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“Arriving At Your Own Door”: Transnational Identity Formation In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’S Americanah, Julie Oosterink

Masters Theses

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) guides readers through the internal questions and external pressures that contribute to identity formation of her transnational characters. This paper examines the specific ways in which Adichie’s protagonist, Ifemelu, engages with both self-discovery and self-fashioning in order to shape the narrative of her past and make a plan for her future. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Ethics of Identity offers a philosophical framework to consider the many components of identity formation and the ways in which individuals form personal and collective identities. Adichie uniquely addresses personal and collective identities through the transnational experiences of her characters. …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Eng 2150 (Writing Ii), Elizabeth Mannion

Open Educational Resources

In this class, the second of a two-course sequence in the Pathways Required Core, we’ll explore how language and other meaning-making symbols reflect the Gramercy neighborhood, home to Baruch College, particularly during the Gilded Age (1870s-1914). We’ll read literature of the period by authors with ties to this neighborhood, and study the 1913 Armory Show (which was held across the street at the 69th Regiment Armory), which blurred, challenged, and disrupted the social lines of Gilded Age New York.

English In France - Linguistic Dominance And Ambivalence, Chloe Kampf

Honors Projects

Whenever English is perceived as a threat to a nation’s language, English proficiency suffers, and France is guilty as charged. Many people know France as a nation with exceptional cuisine, famous artists, and breathtaking countrysides. What many are not aware of, on the other hand, is that France has the least proficient English speakers out of any EU country. Through in-depth research, literature reviews, interviews with French citizens, and analyzations of personal experiences, I attempt to expose the underlining truth behind this intriguing phenomenon.

Job Satisfaction And Turnover Intention In Higher Education: A Study Of Information Technology Professionals In The California State University System, Brooke Ferrier Banks

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to survey perceived job satisfaction and turnover intention of information technology professionals in the California State University (CSU) system. Employee satisfaction facets (work, pay, opportunities for promotion, supervision, and co-workers), overall satisfaction, and turnover intention were measured. Further, the study identified whether there was a significant difference in perceived job satisfaction or turnover intention based on years of service in the CSU system, gender, or campus in the CSU system. The study also examined the uniqueness of information technology professionals at campuses in the CSU system. This study utilized a mixed-methods methodology with two …

Teaching Issues Of Identity Through Multicultural Young Adult Literature, Emily M. Withers

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Despite changing demographics of high school classrooms, teaching practices and literature remain similar to decades-old practices focusing more on literary devices and symbolism than on topics relevant to the students. Many teachers don’t have the time to find new novels. And when they do find the texts, they are often at a loss for how to properly teach the novels. This thesis is a three-part paper advocating for teaching identity to high school students using a blend of classic literature and contemporary multicultural young adult literature. The first section focuses on personal experiences and research illustrating the need for more …

Adapting Environmental Ethics And Behaviors: Toward A Posthuman Rhetoric Of Community Engagement, Beth J. Shirley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

What persuades people one way or another to accept or deny climate change? More importantly, what persuades people to act on, ignore, or even be defiant of climate change? We would like to think that people are motivated when they hear the science explained clearly and when they are presented with a clear understanding of how their actions have a lasting impact. Yet the science on climate change has been made clear for some time, and doubt in climate change science is rampant (at least in the United States).

This dissertation seeks to answer these questions and develop a new …

The Red Front Door, A Memoir, Camila B. Sanabria

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This is a creative thesis that contains two components: 1) a critical introduction that defends the representation of mixed-status families and deportation narratives, and 2) a memoir that depicts my experience with deportation and as a member of a mixed-status family. The second component of this thesis will consist of the first four chapters of my memoir, with the remaining chapters to be completed post-graduation. These chapters take place the years before my parents’ deportation and the year immediately after. The memoir is a coming-of-age story that explores my ethnic identity, along with themes such as insider versus outsider. This …

Thylacine Dreams: The Vernacular Resurrection Of An Extinct Marsupial, Daisy M. Ahlstone

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis explores the folk resurrection of the thylacine through artwork and symbolic interaction. The thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, is a marsupial that suffered a government-sanctioned massacre leading to its extinction in 1936. The thylacine’s status as a hidden animal has inspired what folklorists call “ostensive practice”; people not only actively seek out the thylacine in the wilderness of Tasmania today and share their sightings online, but they have also incorporated the thylacine as a symbol of hope and perseverance into various forms of folk art.

There have been upwards of five thousand documented sightings of the …

The Great Games We Play: Fan Resistance And The Bbc Sherlock, Amanda Ewolt

Louise Pound: A Folklore and Literature Miscellany

Discontented with mainstream value systems, the Sherlock fandom is tireless in implementing various forms of resistance to question the balance of power and authority between producer, consumer, and text. One such method is slash fanfiction, which is both a tool for understanding and creating meaning from the source text and an act of defiance from those who feel marginalized by the dominant culture. Yet, I argue, Sherlock is a special case. Sherlock itself is a brilliant and intertextual rereading of Arthur Conan Doyle's original text; in other words, the show itself is elaborate fanfiction, which complicates the typical producer-fandom interaction …

The Complete First Issue, £ £

Louise Pound: A Folklore and Literature Miscellany

No abstract provided.

Increasing Faculty-Librarian Collaboration Through Critical Librarianship, Adrienne Gosselin, Mandi Goodsett

Michael Schwartz Library Publications

Through the lens of critical librarianship, librarians are becoming increasingly involved in social justice, civic engagement, and human rights issues. This paper examines the collaboration between a subject librarian and a faculty member in an assignment that engaged in Public Sphere Pedagogy (PSP), a teaching strategy with the goal of increasing students’ sense of civic agency and personal and social responsibility by connecting their classwork to public arenas; and project-based learning, wherein students develop a question to research and create projects that reflect their knowledge, which they share with a select audience.

Violence And The Other In The Novels Of Carmel Bird, Donna Yannakis

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis argues that throughout her fictional work, Carmel Bird interrogates multiple forms of violence against the gendered and racialised other. Using Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity and the discursive construction of race, the thesis shows how these constructions not only inform or incite violence against the other, but are inherently violent in themselves. To chart these multiple forms of violence, the thesis uses Slavoj Žižek’s delineation of a triumvirate of violence: symbolic, systemic and subjective violence. He describes subjective violence as the most visible, physical violence of an actor or actors against an other. He determines that this …

Female Protagonist Mega-Archetypes: A Study In Medieval European Romances, Doaa Omran

English Language and Literature ETDs

Despite the claim that structuralism has sung its swan song, my research offers new insights in the field of structuralism through archetypal criticism by exploring four female hero mega-archetypes as narrative structures inspired by the Qur’an and the Bible. These scriptural narratives offer tenets, based on narratives and motifs, that, as structural units, create and identify mega-archetypes. This study posits how, rather than being extensions of existing structuralist taxonomies on the male hero monomyth, the female mega-archetypes enrich that monomythical narrative. This work details the structure of the mega-archetypes Zulaikhah (Potiphar’s wife), Sarah and Hagar, the Virgin Mary, and Queen …

Exploring Madness And Ableism In The Context Of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Sara Dorsten

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Forum Prompt, Dennis Cutchins

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Identity And Ecriture Feminine In Beyonce's Lemonade, Morgan Lewis

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Contributors Page

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Recursive Art, Chris Althoff

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Mythic Circle #41, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

In #41, The Mythic Circle welcomes seven authors new to our pages. Lawrence Buentello debuts with a supernatural story of deceit and revenge. David Rogers explores the territory between nihilism and naiveté in a contemporary setting. Meg Moseman, Anum Sattar, Ted Snyder, Chad Chisholm, and Pawel Markiewicz all offer poems in varying styles and settings. Also we are happy to see some familiar names. Kevan Bowkett returns, this time offering, in prose, a poignant story of love and honor, playing out in an exotic mythological setting, and in verse, a humorous vignette from the life of a hero who knows …

Editorial, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Sub-Creating Arda (2019), Edited By Dimitra Fimi And Thomas Honegger, Dennis Wilson Wise

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Dennis Wilson Wise of Sub-creating Arda (2019), edited by Dimitra Fimi and Thomas Honegger

"Fault Lines In American Identity" Review Essay, Harrison Dietzman

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Anna Sorokin, an émigré fashion student of modest means, became a very wealthy woman simply by pretending to be one. Her brief life of the rich and famous abruptly crashed down when she racked up too much debt, but not before she successfully executed a series of con-jobs that netted her hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and left friends and associates with bills in the tens of thousands of dollars. After her conviction on three counts of grand larceny and her sentencing to four to twelve years in prison, Ms. Sorokin expressed to The New York Times that …

Urban Landscape In Mcewan's Narrative Representation Of Berlin, Barbara J. Puschmann-Nalenz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Urban Landscape in McEwan's Narrative Representation of Berlin," Barbara J. Puschmann-Nalenz discusses the image of Berlin created in Ian McEwanﹸs novel The Innocent (1990) and the chapter titled "Berlin" in Black Dogs (1992). It starts from the hypothetical statement that while British literary fiction set in Berlin is rare after 1970 the genres of spy and detective novel, where crime and violence take center stage, shape the image of the city in highbrow narratives as well. The perspectivization of the cityscape, including its monuments, through the protagonists fundamentally influences its image. In The Innocent the limited view …

Intertextuality, Aesthetics, And The Digital: Rediscovering Chekhov In Early British Modernism, Sam Jacob

Modernist Short Story Project

Mark Halliday’s poem, “Chekhov,” published in 1992, raises a simple yet profound question regarding the Russian playwright and author, Anton Chekhov: What do we get from Chekhov? Considering the present article’s particular focus, Halliday’s query may be used to ask how Chekhov influenced early modernist writers (circa 1900-1930) from the British literary context. However, when considering the amount of scholarly work devoted to this question, the initial simplicity of Halliday’s inquiry evaporates, giving way to a breadth of complexity, nuance, and ambiguity. Such ambiguity has led scholars attempting to trace the intertextual convergence between Chekhov and the early modernist writers …

Mule Nation, Polina Konokh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis project is a TV pilot and the second episode of the show. There is also a critical essay that serves as an explanation of the creative work.

There are multiple problems addressed in the text, such as growing up, living in the modern world, countries not working properly for their citizens and other important issues of our modern life, with a thorough explanation of some of them in the critical essay.

The screenplays are formatted according to the current industry standards.

The result of this thesis is two first episodes of a potential TV show.

Kentuckiana, And A Dash Of Cambodia: A Collection Of Short Stories, Brodie Lee Gress

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The following is a collection of five short stories set in regions familiar to me: “Dewberry Park,” “YouLead,” and “The Color Violet” in Indiana; “Mens Rea” in Kentucky; and “Tory Ride” in Cambodia. Gay identity plays a role in many of these stories, and other themes explored include family, region, socioeconomics, gender, mentality, and change. These stories are concerned with people on the brink, failing and surviving all the same. Some of them are intended to weigh, and some to satirize. I hope they all nick their readers.

Global And Radical Homesickness: Rewriting Identities In The Airport Narratives Of Pico Iyer And Sir Alfred Mehran, Sean Scanlan

Publications and Research

This article explores the personal narratives of two displaced travelers, Pico Iyer and Sir Alfred Mehran. Their memoirs, The Global Soul (2000) and The Terminal Man (2004), provide evidence that anxieties associated with global mobility are heightened due to a loss of community anchors and social orientation points. My reconceptualization of homesickness provides a powerful expression for these losses and uncertainties. In particular, the collision between past memories and present identity tests, especially as these tests occur in global airports, can produce global homesickness or a more destabilizing feeling: radical homesickness. Iyer’s class, national affiliation, and passport allow him to …

Review Essay: Pop Formalist: Ned Balbo And The Perseids, George Guida

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Suburban Captivity Narratives: Feminism, Domesticity And The Liberation Of The American Housewife, Megan Behrent

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

'Tomboy' Is Anachronistic. But The Concept Still Has Something To Teach Us, Lynne Stahl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article explores the tomboy trope in film and literature and the "taming" that characterizes it, framing both in relation to contemporary debates about gender and sexual identity as well as cultural anxieties around queer, trans, and nonbinary identity. Examining texts from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women to the 1980 film Little Darlings, the article argues that even while the term tomboy may be obsolete, tomboy narratives document processes of rebellion that hold continuing value.