Quinny & Hopper,
2025
Liberty University
Quinny & Hopper, Rachel Schwedt, Janice Delong
Ages 3-6
Respect, Courage, Imagination, Individuality, Joyfulness
Fire On The Mountain,
2025
Liberty University
Fire On The Mountain, Rachel Schwedt, Janice Delong
Ages 3-6
Fairness, Ambition, Cleverness, Courage, Endurance, Honesty, Humilty, Resourcefulness, Resolve, Wisdom
Anna Husbiscus,
2025
Liberty University
Anna Husbiscus, Janice Delong, Rachel Schwedt
Ages 3-6
Cooperation, Caring, Humilty, Love, Patience
The Communal Lyric: Poetry In Devotional And Oppressed Communities,
2025
The American University in Cairo AUC
The Communal Lyric: Poetry In Devotional And Oppressed Communities, Michael N. Yacoub
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis investigates the interaction between lyric and community; it asks what a communal lyric is, how it functions, and to what ends. In Chapter One, I compare Jonathan Culler’s performative model of lyric with the theory of Takhyīl as expounded by Arab philosopher-critics al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and al-Qartajanni to argue that a communal lyric is a form of audience-oriented public discourse distinguished by formal features that prompt the poem’s (re-)iteration and establish an interpersonal relationship with the audience in order to influence them and make shareable value claims about the world. In Chapters Two and Three I provide close-reading …
Paradise Lost Thrice: Exile And The Abrahamic Religions In Aciman, Werfel, And Ashour,
2025
The American University in Cairo AUC
Paradise Lost Thrice: Exile And The Abrahamic Religions In Aciman, Werfel, And Ashour, Malak K. Hosny
Theses and Dissertations
Exile is an integral part of the history of all three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This thesis compares between literary narratives of the exile of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It explores the notion that having been exiled from Eden with the fall of Adam and Eve, and having each religion’s prophet’s story intrinsically tied with exile, the believers’ exile is then the third in a layered cycle of exile. Having lost the paradise, believers tend to search for earthly paradises that they attach themselves to, and then tragically lose those as well. The thesis’ three primary literary texts …
Mindful Marcelo: The Process Of Writing And Illustrating A Culturally-Specific Children's Book For Early Psychoeducation,
2025
Portland State University
Mindful Marcelo: The Process Of Writing And Illustrating A Culturally-Specific Children's Book For Early Psychoeducation, Liz Romero-Herrera
University Honors Theses
Socio-emotional learning (SEL) is imperative for young children to learn prosocial skills and how to identify and regulate their emotions. Most children begin to develop these skills in early childhood and depend on caregivers and teachers to model them. However, caregiver and teacher biases related to child gender and race can limit equitable access to high-quality SEL, placing male students of color at higher risk for maladaptive coping strategies. To address this gap, this thesis documents the creation of a culturally sensitive children's book focused on SEL concepts for young Latino boys. Throughout this thesis, I documented the process of …
At Home In Horror: Women And Body Horror,
2025
Portland State University
At Home In Horror: Women And Body Horror, Brooklynn Kreps
University Honors Theses
While most discussion around the subgenre of body horror focuses on its birthplace of film, the richest iterations come from women writing body horror fiction to explain the experience of womanhood. As body horror focuses on fear of painful or absurd mishap with the body. Women experience pain or absurdity in their own bodies every day with processes like menstruation, pregnancy, puberty, and heightened chances of becoming a victim of sexual assault. Furthermore, women experience society's forceful shaming and fear about natural processes of the body and experiences such as anger and sexual desire. Using this idea as a framework, …
Knowing Remembers Joe Christmas: An Exploration Of Trauma In William Faulkner's Light In August,
2025
Portland State University
Knowing Remembers Joe Christmas: An Exploration Of Trauma In William Faulkner's Light In August, Kendall Boyd
University Honors Theses
William Faulkner wrote Light in August in 1932, during the American prohibition and national Jim Crow laws. As a southern gothic/American modernism text, Light in August is a fictional story that takes place in the southern states of the U.S. and primarily relies on memory and ambiguity to reveal its dark themes of racism, sexual violence, and collective trauma. The novel features two separate narrators as main characters: Lena Burch and Joe Christmas. Joe Christmas, a man of mysterious heritage who lives a life of tragedy and violence, is the focus of my analysis of Light in August. Using …
Harlem’S Avenues For Agency: An Exploration Of Black Female Agency In Angelina Weld Grimké And Zora Neale Hurston’S Short Stories,
2025
University of Denver
Harlem’S Avenues For Agency: An Exploration Of Black Female Agency In Angelina Weld Grimké And Zora Neale Hurston’S Short Stories, Jessica Ellen Hartenbower
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores themes of Black female agency in selected short stories by Angelina Weld Grimké and Zora Neale Hurston. Pushing back against the belief that the Harlem Renaissaince was a movement solely for male artists, Grimké and Hurston write short stories that center Black women and their experiences. Through the avenues of bodily autonomy, the using or silencing of voice, the opportunity and ability to make choices, issues of justice, retribution, and vengeance, the holding of authority, and being empowered or disempowered, I examine the female characters’ exercising of their agency to varying degrees. I also discuss how religious …
Desire, Disobedience, And Drag: My Lesbian Fangirling Of Emily Dickinson, Aaron Copland, And Alena Smith,
2025
Lawrence University
Desire, Disobedience, And Drag: My Lesbian Fangirling Of Emily Dickinson, Aaron Copland, And Alena Smith, Nina Schifano
Lawrence University Honors Projects
Taking an interdisciplinary approach that sits at the intersection of musicology, literary studies, and queer studies, I undergo a queer reading of Emily Dickinson’s writings and subsequent interpretations of her works. I begin my analysis with a queering of genre, using archival evidence to consider the complex ways gendered genre norms affected how Dickinson wrote, how her works were edited and published, and how people have since read her. I then undertake a genre-queer reading of some of the writings that she sent to Susan Dickinson, her sister-in-law and lifelong love. I turn next to Aaron Copland’s 1950 setting for …
The Islamic Orient In Antebellum America: The Influence Of Edgar Allan Poe In Contemporary Arabic Literature,
2025
University of Denver
The Islamic Orient In Antebellum America: The Influence Of Edgar Allan Poe In Contemporary Arabic Literature, Sohaib Alkamal
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation posits a comprehensive overview of the debate about Orientalism, particularly early American depictions of the Islamic Orient. The study investigates the antebellum American portrayal of the Islamic Orient, focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s Orientalist readings. While Said’s Orientalism concentrates heavily on aspects of power in West-East relations throughout history, this study expands on several aspects of Said’s book. This study provides a new approach to exploring the field of Orientalism by giving a voice to Arabic sources that are absent in Said’s Orientalism and rarely known to Western audiences. Such sources are medieval Islamic sources, which include phantasies …
Representation Of Diseases And Health Care In Selected African Gyno-Texts,
2025
University of Denver
Representation Of Diseases And Health Care In Selected African Gyno-Texts, Rachael K. Aderoju
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This study explores the interdisciplinary field of literature and medicine through a feminist psychoanalytic lens, focusing on how Nigerian female writers represent illness, healthcare, and medical ethics in post-independence gyno-texts. Traditionally, scholarship in this field has centered on andro-texts (literary works authored by men), leaving a critical gap in the exploration of women’s perspectives. This research addresses that gap by analyzing nine prose works authored by Nigerian women, including texts by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ayobami Adebayo, Lola Shoneyin, and Samira Haruna Sanusi. These texts are examined for their portrayal of diseases such as infertility, cancer, bipolar disorder, and renal failure, …
Margaret Cavendish And Radical Self-Love,
2025
University of Denver
Margaret Cavendish And Radical Self-Love, Marina Burandt
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Margaret Cavendish was an early modern Englishwoman writer who lived from 1623 to 1673. She wrote under her own name at a time when it was more common for women to write under a pen name, and published almost everything she wrote. Her writings include a multiplicity of genres, from science fiction, poetry, drama, and philosophy, to letters, biography, and autobiography. Cavendish’s style often blends multiple genres and forms, showcasing a modality that is driven by complexity and hybridity. Cavendish was a surprisingly modern figure in many ways, as her writings show. The Description of a New World, Called the …
“Eyes Can Be Blinded”: A Narratological Analysis Of Focalization In Sarah J. Maas’S A Court Of Thorns And Roses And A Court Of Silver Flames,
2025
University of Denver
“Eyes Can Be Blinded”: A Narratological Analysis Of Focalization In Sarah J. Maas’S A Court Of Thorns And Roses And A Court Of Silver Flames, Georga Mae Feek
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores the complex relationship between Feyre and Nesta, two prominent characters in Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) and A Court of Silver Flames (ACOSF). My analysis uses narratological concepts from three significant scholars in narrative theory: Gérard Genette, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, and Mieke Bal. I begin with a theoretical synthesis of narration and focalization and outline the various categories of types of narrators and focalizers. Then, I analyze Feyre’s focalization in ACOTAR and Nesta’s focalization in ACOSF. Through this process, I have developed rich character studies of Feyre and Nesta. My investigation of the …
The Shōnen Apocalypse: An Analysis Of The Shōnen Power System And Its Narrative Functions,
2025
University of Denver
The Shōnen Apocalypse: An Analysis Of The Shōnen Power System And Its Narrative Functions, Mario Da Silva Melo
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
My thesis has two primary goals. First, it provides an overview of the history of manga as a medium, and manga studies as a field. In doing so, I observe a lack of terminological and methodological specificity. As a result, I provide a formalist approach to thematic criticism in order to address the above issues. Second, my thesis primarily centers on shōnen power systems and their narrative functions. Power systems are "magic rules" that determine how superhuman abilities mechanically function. I identify two main power systems in shōnen manga: spiritual manipulation and transformations. My thesis posits that shōnen manga authors …
The Narratological Maus,
2025
University of Denver
The Narratological Maus, Isla Lader
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Complete Maus, a memoir graphic novel surrounding the events of character Art Spiegelman as he collects, records, and illustrates his father’s life pre-the Holocaust in Europe, his time in Auschwitz, and then life in the United States has been one of the focal Holocaust survivor testimonies and has redefined the genre it exists in as both a graphic novel, but also as a form of testimony. Like many popularized works dealing with the Holocaust, though, cultural preconceptions of Jewish people, genocide, and audiences’ desire to find morals within the work have made it so often audiences come to …
Utilizing Creative Writing Techniques In First-Year Composition,
2025
Arkansas State University
Utilizing Creative Writing Techniques In First-Year Composition, Brett Moss
Student Theses and Dissertations
One common issue found in first-year composition courses is a lack of emphasis on creative style and writing about writing (WAW) concerns. This thesis is concerned primarily with explaining how creative writing skills can benefit students in first-year composition courses, as well as advocating for more WAW ideas. I argue that by allowing students the chance to write with a more creative mindset in an environment which consciously considers writing as a skill, not just in the English department but across disciplines, a greater understanding of the importance of writing can be gained, along with more transfer skills.
Apotheosis,
2025
Arkansas State University
Apotheosis, Cameron Eric Simmermon
Student Theses and Dissertations
Occult Detective Fiction (ODF) follows the standard procedures and practices of Detective fiction but throws in the supernatural elements: monsters, aliens, ghosts, and so forth. I dive into the history that led to the development of ODF, along with all the great authors who contributed to it. These greats were the likes of H. P. Lovecraft, Blackwood, Hodgson, and Quinn. Discussing these authors and their participation in ODF gives context to the novella and the choices that led to its development. From Voltaire’s impact on occultism to Poe’s invention of the detective novel, Apotheosis is heavily influenced by the greats …
The Hitching Post: American Poetry And Chinese Mythology,
2025
Loyola University of Chicago Graduate School
The Hitching Post: American Poetry And Chinese Mythology, Xiamara Elena Hohman
Dissertations
In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which Chinese mythology has figured in American poetry, focusing particularly on the ways Chinese mythologies have served—and continue to serve—as “hitching posts,” quasi-material sites from which meaning can be created and explored. As I am defining it, a myth is a narrative that gives meaning to a lived experience. It explains what we commemorate and worship and renders meaningful both celebration and life. In the first three chapters of this study, I discuss the ways in which Chinese myths and cultural practices have been both used as hitching posts and appropriated by …
Modernism’S Mythic Mothers: Queering Motherhood Through Classical Matrilineage,
2025
Loyola University of Chicago Graduate School
Modernism’S Mythic Mothers: Queering Motherhood Through Classical Matrilineage, Samantha Marie Lepak
Dissertations
I position this dissertation at the intersection of modern/contemporary literature, queer/feminist theory, and ancient Greek classics in the hopes of better understanding the spaces in which they meet, engaging with writers from the late modernist era to the present in order to highlight the connections between theories, themes, and practices of queerness from the modernists forward. Using the work of H.D. and writers following in her footsteps, I argue that exploring adaptations of Greek classics written primarily by female and gender-variant authors from the modernist era forward illuminates the extent to which the classics enables writers to “think queerly,” considering …
