Modern Literature Commons^™

The Introvert's Guide To The Galaxy: A Reflective Guide Of Solo Travel And Study Abroad, Hope Patterson

Senior Theses

Oringinally meant to be a much longer volume, The Introvert’s Guide to the Galaxy is a creative anthology of works that explores one person’s Study Abroad and solo travel experiences. The main goal is to open a space to talk about unique experiences that cannot be anticipated, but should be learned from later. Topics include culture shock, sexism, alcohol culture, family, freelance tutoring, and risky outdoor activites.

Travel with our trusty guide as she fills you in on the things to know while traveling abroad, including finding perfect outdoor sleeping conditions because you missed all the taxis, dealing with the …

Enchantment: A Teleology, Nathanael S. Toth

Senior Honors Theses

Despite the highly developed nature of his fictional world, Middle-earth, Tolkien never formally laid out a tabulated magic system for his fantasy creation. Nevertheless, unlike many stories by others in the fantasy genre, the magic he does include is far from just a shallow, world-building mechanism. Instead, it encapsulates the core theme of his fiction and the purposes which Ilúvatar (the God of Middle-earth) has given to the story’s many characters.

This paper will examine the nature and function of this magic from many angles: the identification of good magic with art and evil magic with domination; the delineation between …

Pathos, Spring 2019, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Sadie Jordan

Earthseed Planted: Ecofeminist Teachings In Octavia Butler's Parable Of The Sower, Delia Shahnavaz

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is set in a world where patriarchal supremacy has stifled not only womankind, but also the natural environment of the Earth. By exploring the innate connection between the desecrated Earth and the strangled matriarchy, this paper draws direct links to Butler's world and ecofeminist theory by Vandana Shiva and others, ultimately concluding that Butler's "Earthseed" serves as a representation of a world in which ecofeminism reigns supreme.

Subverting Transnormativity: Rage And Resilience In Kim Fu’S For Today I Am A Boy, Andrea Ruthven

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article analyzes the affective politics of rage and resilience in the novel For Today I Am a Boy (2014) by Kim Fu. The novel explores the dis-identification (Muñoz 1999) of gender identity through the protagonist, focusing on the rage, sadness, fear, and secrecy that function as the glue holding the body together, but that also work to constrain the process of self-identification. The novel is not the celebration of self-realization, nor is it the lamentation of a traumatized protagonist. Instead, the narrative pays attention to the various ways in which non-binary, or non-normative gender identities are marginalized, and to …

The Unruly Womb In Early Modern English Drama: Plotting Women's Biology On The Stage, Ursula Potter

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

This study provides an accessible, informative and entertaining introduction to women’s sexual health as presented on the early modern stage, and how dramatists coded for it. Beginning with the rise of green sickness (the disease of virgins) from its earliest reference in drama in the 1560s, Ursula Potter traces a continuing fascination with the womb by dramatists through to the oxymoron of the chaste sex debate in the 1640s. She illuminates how playwrights both satirized and perpetuated the notion of the womb’s insatiable appetite.

"The Tyrant Father": Leslie Stephen And Masculine Influences On Virginia Woolf And Her Novel, To The Lighthouse, Anya Graubard

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper examines the volatile yet nurturing relationship between Virginia Woolf and her father, Leslie Stephen. It specifically considers the effects of three male “tyrants” in Woolf’s childhood, including not only her father but also her two half-brothers, who abused her sexually. Analysis of the dynamics of these relationships provides insight into Woolf’s lifelong battle with mental illness and helps us to understand the complicated relationships she had as an adult with men and women.

In her letters, diaries, and memoir essays, Woolf reveals how she drew from her own experiences of childhood to write her most famous novel, To …

Learning From And Listening To Latinx Youth At The 2019 Ltc Tya Sin Fronteras Festival And Convening, Marci R. Mcmahon

Literatures and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

‘Some Foods Are Considered Aphrodisiac Because They Resemble Sexual Organs’: On Isabel Allende’S Aphrodite, Anke Klitzing

Articles

At the age of 56, well into her second marriage and a grandmother herself, novelist Isabel Allende decided to find out whether aphrodisiacs are all they are made out to be. She wrote Aphrodite: The Love of Food and Food of Love after extensive research into erotic literature across some centuries and continents, and this foundation of age-old wisdom also means that the book, while published in 1998, remains a timeless source of inspiration and enjoyment.

When Literature Scholars Write For General Readers: A Two Person, First Person Essay, Sue Norton, Laurence W. Mazzeno Prof.

Articles

This dually authored first-person essay offers a narrative account of the far-ranging writing experiences of two well-established academics who, like many others working in higher education, contribute writing to mainstream publications as well as to scholarly ones. The essay considers the implications for professional and personal reputations when material targeted at one kind of audience is easily accessible by another through internet ‘context collapse.’ It argues for an inextricable connection between authorial ethics and the essential rigour of all good writing, and it encourages scholar-writers to invest their energies in nonscholarly writing for its value to society.

Data Diving Into “Noticing Poetry”: An Analysis Of Student Engagement With The “I Notice” Method, Scot Slaby, Jordan Benedict

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This paper explores students’ engagement in reading poems, examining data on their self perceptions of their confidence and competence in reading poems before, during, and after using the “I Notice” methodology as adapted from The Academy of American Poets’ unit plan, “Noticing Poetry” (Slaby, 2017). The data was collected over the course of a month from January 9 through January 30, 2018 and involved five classes of one hundred general English tenth grade students across three teachers’ classrooms at Shanghai American School’s Puxi High School Campus. Data indicates that the “I Notice” method and the “Noticing Poetry” unit and its …

Comics In Action: A Reflection Of The Dominant Narrative In World War Ii, Spencer Gutierrez

SMU Journal of Undergraduate Research

In this paper, I argue that the propagandized use of comic books during World War II promoted views among Americans which contributed to antipathy towards Americans of Japanese and German descent. More generally, the goal of the essay is to highlight the importance of comic books as a reflection of the times – they simultaneously influence and are influenced by society’s dominant ideas – and promote the further study of such material. I examine the text and art from three comic book covers dated from 1942-1943. An analysis of these selections suggests that comic books depicted Axis soldiers as savage …

Review Of The Altruists, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

A book review of the debut novel by Andrew Ridker.

Reversing Borrón Y Cuenta Nueva: The Curative Power Of Family Memory In The Novels Of Loida Maritza Perez And Nelly Rosario, Ivonne Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I examine two novels, Geographies of Home by Loida Maritza Perez and Song of the Water Saints by Nelly Rosario, written by Dominican American authors, to determine how they present identity with relation to family history in conjunction with an analysis of my life and the circumstances that have helped define my identity. I explore how the characters in the texts are affected by the loss of family history, the role that gaze and family memory play in reclaiming that which is lost, and how these all shape identity. The families in the novels seem destined to lead desolate lives; …

The Practice Of Secularism In Religious Cencorship In Turkish Film (1939-1990), Aditama Aditama, Nadira Bella Rachmanti, Siti Rohmah Soekarba

International Review of Humanities Studies

This paper analyzes a film as one of the media with the ability to convey certain messages to the public. Films can reflect the social and cultural conditions of society, thereby they can be used to spread the current ideas, views, and ideologies of a country. Films in Turkey are part of a culture that has developed rapidly and has become an entertainment for the people. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk reformed and turned Turkey into a new country with the ideology of secularism, controlling religious institutions and expressions. This journal article aims to describe the implementation of Turkish secular ideology in …

Post Colonial Studies, Nashieli Marcano, Kyle Brooks

Research Guides & Subject Bibliographies

No abstract provided.

James Joyce, Bruce Springsteen And The Notion Of Exile: It's A Town Full Of Losers, And I'M Pulling Out Of Here To Win, Barry Sheehan

Academic Articles

“It’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win.”

Bruce Springsteen (1975) Thunder Road, Track 1 of Born to Run [CD], Columbia.

“So it returns. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

James Joyce (1998) Ulysses, p.309.

James Joyce was born towards the end of the nineteenth century, in Dublin, Ireland. He spent most of his life writing about Dublin while living in exile.

Born in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century, Bruce Springsteen has spent a career …

House And Family, Thomas Karli

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

The intention of this research is to establish the idea of a standard Four Person grouping in literature. In many modern stories, the ensemble holds a special place in people’s hearts, especially if they identify specifically with a certain member of the ensemble. This allows friend groups to debate placement and discuss their roles, all while appealing to our sublimated desperation to belong and to be represented. This paper will examine perhaps the most ubiquitous separation of fictional characters into four groups, the sorting of the Hogwarts Houses in Harry Potter. This thesis posits that sorting is based on determinable …

You Can Go Home Again: The Misunderstood Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder, Monica M. Krason

ETD Archive

Critics have frequently commented on the nostalgic tone of Brideshead Revisited. Their assessment has been largely negative, with most considering Brideshead too sentimental about England’s aristocratic past. This current characterization fails to recognize Waugh’s critiques of such thinking in Brideshead, wherein he upends the nostalgic tropes of popular Oxford novels, illustrates the dangers of both insulated upper class living and thoughtless presentism through his depictions of various characters, and proposes a greater metaphysical drama through memory is at play in the novel. Brideshead offers nostalgia as an enlivening force which allows Charles Ryder to maintain a vibrant understanding for who …

Texte Aus Dem Nachlass Von Egon Schwarz — “Lebe Wohl Südamerika” Und “Dank An Die Emigration”, Reinhard Andress

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.