Digital Commons Network^™

Book Review: M. J. Trow, A Brief History Of Vampires, Myha Do

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Review of M. J. Trow's A Brief History of Vampires. Philadelphia: Running Press Book Publishers, 2010. xv, 368 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-0-7624-3988-1.

Applications In The Classroom: Hardly Elementary—Frontiers For Freshman Composition With Conan Doyle’S A Study In Scarlet, Kate M. Donley

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Three recent television and !lm adaptations testify to the continuing popularity of Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. The fast-paced novella that introduces detective duo Holmes and Watson, A Study in Scarlet involves some astonishing elements, and not just in the plot. With just a little probing, collegiate readers may wonder whether Conan Doyle plagiarized his most famous character, invented forensic science, despised Mormons, and accidentally wrote a Western.

The novel was adapted as A Study in Pink, the !rst episode of the BBC’s series Sherlock created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Their vision of Holmes set …

Reflection: The Twenty-Line Trap? Shakespeare Enacted By Young Women, Shannon Reed

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Professional actors assemble a toolkit of monologues with an obligatory “Shakespearean monologue” of around 20 lines. But female actors are at a disadvantage, with less than 150 women in a repertoire of over 1,100 characters in Shakespeare’s 37 or more plays. Young female actors (18-22 years old) are even more at a loss, if the powerful and complex older female roles are removed, leaving only a few dozen appropriate speeches. What effect does this limited canon have on such actors? Here, I reflect upon my own participant observer experience as a young woman actor, who received the bulk of my …

Learning About People, Places And Spaces Of The World Through Informal Pedagogy: Socio-(Inter)Cultural Constructions And Connections To Popular Culture, Shelbee R. Nguyen

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores how adult and higher education (AHE) learners utilize popular culture as an informal pedagogical resource when learning about different cultures and preparing for international learning abroad or study abroad. Specifically, this case study research is concerned with what particular sources of popular culture serve as informal pedagogy and how these shape AHE learners’ cultural perceptions about study abroad to a specific international destination. A review of current literature at the intersection of popular culture and study abroad identities both the need to include adult and higher education learners as well as the ubiquitous nature of learning through …

“Can You Imagine, A Real, Live Indian Right Here In Walnut Grove?”: American Indians In Television Adaptations Of Little House On The Prairie, Amy S. Fatzinger

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House novels have been adapted into two major television series: Michael Landon’s well-known series, which aired from 1974-1983, and a more recent Disney adaptation, which aired as a miniseries in 2005. The premier movie, which preceded Landon’s series, and the Disney miniseries both focus on the events in Wilder’s 1935 novel, Little House on the Prairie, which covered the period from 1869-1871 during which the Ingalls family lived among the Osage in Kansas Indian Territory. Wilder’s portrayal of the Osage in her novel is controversial, but she does also include some literary devices that allow …

A Qualitative Study Of The Career Experiences Of Asian And Asian American Female Administrators In U.S. Higher Education, Yunru Shen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study explored the experiences of Asian and Asian American women administrators’ career paths in U.S. higher education. The research fills a gap in the literature regarding the careers of Asian and Asian American women administrators. The recruitment process was completed between May 13 and July 9, 2024. Recruitment emails were sent to 25 potentially qualified participants, including a network of 17 people made up of mentors, professors, and colleagues, as well as eight professional associations and LinkedIn. The participants were six Asian and Asian American biologically female administrators at U.S. colleges and universities. These participants currently hold …

Asia In Saint Louis: Synergy Of Library Instruction, Digital Humanities, And Community Engagement, Joan Wang, David Romney

Journal of East Asian Libraries

This article explores the integration of library instruction, digital humanities, and community engagement through the "Asia in Saint Louis" project at Washington University in St. Louis. Led by subject librarians Joan Wang and David Romney, in collaboration with digital humanities specialists and local community organizations, the project aimed to digitally reconstruct and showcase the histories of Asian Americans in St. Louis from the late 19th to the 20th century. Funded by the Missouri Humanities Council, the project employed ArcGIS StoryMap technology to create a series of interactive narratives. These StoryMaps, supported by archival research and community involvement, highlight key themes …

The Wizard Of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, And The Moral Imagination, By Camilo Peralta, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Camilo Peralta’s The Wizard of Mecosta gives the first detailed look at Russell Kirk’s fiction, from his ghost stories to his three gothic novels. While the work particularly emphasizes Kirk’s gothic influences, Peralta also explores references to T.S. Eliot and Charles Williams in his fiction, as well as comments in his nonfiction about Lewis and Williams writing “tales of the preternatural.” The discussion provides important material for seeing Kirk as an Inklings-influenced author.

Friar Jack, The Science-Fiction Apologist: Exploring “The Friar Of Oxford” By William Lindsay Gresham, G. Connor Salter, Sørina Higgins

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Few Inklings scholars have explored William Lindsay Gresham’s life outside of the fact that he was married to Joy Davidman. His poem “The Friar of Oxford,” published here for the first time, shows a surprising level of engagement with C.S. Lewis’s ideas, combining war imagery with references to the Ransom Cycle and a “mushroom cloud” reference that may show he explored one of Lewis’s literary influences. The poem’s contents add to existing Gresham-Inklings scholarship, and show Gresham accomplishing the same goals that the Inklings and their associates like Dorothy L. Sayers accomplished in their “escapist” or mythopoeic works.

Jewish Worship, Music, And Technology During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jeffrey A. Summit

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Jewish worship and considers a range of worshippers’ reactions to livestreamed and Zoom prayer services. Focusing on the Jewish Emergent Network, innovative communities who are known for cultivating vibrant, participatory music in worship, leaders discuss the challenges of not being able to sing together online, the Jewish legal ramifications of using technology on the Sabbath and the on-going changes they believe could occur as virtual worship returns to in-person prayer. These leaders also discuss surprisingly positive developments in online prayer, as congregants deepened interpersonal relationships in discussion breakout rooms, discovered …

Bridging Thought And Action: History, The Digital Humanities, And Building The Foundations Of Asian/American Political Thought, Vivian Yan-Gonzalez

Asian American Studies Faculty Articles and Research

This article argues that understanding the historical contours of Asian American electoral engagement provides an essential foundation for studying Asian/American political thought. However, historians have tended to adopt a broad understanding of "politics" beyond traditional civic and electoral politics, due to limited historical sources on Asian American electoral engagement and the longstanding interest among Asian Americanist scholars in alternative politics. I reintroduce Asian American electoral history as a vital and viable subject of study by exploring how scholars can use digital humanities tools and methods to build the archives of Asian American politics and to explore new insights and questions.

Transatlantic Literary Networks, 1949-1972, Cristina Iuli, Stefano Morello

Publications and Research

Il racconto di Donald Barthelme “Critique de la Vie Quotidienne”, pubblicato sul New Yorker il 9 luglio 1971, si apre su una famiglia newyorkese di classe media sull’orlo di una crisi matrimoniale. Wanda, la moglie, sfoglia Elle, costringendo il marito a prestare attenzione alle foto dell’elegante ristrutturazione di un vecchio mulino in Bretagna da cui spiccano arredi di Arne Jacobsen e “cose di plastica arancione e rosso brillante che arrivano da Milano” (Barthelme 1971, p. 26). Barthelme, che aveva trascorso tutta l’infanzia e buona parte della gioventù a Houston, in Texas, dove il padre era direttore del museo di …

Scene Transatlantiche: Eco Italiane Nella Beat Generation, Stefano Morello

Publications and Research

Nella maldestra intervista con Fernanda Pivano trasmessa dalla RAI nel settembre del 1966, Jack Kerouac, interpellato riguardo le infuenze letterarie che avevano ispirato la sua produzione, rispose negando con forza l’impatto di autori italiani sulla sua poetica. Il rifuto di Kerouac – uno dei pochi esponenti della Beat Generation a poter vantare un radicamento nel territorio nordamericano da più di dieci generazioni (FamilySearch) – può essere letto come il tentativo di un autore aggrappatosi, nella parte fnale della sua vita, a un’ideologia conservatrice e nazionalista, di inscrivere la propria poetica all’interno di una tradizione letteraria puramente americana. Nella frase successiva …

Warm Bodies, Strong Attachments, And The Search For Better Bonds: The Politics Of Human-Animal Entanglements In U.S. Fiction And Media, John Charles Hawkins

Dissertations

This dissertation describes human-animal relationships as sites of political longing and meaningful failure in the context of twentieth and twenty-first U.S. fiction and media. I locate three tendencies of imagination prevalent in writing about bonds between humans and other animals: collaboration in regional modernity, refamiliarization in consumer capitalism, and transformation in rationalist patriarchy. These expressions of desire for a different way of relating, I argue, open important windows into the places where current power structures generate suffering and distress. I also emphasize the compelling but imperfect nature of these expressions. The texts and images in this dissertation offer attempts to …

“As Blind Men Learn The Sun”: Towards A Poetics Of Queer Mysticism In American Literature, 1860-1960, Bradley M. Nelson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to play with the similarity between the queer and the mystical, and in the process, defines something I call “queer mysticism.” I include four cardinal figures of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American poetry: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Robert Duncan. Beginning with Walt Whitman, I show how each of these poets bear witness to an experience of the divine that is both immanent and immanently queer. Through historical and biographical research, I uncover their poetic inspiration in popular modes of expression and in the esoteric and arcane. By establishing a connection with a few Catholic mystics …

Building Networks, Producing Spaces For Play: Local Geographies And National Organizing In The History Of Adventure Playgrounds In The United States, 1949-1999, Reilly B. Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides an historical analysis of repurposed material adventure playgrounds in the United States between 1949 and 1999. Three microhistories of adventure playgrounds (The Yard, in Minneapolis, M.N., and several playgrounds in New York City, N.Y., and Houston, T.X.) are framed against the wider socio-economic changes that shaped more than thirty-five adventure playgrounds in the United States over the period of study. By focusing on the relationships mobilized by adventure playground advocates at different scales and across different points of view, and how these networks shaped the local production of spaces for play, this dissertation's method underlines the importance …

Building Black Manhattan: Architecture, Art, And The Politics Of Respectability, 1857–1914, Jessica Larson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Building Black Manhattan” is the first study to examine the architectural contributions of Black women reformers to the urban development of New York City between the Civil War and the Great Migration. Through the construction of charitable and reform institutions throughout Manhattan, they articulated a strategy of racial uplift through deliberate spatial construction.

As reform work was one of the very few arenas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which women had a significant public voice, the buildings constructed to facilitate reformers’ work encoded the social, racial, and gendered demands of women into their designs. These institutions included …

The Film, The Stadium And The Jail: The Post-Industrial Transformation Of Downtown Durham, Seth Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

By the late 1980s, Durham, North Carolina’s downtown-based industrial economy had been replaced by a powerful knowledge economy in the city’s peripheries. Downtown Durham’s vast array of tobacco and textiles manufacturing buildings stood empty, along with most of its commercial spaces, offices and sidewalks. This thesis argues that the local development of two major public works, a baseball stadium (the Durham Bulls Athletic Park) and a jail (the Durham County Detention Center), conceived and constructed on similar timelines in close physical proximity, was indicative of how—and for whom—city and county officials envisioned a revitalized downtown. The first chapter examines the …

Reviving Hysteria: The Nineteenth Century At The End Of The Twentieth, Christina Quintana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores popular and medical representations of female madness in two time periods: the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. I argue that 1990s American culture produced an abundance of texts, images, and narratives that revitalized the iconography and medical discourses of late nineteenth-century hysteria. Analyzing popular texts, films, and cultural touchstones of the 1990s, I explore how Victorian ideas about women’s minds—such as the inherent feebleness of the female brain and nervous system; the fatalistic, life-altering effects of female puberty; the association between hysteria and deviant female sexuality; and the implicit racialization of hysteria and female madness more …

Henry James And The Act Of Speech From Drama To Dictation, Mary Claire Brunelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the idea of speech as an act in the writings of Henry James for the purpose of analyzing the author’s relationship to drama and how it influenced his practice of typewriter dictation. It traces the intersections of biography and bibliography within James’s notebooks, letters, and fiction produced during the years between his dismissal of playwriting after the public rejection of Guy Domville in January 1895 and his adoption of dictation due to writer’s cramp in the fall of 1896, as he worked on What Maisie Knew. In advancing an affective methodology to discover the embodied reality …

"White Slaves Of California": Race, Religion, And The Railroad In Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton's The Squatter And The Don, Katie Buonanno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In The Squatter and the Don (1885), Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton depicts the decline of the Alamars, a patrician Californio family, in the years after California was annexed by the United States. This thesis explores the different rhetorical maneuvers Ruiz de Burton makes to place the Californios in a broad, enfranchising Anglo-American national paradigm. The novel negotiates the messy, competing histories of Spanish, Mexican, and American colonialism, ultimately making the case for the enduring presence of Spanish missionization in the region, as well as the cultural assimilability of the Californio population. While the novel has frequently been read as …

Review Of Emily Sun’S On The Horizon Of World Literature, Jing Yang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Chinese Ideas And American Politics: Confucius As A Guideline For Leadership, Alfred Hornung

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Chinese Ideas and American Politics: Confucius as a Guideline for Leadership", Alfred Hornung traces the influence of Chinese ideas on American politics with a focus on the works of Confucius. The more than 2.500-year-old impact of the Chinese philosopher on public conduct and his pursuit of virtuous perfection has served as a guideline for leadership emanating from China to Europe and America. For this trajectory of ideas, the historic and the new Silk Road play a decisive role. The exchange of goods along the land-based and maritime routes, which inform Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative, also …

All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’S Translation Of Shui Hu Zhuan And Its Effects On Her Writing Career, Zhihui Sophia Geng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’s Translation of Shui Hu Zhuan and its Effects on Her Writing Career,” Zhihui Sophia Geng focuses on Pulitzer Prize winner and Noble Laureate Pearl Sydenstricker Buck’s All Men Are Brothers, her translation of the classical Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan. She examines the reception of her translation and analyzes the significance of All Men Are Brothers to Buck’s literary career. By providing the first complete translation of Shui Hu Zhuan to an English-speaking audience, Buck made a significant cultural contribution to the United States and English-speaking cultural spheres. The …

Engaging China: Beckett’S Debt To Pound, Giles, And Laloy, Lidan Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Engaging China: Beckett’s Debt to Pound, Giles, and Laloy," Lidan Lin examines Ezra Pound’s influence on Samuel Beckett. In their dealings with China, Pound and Beckett are both indebted to such sinologists and cultural transmitters as Ernest Fenollosa, H. A. Giles, Louis Laloy, and Laurence Binyon who introduced Chinese culture, literature, and arts to the Western world through translation and their writings about China. Lin situates the Pound-Beckett connection in the broad cultural context of the early 20^th century. She argues that while modernism’s turn to China as a cultural paradigm was collectively brought about by …

Translation As Creative Writing: Rewriting The Chinese Maze Murders In Contemporary China, Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Translation as Creative Writing: Rewriting The Chinese Maze Murders in Contemporary China,” Xiaoquan Raphael Zhang examines four groups of selected writings centered on one of Robert van Gulik’s more well-known Judge Dee novels, The Chinese Maze Murders (written first in English but not published until 1956). Different from most publications on van Gulik and his novels, Zhang examines the impact of censorship and self-censorship on the writing, rewriting, and (re)adapting, “literal” and “liberal/free” translation of the Judge Dee stories traveling between Chinese and English, between China and the West, for Chinese and non-Chinese audiences. Focus is given …

Exotic Construction Of An Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’S Creative Translation Of Li Ch’Ing-Chao’S Ci-Poems And Its Influences, Yuqun Fu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “Exotic Construction of an Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’s Creative Translation of Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-Poems and its Influences,” Yuqun Fu discusses Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-poems and her identity as a woman intellect in the patriarchal and feudal Song Dynasty of China. Due to Kenneth Rexroth’s feminist perspective and Sappho complex as well as his own pursuit to excel in the hipster stylistics of the newly prospering Beat writers, Rexroth turns to the Eastern women poets to fuel his own cause, especially in his idiosyncratic way of interpreting and translating Li Ch’ing-Chao. His translation focuses on gender identity and …

Precarious Refugee: Self-Optimization And Neoliberal Rationality In Rawi Hage’S Cockroach, Shahab Nadimi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Precarious Refugee: Self-Optimization and Neoliberal Rationality in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach," Shahab Nadimi examines Rawi Hage’s Cockroach as an example of refugee literature in the light of current debates about neoliberal biopolitics and the idea of a new form of life. Refugees, who are neither identified as citizens nor totally as strangers, are forced to compete in unequal circumstances of economic mobility with other citizens, often leaving them in a condition of personal debts, unemployment, and mental distress. Nadimi investigates Cockroach’s depiction of psychological breakdown, suicidal attempts, and metamorphosis as symptomatic of and critical to the neoliberal …

The Post-Closet Home: Queer Domesticity, Enclosure, And Queer Southern Gothicism In Lee Mandelo's "Summer Sons", Andrew Dylan Dampier

Master's Theses

In current discussions of queer theory, terms such as “post-gay” leave room for misrepresentation. The premise behind this term serves a primarily cisgenderheterosexual agenda by promising the assimilation of queer individuals into the dominant society. For this reason, I prefer to align the term “post-closet” with the queer person’s journey towards, and past, such societal barriers while maintaining the significance of foundational queer theories. In his novel Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo depicts Andrew Blur’s journey through the grief-ridden confines of the closet as he seeks a new identity following the death of his best friend. Mandelo accomplishes this by juxtaposing …

On Salvation And Genre: Fast Sermons In Seventeenth-Century New England, Daniel Patrick Mcgee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The fast sermon is an important and overlooked genre in the literary history of colonial New England, one which complicates theories about American puritanism underwritten by the imprecise narrative construct of the jeremiad. This thesis will argue that preachers used fast sermons to shape their communities, respond to major events, and provide competing interpretations of Congregationalist doctrine throughout the seventeenth century. Borrowing from the methodologies of new formalist criticism and Louis Althusser’s theory of material ideology, it will examine common themes, motifs, and rhetorical demands in John Wheelwright’s 1637 Fast Sermon, Thomas Shepard’s 1645 Wine for Gospel Wantons, …