English Language and Literature Commons^™

Book Review: The Hidden Oracle, Tessa Hauglid

The Utah English Journal

“Is anything sadder than the sound of a god hitting a pile of garbage bags?” So questions the (former) god, Apollo, after Zeus turns him into a pimply 16-year-old boy, jettisoning him into a New York City dumpster. Apollo quickly realizes he has lost the very attributes that make him a god: immortality, beauty, and strength. The only divine gifts he seems to have retained are his expansive ego and his wit.

Queering The Spheres: Non-Normative Gender, Sexuality, And Family In Three Victorian Texts, Randi Mihajlovic

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, I use a queer theoretical lens to consider three Victorian texts, Hesba Stretton’s “The Ghost in the Clock Room,” Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. I apply queer theory to locate these authors’ attempts to destabilize heteronormativity by depicting non-normative gender roles, sexualities, and families in texts that emphasize the Victorian ideology of separate spheres. Many scholars imagine the separation of spheres as simply relegating women to a domestic sphere that reinforced traditional values and restricted their power. However, these works demonstrate that opportunities for power and queer possibility exist within the home …

Freakish, Feathery, And Foreign: Language Of Otherness In The Squire’S Tale, Laurel Meister

The Expositor: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities

No abstract provided.

Social Madness In Beat Generation Writing, Megan Reynolds

The Expositor: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities

No abstract provided.

Teaching Anglo-American Academic Writing And Intercultural Rhetoric: A Grounded Theory Study Of Practice In Ontario Secondary Schools, Amir Kalan

English Faculty Publications

This qualitative research project is a grounded theory study of the experiences of five EAL (English as an additional language) academic writing instructors with intercultural rhetoric. Following the academic conversation about contrastive/intercultural rhetoric, this investigation explores narratives of classroom practice in Ontario secondary schools in order to underline L2 writing activities that are sensitive to intercultural rhetoric. This paper includes explanations of the phenomenon of intercultural rhetoric as identified by the interviewed instructors and lists practical strategies employed by the participants. These strategies are organized in three categories: (1) strategies that use the potential of students’ first languages and mother …

Reading Chaucer With Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal, Lee H. Downen

The Larrie and Bobbi Weil Undergraduate Research Award

In order to understand the ending of Chaucer's poem "Troilus and Criseyde," one must read him with charity. The person who is indifferent to or suspicious of him will not, to use literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin's words, “be able to generate sufficient attention to slow down and linger intently over [the poem], to hold and sculpt every detail and particular in it, however minute.” The charitable reader, that is, the reader who practices caritas—"love for our neighbor," to use Thomas Aquinas's definition—will be able to appreciate how the Boethian logic and the Thomistic distinctions of the poem allow for the …

Science Fiction, Lisa Yaszek, Jason W. Ellis

Publications and Research

Literary and cultural critics call science fiction the premiere story form of modernity because it relates the adventures of educated men and women who use science and technology to reshape the material world and build new, hopefully better societies. As such, it is no surprise that many authors working in this popular genre explore how educated men and women might use science and technology to reshape the physical body and build new, hopefully better versions of humanity itself. Yet, lingering even in the most optimistic imaginings of a posthuman future is the doubt that these transformations will be evenly distributed …

Nsu Early Literacy And Reading Education Curriculum 2016, Nova Southeastern University

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice College Archive

No abstract provided.

Devising Performance & Queer Futurity, Brendan F. Leonard

Honors Theses

This project argues that devising performance is an inherently queer and utopian form. In response to recent political movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, which seek to stage dissatisfaction with the systems of late capitalism, I turn to devising performance as a site. Informed by the queer and performance theories of Jose Esteban Munoz, Lee Edelman, and Jill Dolan, I argue that devised theater allows us to process disillusionment, rehearse collectivity, and stage futurity. In conversation with Munoz, I define futurity as an imaginative site that considers what will follow what some scholars suggest will be …

Hanging The Servant Girl To Hunting The Ripper: The Victorian Birth Of The True Crime Genre, Jonathan G. Brown

Masters Theses

More definitive answers about the creation and form of the modern True Crime genre narrative can be found by exploring, not the creators of True Crime narratives, but by following reader expectations and examining the social situation from which True Crime narratives were able to arise. Theorists in the genre field such as Lloyd Bitzer Carolyn Miller and Amy Devitt have introduced and refined the view of genre as a social action. In this view, genre does not come about as a set of rules imposed upon types of literature to bring order, but as a societally accepted creation constructed …

"If You Want Sense, You'll Have To Make It Yourself": Language, Adaptation, And The Myth Of Visual Nonsense, Dianna M. Bellian

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between language and image in Nonsense texts through analysis of illustrations, animations, and live-action portrayals of scenes from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, and their adaptations. This study proceeds by first discussing the discrepancies between various definitions of the critical term "nonsense" as applied to a genre of literature, then moves on to critique the established term of "visual nonsense" as used within the discourse community. The analysis of word-image relationships in the sample texts …

Intersections Of Space, Movement, And Diasporic Subjectivity In Brick Lane, White Teeth, And Maps For Lost Lovers, Md. Alamgir Hossain

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the correlations between characters' encounters with specific locations and their interior development as they adjust to their new environments in the novels Brick Lane (2003), White Teeth (2000), and Maps for Lost Lovers (2004). Monica Ali's Brick Lane focuses on Nazneen's (the protagonist) encounters with different places such as particular streets, pubs, restaurants, cafés, and train stations, which impact her personality to such an extent that, in the process of traversing London's physical terrain, she is transformed from a passive Bangladeshi rural woman into an active, independent agent in London. In With Teeth, Zadie Smith depicts …

Female Anti-Heroes In Contemporary Literature, Film, And Television, Sara A. Amato

Masters Theses

The anti-hero character has steadily become more popular in contemporary literature, film, and television. Part of this popularity is due to the character's appeal to the audience. This character type often commits acts that challenge the regulations of society. These acts, however, can become wish fulfillment for some audience members, making the acts of the character a vicarious experience as well as making the character more relatable because of the character's flawed nature.

This study will trace some of the evolution of the female anti-hero by discussing an ancestral character of the female anti-hero—Hester Prynne the protagonist of Nathanial Hawthorne's …

The Quotidian In Naguib Mahfouz’S The Cairo Trilogy, Kenneth Strickland

Masters Theses

Naguib Mahfouz said that his primary concern in writing was freedom. This study defines the Quotidian as Naguib Mahfouz uses the concept in his seminal work, The Cairo Trilogy to reveal changes in characters’ subjectivities as they gain access to freedom. Using a Foucauldian theory of power and Homi Bhabha’s Third Space illuminate how freedom emerged as the daily rhythms and accouterments of life changed during the early twentieth century in Cairo. In the novel, characters, whose subjectivities were delimited by imposed strictures, find new opportunities to define reality with some sense of autonomy. The thesis examines the changes in …

Identity-Construction And Development In The Modernist Bildungsroman, Victoria Gordon

Senior Theses

"Near the turn of the 20th century, with the advent of modernist modes of creation and thinking, there is a perceptible shift in the narrative of the Bildungsroman. This essay focuses on the shift in perception of the self and self-development in the modernist. Bildungsroman by performing a psychoanalytic reading of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian (1890) Gray and James Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." --pages 1-2

Remnants Of The Past: Grendel’S Mother, Wealhtheow, And The Pagan Past, Sarah Kinkade

Senior Theses

"Within medieval studies, Beowulf is, by far, one of the most well-known and analyzed texts. While much scholarship focuses on subjects such as lexical analysis, Beowulf’s actions, the symbolism of Grendel, women’s roles and expectations, medieval politics, and many other notable topics, a less-popular, but significant theme within Beowulf is the fluctuating state of religion throughout Anglo-Saxon history. Rather than depicting a binary system between Christianity and paganism, the poem acknowledges the ongoing conversion process, which presented overlaps of both beliefs. The result of this process was folklore and this ambiguous system plays a major role throughout Beowulf. However, this …

Beasts, Brides, And Brutality: The Intersection Of Animalism And Gender In European Fairy Tales, Rachel Matson

English Honors Papers

This thesis, a comparative study of published fairy tale collections across three nations and three centuries, argues that fairy tales were, in their time, highly charged ideological interventions in period debates about gender, class, and nation. In this thesis I recover not just the historical context of each collection but also the circumstances of production for their print publication. The variables that form the basis of this comparison include: whether stories in a given volume were collected from informants or invented by a single author; the level of attachment of the collector to nationalist movements; and the layers of editorial …

Within And Without: Psychoanalysis, Trauma Theory, And The Healing Narrative, Carrie Crisman Oorlog

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this collection, I explore the process of writing to heal from trauma. In exploring the rhetorical landscape of trauma writing, I offer a new framework for understanding how those who experience a traumatic event may use the process of writing creatively to engage in a process of healing. I argue that through the creation of art, individuals may take ownership of their experiences and memories, thus exerting the agency over the experience that was lost as the result of trauma. I also demonstrate and reflect upon my own journey in creating the healing narrative as a process of healing …

A Comprehensive Literature Review Of Juvenile Programs, Policies, And Monitoring Systems, Jason Herter

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This paper investigates past literature on juvenile-based programs, policies, and monitoring systems. It shows what strides practitioners have taken to reduce recidivism and how programs have tried to limit past failures. By showing what has worked and what has failed, we can develop future research and designs, measure the effects of different theories, and even add more important categories to future programs. This research presents information that may assist practitioners who work directly with juveniles and those who are involved in researching and developing future juvenile programs and policies.

Message Status, David Shrauger

Bryant Literary Review

Sam awoke with a smile, just like he did every day.

He brushed his teeth with a smile,