English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Monday Manure, Zachary David Berston

Journalism

For my senior project, I wanted to create a new section of Mustang News that includes satire and cartoons. The section is called the Monday Manure to fit with the horse themed titles of other sections. This idea began as a project in the Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship class. While I initially had the idea to have a section that included games, I realized that it was a bit too ambitious after discussing that with the team at Mustang news. Over the course of this project, I have created several satire articles and cartoons, as well as organizing a team …

Monstrous Feminine, Deviant Mother: Tolkien’S Shelob And The Grotesque Maternal, Sara Brown

Journal of Tolkien Research

J.R.R. Tolkien’s menacing character of Shelob embodies the ultimate danger that faces Frodo on his journey to destroy the Ring of Power. Her actions, in combination with the language that Tolkien uses to describe her, invite the reader to view Shelob with revulsion and horror, designating her as Other. However, Shelob is also undeniably a mother, a term laden with social and cultural expectation. This paper explores Shelob as a representation of what Barbara Creed, in her article “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection”, has termed the ‘monstrous-feminine’, examining Shelob’s presentation within the text as not only identified as …

Celebrating Tolkien’S Legacy: Essays (2024), By Nancy Bunting, Seamus Hamill-Keays, And Toby Widdicombe, Douglas Charles Kane

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Douglas Charles Kane, of Celebrating Tolkien’s Legacy: Essays (2024), by Nancy Bunting, Seamus Hamill-Keays, and Toby Widdicombe

He Is The Master Of Wood, Water, And Hill: Is Tom Bombadil The True Key Keeper Of The Old Forest?, Noelia Ramos

Journal of Tolkien Research

Tom Bombadil, with his iconic singing―”Hey! Come merry doll! Derry doll and merry-o!―has captivated scholars worldwide, due to the enigmatic nature Tolkien intentionally left unexplained. This deliberate mystery has fuelled extensive debate, leading many to explore possible mythological and cultural frameworks that might decode Bombadil’s origins. Among these hypotheses, a Celtic interpretation has often been dismissed despite its potential relevance. This paper, thereby, seeks to analyse Bombadil’s function within the Old Forest and his interactions with the hobbits during their forest episode, presenting fresh insights into his role as a Celtic-inspired guide and druidic figure.

To support this analysis, primary …

The English Apocalypse: A Fourteenth-Century Translation Of The Book Of Revelation From Columbia University, Ms Plimpton Add. 03, Ethan Campbell

TEAMS Middle English Texts

Before the Wycliffite Bible in the 1380s, one of the only complete books of the Bible to be translated into Middle English was the Book of Revelation. The English Apocalypse, translated from the French sometime in the early 14th century, must have been well known to the later translators, since it appears in 18 extant manuscripts, sometimes alongside Wycliffite material. This edition reproduces, for the first time, a copy of the English Apocalypse, which actually replaced the Book of Revelation at the end of a Wycliffite New Testament. Whether the manuscript compiler simply preferred this version or meant it to …

Reading The Rainbow: Exploring Themes And Identities In Lgbtqia+ Picture Books, Amanda Melilli, Alicia G. Vaandering, James W. Rosenzweig

Library Faculty Presentations

This presentation shares an analysis of over 275 picture books featuring LGBTQIA+ identities, providing evidence that the depiction of queerness in children’s literature is complex and varied. Tools for defining narrative themes and LGBTQIA+ identities will be shared as well as data on queer characters with intersecting identities. By exploring the nuances of LGBTQIA+ representation in picture books, attendees will gain a better understanding of novel research inquiries into representation.

“Where War Is God And God Is War:” Women’S Religious Great War Poetry And Homefront Lines, Faith Ellington

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project seeks to redefine war’s poetic landscape. Through a focus on women’s Great War poetry, I argue against a dichotomous home front | front line poetic barrier and instead explore the intermingling of wartime spaces. Women’s WWI poetry, I argue, exists within a space I call the homefront lines, a space in which women produce writing from their full experiences of war regardless of combatant status. The homefront lines must be included in World War I literary canons in order to fully recognize the humanity of women during wartime and to fully grasp the war’s impact on poetry …

An Illusion Of Choice: An Analysis Of Geoffrey Chaucer's Gender Politic, Katelyn Dunn

JSU Student Symposium 2025

Please note: no video is available for this video.

Male anxieties are the culmination of reactions that men project upon women when the patriarchy is subverted by female means. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer illustrates how patriarchal rule determines the interactions between both men and women by developing complex figures who submit or rebel to the overwhelming societal expectations that dictate the performance of gender. Whereas characters such as Emilye of “The Knight’s Tale” are rewarded for their virtuousness and willingness to obey the demands of masculine society, characters such as the Wife of Bath in “The Wife of …

Media Literacy: College Admissions Standards And Covid-19, Greenlee Orman

JSU Student Symposium 2025

This presentation describes how admission standards have changed after COVID-19 and the impact of those changes for community colleges, four-year universities, and students. Looking at the admission standards for colleges in the State of Alabama pre-COVID, during COVID, and post-COVID-19 to illustrate how the relaxed admission standards have leveled the playing field for all students. Hard work has become the priority over ACT test scores. The focus is more on how the skills learned through the media literacy courses, student events, and resources offered at JSU allows one to develop the skill set to understand what sources are credible and …

Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions, Amira Mahmoud Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between language, trauma, and emotional expression among bilingual Arabic-English speakers, focusing on code-switching patterns and euphemisms, and more broadly the emotional roles of native and non-native languages in trauma narratives. Through qualitative interviews with 20 Egyptian participants, the research reveals that code-switching serves as both a linguistic and emotional tool, allowing speakers to navigate trauma by creating distance or engaging more intimately. Such codeswitching patterns include the integration of English content words within Arabic structures, morphosyntactic innovations, and gender agreement applications, reflecting the creative adaptability of bilingual speakers in emotionally charged contexts, in line with …

Antiphons Of Iron And Blood: The Inspirations Of Tolkien's Poetry, Patrick J. Lyon

Journal of Tolkien Research

The new book, The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond, is a fascinating new look into a trove of previously unpublished Tolkien poetry. One of these new poems, “Ferrum et Sanguis,” includes an interesting series of addenda and subtitles written by Tolkien that give insight into the origins and inspirations for the poem. Furthermore, the interpretation given by the editors in their commentary on the poem misses the specific reference and applies it to a different source. The real source for the poem is very likely found in the Advent Vespers of the …

Returning To The Beginning Place: Le Guin’S Forgotten Anti-Fantasy Four Decades On, Timothy S. Miller

UKL: The Journal of Ursula K. Le Guin Studies

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1980 portal fantasy The Beginning Place has received a fraction of the critical attention that most of her other novels have attracted over the years. This short book's many enigmas, often structured by self-consciously Jungian symbolism, are best understood as operating in service not to a strict Jungian framework, but rather to a broader metafictional evaluation of fantasy and an articulation of Le Guin's own preferred approach to the reading and interpretation of fantasy. At times, The Beginning Place moves beyond meta-fantasy to become an anti-fantasy that does not shy from critiquing some dimensions of both …

The Mirror Of Desire Unbidden: Retrieving The Imago Dei In Tolkien And Late Medieval English Literature (2024) By Giovanni Carmine Costabile, Łukasz Neubauer

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book Review, by Łukasz Neubauer, of The Mirror of Desire Unbidden: Retrieving the Imago Dei in Tolkien and Late Medieval English Literature (2024) by Giovanni Carmine Costabile

How Do Literary And Cinematic Monsters Reveal The Fear Of The Instability Or Distortion Of Human Identity?, Arya Kc

CAFE Symposium 2025

Throughout history, monsters have both disturbed and captivated humanity. Initially defined by their grotesque physical forms, monsters have evolved to symbolize deeper psychological fears, often reflecting the instability or distortion of human identity. This project examines the shifting portrayal of monstrosity in literature and film, focusing on works like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alien. By blurring the line between human and monstrous, these stories reveal the fragility of human identity and expose our profound fears of psychological and existential instability, challenging us to confront what it truly means to be human.

Engaging Students With Interdisciplinary Learning Community Project For Freshman Composition And Digital Media Students, Hsi-Ling Huang, Xin Xu

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Studies have shown that Learning Communities have many benefits, including “[f]ostering workforce skills, encouraging problem-solving skills, and increasing retention and success” for both faculty and students (Dodge and Kendall, College Teaching, 2004). In this project, we created an interdisciplinary Learning Community Project that allowed a Freshman Composition (FC) course to pair with a Digital Media (DM) course (Sophomore students) for students to work on a mini magazine. Students in FC were writers whose tasks focusing on writing and researching, whereas students in DM were copy editors whose tasks focusing on graphic design and layout. The goal was for students …

Navigating The World Of Online Information: A Braided Approach To Research And Writing In Ela Classrooms, Ana Katz, Brittany Malloy

The Utah English Journal

As ELA teachers, we know that teaching students how to write well goes beyond grammar and thesis statements–it is about empowering students to think critically in a world overflowing with information. Whether it is news headlines, social media posts, or academic articles, our students are constantly navigating a sea of facts, opinions, and misinformation. The challenge? Equipping them with the skills to tell the difference. One approach that positively impacted our classrooms was integrating research and writing into a single process. This “braided” method teaches students how to evaluate sources and build strong arguments while keeping their engagement high and …

The Summer Of Ya Love: Young Adult Romance, Tiktok, And The Classroom, Annika Nielson

The Utah English Journal

Where teenagers are, there romance will be also. As a high school English teacher, I constantly witness the intensity of adolescence as young people start to explore their own identities. It is impossible to separate this time of teenagerdom from romance, since “adolescents are fascinated with developing sexuality and love” (Litton, 1994, p. 28). Even if they are not experiencing it firsthand, teens are hearing about it constantly from their friends, in school hallways, in the movies and tv shows they consume, and especially in the literature they read. Even the core texts in high school echo this desire for …

Book Reviews: From The Editor, Justin Scholes

The Utah English Journal

What a wonderful time to be an English Language Arts teacher! There has never been a time with such a flourishing offering of young adult literature as well as digital and multimodal texts!

Thank You, James, Leah Parks

The Utah English Journal

Brightest, kindest

Wise beyond your years

Knowledge of content and people

Potential

Book Review: Alebrijes, Shauna Christensen

The Utah English Journal

400 years into the post-apocalyptic future, 13 year-old orphan Leandro and his younger sister, Gabi, struggle to survive in a barren San Joaquin Valley. Like the other Spanish-speaking lower class field workers, they are forced to farm vegetables for the elite ruling class, or risk exile or death in the harsh desert, a barren wasteland filled with terrifying man-eating wyrms. Leandro’s plan to escape with Gabi is thrown into disarray when Gabi is caught stealing a single strawberry in the market. Leandro takes the blame and is sentenced to banishment, or he can choose to have his consciousness transferred to …