Digital Commons Network^™

Goodnight Sister : An Original Children's Book, Johanna Pyun

Graduate Student Independent Studies

An original children's book written for five to seven year olds that touches on the themes of adoption, sibling relationships, and culture.

The Influence Of The “Celtic” Revival: Quest For Paradise In Chwedl Iarlles Y Ffynnon, Le Chevalier Au Lion, And Frances Hodgson Burnett’S The Secret Garden, Grace Vasington

Honors Scholar Theses

I re-situate Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (1911) within the context of the 19th-century Medieval Revival. Typically cast as an Eden allegory, Burnett's "secret garden" employs myth, folklore, and medieval romance quest narratives, and taps into the 19th-century mythicizing of the British landscape to explore contemporary questions about belief and social order. By complicating current readings of The Secret Garden, this paper interrogates the simplistic mold within which Burnett as an author has often been cast. It likewise calls attention to the varied impact of the Medieval Revival on different genres. This generic mutation exemplified by The Secret …

Mccarthy's Outer Dark And Child Of God As Works Of Appalachian Gothic Fiction., Ava E. Gooding

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In both Outer Dark and Child of God, McCarthy does a masterful job of blending the elements of Appalachian Gothic to present a novel that is darkly suspenseful and grimly thought-provoking. Outer Dark focuses on the complex incestuous relationship between a brother and sister and their interaction with others. The novel follows the two on a journey through the wilderness where they must cope with the unknown qualities of that wilderness, as well as the guilt stemming from their own behaviors. In Child of God, McCarthy explores the grotesque nature of a life lived in isolation and poverty in the …

Missing Immortality: The Case Of Melesina Trench (A Neglected, Celebrated, Dismissed And Rediscovered Woman Poet Of The Long Eighteenth Century), Katharine Kittredge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Clockwork Heroines: Female Characters In Steampunk Literature, Cassie N. Bergman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Steampunk is a progressive literary genre that evokes, imitates, and re-imagines the nineteenth century and favors the Industrial Revolution ideals of science and technology. In a historical framework, it mixes nineteenth-century conventions and retrofuturistic machinery with science fiction and fantasy elements. Steampunk authors are able to radically redefine socio-cultural implications that affect both past and contemporary societies. The following study explores the multitude of characteristics that define Steampunk literature as an interdisciplinary study. Chapter 1 explores the definitions and literary genres that construct Steampunk and includes a brief literary history of Steampunk works. Chapter 2 focuses on Cherie Priest’s novel …

"The Sister Was Not A Mister": Gender And Sexuality In The Writings Of Gertrude Stein And Virginia Woolf, Jillian P. Fischer

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This thesis explores the topics of gender and sexuality within Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando by analyzing the texts through the lens of early twentieth-century sexologists and twentieth and twenty first century gender theorists. Both works reveal a common critique of the heteronormativity present within early twentieth-century understandings of sexuality and propose alternative spheres of sexuality and gender identity. Stein creates an alternative sphere in which desire is expanded. Beginning with an exploration of consumerist desire, Stein ultimately reveals a utopian vision of lesbian sexuality and the foregrounding of female desire, sexuality, and pleasure. Woolf’s alternative consists …

Measure For Measure And The Discourse Of Husbandry, Benjamin Bertram Phd

Faculty Publications

The article explores early modern husbandry, which are more focused on encouraging its readers to lead pious, productive and economical lives. In "Measure for Measure," by William Shakespeare, the play centers on the rise of state husbandry as it focused on the parallels between Duke Vincentio and James I and views of sex and marriage. According to the author, there are two competing views of sex in the work including Lucio's pleasurable economy that resists the order of state husbandry.

Reading War : Modern Warfare In The Age Of Terror And Recent American Literature, Kyle Anthony Kovacs

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

No abstract provided.

Towards A Hibernian Hybridity: Joycean Appropriations Of Celtic Mythology And The Realization Of A Modern Irish Identity, Robert C. Ware

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In nineteenth-century Ireland, the Celtic Revival established an Irish identity in opposition to British colonialism through a nativist construction of true Irishness based on premodern, precolonial Celtic mythology, language, and culture. This created a primitive Irish identity situated in a binomial dialectic with a civilized British identity, establishing the Irish as an internal Other for the British imperial self. This effectively justified British colonialism as a necessary catalyst in a teleological progression intended to save Ireland from the uncivilized Irish. This thesis explores how Joyce’s appropriation of literary artifacts of Celtic mythology in “The Dead,” specifically the sovereignty goddess mythology …

An Intersectional Comparison Of Female Agency In Toni Morrison's Sula And Wang Anyi's Song Of Everlasting Sorrow, Jordan Lynton

HIM 1990-2015

The opportunities created by the end of the Mao Era and legislature promoting the rights of African Americans and women in the mid-twentieth century allowed women of both cultures to break further into the literary scene and negotiate their own sense of agency through their work. Although Western feminism also grew rapidly throughout this period, its ethnocentric centering of gender prevented it from being a reliable lens with which to analyze the work of Chinese and African American women who experienced issues of race, class, and gender simultaneously. This caused Western feminists to evaluate the work of Chinese and African …

"The Country Of Nine-Fingered People": The Southern Mountain Tradition And The Gothic In Faulkner's Intruder In The Dust And Dickey's Deliverance, Kathleen Peterson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the role of the Southern mountain tradition and the Gothic mode in William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust and James Dickey’s Deliverance. Using Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject, it argues that Faulkner and Dickey appropriated already Gothic elements of Appalachian history in order to create the Gothic characters and settings that would allow them to explore major cultural anxieties of their time. Chapter One gives a brief overview of Appalachian history from the Revolutionary War through 1970. It examines both factual material and fictional portrayals, including the miners’ union strikes of the early 1900s, Mary …

"Balanced Between Poetry And Practicality": The Agrarian Figure In Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd And Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Rebecca Puelle

Honors Scholar Theses

A surface reading of any of Thomas Hardy's novels of the fictional world of Wessex- the south-England county based on the real-life counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire- invites readers to revel in the silly quandaries of the villagers, farmers, malsterers, and labourers that populate this idyllic, pastoral world with quaint phrases, delectable dialects, and jovial camraderies. Even when Hardy’s vision is deeply tragic, he maintains an interest in a colorful, and sometimes even comic, cast of bucolic people. A closer reading of Hardy, however, challenges readers to chart the changing course of agricultural labour in mid …

Speed And Stasis: Femininity And Symbolism In John Dos Passos's 1919, Natalie Tara Cope

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

My thesis connects the ideas of speed, movement, symbolism and feminism in Dos Passos’s work 1919, the second book of the U.S.A. trilogy. For the women in the novel―Janey Williams, Eveline Hutchins, Eleanor Stoddard, and Daughter― there is an ever-present tension in their existence as they struggle between the static roles available for women as symbolic figures outside of time and the personal mobility that allows them to participate in history. By using speed as a measure of extreme behavior, I examine the degrees to which women could move outside of their domestic sphere of inequality and the speed at …

The Soul Of Man Under Capitalism, Joe L. Cantu

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This paper examines the consciousness of three literary characters, divided by space and time, from mid nineteenth century Russia, mid twentieth century Italy, to late twentieth century American society. This paper exposes literature’s rendition of modern man’s varying consciousness as shaped by the changing social conditions around him. This paper recognizes these varying social conditions as different stages in capitalism’s development. Capitalism has a history; the literature this paper examines discloses its negative impact on the consciousness of its characters. In analyzing Notes from the Underground, Contempt, and American Psycho, three novels separated by geography and spanning a timeframe of …

Putting Down Roots: A Tolkienian Conception Of Place, Kayla Snow

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the way in which J.R.R. Tolkien's develops and expresses his nuanced sense of place through his major literary works--namely, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's sense of place, as expressed through his fiction, encompasses both metaphysical and geographical relational structures that are operative at both the local and global levels. As Tolkien develops his sense of place in his fiction, he draws from the Distributist principles--largely informed by Catholic social policy of the late nineteenth century and popularized by G.K. Chesterton--to build the economy in Middle-earth. The resulting economy resists industrialization …

Levels Of Selection In A Polymorphic Species, Marisa L. Korody

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Adult Realm V. Childhood: A Critical Examination Of The Victorian Realm’S Ideal Young Adult, Jewels White

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Alice in Wonderland is a story that represents the cultural shift in Victorian ideas and its vision of childhood. The character of Alice represents an ideal Victorian youth, but her inabilities, confinement, and limitations in Wonderland suggest a culture clash and changing times. The story of Alice, through its puns, miscommunication, confusing mannerisms, and cultural disconnection between Alice and the inhabitants of Wonderland, preach a rejection of the Victorian adult realm. The novel itself provides an alternative for children to be children rather than obedient little adults.

Trading Places: Mary Shelley’S Argument With Domestic Space, Eve M. Lynch

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

When Mary Shelley began writing The Last Man in 1824 in the wake of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley’s untimely death, she drew from her close circle of family and friends as models for her main characters. Although it is tempting to view this novel as an autobiographical expiation of the profound sorrow that overwhelmed Shelley at her husband’s death, to do so is to underestimate her prescient political insight and to risk overlooking the complex implications of class and rank that suffuse the position of the narrator, Lionel Verney. While Shelley’s emotions give a passionate appeal to this novel, …

Glottopoeia: A Case Study In Language Change, Ian Hollenbaugh

Honors Theses

"Glottopoeia: A Case Study in Language Change" is a thesis in the form of a I32-page grammar booklet, entitled An Elementary Ghau Aethauic Grammar, with a preface detailing what I did, why I did it, and how I accomplished it. In effect, I invented a language called Ghau Aethau. It was created almost entirely ex nihilo, borrowing nothing in the way of phonetics, morphology, or vocabulary from any real language. It does employ grammatical concepts present in many real-world languages, but also several of my own design. I chose this project for two reasons: first, to explore the art form …

J.R.R. Tolkien, Sub-Creation, And Theories Of Authorship, Benjamin Saxton

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

Tolkien is unfortunately underrated as a theorist in literary studies—in fact, alas, generally invisible to the mainstream. This essay draws attention to his ideas about sub-creation and allegorical “dominion” of the reader, contrasting Tolkien’s stated and implied theories with those of Roland Barthes, and elucidating Tolkien’s concern with “the delicate balance between authors, authority, and interpretive freedom.” Saxton draws on “Leaf by Niggle,” The Silmarillion, and The Lord of the Rings for examples of Tolkien’s theories in action.

Place And Contemplative Pedagogy, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

The Gods Who Speak In Many Voices, And In None: African Novelists On Indigenous And Colonial Religion, John C. Hawley

English

The subject of this essay, then, is the enduring spiritualities of Africa (including "imports"), their varying levels of success in meeting the challenges of engagement with non-African cultures, and, particularly, the manifestations of these encounters in a representative sampling of its fiction. In the first wave of novels in English and French, African religion typically loses out to Christianity and Islam in much the same process that village economies fail before railroads and missionary schools. In more recent fiction, more worldly-wise Africans (whether as characters of novels, or as writers of those novels who have been educated abroad) turn a …

The Parchment Of Kashmir (Review), Alpana Sharma

English Language and Literatures Faculty Publications

The Parchment of Kashmir gathers together a wide range of essays on the subject of Kashmir. It is a compelling and stimulating book for a number of reasons. First, it interrelates a range of disciplines from political science and sociology to history, philosophy, and English. Second, it is produced by academics, all of whom are based in Jammu and Kashmir. Third, because these essays are written by scholars who are intimate with Kashmir, yet have not had an opportunity to be read outside of local circles, the book gives them a readership that they otherwise wouldn’t have; but readers themselves …

The Embodiment Of Collective Exclusion: Transcending The Borders Of Social Segregation In Harry Potter, Alyssa Hunziker

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.

Memory, Deconstructed And Reconstructed An Ontward Expression Of An Inward Reality, Jessica Rochford

Honors Projects

Opening Paragraph

Lieux de Memoire, or "places of memory," are symbolic sites of national identity. Defined in Le Grand Robert de la langue franfaise, the term is attributed to French historian Pierre Nora. Nora has compiled two large project anthologies and several individual books of essays by various authors that identify and reflect upon symbolic sites of great national importance throughout France. Nora's various collections of work, span over "seven volumes, six thousand pages") and "more than one hundred and thirty authors" (Le Goff 118). The particular project of Nora's that I will focus on, titled Realms of Memory: The …

Response: An Invitation To A Too-Long Postponed Conversation: Race And Composition By Octavio Pimentel, Cruz Medina

English

Octavio Pimentel’s “Racism and Composition: Redesigning the Composition Classroom to be more Culturally Inclusive” critically provokes pedagogical and programmatic questions by focusing on pressing issues of race and language within a historical context relevant to the field of rhetoric and composition.

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, Vol. 21, No. 2, The Sinclair Lewis Society

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter

“In Defense of Gopher Prairie: Main Street as a Critique of Urban Culture,” by James Nixon, Glasgow University

“Red in Retrospect”: A Review of Sinclair Lewis Remembered, edited by Gary Scharnhorst and Matthew Hofer, by Sally E. Parry, Illinois State University

“You Should Remember This”: A Review of The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War by Richard Lingeman, by Sally E. Parry, Illinois State University

“Cass: Anatomy of a Moniker,” by Charles Pankenier

“Twin Farms Today,” by Susan O’Brien

“Sarcastic but Sympathetic, Babbitt is Premier Middle-Class Novel,” by Mark Roth

“Barnaby Conrad, Lewis’s Secretary, Dies …

Manifest Content Without A Dreamer: A Freudian Analysis Of Percival Everett’S Erasure, Irene Rose De Lilly

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

This paper will provide a Freudian analysis of Erasure in order to prove that Everett is, in fact, the two main characters he has created, as well as attempt to challenge the stigma of interpreting through a psychoanalytical lens, rather than treating writing and literature as manifest content without a dreamer.

The River In A Landscape Of Creative Practice: Creative River Journeys., Kylie J Stevenson

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

In my current PhD study, Creative River Journeys, I use the metaphor of the river as a data capture tool when interviewing artist-researchers about their experiences of conducting creative practice within a university context. My use of the river functions as a metaphor for the creative process. I have adapted the River Journey tool from its previous use as a map of teacher identity and professional development, and in a project about children’s musical experience. This PhD project follows a long tradition of using the river as a metaphor. For example, the river has been used in a narrative therapy …

There Are But Few Things Which Can Afford Us Greater Pleasure Or Improvements, Christine Haney

Pride and Prejudice: The Bicentennial

The author reviews New and elegant amusements for the ladies of Great Britain (1722) which will guide women in "sciences" and compares it to Pride and Prejudice.