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Collaboration Revisited: The Performative Art Of Claude Cahun And Hannah Weiner, Phillip L. Griffith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In its most common usage in the artistic context, collaboration refers to a practice of creation in which two artists work together to produce a single artwork or object. Collaboration Revisited: The Performative Art of Claude Cahun and Hannah Weiner focuses on the nexus of photography, writing, and performance in the work of six female avant-garde artists from the transatlantic twentieth century, informed by the important place of surrealism in that history, to reconsider this understanding of collaboration. Instead of the notion of collaboration as founded in the experience of two artists working together in each others’ presence, I examine …

Knowing Others, Or Not: Performing, Caring, Foreboding, And Acknowledging In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Meechal Hoffman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Knowing Others, Or Not makes two overarching claims about the nineteenth-century novel’s depictions of relations. First, they are overwhelmingly concerned with epistemological questions about knowing others, and second, more often than not, the problem of other minds is portrayed as productive of both pleasure and valuable negative affects. While much scholarship on the relational nineteenth century focuses on either sympathy or social responsibility within the framework of liberal individualism, I show instead that the authors in this study—Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, and George Eliot—repeatedly register doubt about the usefulness or possibility of authenticity, and posit the pleasure that …

Lyrical Mysticism: The Writing And Reception Of Catherine Of Siena, Lisa Tagliaferri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lyrical Mysticism: The Writing and Reception of Catherine of Siena (https://caterina.io) affirms the 14th-century mystic Catherine of Siena as a writer through contextualizing her texts among the corpus of contemporary Italian literature, and studying her reception in the Renaissance period of Italy and England. Joining an increasing body of recent meaningful scholarship that has been making significant progress to recover many overlooked and peripheral female voices of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this work serves to fully assert Catherine as a writer of work that is literarily significant and worthy of textual analysis alongside contemporary male Italian …

Experience And Authority: Knowledge, Gender, And The Creation Of The Self In The Book Of Margery Kempe And Late Medieval Travel Literature, Rebecca D. Fox

The Hilltop Review

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between written authority, experiential authority, travel, and gender in late medieval travel literature. By expanding Terrence M. Bowers’ discussion of travel as a masculine rite of passage beyond Margery Kempe to include Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, the relationships between the aims and experiences of each figure are clarified. Each figure claims that their travels have given them unique a experiential knowledge which allows them to both recreate themselves on their own terms and to assert their own authority in opposition to written authority. Variables such …

Review Of Conrad And Language, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Conrad and Language, edited by Katherine Isobel Baxter and Robert Hampson.

Dark Stars Of The Evening: Performing African American Citizenship And Identity In Germany, 1890-1920, Kristin L. Moriah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dark Stars of the Evening: Performing African American Citizenship and Identity in Germany, 1890-1920 demonstrates that black performers in Germany developed wide networks in the performance world as they sought artistic opportunities beyond the racist circumscription of the American popular stage. Their performances became emblematic of modernity, globalization, and imperial might for German audiences at the turn of the century. African American-styled blackness contributed to the formation of the city of Berlin while allowing African American performers to assert themselves on the global stage. Groups like the Four Black Diamonds had a lengthy engagement with the popular stage in Berlin, …

Literary Theories Of Circumcision, A. W. Strouse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Literary Theories of Circumcision” investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organizes literary experience. In every period of English literature, major authors have employed the penis’s hood as a figure for thinking about reading and writing. These authors belong to a tradition that defines textuality as a foreskin and interpretation as circumcision. In “Literary Theories of Circumcision,” I investigate the origins of this literary-theoretical formulation in the writings of Saint Paul, and then I trace this formulation’s formal applications among medieval, early modern, and modernist writers. My study lays the groundwork for an ambitious …

Shifting Focus: The Role Of Visual Literacy In The Twenty-First Century English Classroom, Bryanna Tester

Masters Theses

Ultimately, the English language arts classroom seeks to help make students “literate” members of society. Due to the dominance of images in twenty-first century communication, the term “literate” has also slowly shifted to include an individual’s ability to effectively and accurately communicate with verbal text as well as with visual images and symbols. Although students are native image-viewers, they are not able to be image-readers without instruction and training on how to critically “read” images. Therefore, an English teacher’s literary curriculum is not strictly bound to the written and spoken word. Instruction in reading and writing written texts are vital …

Monstrous Dolls: The Abject Body In Rosario Ferré’S Works, Mackenzie Fraser

Senior Theses

In this Honors Thesis project, I examine two literary texts, “The Youngest Doll” (1991) and The House on the Lagoon (1995), by Puerto Rican author Rosario Ferré (1938-2016) with attention to her depiction of the abject female body as a figure analyzed by both theories of gender and the subaltern. Using these critical frameworks as well as my own textual analysis, I argue that Ferré offers a postcolonial feminist critique of the double oppression—patriarchal and colonial— operating upon her female Puerto Rican characters. Yet these women also turn this abjection into transgression, allowing Ferré to expose the paradoxes of female …

Considering The Body: Sexual Agency And Material Selfhood In Alex As Well, Karlie Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the tensions between intersex embodiment and trans* identity, intersex children and their parents, and the intimacies that come out of these relationships – which, I argue, are ultimately queer. Using queer, trans*, and intersex theory, as well as feminist new materialisms, I highlight the ways in which the imbrications of the material and the symbolic are presented in Alyssa Brugman’s contemporary Young Adult novel, Alex as Well. The goal of this analysis is to encourage a separation from binary thinking and explore the possibility of nonbinary identifications in literature – more specifically, literature with intersex …

Canvases Of Representation: Addressing The Cultural Politics Of Black Male Superhero Identity In Graphic Narratives, Danielle L. Cochran

Theses and Dissertations

Canvases of Representation: Addressing the Cultural Politics of Black Male Superheroes Identity in Graphic Narratives is an analytical literary mixtape dedicated to Black male superheroes Black Panther, Luke Cage, and Black Lightning. Cochran draws out how superheroes play a role in the socio-political, identity, and cultural representations Black identity. The work argues that what is not just the symbolic/cultural destruction of the Black image in popular culture but how such representations provide a template for how the Black body is actively managed, controlled, surveilled, and contained in the material world. Examining these figures through the blended genres of Afrofuturism, film, …

Dalgish Studies, Teaches The Complexities Of Languages., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“I tell my students that if they want to see the world, they might consider studying linguistics, because that is how I got my start,” says Dr. Gerard Dalgish, a professor of English at Baruch College. “I went to many different countries, and if you have that sort of background, you can live for a while working part-time or something like that if you like the particular place you’re visiting.”

These compelling words come from someone who has specialized in teaching English as a second language or ESL, as it is also known.

Religion In The Media: A Study Of Student Perception Of Media Bias In Georgia, Alexander Clegg

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Georgia is fighting to make the step from developing to developed and the influence of the Georgian Orthodox Church has been an identified barricade for European Union leadership to accept Georgia into the supranational organization. This research investigates the relationship between religiosity and the perception of media bias among college students in Tbilisi, Georgia. It was hypothesized that the relationship between religiosity and perception of media bias will be negative, as measured by survey administered to the students. This paper proves the more religious a student is, the less likely he or she will recognize a media bias towards the …

When The Universal Trump Is Passed Around, Molly Ann Garthwaite

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This essay, "When the 'Universal Trump is Passed Around'" was the final paper submitted to Dr. Mary Rigsby at the conclusion of the Fall 2016 semester for her Moby-Dick senior seminar (Engl.455J). On the first day of class, Dr. Rigsby posed the question to nine senior English majors that would serve as both the prompt for our final essay and overall theme for the course: Is Moby-Dick worth preserving? Throughout the slow and careful reading of Herman Melville's renowned novel about the great white whale, the many parallels to life aboard the Pequod to life in 2017 breached the surface. …

The Dangers Of Living The "Half-Known Life": What Moby-Dick Can Teach Us About Nature, Katherine Barth

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

At the time Herman Melville was grappling with the monstrous manuscript that was to become Moby-Dick, America was engaged in its own battles of global expansionism, including the Mexican War and the War of 1812, environmental devastation, unfair class conditions, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and shifting ideals of the self, other, and collective in American culture (Armstrong 1039). Unbeknownst to Melville, whose novel would go unappreciated during his lifetime, Moby-Dick would become prime fodder for 20th and 21st century literary critics and scholars who both critiqued and praised Melville's literary accomplishment as an exploration of the physical, emotional, …

Language Choice Of Bilingual Musicians, Macy Lethco

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Often unconsciously, every bilingual makes a choice in each interaction of which language to use. These choices have many motivating factors but are mainly based on the content of the message and the identity of the speaker. This may occur in seconds and without hesitation. If even here, a choice is taking place, how much more in the writing, composition, and production of a song or album? Artists, unlike speakers in a conversation, can choose the audience the communicate with. Musicians and music listeners who choose to define themselves in a personal bilingual identity, which at the same time is …

An Analysis Of Kermit The Frog Memes, Megan Elizabeth Palmer

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Memes have become an increasingly popular form of digital communication since the rise of social media. However, academic study of memes is often limited to those that are connected to specific social, cultural, or political movements. In this paper, I discuss the popularity of the Evil Kermit and the But That's None of My Business Kermit the Frog memes, and argue in favor of widening the genre of memes that academic study tends to focus on. An Analysis of Kermit the Frog Memes was written for COMM 460, the Seminar in Digital Rhetoric, and the sponsoring professor was Jessy Ohl, …

The Sounds Of Silence; Or, Isabella’S Counter Discourse In Measure For Measure, Gina Vivona

Theses and Dissertations

This argument reshapes the thinking about masculine dominance in Measure for Measure, and considers the patriarchy as a series of socially constructed, hence artificial, rules and regulations. It also explores how Isabella’s discourse and celibacy empower her to defy the constraints of early modern paradigms and achieve individual freedom.

The Use Of Creaky Voice In Mitigating Face Threatening Acts, Erin Butler

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This study explores the use of creaky voice in mitigating face threatening acts. Through the perspective of conversational analysis, examples of salient creaky voice from two audio recordings are analyzed for their role in instances of face threatening acts. The examples of face threatening acts used in this study include commands, requests, disagreements, suggestions, and jokes. Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory of politeness is used as the basis of defining face threatening acts, positive and negative face, and strategies for completing face threatening acts. The analysis shows that salient creaky voice is used in all the examples presented of face …

"The Condition Of Women:" Gender, Sexuality, And The Patriarchy In Charlotte Bronte's Shirley And Villette, Alexis Noelle Robinson

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The primary focus of this honors project is analyzing the ways in which Charlotte Brontë strategically deconstructs traditional heteronormative constructs of feminine gender and sexuality in two of her novels, Shirley and Villette. This project is split into two analytical documents: the first, an annotated bibliography assessing the critical, scholarly discourse on Shirley; the second, a critical assessment of Brontë's "novel of alternatives," Villette. Although this project is entitled "The Condition of Women," as Brontë scholars have dully noted the author's continued progression and revolutionary approach to Victorian normalizations of women, the didactic messages behind Brontë's novels ultimately need to …

The Writing Path To Healing: An Individual Study On Written Emotional Disclosure, Sarah Foster

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The purpose of this project is to provide writing prompts as an intervention method for adolescents who have experienced family violence and have been placed in the safe environment of family-style orphan care. The paper provides a literature review of writing as healing, also known as written emotional disclosure, in therapeutic contexts. Writing prompts are then presented designed for adolescents who have experienced complex trauma in the form of family violence. Each prompt has a specific purpose, but all prompts share a focus on empowering the adolescents to consider their identity, rise above hardships, and engage their past through reflective …

The Active Narrator: Fieldian Narration In Strachey And Woolf, Natalie I. Beyer

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Lytton Strachey, one of the most prominent members of the Bloomsbury Group, has long been regarded as creating "the new biography" with his book, Eminent Victorians. One of the more innovative techniques used in his biography was using active voice through his narrator, an element influenced by the narrative structure of Henry Fielding. Not only did Strachey change the field of historical biography with his active narrator and critiques on the discipline of biography itself, but he also influenced another huge presence in the Bloomsbury Group, Virginia Woolf. Years after Eminent Victorians, Woolf took Strachey's narrator and applied it two-fold …

Conrad's Pronoun Usage As A Stylistic Marker And Its Relation To His Density Of Text And Themes, Jennifer K. Onishi

English Department Theses

In this thesis I perform a close examination of Conrad’s use of pronouns. Before this data is related, a brief overview of Conrad’s linguistic history and the history of his criticism is presented. This overview allows for the data to be placed in the context of his linguistic interference. It also lays out what aspects of Conrad’s language have already been explored. Pronouns are analyzed by word, type, and distance from the referent. The results of this study are then combined with statistical data from previous studies of Conrad’s grammar and linguistics. This combined data is used to explain one …

Race, Gender, And Exile In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises And Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Abby E. Gould

Senior Theses

This senior thesis for the South Carolina Honors College conducts a literary analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Across these two texts, I focus on expatriates, examining the psychological trauma that ensues when they are forced to define their “self” not in terms of where they are, but in terms of who they really are. These challenges to one’s self, I argue, illuminate the complexity of gender and sexual identity as well as the social structures that assign values to certain forms or expressions of masculinity.

Dogs, Cats, And A Lambkin: Speechlessness And The Animal In Ulysses, Pierce R. Watson

Theses and Dissertations

This essay explores the status of the animal and the consequences of animal speechlessness in Ulysses, mainly focusing on encounters with dogs and cats. Through these animal encounters, Joyce provides a foundation for understanding the complications faced by the Bloom family in grieving their deceased infant son.

The Importance Of Using Information Communication Technology For Learning And Teaching The English Language In Kurdistan Of Iraq, Nabaz Noori Kareem

English (TESOL) Master Theses

Kurdistan as a region in north of Iraq has undergone significant changes regarding its educational system, and using ICTs (information communication technologies) for teaching and learning English has been given a great role in the system. There are many researchers who wrote about the benefits and the challenges of using ICTs. As the term ICT includes many kinds of devices and applications, students and teachers in Kurdistan are using various types of ICTs inside or outside of the schools. Students and teachers use ICTs for teaching and learning the skills of the English language such as reading, writing, speaking, and …

The Iallt Language Center Evaluation Toolkit: Context, Development, And Usage, Elizabeth Lavolette, Angelika Kraemer

Language Resource Center

In the summer of 2014, a committee composed of members of the International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT) began discussions toward accomplishing the following charge:

Design a tool that internal evaluation committees can use to evaluate and make recommendations for the improvement of their institution's language center. We emphasize the fact that it is the university appointed evaluation committee that will use this evaluation toolkit, not the language center directors themselves (although the LC Director should have input on how the toolkit should be deployed). Such evaluation committees might be composed of language department Chairs, TA/Language coordinators, Dean or …

Colonial Shame And Its Effect On Puerto Rican Culture, Alison Torres Ramos

English Dissertations - Archive

I explore how American influence affects Puerto Rican culture through colonial shame. My dissertation is informed by the following questions: (1) In what ways does Puerto Rican culture attempt to move away from colonial shame? (2) What underlying desires and fears are present in Puerto Rican cultural productions? (3) How does colonial shame create agency in the struggle to achieve cultural currency within the wider American society? (4) How does colonial shame affect transculturation between Puerto Rico and the United States? The second chapter of my dissertation explores Puerto Rican attempts at moving away their colonial shame to subvert it. …

Disabling Sex Education: Science, Narrative, And The Female Body In Feminist Medical Fiction, 1874-1916, Stephanie P. Tavera

English Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation offers a feminist disability theory approach to women’s medical fiction during the Comstock Law Era. I argue that, in responding to Comstockian censorship, women authors of medical fiction resisted sexed and gendered narratives in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sex education discourses, but in so doing, they recast the female body within disability rhetoric. Using feminist body theorists such as Judith Butler, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Emily Martin, and Elizabeth Grosz, I frame each work of feminist medical fiction within a specific historical nexus before discussing how the authors–Rebecca Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, Annie Nathan Meyer, and Charlotte Perkins …

The Revival Of America's First Genre: Exploring The Panther Narrative's Feminist Principles In Post-Revolutionary War America, Abigail Bentley

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

America’s victory in the War of Independence posed new challenges for the men who drafted the Constitution. Gender roles shifted dramatically during the war, creating a new attitude about women’s roles in the new republic. Before the Constitution was ratified, women like Abigail Adams advocated for women to have a more active role in the new nation. Radical literature regarding women’s roles also became a driving force in the movement. The Panther Narrative used the resurgence of America’s first genre, the captivity narrative, to combine the new republic’s obsession with personal freedom and radical ideas about gender spheres. The anonymous …