Digital Commons Network^™

“O Brave New World”: Service-Learning And Shakespeare, Matthew C. Hansen

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Community-engaged learning is a rising feature of a wide variety of higher education institutions, from community colleges to private liberal arts colleges to large public universities. Everyone, it seems, is getting in on the act, and as a result, the amount of scholarship published on service-learning continues to multiply. There remains, however, curiously little scholarship published on the intersection of service-learning and literary studies. Almost no published scholarship exists on how courses on Shakespeare – a staple of nearly every college English department – might engage with the community through service-learning that provides a genuine community benefit while simultaneously deepening …

Compulsory Homosexuality And Black Masculine Performance, Vershawn A. Young

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Preface, Brett C. Mcinelly

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

As I was breaking into the profession some years ago, religion was a mere blip on my radar of scholarly interests. Having come through graduate school in the 1990s, I naturally followed disciplinary trends in literary and eighteenth-century studies, focusing much of my research on issues of race, class, and gender and examining the relationships between Britain's imperial history and the literature and culture of the period. Religion factored into my queries at times, say, in considering the ways Crusoe's Protestantism informed his sense of self while taking possession of a West Indian island. But religion itself remained on the …

"Expectation And Amendment Maketh Me To Become An Usurer": Usury, Providentialism, And The Age Of Projects, Dwight D. Codr

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

In an Internet postscript to his 1989 history of usury, Norman Jones remarks that "by the eighteenth century the moral issue of usury was no longer of interest to most Protestant thinkers. In practice lending at interest with collateral had become normal, as had deposit banking:'1 Indeed, usury itself was of relatively minor importance to economic theorization and debate in the eighteenth century when compared to the financial debates of the period Jones's work covers, 1571-1624, spanning Elizabeth's Act Against Usury and the Usury Act of 1624. During the earlier period, usury was not simply linked to an emerging system …

Sermon Publishing, Clerical Reading, And John Wilkins's Ecclesiastes, 1646-1750, Rosemary Dixon

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Francis Bacon had little to say about the study of divinity in The Advancement of Learning (1605), his critical survey of the state of knowledge at the turn of the seventeenth century. In contrast to the other fields of learning Bacon explored, divinity needed but little encouragement: "For I can finde no space or ground that lieth vacant and vnsowne in the matter of Diuinitie, so diligent haue men beene, either in sowing of good seede, or in sowing of Tares:' Bacon did, however, have an intriguing suggestion for a hypothetical theological book:

that forme of writing in Diuinitie, which …

Liminal Practice In A Maturing Writing Department, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph]

In Spring 2011 I was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant to "consult, collaborate, and inform" on the future of the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg, located in the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. The Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications department (hereafter, RWC) was a pioneer in writing instruction in Canada, where it became the first unit to establish itself independently as a department with a full-‐time faculty committed to both teaching and scholarship in writing and rhetoric. It remains a rare phenomenon on the Canadian higher education scene, where studies …

The Power Of Words: The Use Of Language In Ethan Frome, Heather Faye Spear

Masters Theses

Edith Wharton's novel, Ethan Frome, has been sharply criticized for its tragic ending, yet Wharton's compelling storytelling which depicts universal conditions of mankind accomplishes something powerful through its narrative: it defends language. The complicated relationship between the three main characters, Zeena, Ethan, and Mattie is rooted in their utilization of language. Using a combination of close reading for textual analysis and identifying a communicative style for each character, this thesis asserts that how the characters in this novel utilize language contests the meaninglessness and relativity supported by deconstructionists. Wharton clearly illustrates Zeena's linguistic power over both Ethan and Mattie, and …

Stop The Coughin': Immersing Ell Students Into The Reading Culture, Mariya Ogden

The Utah English Journal

For me, moving to California from St. Petersburg, Russia, was an exciting thrill beyond belief. Everything looked just like in the American movies I watched growing up: the quiet suburbs, pizza delivery, and the smiling public. The schools were colorful, the playgrounds weren’t broken, and the teachers called you by your first name, not your last. Yet, there were certain cultural aspects that clashed with this new American society that I was in. I made friends on the playground, but always felt outside of the loop. For some reason, my clever Russian jokes sounded idiotic and weird when translated to …

United In Literacy: Narrative Accounts Of Encounters With Young Adult Literature, Mary Rice

The Utah English Journal

The purpose of this paper is to describe the experiences I have had reading, learning, and growing in that apprenticeship with my students and the young adult literature they read. After providing some background on social literacy practices as a basis for the idea that such enriching experiences can occur between teachers and students and that they can be unifying, I will share my stories and the understandings I have developed. Although I have stories of reading young adult literature with many students, I have selected specific narratives featuring boys to preserve the continuity of experience and because the notion …

Book Reviews, Judy Halden-Sullivan, Julie J. Nichols, Mary Pettice

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Book Reviews

Judy Halden-Sullivan - Evolution and Criticism

Julie J. Nichols - Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2009.

Julie J. Nichols - Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006

Mary Pettice - Dutton, Denis. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. 2nd edition. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010. Print.

Writing And Time, Time And The Essay, Douglas Hesse

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Writing requires time, thought, and most of all, discovery—despite a high-tech world that can’t be bothered with it.

‘Up These Hills To The Mountain Top’: Memories Of 'The Golden Sun' In Michael Echeruo's War Poems (Distanced), Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

One of the leading voices among the first generation of post-independence African modernist poets of the twentieth-century, Michael J. C. Echeruo's second collection of poetry, Distanced (1975), is, unlike his better-known first collection, Mortality (1968), characterized by direct phrasing and open accessibility—in terms of imagery and other signifiers—to the general reader. Composed within the first four years (1970-74) after the end of the Biafran war of independence of 1967-1970, the nineteen lyrics that make up this collection look back with extraordinary candor and passion into the future of the Biafran experience, especially with regard to the problems of reintegration into …

'Clearing The Forest': Critical Commentary On Gabriel Okara’S Postwar Ode, ‘The Dreamer’, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

The present essay is essentially a preliminary exploration of a previously unexplored territory of postcolonial, modernist African poetics—Gabriel Okara’s venture into the appropriation of the signs of the classical and latter-day European ode as a vehicle for both a satirical interrogation of the performance of the postcolonial civilian and military elite the dysfunctional Nigerian federation after its war against Biafra and for an understanding of the possibility of heroic regeneration in the face of the depth of , bordering on existentialist , into which the nation has been reduced by the post-civil war triumph of disorder in the hands of …

Christopher Okigbo’S Intentions: A Critical Edition Of A Previously Unpublished Interview By Ivan Van Sertima, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

This is a critical edition with emendations of lacunae from indelible inkblots and termite activity of an interview with Christopher Okigbo conducted in the mid-1960s by Ivan van Sertima, the distinguished Caribbean-American anthropologist, linguist, literary critic, Afrocentric historiographer, and founding-editor of The Journal of African Civilizations (New Brunswick, NJ), who passed away on May 29, 2009, at the age of 74. It was discovered in January 2006 among Okigbo’s unpublished papers, which I catalogued at the invitation of the Christopher Okigbo Foundation, in Brussels, Belgium, now part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

Encounters With The Outcast : The Ethical Relation In Wordsworth And Lacan, Heewon Kang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the ethical importance of the moments in William Wordsworth's poetry when language verges on silence or presents experience as finally unintelligible, and explores the ethical dimension of outcast figures intimately connected with the problem of this void in signification, on the basis of Jacques Lacan's insights concerning psychoanalytic ethics. The question that orients the examination of the ethical issues embodied in Wordsworth's poetry is how one should encounter or represent the outcast figure as a rupture in meaning. And the ethics of subjectivity which Lacan explores in terms of his theories of the gaze, feminine jouissance, and …

Birmingham Poetry Review 38 (Complete Issue), Birmingham Poetry Review Staff

Birmingham Poetry Review

No abstract provided.

‘The Mystic Drum’: Critical Commentary On Gabriel Okara’S Love Lyrics, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Structurally, Okara’s love lyric, “The Mystic Drum,” evinces a tripartite ritual pattern of initiation from innocence through intimacy to experience. By comparison to the way of Zen as manifested in the experience of Zen Master, Ch’ing Yuän Wei-hsin, this pattern resolves itself into an emotional and epistemological journey from conventional knowledge (born of innocence) through more intimate knowledge (born of closer apperception of reality) to substantial knowledge (born of experience). The substantial knowledge born of experience empowers the lover to understand that beneath the surface attractiveness of what we know very well (such as the women we love) may lie …

'The White Man Laughs': Commentary On The Satiric Dramatic Monologues Of Gabriel Okara, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Examined in the present article are two early satiric lyrics of Gabriel Okara—“Once Upon a Time” and “He Laughed and Laughed and Laughed”—which are the products of the postcolonial cultural war environment in which the issues of modernity, alterity (otherness or difference) and afro-authenticity implicated in Achebe’s ripostes on the bigotry of the colonialist critic were central. The tone of this discourse amongst leading African intelligentsia was set in the 1930’s and 1940’s by four fellow south-eastern Nigerian writers in their semi-autobiographical blueprints for African cultural emancipation—Renascent Africa ((1937)) by Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996); British and Axis Aims in Africa (1942) …

Contents, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Semantics, Structural Linguistics, And Self-Sacrifice: Re-Imagining “The Dream Of The Rood”, Jeff Everhart

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

“The Secret Heart” Of Gray’S “Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College”, Lucy Geake

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 13 Fall 2011

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Constructing The Christian: Agency And Emulation In Old English Poetry, Jennifer Ross

Theses and Dissertations

Old English religious verse - born out of a productive fusion between pre-existing Germanic ideals and Christian value-systems brought to England at the end of the sixth century - grapples energetically with the question of how people ought to live morally upright lives pleasing to God. In Beowulf, Judith, Juliana, and The Dream of the Rood, a model for the believer/God relationship is constructed from a common pattern of the Germanic thane/lord relationship, but, like garments cut from the same cloth by different tailors, each poem crafts its subject differently. Still, each is constructed around a …

Benjamin, Joyce, And The Disappearance Of The Dead, Graham Macphee

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"We Endure Around Truths Immemorially Posited”: A Dramaturgical Research Analysis On Brian Friel’S Linguistic-Historical Drama “Translations”, Meredith Levy

Undergraduate Research Awards

A dramaturgical analysis of Friel's Translations intended to provide an overview of the play to a director staging it. The paper focuses on topics such as Friel's life, the history of Northern Ireland relevant to the play, and thematic analysis. The PDF includes the author's entry submission essay for the 2011 Undergraduate Research Awards.

Contemporary Arab-American And Middle Eastern Women's Voices: New Visions Of "Home", Abdullah Kheiro A. Shehabat

Dissertations

esponding to an increase in the literary output of Arab-American and Middle Eastern women in the post September 1 ll Attacks, I examined three exemplary memoirs: Leila Ahmad's A Border Passage, Zainab Salbi's Between Two Worlds, and Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis. This study examines these memoirists' journeys back and forth from their homes of origin to their host homes in the West. In addition to charting how these memoirists break their silence and liberate themselves from authoritarian patriarchal culture and institutionalized religion, I discussed how they construct new feminist identities expressed through the creation of what …

The Authority Of Difference: Culturally Effected Realism In Whitman And Henry James, Lindsey Jaynes

Honors Papers

This project examines the boundaries and definitions of 19th-century American realism in relation to the critical and literary writings of Walt Whitman and Henry James.

The Sentence, The Novel, And Autobiography: The Histories Of Reading And Self In Bunyan And Rousseau, Samuel Rowe

Honors Papers

This study analyzes late-seventeenth and eighteenth-century autobiographies in order to address questions regarding the relationship between the history of reading and the "history of the self" in the West. More particularly, it examines the treatment of reading and textuality in John Bunyan's "Grace Abounding" and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions" in order to suggest that the historical phenomenon Michel Foucault describes as the "emergence of Man" can be understood in terms of the rise of mass print culture and subsequent development of extensive reading practices during the eighteenth century.

The Forbidden Experiment, Stephen Kampa

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 36-38

Why We Make Gardens (& Other Poems), Luke Johnson

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 104-105