Digital Commons Network^™

An Aspirational Cultus? Tolkien Fandom At The Borders Of Belief, Tom Emanuel

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

This paper draws upon fan studies, sociology of religion, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s theory of sub-creation to theorize the religious implications of Enyalië (Quenya: remembrance), the emotionally charged graveside memorial which closes the U.K. Tolkien Society’s annual gathering in Oxford. Employing a framework of religion as sacred worldbuilding, the author argues that Enyalië is best understood as the “secondary liturgy” of the “secondary faith community” that is Tolkien fandom. The paper concludes that Tolkien’s fiction, his community of devoted fans, and the lineaments of religious ritual have combined, in Enyalië, to produce a fan practice which troubles the boundaries …

Research Poster Ietic: The Language Of Mere Wudu, Alexis L. Campos, Ixchel Mireles, Bryon Haynes, David Kamal, Zachariah Gonzalez

Team - Mere Wudu - Documents

2025 Research Poster of The Language of Mere Wudu, Ietic.

Volume 12 Issue 2

NEBO: A Literary Journal

This issue of Nebo: A Literary Journal is a heartfelt tribute to mentorship, education, and the transformative role of teachers, exploring the profound impact educators have on students and the literary world. Originally archived as Volume 12, Issue 2, this issue is actually Volume 17, Issue 1, covering Fall 1998. Due to necessary metadata adjustments in the digital archiving process, some volume and issue numbers in the online collection may not match those printed in the original journals.

Many of the works in this issue reflect on the legacy of learning, with poetry, fiction, and …

Volume 6, Issue 2

NEBO: A Literary Journal

This issue of Nebo: A Literary Journal continues its tradition of publishing a diverse array of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art, offering a platform for both emerging and established writers. Originally archived as Volume 6, Issue 2, this issue is actually Volume 10, Issue 2, covering Fall 1992. Due to necessary metadata adjustments in the digital archiving process, some volume and issue numbers in the online collection may not match those printed in the original journals.

Featuring an eclectic mix of contemporary poetry, short fiction, and literary essays, this issue captures a broad spectrum of themes, …

“Time Is Our Only Ally!”: Indigenous Heroism And Native Slipstream In Turok, Son Of Stone, Justin Wigard

Heroism Science

In this article, I draw on Frederick Luis Aldama’s framework of Graphic Indigeneity to revisit the long history of an Indigenous hero figure in comics: Turok, a pre-Columbian Mandan warrior lost in a prehistoric space known as the Lost Valley. First appearing in Dell’s Four Color Comics #596 (1954), Turok has appeared throughout comics history for nearly 70 years, primarily written and drawn by white creative teams, yet a visually, narratively prominent Indigenous hero in the comics page, one who has periodically been a top-selling popular character in the comics industry. To this end, I argue that Turok is a …

Negotiating Home In The Long Poem: Amatoritsero Ede’S Transpatiality, Mathias Iroro Orhero

Faculty Publications

In this paper, I argue that Amatoritsero Ede uses the long poem to negotiate the idea of home in an African diasporic context. As a form that carries the implications of length, time, and space, the long poem has been used by poets to interrogate the way we structure the world and to deconstruct grand narratives. The figure of the Black immigrant is one that destabilizes grand narratives of nationalism. This makes the form important in its capacity to ask important questions about nation and tradition even as it transgresses them. As a writer from the Niger Delta, a marginal …

“Where War Is God And God Is War:” Women’S Religious Great War Poetry And Homefront Lines, Faith Ellington

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project seeks to redefine war’s poetic landscape. Through a focus on women’s Great War poetry, I argue against a dichotomous home front | front line poetic barrier and instead explore the intermingling of wartime spaces. Women’s WWI poetry, I argue, exists within a space I call the homefront lines, a space in which women produce writing from their full experiences of war regardless of combatant status. The homefront lines must be included in World War I literary canons in order to fully recognize the humanity of women during wartime and to fully grasp the war’s impact on poetry …

Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions, Amira Mahmoud Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between language, trauma, and emotional expression among bilingual Arabic-English speakers, focusing on code-switching patterns and euphemisms, and more broadly the emotional roles of native and non-native languages in trauma narratives. Through qualitative interviews with 20 Egyptian participants, the research reveals that code-switching serves as both a linguistic and emotional tool, allowing speakers to navigate trauma by creating distance or engaging more intimately. Such codeswitching patterns include the integration of English content words within Arabic structures, morphosyntactic innovations, and gender agreement applications, reflecting the creative adaptability of bilingual speakers in emotionally charged contexts, in line with …

The Fourth Road, Aulò, Beyond The Frame, And Maka: A Study Guide, Simone Brioni Dr., Lorraine Hallett

Department of English Faculty Publications

This study guide is aimed to help students explore four documentaries about postcolonial culture in Italy: The Fourth Road, Aulò, Beyond the Frame, and Maka. It is the result of a reflection and collective work by a professor who wrote the films and a teaching assistant and previous student of a course on migration studies. Each film features a prominent African Italian writer, respectively Kaha Mohamed Aden, Ribka Sibhatu, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah and Geneviève Makaping. After a brief plot summary, the study guide includes questions about various elements of cinematic style, such as sound, lighting, and genre conventions. It …

La Quarta Via, Aulò, Oltre I Bordi E Maka: Attività Didattiche, Simone Brioni Dr.

Department of English Faculty Publications

Queste attività didattiche si propongono di esplorare quattro documentari sulla cultura postcoloniale in Italia: La quarta via, Aulò, Oltre i bordi e Maka. Ogni film ha come protagonista una scrittrice africana italiana, rispettivamente Kaha Mohamed Aden, Ribka Sibhatu, Ubah Cristina

Ali Farah e Geneviève Makaping. Ciascuna sezione presenta un breve riassunto della trama, comprende domande sulle storie di Somalia, Eritrea, Camerun e Italia e sullo stile cinematografico (suoni, uso delle luci, fotografia). Le attività esplorano questioni relative all’appartenenza nazionale, alla rappresentazione degli immigrati nei media, alla spazializzazione della memoria e alle geografie intime e affettive che caratterizzano le culture degli …

Miscellaneous, Bruce R Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

C. S. Lewis’S Most Important Message: The Abolition Of Man As Lewis’S Self-Conscious Struggle For The Value Of Human Persons, Dwain Tissell

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Over the roughly sixty years since C. S. Lewis’s death, many have asked, what was the message he most wanted to convey? A decade before Lewis’s passing, Dr. James Houston asked him that very question. Lewis answered that he was fighting “reductionism.” More specifically, Houston heard C. S. Lewis to be most concerned about reduction of the value of the human person. At the time of this writing, Houston is 101 years of age, and he has kept a low profile all these years about his relationship with C. S. Lewis. From 1947 until 1954, he and Lewis were more …

Gender And The Abolition Of Man: The Masculine And The Feminine In Lewis’S Natural Law Thought, Joshua P. Herring

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

C. S. Lewis wrote extensively about gender in both nonfiction and fiction works. In nonfiction, he lays out a specific understanding of gender with logical clarity; in fiction, Lewis develops a series of poetic images magnifying the depth of meaning found in being masculine and feminine. In both forms of writing, Lewis celebrates the goodness of God’s gift of gender, and summons his readers to receive the gift with gratitude. Reading Lewis’s works on gender functions as an antidote to gender ideology. Rather than a severing of felt experience and bodily reality, Lewis calls his readers to see the ideas …

The English And The Welsh: Tolkien’S Rewriting Of History In The Legendarium, Alexander Retakh

Journal of Tolkien Research

Early legendarium is often called a "mythology for England," while Tolkien's later tales have been described as mythologies for Britain (by Dimitra Fimi) or Englishness (by Thomas Honegger). Later legendarium still contains fictional versions of English-like peoples, the Hobbits and the Rohirrim. Their construction leads to a re-construction of elements of English history in the subcreation, that often produces fictional analogs not only of the English but of the Welsh. How Tolkien described contacts between the English and their closest neighbors reveals his idea of Englishness (his own national identity) and its place in the narrative.

This article traces appearances …

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

Coffee Shops And Community, Julia A. Franz

Emerging Writers

This paper focuses on the role of coffeehouses as community hubs through a comparative analysis of two locations of a locally owned coffee company in Georgia. It examines how the physical design and values of each shop offer unique forms of social interaction. The St. Simons location encourages spontaneous, intergenerational conversations; while, the Brunswick shop strengthens pre-existing community ties among working families and retirees. The profile explains how, by incorporating local history, sustainable sourcing, and communal spaces, the coffee company shows how design and principles shape social dynamics. This profile highlights how coffeehouses can serve as more than commercial spaces …

"His Injustice Stirred In Me Ambitious Wishes": Women's Education In Charlotte Brontë’S Villette, Kathleen Sickinger

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis will explore Charlotte Brontë’s novel Villette and how it functions as an insight into the complicated ways in which Brontë’s Victorian world felt towards women’s education. The text focuses on the life of Lucy Snowe, a character often considered to be one of Charlotte Brontë’s most autobiographical, and her experiences in an all-girls’ school in the Brussels-inspired town of Villette. Education plays a large role in the events of Lucy’s life, which the novel explores, along with detailing the experiences of the characters of Ginevra Fanshawe and professor M. Paul Emmanuel. Despite their different conceptions of and relations …

Narrative (In)Completion In Chaucer’S The Canterbury Tales And Woolf’S The Waves, Ananya Ramkumar

Pomona Senior Theses

I examine how narrative and personal completion manifest—and are continually unsettled—in The Canterbury Tales and The Waves. Though separated by centuries and written within vastly different literary traditions, both texts explore the tension between fragmentation and wholeness: the ways in which stories and characters can be constructed from partial, shifting materials, and the ways in which the illusion of completeness can mask deeper absences (holes). Drawing on Woolf’s own theories of reading and character—and her sense that readers instinctively create “rickety and ramshackle” wholes from scattered impressions—I will consider how each text engages with the paradox of narrative closure. …

Preserving Nature: Mapping Patriarchal And Imperial Control In Victorian Fiction, Hannah Schultz

Theses and Dissertations--English

In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a group of fallen women see “themselves and surrounding nature forming an organism of which all the parts harmoniously and joyously interpenetrated each other” (65). As relational, boundary-dissolving, ecological subjects, these women are empowered above society’s judgment, made “sublime as the moon and stars” (65). By analyzing such representations of ecological relationality in Victorian fiction, my dissertation reveals new forms of agency for women and racialized others. While many ecofeminists have historically disavowed the nature-gender link as reinforcing the shared oppression of nature and marginalized groups, I depart from this standpoint, as …

Fatal Futures: Slow Violence, Utopia, And The Postnatural Human In Contemporary American Literature, Shelby Roberts

Theses and Dissertations--English

Fatal Futures: Slow Violence, Utopia, and the Postnatural Human in Contemporary American Literature investigates the ways in which ideas of futurity are articulated in narratives that conceptualize both the end of the world and post-calamity society through the lens of a pessimistic, queer approach to understanding the future. The purpose of this project is to not only build previous research in the configurations of the body in queer, gothic, and speculative American writing as a whole, but to enter into a developing conversation surrounding Appalachian literature through the idea of kinship (the broadening of relationships both chemical and postnatural) as …

Creative Energies: Unearthing The Role Of Romantic Ecocriticism, Nicole Marie Chambers-Stahl

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The literary field of ecocriticism has transcended the boundaries of Academia: excited to connect to their physical environments, many of these scholars are focusing on genres like place-based writing, rhetoric of energy policy, and representations of the Earth in film and media. Interdisciplinary by nature, ecocriticism has demonstrated clear potential in its ability to intersect with concentrations like the history of science, animal studies, and environmental justice.

However, as the language around global crises is heating up —“Today it is scientists, not prophets,” writes Tobias Menely in “‘The Present Obfuscation,’” “who speak the language of apocalypse” (478)—ecocritical scholarship is at …

Once Upon Another Time: Retelling Fairy Tales & Legends With Inclusive Identities For Modern Young Adult Audiences, Hailey Drapcho

Honors Theses

This thesis explores how modern young adult (YA) fairy tale retellings can act as interventionist works as part of the mythopoeic YA fantasy sub-genre, where they enfold traditionally excluded identities into the archetypal role of the fairy tale female protagonist who is expected to embody an idealized form of girlhood. Fairy tales have a profound impact on self-image and how individuals create expectations of their role in the world. By fracturing the archetypes maintaining restrictive and exclusionary expectations, mythopoeic YA fairy tale retellings affirm the young adult girl to embrace her own individual identity and determine her role in the …

A Monstrous [Un]-Becoming: Defining The Final Boy, Rhys Crumpton

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Through an exploration of horror theory, monster theory, queer theory, and disabilities studies, this thesis defines a 21st century archetype within the serial horror narrative, known as “the Final Boy.” This character is a manifestation of a queer, often neurodivergent man in peril at the hands of a monstrous society. This harmful socionormativity is narratively represented by a monster wearing the face of a man, one whom the Final Boy must subdue and overcome if he wishes to survive. The seven tenets found in this project highlight the fluctuating morality the Final Boy is forced to engage in per the …

When The Baobab Trees Bow Before The Iroko: Chinua Achebe And His Literary Heirs In African Fiction: The Case Of Chigozie Obioma, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, And Noviolet Bulawayo, Akua Agyeiwaa Denkyi-Manieson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Akan of Ghana have a proverb that translates, “When a thing is not placed in its rightful place, it will fall down,” and “Respect must be accorded to whom respect is due.” They also say, “The one behind walks in the footsteps of the one in front.” These Akan proverbs capture the literary journey encountered in the works of Chigozie Obioma, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and NoViolet Bulawayo in The Fishermen, Purple Hibiscus, and We Need New Names, respectively. Their narratives reflect an undeniable acknowledgment of the literary path cleared by one man often hailed as the …

Lost In Translation: The Absence Of Untranslatable Words In The English Classroom, Ashley Boledovic

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This qualitative study explores the impact of lexical gaps and untranslatable words on self-expression and communication in English-speaking classrooms. Seven interviews were conducted with bilingual or non-native English speakers representing a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, including Arabic, Portuguese, Marathi, Hindi, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Each interview investigated how language impacts self-expression, or the ability to communicate thoughts, emotions, and identity within the classroom. The findings suggest that untranslatable words and cultural concepts from participants’ native languages offer insights into cultural perspectives, which are often undervalued and not represented in English-speaking classrooms. Additionally, all participants desired greater language inclusivity …

Feeling Foreign / Foreign Feeling: Affect In Southeast Asian Diasporic Short Story Collections, Francys Aerin Fortes

Theses and Dissertations

Affect studies have long been saturated with scholarship investigating the fluidity of emotions, though a larger turn in the field now prioritizes the felt experiences of marginalized peoples. Sianne Ngai’s work is one part of this turn that seeks to unpack the effects of oppressive systemic forces on Black, Brown, and queer bodies. Sianne Ngai reexamined the nature of emotions in her seminal text Ugly Feelings (2005), particularly concerned with how negative feelings are disproportionately felt by marginalized bodies as a result of conditions of obstructed agency, systems of power, and wage labor capitalism. Drawing from Ngai’s writing, this thesis …

Efl Vocational Classroom Teacher’S Emotion-Regulation Strategies And Emotional Well-Being In Technology Application : A Narrative Inquiry, Dewi Nur Suci, Yazid Basthomi, Bambang Yudi Cahyono, Mirjam Anugerahwati

PASAA

No abstract provided.

Textual Sediments: Genre And The Planetary Novel, William Bowden

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how twenty-first-century prose fiction navigates the ecological and temporal dimensions of planetary crisis. In response to accelerating pressures - climate change, ecological collapse, and the intensification of capitalist modernity - literary studies has turned increasingly to the planetary as a conceptual frame. Yet this shift has often outpaced the development of adequate critical vocabularies and narrative methodologies. By drawing on ecocriticism, narrative theory, phenomenology, and related fields, Textual Sediments proposes a new framework for reading what it terms the planetary novel: a sedimentary genre characterized by temporal layering, formal hybridity, and a recursive engagement with scale. Through …

Pseudo-Vampires In The Nineteenth-Century English Vampire Canon: Draining Life Force By Class, Matt Tanner

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

The Elite And The Illicit: Women, Power, And History In Cormac Mccarthy’S All The Pretty Horses And Cities Of The Plain, April Trepagnier

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Much of the discussion concerning female characters in Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre revolves around assertions of narrative misogyny and subjection resulting from overly reductive criticism based on identity singularity. Had the critics taken this approach with McCarthy’s male characters, there would be little discussion of his work today as they, too, would have appeared as shallow stereotypes. Such readings are of limited interest or usefulness. Rather, when readers pay attention to the richness of the literary craft of McCarthy’s works, it is possible to read his male characters with great complexity. The same treatment, applied to his female characters, reveals precisely …