English Language and Literature Commons^™

"Enchantment Dissolved": A Reexamination Of The Hymn's Authorship And Significance In The Commonplace Ms. Hannah Swynock, Hannah Bradley

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

“Enchantment Dissolved” is a hymn written by John Newton and a part of the first publication of the Olney Hymns in 1779. However, starting around the year 1803, the hymn was misattributed in multiple publications to William Cowper, the second author of the collection. This article will analyze Cowper’s literary style and consider why the hymn may have been mistaken for his creation. This particular hymn also appears in a 17-18th century commonplace, Hannah Swynock 1687, in the Parker MSS. at the Lilly Rare Book Library at Indiana University. In this hand-written manuscript, the hymn has four additional verses that …

The Intellectual Woman’S Cage: Complicating Ideals Of Fanon’S “Native Intellectual” In Nervous Conditions, Alyssa J. Mountain

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

This paper examines—through a post-colonial lens— Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions. In particular, this paper analyzes the characters of Tambu, Nyasha, and Maiguru and how their Western education allows them to fit into their roles as “native intellectuals.” Imposing Franz Fanon’s phases of becoming a “native intellectual” onto these strong, educated female characters greatly complicates his term and process. The idea of the native intellectual is most often applied to men. However, in terms of Dangarembga’s work, it is the female characters that rise to this title. In this acquisition of education the female characters are truly “between two …

True Crime As A Literature Of Advocacy, Leslie Rowen

Undergraduate Theses

True crime is often dismissed as a genre of cheap paperbacks with little literary merit and highly sensational, pornographic content. By contrast, my paper proposes an alternative literary history of true crime which merits further investigation because of its focus on advocating for justice where the justice system failed. I begin with Catharine Williams’ 1833 piece Fall River: An Authentic Narrative, an early example from true crime literature. The text disputes the acquittal of a Methodist preacher for the murder of a female mill worker, arguing that the trial was unfairly slanted in the defendant’s favor. More than a century …

American Prometheus: Carnegie's Captain, Bill Jones, Tom Gage

Trade & Scholarly Monographs

American Prometheus: Carnegie’s Captain, Bill Jones presents a compelling historical memoir of the illustrious life of rebellious steel genius and inventor, Captain Bill Jones.

Hero of the Civil War and Johnstown Flood, Captain Bill Jones built and supervised the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, which in its first five years advanced to the rank of the world’s most productive and profitable steel mill. His “hands-on, all over” style solved Carnegie’s production problems on the spot, enlisted baseball teams from the Works’ departments to defuse ethnic strife, promoted the eight-hour work day, and patented inventions, including the Jones Hot Metal mixer, which …

Neues Testament Und Märchen: Tolkien, Fairy Stories, And The Gospel, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1943 claim in “On Fairy-stories” that the Christian Gospel is a fairy story which “has entered History and the primary world” stands over against significant (and widely publicized) elements of Liberal Protestant biblical interpretation of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, exemplified in Rudolph Bultmann’s 1941 essay, “New Testament and Mythology.” Tolkien’s position, which seems to have influenced C. S. Lewis and Austin Farrer, owes something to G. K. Chesterton but has yet more direct parallels in Thomas Aquinas and Gregory the Great.

Believing Mary Karr, Stephanie Rae Guedet

Theses and Dissertations

Believing Mary Karr examines how belief, represented in the memoirs of Mary Karr, works in our contemporary moment. This examination is supported by the argument that our identities and the stories we tell about them are always constructions of belief, and that these beliefs are ultimately relational, enacted in the intersubjective relationship between writers and readers of autobiography. This dissertation provides the fields of both rhetoric and life writing studies not only an awareness of how ideas about belief—how beliefs about belief—have already shaped our scholarly imagination but also the possibilities a rhetoric of belief can offer to future conversations …

The Motionless Half-Sun Over The Postcolonial Horizon: Adichie, Bhabha, And Inaction, Themal I. Ellawala 2896594

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Action is a metaphysical reality of our daily existence, one so commonplace and privileged that it has transcended its dialectical relationship with inaction to preeminence. The latter has failed to capture the imagination of philosophers and critical theorists, leaving the subversive potential of this negative space unexplored. This essay seeks to interrogate the space of inaction, and restore the unity between the action and inaction. This exploration is situated within a postcolonial context, as a conversation between Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Homi Bhabha, to examine how inaction offers a site to challenge the violence of action …

Religion And Morality In Tolkien's The Hobbit, Sophia Friedman

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Much research has been done on J. R. R. Tolkien's works, but The Hobbit has been overlooked. Because of the time in his life that it was written, this particular novel can give unique insight in the questions of religion in Middle Earth that have been continuously raised. The first half of this essay will seek to answer that question. Though most scholars look for an allegorical representation of the author’s Catholic faith in the novel, it is not there. Instead, Tolkien found spirituality in the process of writing, in creating a believable Secondary World. Rather than trying to convert …

International Yeats Studies, Issue 2

International Yeats Studies

International Yeats Studies was conceived by the organizing board of the International Yeats Society as a means of bringing together national and other Yeats societies around the world. This journal is designed to complement the Yeats Annual, published under the general editorship of Warwick Gould. International Yeats Studies will be published twice a year and aims to include a variety of approaches to the study of Yeats. The editorial board draws together scholars from across the globe, and we hope that when it is possible, the journal will publish important essays translated into English from other languages. In addition …

Female Insanity: The Portrayal Of A Murderess In Alias Grace, Maria Medlyn

Honors Capstone Projects

In this paper, I analyze Margaret Atwood’s biographical novel Alias Grace which is based on the life of Grace Marks, a servant who was convicted of murdering her employer and his housekeeper. I use feminist and psychological perspectives to recount Atwood’s interpretation of the 1800s social hierarchy and the use of labels in controlling individuals. First, I explain the severe oppression of women in the 19^th century. For example, women in this era were financially controlled by men, held to high moral standards, expected to be chaste yet submissive, and restricted to domestic roles. Next, I describe the changing …

Private Deaths: The Impossibilities Of Home In The Modernist Novel, Ava Bindas

English Honors Projects

This project examines novels by Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Nella Larsen featuring female characters who contemplate or commit suicide. Relying on a composite theoretical framework that weaves together geography theories of spaces as well as gendered theories of bodies by authors like Judith Butler, Rita Felski, and Victoria Rosner, I argue women commit suicide because their modern homes fail to accommodate their gendered bodies. Focusing less on the moment of death than on the conditions that make choosing to live impossible, this project tracks how, during a moment of supposed liberation, conceptions of gender, modernity, and domestic …

Discursive Mapping: Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca And Thomas Jefferson’S Construction Of Selfhood And Otherness, Monica Doebel

Undergraduate Research Awards

The binary of savage versus civilized was deeply embedded in the structure of early American society and the consciousness of early generations of colonizers, codified through multiple methods of inscribing meaning upon native land. Thomas Jefferson, in his pseudo-scientific Notes on the State of Virginia, taxonomizes life in native America using maps, charts, and textual descriptions for the purpose of consolidating an American identity premised on superiority over native people and black slaves. In contrast, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca maps native America purely through language, constructing the illusory infallibility of European colonizers while crafting an overall narrative of native …

Constructed Borders And Conditional Belonging: Refugee Narratives In Literature And Law, Rachel C. Wilson

English Honors Projects

Merging literary criticism and political theory, this project explores the representations of refugees in contemporary fiction and human rights law. Through a close reading of reports and press releases published by human rights organizations, I trace how NGOs’ moral and expert authority creates a narrow emphasis on refugees’ fear and victimhood. As novels by Dave Eggers, Susan Choi, Caryl Phillips, and Chris Cleave show, literature is not bound by the same constraints. These novels reveal the internal borders that continue to compromise refugees’ belonging after resettlement. Employing a metanarrative that considers the uses and limits of its own project, literature …

Delving Into Multicultural Literature With Inquiry, Juan Gonzalez

Honors Theses

This paper argues for the use of multicultural literature in the classroom, and puts forth a unit plan that uses critical literacy in an English 11 classroom, though it can be readapted to fit other grade levels. Bishop (1990) describes multicultural literature as a set of windows, that people use to view the experiences of others, and mirrors, that reflect and validate peoples’ experience, a core principal in this paper. Critical literacy is comprised of four dimensions (Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002) that allows for analyzing literature in a different and meaningful way. The final part of this paper …

A Scholarly Fictional Narrative Portraying The Stigma That Surrounds Mental Illness And Its Place In Literature, Adrianna Robinson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this scholarly fictional narrative is meant to reveal the struggles that individuals with mental illness go through, not only in their personal lives, but also with their place in society. I lay out research around the stigma that surrounds mental illness first, defining both public and self-stigma in relation to mental illness. I also briefly mention Girl, Interrupted and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to show how authors have addressed the stigma that surrounds mental illness in literature in the past. The research is an important part of understanding why I write the fictional narrative the way I do, …

The Formation Of The Autonomous Woman Through A Hegelian Lens: A Comparative Study Of The British Fin De Siecle "New Woman" And The Post-Mao "Amazing" Woman, Robyn L. Buro

English Department Theses

This thesis utilizes the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness development to explore the formation of the autonomous woman within the New Woman movement of the British fin de siècle and the literature of women writers in 1980s Post-Mao China. The sexual figuration of the New Woman via an unremitting male gaze as well as the absence of individual awareness due to limited reflective self-assessment lead to a misrepresentation of the female figurehead in fin de siècle Britain. Through an in-depth study of literature by Charlotte Mew, Victoria Cross, George Egerton, and Thomas Hardy, the reader can identify key points of failure …

Blade Runner And The Divine Menace, Alexander W. Pickens

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

Following the decline of Christianity in mainstream Western culture, a void rose in the moral and societal code. Those writers that emerged presented alternate visions that worked their way into the literature of the 20th century. Karl Marx's interpretation of the structure of labor in capitalism presented a new societal hierarchy whose finer points have been worked out in the complex film Blade Runner. This dystopian nightmare, in which a Marxist interpretation of current society bogged down by the ennui of capitalist accumulation is confronted, describes a new religious order based upon this economic theory. Central to this reimagining …

Homosociality In Michael Radford’S "The Merchant Of Venice", Eric A. Pitz

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

A Praxis Redefined, Christina A. Slick

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

“A Praxis Redefined” submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: Master of Arts in the field of English with a specialization, in English Teaching, exemplifies a portion of the substantial research and analysis that reflects theoretical conversations in reading, visual rhetoric, linguistics, grammar, and composition that most influence my practices as an English scholar and educator. Furthermore, the analytical narrative included in this portfolio shows how participation in a variety of challenging pedagogical conversations have changed me from a theoretical outlander to theoretical compromiser. All the …

Reflections In Passion And Progress: Blending Vision, Resilience, And Evolution As A Writer And Scholar Of The English Language, Elizabeth Scoville

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

The following is a final master's degree portfolio of revised graduate work in English composition. Consisting of four projects, this portfolio highlights research, theory, and applications in multidisciplinary writing, visual argumentation, linguistics pedagogy, and professional editing. The pieces within reflect significant growth and adaptation in the field of English comprehension and writing, where successful compositions walk hand-in-hand with innovation, audience acknowledgement, and the willingness to change as language ebbs and flows with the passage of time.