Digital Commons Network^™

Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, And The Question Of The “True” Ariel: Complicating Binaries In Plath’S Literary Legacy, Jacob C. Quinn

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis aims to complicate common binaries that have defined critical responses to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel since its first publication in 1965, and which emerged as the result of her husband Ted Hughes’ alterations to her original selection and arrangement of poems. Hughes’ editing emphasizes a narrative which ends in bleak fatality, whereas Plath’s original narrative concludes on a note of bittersweet hope. I read Hughes’ choice of ending as highly influential on Plath’s reception and legacy. The tone of her immediate reception, largely shaped by Al Alvarez, characterized Plath as an “extremist” poet whose work should be read through …

We Need To Care About Care: (Un)Caring Relations In Victorian Fiction, Roslyn Fleming

Theses and Dissertations--English

The professionalization and institutionalization of care in the Victorian era ushered in a growing societal concern about the pitfalls of care being “systematized and depersonalized” and treating people as burdens, problems to be solved. Given the increasing attention paid to people’s welfare and well-being during this period, the cultural shift from intimate community care to professional and institutional care, and the growing stigmatization of disabled bodyminds, the fiction produced amidst these cultural changes makes a compelling site for a study of care. Critical scholarship attending to Victorian novels’ representations of care, however, has largely concentrated on specific categorizations of care …

Benjy's Personhood In The Sound And The Fury, Addison D. Tighe

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis will take a look at the way Benjy Compson’s character in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury can be used to form an anti-eugenic argument. By taking a close look at the historical context of America’s twentieth century eugenic movement, the ways in which the novel presents an argument of personhood for those with disabilities come forth despite the eugenic pressures of the time. By taking the time to closely read Benjy’s section within the novel, a mix of disability studies and feminist disability studies, and understanding the complexity of character and stream of conscious writing, …

Analyzing Headers With Chatgpt, Raymond Rosas

Open Educational Resources

This assignment invites students to examine how section headers function as rhetorical and organizational tools in research writing by analyzing headers generated by ChatGPT. Using a shared sample text, students prompt generative AI to produce multiple sets of headers that foreground different analytical emphases (e.g., race or language). Students then compare these AI-generated headers to identify how shifts in emphasis reshape the implied structure, focus, and interpretation of a text. Through analysis and reflection, students use these insights to inform their own planning for inquiry-based research writing, while critically evaluating the affordances and limitations of generative AI at an early …

A Low-Stakes Assignment That Introduces Ai Technology Into The Analysis And Writing Process, Tim Mccormack

Open Educational Resources

In this ENG 225 assignment, students use AI (ChatGPT) to perform tasks related to summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and responding to a text, then compare the AI-generated work to their own. Using Blitzer’s article “The Rhetorical Situation”, students create APA citations, summaries, paraphrases, key quotes, and personal responses with AI guidance. The assignment emphasizes critical evaluation by having students analyze the accuracy, effectiveness, and differences between human and AI-generated work. This exercise develops skills in rhetorical analysis, source engagement, and reflective assessment of AI as a tool for writing and research.

(Re)Discovering The Streets Of Nyc: Honorary Signs, Sticker Street Art & Collective/Collaborative Investigations, Mark Mcbeth

Open Educational Resources

In a scaffolded series of assignments, students investigate NYC honorary street signs and sticker art through photography, research, individual essays, and a collaborative project.

By The Light, Desiree Galamgam

CMC Senior Theses

On the island of Helios, the sun god, a water nymph finds comfort tending to the flora along  riverbanks. Clytie avoids her oceanid sisters’ poisonous proclivities. Modeling herself after the sun god’s incessant responsibilities, she spends her existence working. Only taking breaks to perch herself at the top of her alcove’s hill to watch Helios drive his chariot to rise and set the sun, she sees him as the epitome of perfection and freedom.

Her tranquil life is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Helios himself at the footsteps of her isolated cave. Clytie begins to feel new emotions as …

Writing Against The War Machine: Wiflred Owen's Poetic Challenge To World War I Pro-War Rhetoric, Elizabeth Woods

Theses and Dissertations

Wilfred Owen, a soldier-poet who fought in World War I, is often labeled an anti-war poet, with some claiming that he was against the war in its entirety. This thesis explores the opinion that Owen is not an anti-war poet but rather that he wrote against anti-pro-war rhetoric. This includes all types of pro-war rhetoric influential in England for recruitment purposes but mainly focuses on poetry that would be published in newspapers for everyday readers to see. Owen seems to specifically resist two types of pro-war rhetoric, the myth of the German barbarian and what he called the old lie. …

Unmasked And Unprotected: An Autistic Poet's Journey Of Imperfect Confession, Cynthia Short

Theses and Dissertations

Cynthia Short’s thesis analyzes the consumption and contortion of neurodivergent experience across the clinical, personal, and artistic stages. Combining intersectional memoir with clinical research, traditional poetics, and spoken word experience, she weaves a first-person narrative of consumption and redefinition by systems that did not understand her. Yet, she argues that imperfect confession -done without self-knowledge, resources, or proper self-worth to resist consumption – still has its place. Her collection of twenty-nine self-authored poems serves as a testament to the growth her imperfect confession allowed, outlining her struggles with identity, clinical experimentation and economic survival in a world not meant for …

2026 Forces

Forces

Full issue of Forces, published March 2026.

Annotated Bibliography Assignment For English 201, Sara Whitestone

Open Educational Resources

In this English 201 assignment, students investigate a research question about happiness and build an annotated bibliography through 15 scaffolded, low-stakes steps involving research, source evaluation, reflection, drafting, feedback, and revision. They use the same sources to write papers in two different disciplinary genres, adapting their selection and use of evidence to each genre’s conventions, audience, tone, and style. The process emphasizes personal intellectual engagement, responsible use of AI, self-assessment, and the understanding that strong academic writing develops through sustained revision.

Just War Theory In The Hunger Games: Suzanne Collins’S Critique Of Violence, Power, And Rebellion, Laila Hannum

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis applies just war theory to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy, arguing that while the districts' rebellion satisfies the principles of jus ad bellum (justice in going to war), it systematically violates jus in bello (justice in the conduct of war) and jus post bellum (justice after war), and ultimately replicates the oppressive structures of the Capitol it sought to overthrow.

Drawing primarily on Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars and on Brian Orend's ideas on post-war justice, this thesis traces the rebellion's moral arc across all three novels. Chapter One shows that the rebellion meets the criteria …

The Spaces Of Queer Childhood, Haley Beardsley

Master’s Theses

This thesis examines how Victorian and early twentieth-century British literature imagines queer childhood as a spatial condition that generates alternative temporalities, rather than as a stable identity. Focusing on The Well of Loneliness (1928), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), and Peter Pan (1904) and Peter and Wendy (1911), this project argues that queer childhood emerges within literary environments that actively produce misalignment with normative developmental logics of innocence, growth, and reproductive futurity. Drawing on the work of Lee Edelman, Kathryn Bond Stockton, Jack Halberstam, Sara Ahmed, Elizabeth Freeman, and Guy Debord, this study contends that …

Cultus: Eco-Phenomenology In The Work Of John Steinbeck, Robinson Jeffers, And Jack London, Carter D. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--English

In the face of increasingly dire environmental crises, proposed solutions have gravitated toward imperatives for faster, cleaner, and more efficient technologies and resources. While practical solutions are necessary, they are entirely insufficient to deal with an underlying issue driving environmental degradation: unbridled instrumental reason. In this dissertation, I suggest a theoretical posture, cultus, which attempts to balance the necessity of instrumental action with the guiding counterweight of receptivity. Furthermore, I argue that such personal receptivity is uniquely fostered in aesthetic experiences, attuning the individual to the non-identical and renewing a relationship of care.

I examine the life and work of …

Displacement And Belonging: The Search For Identity Through Latina Literature, Noelia A. Alvarado Torres

Literary and Intercultural Studies | Senior Theses

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez and Infinite Country by Patricia Engel are two novels that highlight the Latino search for identity and belonging in the United States.  The characters in these books navigate adolescence and adulthood in the face of displacement, each illustrating how history, culture, and society interfere with the search for one’s self. They also highlight the multicultural experience of being shaped by different spaces that at times contradict one another. Furthermore, these books, written by women and with women at the center, bring forth a voice that often gets left out in …

Humanising Language Teaching In The Age Of Ai, Anuchaya Montakantiwong, Napat Jitpaisarnwattana

PASAA

No abstract provided.

What Makes An Ideal English Teacher? Thai Secondary School Students’ Perceptions, Monthon Kanokpermpoon, Israporn Chuntharusmi Sanongpong

PASAA

No abstract provided.

A Competence-Based, Technology-Mediated Speaking Intervention In Vietnamese Efl Classrooms : A Comparative Study Of Collaborative And Expert-Novice Dyads, Tran Anh Vu, Kwanjira Chatpunnarangsee

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Sustainable Web Application For A Blended Learning Environment To Improve Standardized English Test Performance Of Undergraduates At King Mongkut’S University Of Technology North Bangkok, Rayong Campus, Kusuma Bangkom

PASAA

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Content And Paralinguistic Cues In Enhancing Vocabulary Learning Across Different Themes In Young Learners, Sri Agustini, Imam Wahyudi Karimullah

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Are They Ready To Speak English With Students? A Clil Adaptation To Thai Efl Classrooms, Wipada Sutthiroj, Phanatdao Chantarasiri

PASAA

No abstract provided.

How Teaching Experience Shapes Efl Teachers’ Integration Of Extramural English In Thai Classrooms, Santipap Upara, Ruedeerath Chusanachoti

PASAA

No abstract provided.

No Red Pen, Just Ai : Student Perceptions Of Ai-Generated Feedback In Research Proposal Writing, Flora D. Floris, Willy A. Renandya, Wiwiet E. Savitri

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Epistemic Lexical Verbs As Hedging Devices And Their Semantic Prosodies In Applied Linguistics Abstracts In Thai International Journals, Soranut Kumdee

PASAA

No abstract provided.

The Grammatical L1 Transfer Of Self-Forms Among Asian Learners Of English, Kittinata Rhekhalilit, Pong-Ampai Kongcharoen

PASAA

No abstract provided.

L1 Thai Learners’ Acquisition Of English Wh-Nominal Clauses, Supakit Thiamtawan

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Phantasmagoria: A Novel, Miran Bogedain

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

What's That Sound?, Leslie Lemus

Athena: Undergraduate Research and Literary Journal

"What’s That Sound?" is a metaphorical short story that explores racism through the lens of a mysterious, ever-growing sound. The protagonist begins to hear a strange noise, subtle at first, then increasingly deafening as they navigate daily life. Despite their confusion and efforts to understand the source, those around them, particularly white individuals, dismiss or deny the sound’s existence. Only other people of color acknowledge it, sharing a collective understanding. Through symbolism, the story illustrates how racism operates as an ever-present force felt deeply by marginalized communities, yet often ignored or unheard by those not directly affected.

The Best Children's Books Of The Year In Spanish [2026 Edition], Bank Street College Of Education. Children's Book Committee

The Center for Children's Literature

An annotated list of the best children's books in Spanish published or translated in 2025. In English and Spanish.

Spanish title: Los mejores libros infantiles del año 2026.

"Queens Of Ghost-Land" 134 Years Later: Un-Masking An Appalachian Witchcraft Accuser, Aine Norris

English Faculty Publications

In 1891, newspapers across America printed a story about witches in the Appalachian Mountains and the alleged powers they possessed to control their small farming community. The article was scathing in accusation and ultimately contributed to continued othering of the women profiled, increasing their visible vulnerabilities of class, gender, and societal status. Despite an implied familiarity with the region, the article was published with initials for its byline, an act that simultaneously identified the author to locals as historian Eva Grant while offering her anonymized national protection as a subject expert. For over five years the accusations were re‐printed in …