Digital Commons Network^™

Review: The Year Of Miss Agnes, Rachel Schwedt, Rachel Schwedt

Ages 10-12

Acceptance, Caring, Community, Cooperation, Creativity, Dignity, Encouragement, Inspiration, Pride, Respect, Self-acceptance

Review: My America: A Poetry Atlas Of The United States, Rachel Schwedt, Janice Delong

Ages 10-12

Appreciation of nature, Citizenship, Community, Diversity, Ethnic pride, Knowledge, Patriotism, Wonder

The Islamic Orient In Antebellum America: The Influence Of Edgar Allan Poe In Contemporary Arabic Literature, Sohaib Alkamal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation posits a comprehensive overview of the debate about Orientalism, particularly early American depictions of the Islamic Orient. The study investigates the antebellum American portrayal of the Islamic Orient, focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s Orientalist readings. While Said’s Orientalism concentrates heavily on aspects of power in West-East relations throughout history, this study expands on several aspects of Said’s book. This study provides a new approach to exploring the field of Orientalism by giving a voice to Arabic sources that are absent in Said’s Orientalism and rarely known to Western audiences. Such sources are medieval Islamic sources, which include phantasies …

Introduction, Dominic Davies, Candida Rifkind

WLU Press Books

This is the introductory chapter of Graphic Refuge Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics by Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind.

Graphic Refuge is the first in-depth study of comics about refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and detainees by artists from the Global North and South. Co-written by two leading scholars of nonfiction comics, the book explores graphic narratives about a range of refugee experiences, from war, displacement, and perilous sea crossings to detention camps, resettlement schemes, and second-generation diasporas.

Through close readings of work by diverse artists including Joe Sacco, Sarah Glidden, Don Brown, Olivier Kugler, Jasper Rietman, Hamid Sulaiman, …

A Reconstruction Of The Homeric Tradition In Early Greece, Aidan F. Hoey

Student Theses

This thesis discusses the centuries-long historiographical debate that is known to us as the Homeric Question. The identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dating from when the Homeric epic poems were composed, the Homeric diction, and the historicity of the Trojan War has puzzled scholars since Antiquity. Only by the twentieth century, scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord proved that the Iliad and Odyssey were orally composed. How the written form of the Homeric epic poems came about has become even more of a historiographic puzzle than it has been previously. Building off the …

The Finest Orientalism: "The Orient" And Empire In 19th Century Romantic Poetry, Nathan D. Banfield

Graduate Masters Theses

This project seeks to interrogate the way that nineteenth-century Romantic authors incorporated tropes and depictions of the Near East in their poetry, and the relationship that their use of these tropes has to furthering the British Empire’s imperial aims. Drawing from the theory of “Orientalism” articulated by Edward Said, and his theoretical underpinnings in Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse analysis, I consider four major Romantic poets whose works articulate different versions of “The Orient” as a discursive entity. Said postulates that the “The Orient,” rather than being an inaccurate depiction of an existing geopolitical region, is a fabrication which is …

The Otley Y. J. S. Chapbooks, A Critical Edition, Michelle Dewitt, Ainsley Farmer, Kenna Fry, Elitza Hallam, Wilson Hurdle, Whitney Hutchings, Kemry Jensen, Evva Kreitlein, Samuel Peterson, Caroline Salmeron, Olivia Toone, Gabby Tracey, Elliana Valentino, Laura Vance

Student Works

The L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU contains a collection of sixteen small, yellow chapbooks, each with eight pages of text and hand-colored woodcut illustrations. The titles in this series range from well-known and well-loved tales such as “The History of Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Jack the Giant Killer,” to less familiar “Capitals of Europe,” “The History of Peter Brown,” and “The Old Man and his Ass.” These chapbooks are unattributed and undated, bearing only a notice that they were “printed for the booksellers” by the Yorkshire J. S. Publishing & …

Langston Hughes And The “Afro-American Narrative” Tradition, Paul Haynes

Theses and Dissertations

After introducing Langston Hughes and defining Robert B. Stepto’s “Afro-American narrative” tradition, Chapter One presents a biography of Hughes from his birth in 1902 until he came under the patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason in 1927. Chapter One also addresses the aesthetic expectations of the Harlem Renaissance and the extent to which Hughes either met or failed to meet those expectations. Chapter Two presents a reading of Not without Laughter as an integrated narrative, addressing how Hughes’s authenticating strategies and Mason’s authenticating devices evenly control the novel. Chapter Three presents a reading of Hughes’s short-story cycle, The Ways of White …

Túrin Was Dead: To Begin With. Death, Fate, And A Happy Ending In The Book Of Lost Tales, Thomas Hillman Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

The final weight of the Tale of the Children of Húrin is crushing. Only the prophecy that Túrin will slay Melkor in the Last Battle offers any relief. Yet its first version, “Turambar and the Foalókë,” has an ending one might call happy. For Túrin’s death is not the end of his story, but its turning point. A coda details the afterlife of Túrin and Nienor, which begins in sorrow and ends in joy, but it is Fionwë, not Túrin, who kills Melkor (LT I 219; II 116). By the “Sketch of the Mythology” in 1926 Túrin has replaced Fionwë, …

The Moral Function Of Invented Languages In J.R.R Tolkien's Legendarium, Mareike Huber

Journal of Tolkien Research

For J. R. R. Tolkien, the languages he invented for Middle-earth came first, the stories second. Much of his linguistic creation was based on the idea that the sound of a language can create a sense of pleasure or displeasure in those hearing it, irrespective of the meaning behind the words. This can be seen in the ways the sound of the elvish languages on the one hand and Tolkien’s other invented languages such as Khuzdul or the Black Speech on the other, are described not only by Tolkien himself but also by readers of his works. The way a …

Tolkien And Attachment Theory : A Theory To Bind Them All?, Lelie Bremont

Journal of Tolkien Research

Tolkien and Attachment theory: One Theory to Bind Them All?

Ever since the first publication of The Hobbit in 1937, Tolkien’s works have been dominating the fantasy genre, often imitated but rarely equalled. Dozens of scholars over decades have looked for the reason behind this success, the secret ingredient that made Middle-earth so compelling.

Nicole Guédeney is a French psychiatrist specializing in Attachment Theory. Attachment Theory emerged in the early 20^th century and combines psychology with anthropology and ethnology to explore the early attachments created between a baby and the adults surrounding them and how these attachments determine the …

Perceiving The Perceiver: “Viewing” Sauron Through The Gestalt Theory Of Perception, Cameron Bourquein

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper uses Gestalt theory, the Gestalt laws of perception, and the reception theory of Wolfgang Iser to elucidate the character “Sauron” as he appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, and Tolkien’s wider legendarium. It argues firstly that Sauron’s high degree of indeterminacy and ambiguity suggests he can be read as a gestalt entity, one the reader creates by mentally constructing a whole from (seemingly) disparate parts. Building on the semiotics work of Nagy (2013), it argues that Sauron in The Lord of the Rings can be read as gestalt across the spatial, …

“What Ship Will Bear Me Ever Back”: Woundedness And The Western Sea, Janet Brennan Croft

Journal of Tolkien Research

The sea journey into the West is a multi-faceted symbol-system in Tolkien’s works. It is connected with healing, loss, and the numinous. A character may sail to find peace, to lay down burdens, or to challenge the gods or to beg their help. I will be considering both Tolkien’s literary inspirations in medieval and Arthurian literature, and the personal resonances arising from the significant sea voyages (to England as a young child, and to and from France during the Great War) which twice upended his life.

Home, Exile, And Displacement In The Lord Of The Rings And The Hobbit, Sarah Park

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

False Virtues And Fragile Honor: The Weight Of Reputation In Shakespeare’S Works, Amanda Sheps

Theses and Dissertations

"False Virtues and Fragile Honor: The Weight of Reputation in Shakespeare’s Works" analyzes the intersection between honor and social standing in William Shakespeare's Othello and Much Ado About Nothing, specifically in regards to the gender roles prevalent in the plays' societies. In both plays, women who are perceived as a threat to the prevailing norms of society are ostracized, ridiculed, and may even face violence at the hands of their male love interests. The innocence of Desdemona and Hero, however, calls into question the validity of this cruel treatment. These negative reactions reflect the pressure that men have to preserve …

Examining The Connections Between Gender, Identity, And Land In Leslie Marmon Silko’S Ceremony And Rudolfo Anaya’S Bless Me, Ultima, Denise Perez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the representation of gender, identity, and land in the novels Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko and Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. To understand the role of gender in the novels, women are analyzed as sources of salvation and refuge for men. The male protagonists seek a “cure” or an understanding of themselves, and they are only able to achieve this through the nurturing of the women in their lives. This thesis also examines how the male protagonists develop their masculinity through the formation of a bond with the Earth, their homeland, and nature. In Ceremony and …

Systems Of Survivance: Exploring Armenia's Ancient Past Through Dungeons & Dragons, Jango Janigian

English Honors Theses

Systems of Survivance: Exploring Armenia’s Ancient Past Through Dungeons and Dragons is an English Honors and Classics undergraduate thesis that brings the hidden voices of Armenia’s past into dialogue with the present. Opening with an exploration of D&D and a reflection on the field of Ancient Studies from an Armenian-American perspective, Janigian questions the priorities of “Classics” and its amplification of Eurowestern voices. This thesis draws inspiration from the fantasy anthology Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, where a team of writers tell folkloric stories of their cultures through a D&D setting and adventure. Likewise, Janigian provides scholars and tabletop …

Everything And Nothing Found In The House Of Leaves: A Multiliterate Analysis Of Multimodal Writing., Jennings Collins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The postmodern horror novel House of Leaves engages in a bevy of discourses across the humanities, a complex work that invites readers to engage with several multimodal forms of reading and writing to experience it fully. This thesis hopes to explore the novel’s place in various sites of discourse including film theory, philosophy, and horror genre theory; applying a multiliterate perspective to the work to study how the novel encourages multimodal and multiliterate thinking by applying studies of typography, experimental literature, and literary ontology. This thesis will emphasize a filmic analysis of text-within-text The Navidson Record, to address a …

“More Than What [They] Made Us To Be”: From Passing To Perception In Victorian And Modern Vampire Media, Lauren Sieberg

English (MA) Theses

Throughout Victorian Gothic horror fiction, vampires function as deviant figures, maneuvering within social confines of passing until their status quo-threatening identity is exposed. Of the popular vampires from this period, most gradually fail to maintain status as social insiders—as demonstrated with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, who possess the temporary capacity to pass until their hidden monstrosity is revealed over time. Even if Gothic monsters are confined to a limited space and time far from society, this is still not enough; in accordance with the Victorian culture of morality policing by dominant groups, the vampiric Other …

Literary Postcritique And American Transcendentalism: Helping Students Practice Community-Building By Rewilding Literature In The Classroom, Tate Aldrich

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Literary postcritique is an emergent theoretical approach to literature that has elicited skepticism among many in academia because of its central claim that their unchecked overreliance on suspicious and symptomatic reading styles is diminishing the pedagogical potential of our reading together. To restore this potential, Rita Felski, a champion of literary postcritique, suggests adopting an aesthetic reading style, a mid-level interpretation that neither indulges in the formalists’ habits of close scrutiny nor in the cultural critics’ wider lens of political and social contexts. In The Limits of Critique and Hooked, Felski argues that an aesthetic reading style can develop …

Gothic Monstrosity And The Historical Context Of Colonial Violence In The Borderlands In Isabel Cañas’ Vampires Of El Norte, Paulina Longoria

Theses and Dissertations

The speculative genre has become a venue for Chicanx cultural producers to narrate their own histories, preserve their cultural identities, and reaffirm their rightful place in the United States. This thesis explores the redefinition of gothic monstrosity in Isabel Cañas’ Vampires of El Norte (2023), a contemporary novel within the Latinx speculative fiction genre. The novel blurs the boundaries between the supernatural threat posed by the vampires and the human threat embodied by the Anglo American settlers as both endanger Mexicans living in the Borderlands during the Texas Revolution and the U.S.-Mexico War. Drawing from L. Heidenreich’s theoretical framework, this …

A Critical Conversation On Indigeneity, Colonialism, And Feminism In Natsuo Kirino's The Goddess Chronicle, Tegan Rosso

English (MA) Theses

Natsuo Kirino’s novel The Goddess Chronicle has received little attention in regard to Western scholarship. However, Kirino’s other works in her literary canon are well renowned for their gritty and uncensored feminist commentary on contemporary Japanese society. This thesis aims to bring forth the discussion of not only feminism, as is so often the focus of Kirino’s works, but Indigeneity and Japanese imperialism within The Goddess Chronicle as well. In order to do so, this thesis analyzes Kirino’s novel in an effort to highlight the ways in which the narrative is both forward-thinking in its feminist critiques of modern and …

Angelic Wasting: The Impacts Of The Enlightenment, Evangelicalism, And The Industrial Revolution On Romanticization Of Tuberculosis In England, 1800-1850, Sara M. Sudano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to elucidate the intersections between the portrayal of tuberculosis in the Romantic era and the Enlightenment, evangelism, and the Industrial Revolution. This study aims to do so by locating and analyzing depictions in the primary source representations of the disease, then considering the effects of the three factors mentioned above on its representation. The Enlightenment, evangelism, and the Industrial Revolution interacted in a variety of ways, and the influence of all three factors was found within the representations of tuberculosis, albeit in often indirect ways. In the novels of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë, tuberculosis was …

Sacred Connections In Cartoonish Places: Exploring The Implications Of Teotl In Avatar: The Last Airbender (2008), Makenzie P. Morrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Taking Avatar: The Last Airbender (2008) seriously, Sacred Connections in Cartoonish Places explores the animated children’s series and how it is understood through the monistic Nahua (Aztec) concept of teotl. Relying on James Maffie’s text Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion (2014), this thesis determines that Avatar: The Last Airbender benefits from monistic analysis. This analysis results in a breakdown of the show into four body chapters. These chapters respectively explore Aang’s role as a monistic representative, the differences between the physical and spirit worlds presented in the show, the kind of relationships that appear in the series, and …

Neither Here Nor There: Passing Through Race, Culture, Transnationalism, And Generational Inheritance In Mixed-Race Japanese American Literature, Rachel Kelly

English Honors Projects

My honors project explores the concept of passing in Japanese American mixed-race literature written after World War II by examining how acts of passing are racially, transnationally, and formally represented in Ruth Ozeki’s novel, My Year of Meats; Asako Serizawa’s novel-in-stories, Inheritors; and Brian Komei Dempster’s poetry collection, Topaz. Through my analysis, I seek to expand traditional notions of racial passing by reconceptualizing the term's connection to physical and spatial mobility, generational inheritances, and literary forms in order to recognize and celebrate mixed-race Japanese American voices within larger conversations by and around Asian American and BIPOC American …

Yeats, Tagore, And The Nobel Prize In Literature: Imprimaturs In Modernist Cultural Conversations, Ragini Mohite

International Yeats Studies

No abstract provided.

What Happens In The Shadows: Racial Hierarchy And The Policing Of People Of Color, Nanditha Vinod

English and Creative Writing Presentations

In this presentation, I examine the relationship between methods used in graphic memoirs by illustrators to depict and critique political and social inequalities. I specifically analyze the graphic memoir Guantanamo Kid by Alexandre Franc and Jérôme Tubiana, which depicts the brutal experience of Mohammed El-Gharani, who was falsely imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay as a child. I argue that the illustrators manipulate the composition of lights and shadows to emphasize racial hierarchy and the inherent power imbalance between people of color and white bodies that severely restrict agency. The usage of lights and shadows, often overlooked in visual arts, heightens the …

Art And Enchantment: How Wonder Works By Patrick Curry, N. Trevor Brierly

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

Patrick Curry has written extensively on Tolkien, art and enchantment, and Art and Enchantment is his most academic in nature on these subjects, and the most fully developed and detailed. Curry describes and analyzes both enchantment and disenchantment. He focuses on art, artists and artistic movements and whether they might be more, or less, conducive to enchantment. In particular he notes that modernism is largely hostile to enchantment.

Mapping A Sense Of Humor: Narrative And Space In Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels By Daniel Lüthi, Susan Moore

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

No abstract provided.

Pandemic Mythmaking: Covid-19 And Mythological Symbolism In Indian Folk Art, Ishani Anwesha Joshi, Sathyaraj Venkatesan

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

Through a comprehensive analysis of Durga Bai Vyam’s “Samura Manthan” and Rupsona and Bahadur Chitrakar’s “Corona Rakshasa,” this article aims to investigate how mythological stories and themes have been used in the Indian context in folk art during the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigation will offer insights into how artists have leveraged mythological symbolism to infuse their works with richer layers of meaning, thereby engaging readers in a deeper exploration of the pandemic’s impact on society and the human psyche. By close-reading the aforementioned paintings, this study aims to illustrate the evolving visual representation of cultural narratives …