Digital Commons Network^™

The Language Of Rats: Unwelcome Animals And Interspecies Connection In Contemporary Anglophone Fiction, Kieran Leigh Lyons

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Language of Rats: Unwelcome Animals and Interspecies Connection in Global Contemporary Fiction consists of three essays examining the representation of what I call unwelcome animals in contemporary Anglophone novels from the United States, Nigeria, and India. These animals often live alongside humans yet are perceived as threats or annoyances. Literary depictions of this fraught relationship reveal, and sometimes critique, the intellectual structures that shape how we understand and represent interspecies connections. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the interspecies dimensions of contemporary fiction by bringing together the fields of environmental criticism, animal studies, postcolonialism, and U.S. Southern studies. …

The Object Of Affection: Metamorphosis And The Unbound Subject In Early Modern English Literature, Emily Barth

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This project explores examples of metamorphoses in early modern English literature, and argues that metamorphosis becomes a means of affective expression for characters who are otherwise constrained. The Ovidian assault on the firm distinction between subject and object tells us something about affective life in the early modern world – and perhaps especially, if not exclusively, the affective life of early modern women. My primary texts include Thomas Lodge’s Scillae’s Metamorphosis and William Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece; Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book III Cantos 10-12, and Book IV through Canto 10; Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and John Lyly’s Woman in …

Se Dice Pelo Bueno: Black Affirmations In Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature, Amaryllis Lopez

Honors Program Theses and Projects

In recent years, the natural hair movement has demanded social, political, and cultural acceptance of Black hair on a global scale. Particularly in the Hispanophone Caribbean, the natural hair movement has been a tool to not only promote the acceptance of curly, kinky hair but to combat Latin America’s anti-Blackness. I have found that although Black hair in the Hispanophone Caribbean is constantly compared to textures found in nature such as wool and pajón, it has also been regarded as unnatural. My work has been largely inspired by the essay “Beyond blanqueamiento: black affirmation in contemporary Puerto Rico,” in which …

Understanding Gender Practices And Identity In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse Through The Theories Of Erving Goffman, Meaghan Mcintyre

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper uses sociologist Erving Goffman’s theories to examine the nature of gender and identity in Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel, To The Lighthouse. By reading the novel through the lens of Goffman’s theory about what constitutes a performance, as well as applying his argument about the role of the front region and back region in shaping human conduct, gendered behavior is shown to be part of a “socialized [and] molded” (Goffman 35) performance instead of being a predisposed trait. In her representation of the Victorian man Mr. Ramsay, the Victorian woman Mrs. Ramsay, and the modern woman Lily Briscoe, Woolf …

African American Vernacular English: A Language Necessarily Adorned, Christelle Lauture

Honors Program Theses and Projects

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has been spoken by African Americans for centuries but has only recently been acknowledged as a distinct dialect. It is often used in tandem with Standard English, through a concept referred to as code-switching. Although linguists have done substantial work to validate AAVE, there is an incomplete understanding of why the dialect developed, and, in particular, what functions the dialect serves for its speakers. In order to begin the work of discovering why AAVE developed the specific features it manifests, I synthesized other linguists’ observations into a taxonomy of five categories that account for most …

The Poetry Of History: Irish National Imagination Through Mythology And Materiality, Ryan Fay

English Honors Theses

The thesis culminates in the twentieth century and yet it begins with the Ulster Cycle, a period of Irish mythological history that occurred around the first century common era. Indeed, since the time frame was before the arrival of the Gaels, Normans, or Christianity, the extent of this mythology’s relevance today is whatever extent it is conceptualized as “Irish.” As such, the first chapter locks onto an aspect that could feasibly transcend time and resonate with modern Irish society: gender. Of course, the epistemological dynamics of gender^[1] in the first-century common era are vastly different than the twentieth century …

Septimus Smith Had To Die: An Examination Of Virginia Woolf’S Frustration With The Mental Health System After Wwi, Mackenzie K. Mccotter

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In 1922, Virginia Woolf began writing Mrs. Dalloway as reports of shell shocked soldiers began coming out. Treatments were being created and doctors were putting those treatments into practice at the same time. Woolf was armed with her own experiences in the area of treatments for mental health and created Septimus Smith to display how wrong the contemporary treatments are for those struggling with their mental health. Septimus’ doctors, Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, were examples of the way doctors ignored the trauma many patients were processing after coming back from the war. By creating these characters and having …

Parallel Chronotope Poetics In The Novel «The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years», Bahor Turaeva Phd, An Associate Professor

Philology Matters

Chronotope is being concerned as the literary-aesthetic category in the world literature critical studies, expressing the scope of the universe interpretation, the author’s outlook and imagination regarding the world foundation, defining personages, the composition means of expressing the sequence and duration of the events. In the following development of the scientific-theoretical thought in the world, a chronotope is accepted to be one of the poetic means to demonstrate the reality as well as to be a literary process that is basic for the expression of the reality in the compositional construction and illustration of the plot relying on the writer’s …

Lost Voices: William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, And The Nature Of History, Luke Hardin

Undergraduate Theses

The novels of William Faulkner and Toni Morrison are nothing if not haunted. Though the authors themselves remain, in many ways, diametrically opposed, their works remain inextricably entangled due to the looming specter of history that hangs over their pages. Perhaps more-so than any other writers in the 20th Century, these two towering figures of American fiction took seriously the task of unpacking the migrainous burden of history. Read together, they offer differing perspectives on the nature of writing one's own past, and how this is informed by race and class. Specifically, Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! has long been regarded …

“This Is A True Story”: Paratextual Prefaces And Their Fictive Truths Across Literature, Rebecca Stokem

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Scholar Gérard Genette defines the term “paratext” as accompanying components of a text like titles, forwards, illustrations, footnotes, etc. Genette claims these “productions” affect the “reception” and function as a liminal space between the “inside and outside” of a written work (1-2). Many texts and other works of fiction, across years and genres, use their paratexts to create fictitious histories that surround their main stories. The success of this rhetorical strategy, a convention that I call “fictive truth,” depends heavily on the paratexts’ reception from its audience. These genre conventions are traceable through canonical Western literature, from texts like Walter …

Flipgrid And Second Language Acquisition Using Flipgrid To Promote Speaking Skills For English Language Learners, Annelise Difilippantonio-Pen

Master’s Theses and Projects

Integrating twenty-first century skills within the classroom has become a global driving force within the educational field. While schools have adopted models of one-to-one technology or digital formats for native English speakers, addressing the twenty-first century skills for English language learners have been absent. Given that the present global society is driven on bilingualism and multilingualism, English language learners need to be given the equitable digital opportunity to build their twenty-first century skills. The purpose of this mixed methods research study is to explore the influence and use of the digital application, Flipgrid, on the oral, English development for foundational, …

Bad Puns: It’S How Eye Roll: Humor Writing As A Technique To Engage And Strengthen Writers, Hala Louviere

Tutor's Column

Much research has been done on why to use humor writing, but a lack of research on when to use humor writing exists. The researcher argues that when humor writing is used in scholarly and analytical writing, it can engage uninterested students and improve their writing through authorial voice. Previous studies support the researcher’s thesis; young adults, who frequently consume humor through social media and other modes, can appreciate writing more by combining it with a technique they are familiar with and enjoy. This appreciation also motivates students to insert more of their voice, which then improves their writing.

Byron And Don Juan: A Case Study And Queer Reading Of The Closeted Libertine, Caitlin Stanfield

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the major theme of homosexuality throughout the poetry of Lord George Gordon Byron, ultimately focusing on his 1819 iteration of Don Juan. It presents historically relevant information regarding the sodomy laws, religious sermons, anti-sodomite publications, and other obstacles that, I argue, prevented Byron from expressing his sexuality openly. The queer Byron, of course, exists elsewhere. Through close readings of Byron’s correspondence and of his verse, my thesis argues that we can read Byron’s highly coded, homoerotic jargon for what it is, shedding new light on the active but concealed homosexual community of nineteenth-century England.

Crossing Borders, Crossing Genres: Utilizing Genres To Explore Literary Themes Through Genre Fiction, Michael W. Rickard Ii

English Theses

Genre fiction can be used to explore literary themes found in marginalized literature such as Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders, Emma Pérez’s Forgetting the Alamo or Blood Money, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Each author uses the respective genres of hard-boiled detective fiction, American Western literature, and science fiction to explore the elements of borderland literature and the neo-slave narrative. These elements include hybrid identities, the clash between two cultures, disjunctive localities, and the marginalization of both ethnic groups and women. This thesis will show how each genre’s elements are used to further explore the elements of …

Lexical Complexities In The St. Louis Dialect Island, Larry Lafond, Kenneth Moffett

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The Greater St. Louis “dialect island” poses interesting problems for dialect documentation, partly because Greater St. Louis is a transitional area where many overlapping linguistic influences have left their mark, and also because is an area with new immigrant communities, racial divides, and an aging population.Using a sample from survey and interview data from 815 participants over a seven-year period, we examine lexical diversity in Greater St. Louis, comprising counties both in Missouri and Illinois. We discover that both age and place are robust indicators of lexical selection in Southern Illinois and St. Louis. Our findings provide a concurring rationale …

The Deconstruction Of Patriarchal Narratives In Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls, Caleigh Pope

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The concept and criteria of what constitutes the American long poem has been debated by critics for years. Ntozake Shange redefines what is traditionally considered the long poem by experimenting with form and voice in her poem, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. The inclusion of stage directions, dancing, and chanting contributes to reimagining the long poem. Shange distinguishes her work from traditional western poetry using these features, all part of her newly christened genre the choreopoem, an art form that does not contain traditional epic features but instead draws inspiration from theatre. …

Colonialism And Globalism In Two Contemporary Southern Appalachian Novels - Serena (2008) By Ron Rash, And Flight Behavior (2012) By Barbara Kingsolver, Jasmyn Herrell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this essay, I investigate how the historic and current economic structures operating in Appalachia from the 1920s to the 2010s are represented in two contemporary Southern Appalachian novels – Serena (2008) by Ron Rash and Flight Behavior (2012) by Barbara Kingsolver. Through the lens of postcolonial theory, I show how Serena represents Appalachia as functioning under the colonial model outlined by Robert Blauner and Helen Mathews Lewis in 1978. Then, still under the theory of postcolonialism, I explore how Kingsolver’s work depicts regional identity in response to a post-colonial environment and the ever-expanding global economy.

The Enduring Hold Of The Bible On Modern Literature: Exploring The Fall Narrative As A Conceptual Metaphor For American Literature In John Steinbeck’S East Of Eden, Lauren Stotsky

Undergraduate Honors Theses

There is no greater work of literature, perhaps, than the Bible. The Bible has shaped and influenced more literature, art, and culture than any other work in our time. The effects of the Bible’s words are still woven into modern literature today, illustrating that the Bible’s themes, allegories, parables, fables, metaphors, and characters are things that we humans are unable to depart far from even many decades later. One of the very first stories in the Bible, found at the beginning in Genesis, tells of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve’s depiction as the first kind of our species and …

Queering The Curriculum: Establishing Equity For Lgbtqia Students And Educators In Michigan, Miranda Findlay

All NMU Master's Theses

This project examines the state of Michigan’s efforts in creating an equitable learning and working environment for LGBTQIA K-12 students and educators, explicitly focusing on 11^th and 12^th grade English Language Arts (ELA) standards. In the first chapter, I evaluate the relationship between queer theory and pedagogy and illuminate the need to implement queer pedagogy in teaching K-12 ELA classes. The following chapter reviews the progressive state of California for its promotion of culturally responsive pedagogy and its inclusion of LGBTQIA topics in its K-12 curriculum. The third chapter analyzes Michigan legislature and policies to highlight gaps that …

Necropolitical Resistance In Early Modern Drama: Violence And Death As Agentive Acts In Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, Madison Jansen

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy has been widely-read by the academic community, but not always for its own sake. Its influence on the Revenge Tragedy genre, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, have been common topics, sometimes at the expense of readings that engage with the play itself. This thesis continues a tradition of applying the ideas of Michel Foucault to the Early Modern era in order to interrogate the role of power, knowledge, and sovereignty. This thesis explores the way that Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics, and the related concepts of necropolitics and necroresistance, create significant new ways of understanding the …

A Study Of /Sk/-Metathesis In Old English, Catharina Clara Ybarra

Theses and Dissertations

Language change is the primary focus of historical linguistics. Some changes, phonological, morphological, or semantic, alter forms and lead to new regularities in a language’s lexicon. Linguistic analyses and terminology to describe them have been established to aid in linguistic investigations, though, there remain changes that defy typical explanations.

Metathesis is one change that still intrigues scholars intensely because, since the advent of modern linguistic study with Saussure, we have presumed that languages operate systematically; yet, metathetic change is often seemingly random. Even when it does operate over a period of a generation or two, it may do so erratically, …

The Aesthetics Of Storytelling And Literary Criticism As Mythological Ritual: The Myth Of The Human Tragic Hero, Intertextual Comparisons Between The Heroes And Monsters Of Beowulf And The Anglo-Saxon Exodus, Daniel Stoll

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For thousands of years, people have been hearing, reading, and interpreting stories and myths in light of their own experience. To read a work by a different author living in a different era and setting, people tend to imagine works of literature to be something they are not. To avoid this fateful tendency, I hope to elucidate what it means to read a work of literature and interpret it: love it to the point of wanting to foremost discuss its excellence of being a piece of art. Rather than this being a defense, I would rather call it a musing, …

How Parents Interact With Their Children In Literature And How It Affects The Child’S Development, Trinity Byerly

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Characters in literature have several different relationships, but one kind of relationship that stands out is that between a parent and a child. This kind of relationship can be loving, abusive, or in some cases, both. Just as in reality, this kind of relationship heavily affects how the characters grow and develop. The goal of this project is to examine how different parent/child relationships are depicted in different styles of writing and how it affects character development for the child. The difference between mother and father characters will also be examined to show how they interact with their children in …

Blend It Like Beckett: Samuel Beckett And Experimental Contemporary Creative Writing, Sam Nicole Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Samuel Beckett penned novels, short stories, poetry, stage plays, radio plays, and scripts—and he did each in a way that blended genre, challenged the norms of creative writing, and surprised audiences around the globe. His experimental approach to creative writing included the use of absurdism, genre-hybridization, and ergodicism, which led to Beckett fundamentally changing the approach to creative writing. His aesthetics have trickled down through the years and can be seen in contemporary works, including Aimee Bender’s short story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves[1]. By examining these works …

Oh, My Stars: A New Map Of The Universe In Paradise Lost, Michael R. Coats

Master's Theses

Milton’s geographical descriptions in Paradise Lost are heavily influenced by his fascination with maps. Furthermore, his design of the universe in Paradise Lost follows a cartographic style that has led to several attempts at mapping it. These attempts, however, have followed the erroneous assumption that Earth centers the universe. As a result, cosmographical maps of Paradise Lost are inaccurate. I argue that Milton’s universe is Deocentric and provide a new map with a pyramid design that places God at the center of Milton’s universe.

Readers’ Perceptions Towards Two English Translations Of The Quran, Nour Alanbari

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to examine readers’ perceptions towards two notable English translations of the Quran, investigating if the readers’ language groups affected their perception of translation quality in terms of fluency, accuracy, clarity, formality, and likability. A total of 136 participants completed a survey where they rated the researched attributes of two different English translations of the Quran. Independent t-tests, paired t-tests, and ANOVA tests were conducted to compare the overall ratings of the two translations to each other, as well as between and within language groups. Ratings of the four attributes were also compared amongst themselves. Significant …

Thatcherism In The Contemporary British Novel, 1978-2012, David Mowatt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Thatcherism in the Contemporary British Novel, 1978-2012

This dissertation reveals a nuance to contemporary British texts that have thus far been almost homogenously categorized as contributing to a negative portrayal of the political, cultural, and social policies of the 1980s. A study of texts and criticism of the contemporary British novel highlights the disproportionate number of depictions that could be considered anti-1980s and, as a representation of that decade, in turn anti-Thatcherite. There is an apparent consensus in the damaging effects on almost all aspects of British society during the decade because of the many policies enacted by the Thatcher …

Politically Correct Language In George Carlin, Alan Schultz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

American stand-up comedian George Carlin is notable for his long-standing popularity from the early 60s up until his death in 2008. In this paper, I examine George Carlin’s stance on politically correct language. Focusing on his three books Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, I show how his attempts to remove himself from a politically correct system ultimately fail as he adheres to his own ideals of language and morality. Using his texts and various work from Stanley Fish to support these claims, I show how Carlin ridicules the redundancies and hypocrisies …

Anti-Semitism In American Realist Literature: Edith Wharton’S Sim Rosedale - A Thorn In American Identity, Elizabeth Pantirer

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

How does canonical American literature from the early twentieth century reflect the American Jew and anti-Semitic sentiments? How do these novels portray the American Jew as a threat to American identity? In this thesis, I answer these questions and argue how American literature is a product of its culture demonstrating and reproducing fears and accepted ideologies. These fears perpetuated and solidified anti-Semitic stereotypes and alienated Jews from society. In my research, I examine how literature acts as a cultural product specifically homing in on particular anti-Semitic stereotypes which represent a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant fear of "otherness." This analysis will draw …

Govoreeting With Lewdies: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of A Clockwork Orange And Its Translations Across Media And Language, Willie Wallace

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Much linguistic research has been done on the fictional argot of A Clockwork Orange, known as Nadsat, but few efforts have been made to expand beyond the classification and analysis of Nadsat. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper looks at the overarching discourse of A Clockwork Orange and aims to answer three questions: What exigencies and discourses inform the creation of these works? What techniques and power structures are employed in the construction of these works? How do these works shape or attempt to shape the discourse? To answer these questions, I look at three instances of the discourse: …