Strange Compositions: Chemistry And Its Occult History In Victorian Speculative Fiction,
2016
Wilfrid Laurier University
Strange Compositions: Chemistry And Its Occult History In Victorian Speculative Fiction, Susan Hroncek
Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)
This dissertation examines how depictions of chemistry in Victorian literature are influenced by concerns regarding the history of chemistry and its relationship to the occult. Among these depictions, I consider non-fiction writings of the period, such as histories of science and articles from periodicals, but I focus on novels that prominently feature chemistry, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story (1862), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), George Griffith’s Olga Romanoff (1894), T. Mullet Ellis’s Zalma (1895), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). These texts link chemistry with its origins in alchemy, the occult, and …
Revolution, Redemption, And Romance: Reading Constructions Of Filipino Spanish American Identities And Politics Of Knowledge In Rizal’S Noli Me Tangere And El Filibusterismo Alongside Filipino American Fiction,
2016
Hamline University
Revolution, Redemption, And Romance: Reading Constructions Of Filipino Spanish American Identities And Politics Of Knowledge In Rizal’S Noli Me Tangere And El Filibusterismo Alongside Filipino American Fiction, Steven Beardsley
Departmental Honors Projects
This project analyzes the literary works and the iconic role of Filipino nationalist José Rizal before, during, and after the Spanish American War of 1898. Rizal’s social activism and writing inspired a revolution against the Friarocracy in the Philippines. He also influenced Filipino American writers who reference Rizal’s construction of the Filipino woman in Christianity and Filipinos fighting against colonial oppression. Additionally, Filipino American writers illustrate how being Filipino in the US today is a transcultural experience rather than a simple binary of traditional Philippines and modern America. Recognizing Spain as an earlier colonizing force is critical in understanding the …
“There Is Only Power”: Surveying The Structures And Operations Of Power In The Magical World Of Harry Potter,
2016
Hamline University
“There Is Only Power”: Surveying The Structures And Operations Of Power In The Magical World Of Harry Potter, Aaron D. Marciniak
Departmental Honors Projects
As the internationally best-selling series Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling moves into its second generation of readers, it becomes increasingly important to analyze the assumptions it communicates about power differentials between people and belief systems. A central tenant of narrative paradigm holds that humans are innately narrative, internalizing narrative frameworks as a means to understand the world which then become externalized through human action. Thus, while the social hierarchies, collective actions, and institutional authorities in the fantasy world of Harry Potter in some ways map onto Anglo-American social and political structures, the significant differences between these textual and “real world” …
Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory,
2016
Hamline University
Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory, Rock Lamanna
Departmental Honors Projects
While postmodern theory and literature is typically viewed as either “anti-humanist” or a rejection of Humanism, this essay reconsiders these assumptions by exploring ethical questions in early postmodern novels and theory, referred to as “proto-postmodernism.” For proto-postmodernists such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, Humanism—the ethical framework that asserts a centered “self” and a collective “metanarrative” of human progress—causes and legitimates violence, yet in their theories and literature, they promote the humanist value of dignity in their critiques of modern ethics and politics. To examine this hybrid stance toward Humanism, the first section situates …
Idling Women: The Domestic Bildungsroman And The American City, 1830-1900,
2016
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Idling Women: The Domestic Bildungsroman And The American City, 1830-1900, Jordan L. Von Cannon
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
In Idling Women: The Domestic Bildungsroman and the American City, 1830-1900, I explore urban narratives of female non-development. In city novels featuring female protagonists, there are two normative arcs of development: either women find new opportunities for marriage, work, and, in some cases, independence in the city, or they fall prey to threats of seduction, poverty, and even death. However, these two plotlines fail to accommodate stories of women who wait to develop, fail at it, or otherwise resist what might be considered character growth. By problematizing distinctions between idleness and the American “work ethic” often tied to the industrialized …
The Darkest Nation: American Melancholia In Modernist Narratives Of The First World War,
2016
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
The Darkest Nation: American Melancholia In Modernist Narratives Of The First World War, Michael Von Cannon
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation, entitled The Darkest Nation: American Melancholia in Modernist Narratives of the First World War, re-conceptualizes U.S. modernism by attending to how the historical event of WWI inaugurated melancholia, or sustained grief, as the cornerstone of a new form of nationalism. Scholars have focused either on how consolatory mourning bolstered patriotism or how melancholia led to the demise of such an imagined community and to the growth of cosmopolitanism. I consider, however, an American modernist commitment to the nation of loss expressed, surprisingly enough, in narratives about noncombatants. For a country that entered the military conflict near its end, …
To Come Alive In Our Experience: The Sounds Of Listening In Sigurd F. Olson,
2016
Oberlin College
To Come Alive In Our Experience: The Sounds Of Listening In Sigurd F. Olson, Allison Fulton
Honors Papers
My research explores the reflective qualities of nature that can lead to different ways of being in and of the world. In The Singing Wilderness, Sigurd Olson details his experiences in the Quetico-Superior region, an international wilderness of lakes and forests on the border of Canada and Minnesota that is replete with spaces for reflection. Olson encourages his readers to listen to the sounds, songs, and silences of the wilderness. I address his creation of a literary terrain he made accessible to his readers by acting as a guide to the imaginative wilderness with a literary canoe and paddle.
The Reader's Complicity: Universality In Waiting For The Barbarians, The Laramie Project, And The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later,
2016
Christopher Newport University
The Reader's Complicity: Universality In Waiting For The Barbarians, The Laramie Project, And The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, Aubrey Kosa
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Skin And Smoke,
2016
Missouri State University
Skin And Smoke, Kelly Anne Baker
Graduate Theses/Dissertations
My thesis consists of the first ten chapters of a horror novel, entitled Skin and Smoke. My novel focuses on the character of Violet Masterson and her attempts to create her own identify and reconcile with her family's past actions. Violet lives in the small, recently unincorporated town of Nuovita in central Washington. Following her grandmother's death, she must face the paranormal events occurring in Nuovita, while her father leaves on an unknown journey. My thesis addresses themes of loss, identity, and revenge. In Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he proposes that the monomyth ends with the …
Religion In The Early British Literature Classroom: The Challenges Of Teaching Religion And Literature To Students Of Faith,
2016
Dordt College
Religion In The Early British Literature Classroom: The Challenges Of Teaching Religion And Literature To Students Of Faith, Bob De Smith
Faculty Work Comprehensive List
No abstract provided.
Pecan Grove Review Volume 17,
2016
St. Mary's University
Pecan Grove Review Volume 17, St. Mary's University
Pecan Grove Review
Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.
Seeing Harry Potter As An At-Risk Student: Critical Literacy, Cultural Capital, And The Wizarding World,
2016
Brigham Young University - Provo
Seeing Harry Potter As An At-Risk Student: Critical Literacy, Cultural Capital, And The Wizarding World, Dawan Coombs, Jon Ostenson, Whitney Sommerville
Faculty Publications
Despite his celebrity status in the wizard community, Harry’s lack of familiarity with its culture, language, social structures, and institutions constantly causes him to question his competence and magical potential. Although most muggle teens will never deal with the challenges Harry confronts as he tries to sort out Quidditch from Slytherin and Hufflepuff on his first visit to Diagon Alley, they can empathize with Harry’s attempts to acculturate into the social, academic, and political norms of a very unfamiliar world. Many students in secondary schools exist on the margins because of disconnects between their own cultures, languages, and social practices …
Satire And Synthesis: Parody And Satire Of Victorian Education In The Works Of Lewis Carroll,
2016
Central Washington University
Satire And Synthesis: Parody And Satire Of Victorian Education In The Works Of Lewis Carroll, Cameron D. Sedlacek
All Master's Theses
Education is an integral part of any society. Victorian England saw drastic reform in the method of childhood education, shifting from religious to secular forms of rote memorization. An analysis of the works of Lewis Carroll reveals significant instances of parody, pastiche, and satire on these styles of education and their corresponding reform. Unlike traditional satire, however, Lewis Carroll’s satire does not simply criticize these targets, but utilizes a strategy of synthesis to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of various conflicting educational ideologies and to suggest ways of adopting methods from all available options.
Life In Translation,
2016
Independent scholar
Life In Translation, Marion W. Copeland
Animal Sentience
This commentary emphasizes Broom’s (2014) attack on “the widely stated human prejudices” that prevent modern humans from understanding and communicating with animals of other species. As a student and scholar of what is now referred to as literary animal studies, I find one of these biases — anthropocentrism (human exceptionalism) — of particular concern because much of the literature I study is valued only for its concern with animals presented as so remarkably similar to human beings that they are read as symbols or allegorical representations of the human rather than real animals: when some of these animal characters speak …
Animal Welfare And Animal Rights,
2016
University of Westminster
Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle
Animal Sentience
This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.
Illustrations Of Nepantleras: Bridge Making Potential In Ana Castillo's So Far From God And The Guardians,
2016
Central Washington University
Illustrations Of Nepantleras: Bridge Making Potential In Ana Castillo's So Far From God And The Guardians, Amanda Patrick
All Master's Theses
Chicana literature to date has extensively illustrated the process of identity construction—the development of mestiza consciousness—as the means through which Mexican American females may thwart the agents of oppressive patriarchal authority in their lives. While this highly theoretical and politicized literature has contributed greatly to discussions of identity, agency, and the subjective self, many Chicana authors and activists express concerns regarding the fate of the Chicana/o collective. Some consider the relationship between feminist Chicanas and their more traditional families and communities to be irreconcilable. Using the theories of Gloria Anzaldúa, I argue that the novels So Far from God and …
No Sorrow In Sight,
2016
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Discussing The Crucifixion With Jehovah’S Witnesses At The F. Scott And Zelda Fitzgerald House In Montgomery, Alabama,
2016
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Discussing The Crucifixion With Jehovah’S Witnesses At The F. Scott And Zelda Fitzgerald House In Montgomery, Alabama, Barbara Hamby
Birmingham Poetry Review
pp. 96-97
The Belt,
2016
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Where Justice And Whimsy Lead: An Interview With Barbara Ras,
2016
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Where Justice And Whimsy Lead: An Interview With Barbara Ras, Megan Sexton
Birmingham Poetry Review
pp. 9-17
