the connections between portrayals in television shows and real-life people with mental health conditions. In addition, another purpose was to conclude whether my initial thoughts, which include believing a minimal numbers of TV shows contain any positive effect on viewer mental health, were supported. Misperceptions about mental health, including a justified feeling to hide mental conditions, judge others for theirs, or use it as a way for humor, are often given in television shows when mental health is included in the story (Smith, et al. 2019). I created a blog that revolved …

An Examination Of Risk Factors Of Cancer, Nathaniel Teague

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

My goal for this research project is to examine risk factors pertaining to the likelihood of developing cancer, to examine weather or not cancer is a largely genetic or lifestyle disease, and to come up a number of clearly defined recommendations and takeaway points that a general audience could apply.

Roaring Girls, Elizabeth Mazzola

Open Educational Resources

The literary tradition in England starts to appear differently when we see how early modern women handled the alphabet and imagined genres, audiences, and interpretive practices from entirely new perspectives.

Sensitive Plants And Senseless Weeds: Plants, Consciousness, And Elizabeth Kent, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

When a team of researchers in 2018 found that plants exposed to anesthesia appeared to lose consciousness, the press reported that plants might have a consciousness to lose. The ensuing debate revealed a gap between scientific and literary approaches to human and nonhuman consciousness that this article traces back to the botanical writing of the Romantic period. These concerns, I argue, are central to Elizabeth Kent’s Flora Domestica (1823) and Sylvan Sketches (1825), both botanical works that double as literary anthologies in order to expose a productive gap between literary and scientific knowledge. In a time when the distinction between …

Flora Of Middle-Earth: Plants Of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, By Walter S. Judd And Graham A. Judd. Reviewed By Janet Brennan Croft., Janet Brennan Croft

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Eavesdropping On Henry James: Reading Gender In The Correspondence Of William And Henry, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Zombie Ent(R)Ailments In Risk Communication: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Cdc’S Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness Campaign, Ryan Cheek

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

Apocalypticism is a powerful brew of eschatological belief and political imagination that is extremely persuasive. This article addresses the intersections between apocalyptic rhetoric and the technical communication of risk, disease outbreak, and disaster preparedness by analyzing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's zombie apocalypse preparedness campaign. Specifically, I argue that the framing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's campaign relies on and extends problematic iterations of apocalypticism and undermines the educational objectives of disaster preparedness and response. I conclude with suggestions for how technical communicators designing public awareness and outreach campaigns can use existential risk rhetoric for …

Synthesizing The Sublime And Beautiful: Aesthetics In Shelley's "Hymn To Intellectual Beauty", Christopher T. Lough

Student Publications

As a Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley bristled at rationalistic attempts to definitively categorize the human condition. Taking Edmund Burke’s treatise “On the Sublime and Beautiful” as his chief foil, Shelley explored aesthetic categories that certain strains of Enlightenment thought had held apart from one another. In my brief exegesis of his “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” from 1816, I build on Rudolf Otto’s concept of the numinous and the work of intellectual historian Frank Ankersmit to argue that Shelley presents a holistic account of experience with the ineffable.

Music Terminology And Context In Robert Browning’S “A Toccata Of Galuppi’S”, Natalie M. Dolan

Student Publications

In his poem describing a performance of a Baldassare Galuppi toccata, Robert Browning uses music theory terminology and historical context to explain the emotions inspired by the piece. Browning’s 19th-century narrator reflects on the lives of past audiences and on his own mortality as he addresses the deceased composer. This paper analyzes the use of musical references in explaining the narrator’s response to the performance. The analysis includes an examination of Galuppi’s compositional period and a discussion of the specific terminology that Browning uses to convey his narrator’s wariness of death.

Representations Of Disability In Literature And Elementary Education, Rebecca Young

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

By purposefully sharing diverse and inclusive literature with children during their formative years, educators can help them develop ideals which are positively inclusive of others and which support positive self-understandings. This project, an ENGL 491 independent study supervised by Dr. Chris Foss, investigates the ways that the disability community is represented within literature, as well as how positive, diverse, and inclusive literary representations of disability can benefit this community and those around it. With time, small-scale ideological shifts toward inclusivity can further spread throughout society. Thus, these literary representations can enrich all readers and have lasting positive implications for broad …

"The Most Glorious War Recorded In The British Annals”: Portugal In British Figurations Of The Peninsular War, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

“THE MOST GLORIOUS WAR RECORDED IN THE BRITISH ANNALS,” AS ROBERT Southey described it in the dedication of his History of the Peninsular War,1 the conflict that brought together Portugal, Spain, and Britain against Napoleon’s armies between 1807 and 1814 was a dominant preoccupation of the British public in general, and of the first generation of Romantics in particular.2 Many critics have shown the extent to which the Iberian uprising against the tyranny of Napoleon galvanized the British people, united the British nation, and afforded Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge a renewed opportunity to sympathize with the cause of …

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, Vol. 29, No. 1, The Sinclair Lewis Society

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter

"Arrowsmith Endures in the Pandemic,” by Ralph Goldstein

“Mr. Lewis Goes to China: Studying Sinclair Lewis’s Novels in China,” by Chen Ying, College of Foreign Languages, Inner Mongolia University, China

“Introducing Sinclair Lewis”: A Review of Becoming Sinclair Lewis by David Allen Simpkins, with Sally E. Parry, Illinois State University and Jim Umhoefer, by Ted G. Fleener

“Trapped on Main Street,” a Conversation

“What Were They Reading Then?: Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop, by Christopher Morley, 1917 and 1919,” by Sally E. Parry, Illinois State University

English 270 J Introduction To English Grammar And Syntax, Matt Garley

Open Educational Resources

Introduction to English Grammar and Syntax. Not open to students with credit for English 370. Analysis of English sentence structure, with focus on parts of speech, grammatical voice and mood, and written discourse. Students will examine real-world texts from a variety of genres, as well as their own writing practices. This is a Writing Intensive Course. This course may be offered in either online, hybrid, or face-to-face format.

English 270: Textbook Section / Paper #2: Filling In Other Sections, Matt Garley

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

English 270: Textbook Section / Paper #1: A Smattering Of Linguistics, Matt Garley

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Elizabeth Kent’S New Tales Of Botanical Friendship, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

Elizabeth Kent has been considered a rather minor figure in the Leigh Hunt circle. However, this examination of her previously unknown children’s tales illuminates how Kent’s generic crossings establish a common emphasis on observation in the realms of botany, pedagogy, and poetry while suggesting that what happens beyond the observable world might be equally generative. Taken as a whole, Kent’s work constitutes a previously unacknowledged challenge to the Cockney School’s almost fetishistic attachment to the social. The identification of New Tales brings into focus Kent’s efforts to systematize friendship through her writing and clarifies her ambiguous response to Cockney amiability.

A Journal Of The Plague Year As A Sequel To Robinson Crusoe, Ala Alryyes

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Gothic Conventions In Abu Al-Reesh’S Umm Al-Duways And Saadawi’S Frankenstein In Baghdad, Amna Matar Khalfan Mohammed Al Neyadi

Dissertations

Gothic as a literary form first appeared in late eighteenth-century British literature, when Horace Walpole described the second edition of his novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), as a Gothic story. From that time, and throughout the nineteenth century, Gothic continued to exist in English literature and other European nations’ works of literature. This dissertation aims at proposing and delineating the existence of Gothic elements in modern Arabic novels. In doing so, this research demonstrates that the Gothic genre is part of contemporary Arabic novels, even though Arab literary criticism pays less attention to this fact. This study focuses on …

"I'M Absolutely Ordinary": Bella And Her Perception Of Gender Within Twilight, Jaid M. Eichmiller

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores Bella's perceptions of femininity, virtue, and gender roles within Twilight, with a focus on the feminist stance that Bella takes as the narrator. Through a close reading, I explore traditional gender roles, the internalized maternal roles of wife and mother, and the externalized judgements that Bella expresses. Her relationships with those around her, and most importantly Edward, are judged by her internalized concepts of gender politics. Through the examination of previous literature and the close reading of the core text, I argue that Bella both embodies and rejects traditional femininity.