Digital Commons Network^™

"And No Birds Sing": The Environmental Ethics Of Carson, Keats, Sagan, And Oliver, Savannah Bloom

Undergraduate Theses

This project aims to create resonances and synchronicities between the works of science writers Rachel Carson and Carl Sagan and poets John Keats and Mary Oliver. It puts their environmental ethics in conversation with one another with a focus on shared literary practices and ecocritical and ecocentric sensibilities. Is the work of poetry, particularly poetry participating in the Romantic tradition, compatible with science writing? The ultimate goal is to demonstrate the symbiosis between science and literature and the necessity of bridging scientific and poetic discourse in regard to addressing climate and the environment. Each chapter pairs a science writer with …

Middle-Earth’S Middleman: Exploring The Contradictory Positionalities Of Faramir In J.R.R. Tolkien’S 'The Lord Of The Rings', Kelsey A. Fuller-Shafer

Journal of Tolkien Research

In the large pantheon of characters in The Lord of the Rings, Faramir stands out for his position of unbelonging, and is usually analyzed comparatively to other characters rather than in-depth in his own right. However, more focused considerations of Faramir can articulate the breadth of Tolkien’s influences that were incorporated into Middle-earth as well as the ways in which those influences conflicted with Tolkien's own moral compass, and thus needed to be openly challenged and modified. Those internal conflicts can be interrogated throughout Faramir’s contradictory positions within the literature, history, and societies that Middle-earth represents. His positioning in a …

Mr. Truhart, Amy Clements

Bryant Literary Review

No abstract provided.

Substance Abuse: The Symbolic Geography Of Hell In The Great Divorce, Richard A. Bergen

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

Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a Romantic vision of evil energy that reaches to the heavens, a geographical representation of capacity and scope and perpetual cosmic change. On the other hand, Lewis’s vision of hell in The Great Divorce is that of a land without substance: a conurbation of addiction to mental maladies, an endless mental substance abuse, an emptying of presence, and a banal stasis to the journey of the soul. Many of Lewis’s sources and inspirations for The Great Divorce, similarly, portray hell as a land of paradoxical “seeming-largeness”, while having ontological smallness. Throughout …

“Don’T Stop Believin’”: Dante’S And Christian’S Journey To Heaven, Austin Cochrane

English Senior Capstone

Dante's "Divine Comedy" and John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" both encounter a protagonist who is journeying with the goal of reaching heaven in mind. During this journey, they are each met with and guided by various characters. In my paper, I focus on Virgil and Beatrice in "The Divine Comedy", and Evangelist and Hopeful in "The Pilgrim's Progress." Along with these guides, the geography that Dante and Christian each encounter is symbolic of a maturation of faith, as well as many Catholic and Protestant themes that Dante and Bunyan practiced.

The Whispers Of Magnolias, Nican Tlaca, And The World Around Us: An Anthology, Gabriela Rodriguez , '27, Qing Hao , '25, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

Why read poetry after all, for all the frustration it can stir and the immense degree of patience it often demands (particularly challenging in our age of distractions)? Jane Hirshfield’s quotes offer a lucid insight: good poetry often changes how we perceive our surroundings and our states of existence. It lets us experience life in a transformed way – different before and after reading the poem – and inspires us to view our world with a sharper, more curious eye.
Here, we have compiled an anthology of ecopoetry that features a diverse selection of poems, ranging in time, culture, and …

Hidden Monstrosities: The Transformation Of Medieval Characters And Conventions In Shakespeare's Romances, Lynette Kristine Kuliyeva

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When Shakespeare’s First Folio was published in 1623, it was entitled Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, the title designating the three genres under which his plays would be categorized for the next 250 years. Later, Irish critic Edward Dowden took it upon himself to restructure the Shakespearean canon by adding plays that were not previously published in the First Folio, reclassifying the genres of several of the plays, and establishing a new genre to accompany the previous three: romance. Within this fourth generic category of romance, Dowden situated four of the Shakespearean plays: Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; …

Lawful Injustice: Novel Readings Of Racialized Temporality And Legal Instabilities, Danielle N. Mercier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project, “Lawful Injustice: Novel Readings of Racialized Temporality and Legal Instabilities,” examines three specific BIPOC communities across literature—Native American, African American, and Asian American—to understand the influence of U.S. legal frameworks and temporalities upon both the collective and the individual. I assess how legal frameworks create and protect their own instabilities as well as understand how they are produced by the uneven temporal structures of the law. I examine how such legal and settler colonial temporalities are at odds with Native American, African American, and Asian American temporalities. These temporalities—a legal/juridical temporality which reinscribes settler colonial oppression and the …

“Éowyn It Was, And Dernhelm Also”: Reading The ‘Wild Shieldmaiden’ Through A Queer Lens., Sara Brown

Journal of Tolkien Research

The Éowyn we first meet in 'The Two Towers' is a woman who has been traumatised by the loss of her parents at a young age, the recent loss of her cousin Théodred, the apparent weakening of her uncle Théoden, and her inability to escape the lascivious gaze of Wormtongue. Marginalised by her gender and by social expectation, her desire to find purpose in her life as a shieldmaiden is repeatedly thwarted. Seeking to reclaim control over her life and to make her own choices, she rides out with the Rohirrim not as Éowyn, but as Dernhelm.

Past scholars have …

Beyond "His Native Town": Travel And Alienation In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Erin G. Quinn

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein features a surprisingly extensive variety of locations through which Victor Frankenstein travels, ranging from the vibrant cities of London and Oxford to the isolated Orkney islands and Arctic lands. Scholars have analyzed the roles which some of these settings, namely, the Alps and the Arctic, play in the novel, and many have noted the importance of travel to the text. However, little scholarship exists assessing how Victor’s travels as a whole impact him, as well as their collective purpose within the story. Given the prominence of travel in Shelley’s text, as well as the fact …

Miscellaneous, Bruce R. Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Announcements:

Call for papers (The Abolition of Man 80 Years On)

The C. S. Lewis Correspondence Project

The Inaugural Undiscovered C.S. Lewis Conference (George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon September 5-8, 2024)

Submission guidelines, style guide, copyright notice, and order form.

No Place: The Queer Utopia Of Liminality, Harry Gallagher

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

My proposal is a paper on the inherent queerness of the liminal in Jeff Vandermeer’s works, through examples such as the transitional narrative present in the transformation of the Biologist in Annihilation. Especially pertinent is the inherent fighting of Yonic/Phallic imagery happening between her interpretation of a concrete structure as a tower as opposed to a tunnel, which is important to understanding how the Biologist’s trans-masculinity manifests symbolically in the narrative as antithesis to the other cis women on the expedition. Vandermeer’s liminal space in Dead Astronauts also connects to the characters of Moss, a non-binary life form who exists …

Tolkien’S Queer Landscape: Three Papers On Middle-Earth’S Heterotopias, Will Sherwood, Marita Arvaniti, Mariana Rios Maldonado

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The following papers will explore Tolkien’s queer landscapes of Middle-earth: from Arda’s highest peaks and hidden underbellies, to her liminal, fae places, using the lens of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias.

Marita Arvaniti will introduce the panel and discuss Tolkien’s Faerian Drama and its relationship to the much-maligned Tom Bombadil episode, focusing on the queer figure of Tom Bombadil himself and his heterotopic domain.

Mariana Rios Maldonado will analyse the Barrow-downs, Dead Marshes, and Paths of the Dead as symbolic sites of death created during harrowing moments in the history of Middle-earth. These are no-places: spaces of Otherness containing the evil and …

Tarot Fabula: Radical Digital Cards, Shuffled Narrative Structures, And Playing The Future In An Era Of Algorithms, Rachel M.L. Dixon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since their earliest recorded use in the 1400s, tarot cards figure as objects for game play, artistic creativity, spiritual divination, and self-discovery. Tarot Fabula (https://tarot-fabula.com) introduces a ludic, interactive website interface that challenges 20th century tarot reading practices as linear narratives. Statistically random reshufflings of tarot decks from archival collections prompt the reader to become a narrative co-creator, drawing them into conversation with traditional reading and interpretive practices as they remix narrative elements portrayed on the cards. Tarot Fabula’s shuffling and reshuffling of cards as historical objects merges contemporary computational methods for generating random results with an interrogation of …

The Ghost Of John Nisbet: Hugh Macdiarmid’S First Published Work, Alan Riach

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the first published item, a short play, signed with the name 'Hugh M'acDiamid', and sets in its biographical and historical context just after the First World War and in the literary context of 1922 and international modernism, in 1922, viewing it as 'an encapsulation of its moment, and most importantly as an elegiac tribute to a friend,' arguing that 'Performing "Nisbet" as a play intimates the drama of fractured modernist selfhood implicit in the written text,' and concluding that it should be seen 'in the whole national context of Scotland finding a way towards a reconstruction of itself, a …

‘To “Meddle Wi’ The Thistle”’: C. M. Grieve’S Scottish Chapbook, The Little Magazine, And The Dilemmas Of Scottish Modernism, Scott Lyall

Studies in Scottish Literature

Examines C. M. Grieve’s (Hugh MacDiarmid’s) most important journal enterprise, The Scottish Chapbook, which critics have assumed marks the beginning of a modernist Scottish renaissance. Against this view, this article argues that the range of contributions to the Chapbook were generally not modernist in their formal characteristics, many recalling the Victorian or fin-de-siècle periods. While the Chapbook’s brief lifespan (1922–23) was typical for modernist little magazines, the dilemmas encountered by Grieve’s periodical – restricted finances, lack of avant-garde contributors – are explained here as a side-effect of ‘localist modernism’, a concept defined by Eric B. White.

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

English Language Challenges Faced By Licensed Guide Interpreters In Japan, Naoko Tanaka

International Journal of Tour Guiding and Visitor Attraction Research

This study investigates the challenges licensed guide interpreters in Japan encounter related to using the English language by examining foreign language tour guides’ use of English through interviews and surveys. The findings reveal that guides prioritise effectively conveying information and cautionary points to guests. They adjust their speaking speed, pronunciation, volume, vocabulary, and sentence structures to ensure easy understanding. Approximately 80% of the vocabulary used is at or below B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), indicating the issues which non-native speakings guides face. Moreover, they use various methods to confirm understanding, such as repeating …

What Does It Mean To Talk About Tolkien And Diversity? A Look Within And Without The Legendarium, Yvette Kisor

Journal of Tolkien Research

“What Does It Mean to Talk about Tolkien and Diversity? A Look within and without the Legendarium” considers racial diversity by focusing on the structure of Tolkien’s universe, both how it is modelled on ancient and medieval concepts like the Great Chain of Being and the Declining Ages of Man, but also remakes those models. In addition, it considers responses to racial structures perceived in Tolkien’s work.

Mythcon 53 - Fantasies Of The Middle Lands, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon Programs

Mythcon 53 with Diversicon 31
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Double Tree by Hilton – Park Place
August 2-5, 2024

CONFERENCE THEME: FANTASIES OF THE MIDDLE LANDS

The idea of “middle-ness” can suggest stability—the center of an object is less likely to break than its edges. It can also suggest the opposite: something in a state of change can be said to be “in the middle”—neither one thing nor another. Mythcon 53, located in the middle of the continental U.S., welcomes an exciting range of papers, panels, and discussions exploring the concept of “middle-ness” as it is worked out in fantasy, science fiction, …

The American West, 1899–1936: Prose, Poetry & Drama, Harriet Monroe, Michael R. Hill, Lindsay Atnip

Zea E-Books Collection

This comprehensive volume presents Harriet Monroe’s (1860–1936) previously unexplored love affair with the American West, an infatuation that blossomed in three interrelated genres: prose, poetry, and drama. Known internationally as the founder and influential editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, here Monroe is revealed as a prolific author with a passion for the people, scenery, and environments she encountered during western escapes from her constricted urban life in Chicago. Monroe’s western travels were transformative. Originally schooled in the literary and artistic traditions of Europe, Monroe became increasingly convinced of the fundamental importance of the American West as the …

Harriet Monroe: An American Poet In Vevey. Her Diary Entries, May 16 – July 26, 1898, Harriet Monroe, Michael R. Hill, Deborah Anna Logan

Zea E-Books Collection

Since its inception in 1912, Poetry magazine has been widely regarded as a premier resource for modern poetry and poets. Published in Chicago as Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, its legacy continues today through the Poetry Foundation, a superlative online resource for seekers of poets, poems, and random lines needing identification. A less immediately recognizable legacy is that of its founder, Harriet Monroe (1860–1936), one of those fin de siècle “intellectual women” typically dismissed as a contradiction in terms. But Monroe was a force to be reckoned with, and this beautifully crafted volume participates in the recuperation of a life …

The Capacity Of An Unfaltering Duress: America's Lost Love Stories, Seth Shimmelfarb-Wells

English Honors Papers

This thesis interrogates the imbrication between negative subjectivity and the fiction writing of Gayl Jones. In doing so, this work reimagines conceptions of intimate and interpersonal love, community, and retributive violence in the face of conditional (anti)Blackness. Through an engagement with contemporary scholars of Black Studies and with the help of the abundant archive of Black music, this project aims to prioritize, reproduce, and heed to Black Artistic registers of feeling that embrace duress, destruction, and madness. Through her literary performance, Jones reproduces and fabulates moments of Black social life that expand and simultaneously shatter our conception of a given …

The Controversy Of Teaching World Literature And The Importance Of Translation In The Field Of English Studies, Samirah Almutairi

English Faculty Publications

For literary texts to be taught in World Literature courses in the Departments of English Literature, they must be translated into English as a general rule. Some scholars advocate for translating literary texts, and others believe that translation as a methodology does not do justice to these texts. This study aims to lay out the arguments for each position and evaluate them. The significance of this study is to show that World Literature remains an essential field and to highlight the importance of translation. This study questions the modes and purpose of translating literary texts. The result of this study …

Introduction: Autoimmunities In The Wake Of Covid-19, Travis Alexander, Nishant Shahani

English Faculty Publications

Our introduction and the essays collected in this Special Section address themselves to the ruins, creations, and legacies of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. More precisely, we ask how our notions of immunity and especially autoimmunity have changed over the last three years. We theorize autoimmunity in the wake of COVID-19 through approaches that consider the material and experiential phenomenology proliferated by the longue durée of both the experience of COVID-19 infection and the pandemic itself. In this way, we connect our inquiries both to the history of recent epidemics—most notably HIV/AIDS—and to broader philosophical and cultural investigations of what immunity …

Spaces Of Citizenship: Negotiating Belonging Through Cold War Literature And Culture, Daria Goncharova

Theses and Dissertations--English

At the height of Cold War containment culture, when fears of Communism and nuclear warfare overlapped with anxieties about homosexuality, gender inversion, miscegenation, and juvenile delinquency, formal citizenship—narrowly defined as one’s legal status—did not provide all American citizens with a sense of belonging, equal access to civil liberties, and a reasonable degree of safety. Instead, spatialized identity, rather than civic responsibilities and legal rights, came to define the boundaries of proper citizenship. In this context, highly exclusionary suburbs, which sprang up outside major metropolitan areas in the late 1940s-1950s, emerged as a cornerstone of the cultural narratives defining American citizenship. …

Translanguaging With Purpose : An Exploratory Study On Student Translanguaging Practices And Perceptions In The Thai Elt Context, Dalton Le

PASAA

No abstract provided.

The Nebulous Binaries Of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, Amantia Menalla

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Much of C.S. Lewis’ novel Till We Have Faces can be examined through one of two binaries. The tension between rationality, or reason, and spirituality, or religion, is one of the core facets of both the text and its main character, Orual. Orual feels the pull of both ideas and thus spends most of the novel in a nebulous space between them. This tension is further complicated by the space between the feminine and the masculine which she also inhabits. By covering her face and body, Orual de-emphasizes her feminine identity and takes on a masculine role, dressing as a …

Author And Authorship In Arthur Miller’S Death Of A Salesman: Willy Loman's Attempts To Author A Nostalgic, Fictitious Past Lead To His Downfall, While Linda Loman’S Miller-Authored Warnings Fall On Willy’S Ever-Deaf Ears, Allison Stein-Jackter

Dissertations and Theses

Throughout the 20th century, the American male protagonist’s obsession with and longing for a past that never existed brings about his own downfall. In Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman nostalgically fantasizes about a bygone era, the pre-war days of glory and greatness, but as he attempts to recreate his presumed former prestige in a post-war world, the fantasy unravels, with not only death and destruction in his dream’s widening, illusory wake, but the unraveling also presents itself in the recognition that Willy’s carefully crafted memories are works of fiction. Decades of literary research focus on Willy’s …

Visualizing (Multi)Cultural Landscape In Elt Textbooks : Evidence From A Systematic Literature Review, Moh. Arif Mahbub, Yazid Basthomi, Nunung Suryati, Niamika El Khoiri

PASAA

No abstract provided.