Digital Commons Network^™

Towards A Bibliography Of Critical Whiteness Studies, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

As the title implies, this book offers a multi-disciplinary overview of the explosion of work in scholarly critical whiteness studies. The contributing bibliographers acknowledge that this work follows and builds upon a great deal of whiteness critique previously provided by African American writers, and by those writing from other racialized positions. Each section provides a solid introduction to key concepts and practices regarding whiteness in a particular field, including: philosophy, history, literature, cinema, the visual arts, psychology, education, media studies, qualitative inquiry, personal narratives, and international and comparative approaches.

Memoirs Of A Bathroom Stall: The Women’S Lavatory As Crying Room, Confessional, And Sanctuary, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Approaches To Teaching The Brontës One More Time, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

Instructors of courses on the Brontë family now have another large encyclopedic resource to use in their teaching of the lives and works of the family. Like Heather Glen’s recently published Cambridge Companion to the Brontës (2002), this companion surveys the lives and writings of all of the family, including the father, Patrick, and brother, Branwell, while also covering some of the minute details in the works of the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. The question that I will address here is not which companion to use but how to use this particular resource. Of what use to instructors …

Review [Of Writing Across Borders], Beth Godbee, Kate Vieira

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Mythcon 37 - The Map & The Territory: Maps And Landscapes In Fantasy, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon Programs

Held in Norman, OK (Aug 4-7, 2006), this conference focused on the maps and landscapes in fantasy. It includes a track on Native American Fantasy/Native Americans in Fantasy.

Versions Of America: Reading American Literature For Identity And Difference, Raj G. Chetty

Theses and Dissertations

My paper examines how American authors of the South Asian Diaspora (Indian-American or South Asian American) can be read 1) as simply American and 2) without regard to ethnicity. I develop this argument using American authors Jhumpa Lahiri, a first generation American of Bengali-Indian descent, and Bharati Mukherjee, an American of Bengali-Indian origin. I borrow from Deepika Bahri's materialist aesthetics in postcolonialism (in turn borrowed from members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory) and include theoretical insights from Rey Chow, Graham Huggan, and R. Radhakrishnan regarding multiculturalism, identity politics, and diaspora studies. Huggan and Radhakrishnan's insights are especially useful …

Concept Map Used In Reading English As A Foreign Language At The University Level, Li Han

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined traditional reading instruction and concept mapping reading instruction using reading and survey data collected from English as Foreign Language (EFL) students in China. Its purpose was to investigate whether there was any difference between these instructional types in three reading areas: main idea reading, subordinate idea reading and reading between the lines. Forty first-year students were randomly chosen from two universities in Southwestern China. They were equally divided into the two instructional methods. Ten sets ofreading materials were used for a six-week period of the study. Concept mapping students were taught with concept mapping techniques and assessed …

Class Consciousness And The Culture Of Dissent In World War Ii British Literature, Kristin Schall

Honors College Theses

Discusses class consciousness and dissent in World War II British literature using the works of George Orwell and J.B. Priestly.

Interrogating History Or Making History? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Delillo's Libra, And The Shaping Of Collective Memory, Mark Spencer Mills

Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of the post-structuralist skepticism of language and language's ability to represent reality, the philosophy of history has likewise been questioned, since we gain our knowledge and understanding of the past primarily through language—through written and spoken testimony, and through subsequent historiography. Various post-structuralist critics have pointed out that history is never entirely recoverable, but accessible only indirectly through what is written and documented about it. What is written and documented is in turn determined by the contents and the nature of the archive. What we know about history is largely mediated and limited by the problems inherent …

James Thurber's Little Man And The Battle Of The Sexes: The Humor Of Gender And Conflict, Andrew S. Jorgensen

Theses and Dissertations

James Thurber, along with others who wrote for The New Yorker magazine, developed the 'little man' comic figure. The little man as a central character was a shift from earlier nineteenth-century traditions in humor. This twentieth-century protagonist was a comic antihero whose function was to create sympathy rather than scorn and bring into question the values and behaviors of society rather than affirm them, as earlier comic figures did. The little man was urban, inept, frustrated, childlike, suspicious, and stubborn. His female counterpart was often a foil: confident and controlling enough to highlight his most pitiable and funniest features. Contradictory …

Friendships, Romantic Relationships, And The Importance Of Self-Expansion, Mami Kashiwabara

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Self-expansion theory (Aron & Aron, 1986) posits that individuals enter and maintain relationships in order to expand their sense of self and suggests that expanding the sense of self is a basic human motivation. In this study, I examined whether the perceived opportunities for self-expansion within a relationship predicted feelings of closeness and passion for a partner, and unlike many previous studies, I explored the importance of self-expansion in friendships as well as romantic relationships. I also explored individual differences in the importance of self-expansion opportunities in predicting closeness and passion. The results suggest that opportunities for self-expansion may motivate …

The American Way: What Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, And The X-Men Reveal About America, Joseph J. Darowski

Theses and Dissertations

Comic book superheroes have become adopted into American popular culture, and yet few have considered why these characters resonate with Americans. The first comic book superhero premiered in 1938 when Superman appeared on the cover of the first issue of Action Comics. For almost seventy years his adventures and the adventures of other costumed heroes have been continually published. Batman soon joined Superman as a popular costumed crime-fighter, and the early 1960s saw another generation of superheroes created that would be embraced in American culture. Among this new group of heroes were Spider-Man and the X-Men, who have proved as …

The Memory Of The Body And Other Stories, Ryan Craig Shoemaker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of short stories written over the years 2002 to 2006. The short story is a genre that requires brevity. The short story writer, instead of treating the totality of human life, is forever, as Frank O'Connor suggests, selecting the point at which he can approach it. For this reason, unlike the novel, there is very little dallying in the short story. The short story writer, as the form requires, must make his world believable and coherent with only a minimum of words. Based on the experience of the actual author, the short story, like all …

"Th' Offense Pardons Itself": Sex And The Church In Othello And Measure For Measure, Jeffrey Wayne Windsor

Theses and Dissertations

In 1604, James had newly ascended to the throne and England was now part of Great Britain. The Puritans-largely silenced during Elizabeth's reign-began again to assert political influence and call for reformation to both the state and the church. This is the context in which Shakespeare wrote Othello and Measure for Measure. In both plays, the role of the government in Cyprus or Vienna hinges upon the passions of a single authority figure. Both Angelo and Othello cause political unrest because they mismanage sexuality. In the case of Othello, his unfounded sexual jealousy leads to the death of Desdemona, Emilia, …

Telling History Through The Stories Of Women: Julia Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies And In The Name Of Salomé, Nicole Marie Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis discusses the ways in which Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) and In the Name of Salomé (2000) are revolutionary texts contesting traditional, male dominated history and redirecting historical and communal foci to the lives of Dominican women. I employ Walter Benjamin's theories found in his essays "The Storyteller" (1936) and "On the Concept of History" (1940) to assist my exploration of Alvarez's questions concerning the power and effect of storytelling, and the importance of reconstructing various historical voices and images, specifically, the importance of reconstructing female voices in male dominated cultures. I discuss the …

An Awakened Sense Of Place: Thoreauvian Patterns In Willa Cather's Fiction, Breanne Grover

Theses and Dissertations

The recent "greening" of Willa Cather Scholarship has initiated new conversations about Cather's use of and dependence on landscape in her fiction. Scholars have frequently noted Cather's reliance on landscape imagery, but this thesis suggests parallels between Cather's and Henry David Thoreau's use of awakening imagery and examines how such parallels work in Cather's environmental discussion of wilderness and environmental communities. There is little direct evidence linking the development of Cather to Thoreau, although their similar use of awakening imagery suggests they comment on similar environmental discussions through their writing, indicating that Cather deserves further attention as a nature writer. …

The Familiar Foreign Country: Reading Mexico In Cormac Mccarthy, Jack Kerouac, And Katherine Anne Porter, Rachel Mae Ligairi

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis examines the discourse of Mexico in the works of three twentieth-century American authors-Cormac McCarthy, Jack Kerouac, and Katherine Anne Porter-in order to analyze representations of Otherness in modernism and postmodernism. I seek to destabilize the dividing line between these periods as well as to show how representation in postmodernity has become more problematic due in large part to the proliferation of consumer culture. Though the Mexico that McCarthy employs in Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) escapes many stereotypes, his Mexico is merely a staging ground that …

Intertextuality In The Fiction Of Cormac Mccarthy, Benjamin J. Burr

Theses and Dissertations

The moral and aesthetic complexity of Cormac McCarthy's fiction demands sophisticated theoretical reading paradigms. Intertextuality informed by poststructuralism is a theoretical approach that enables one to read the moral and aesthetic elements of McCarthy's work in productive ways. McCarthy's work is augmented by its connection to the works of other great artists and writers. As a result, McCarthy's work forces us to read his precedents from a different framework. An examination of the conversation between Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, Jacques Derrida, and Frederic Jameson about Van Gogh's A Pair of Boots creates an intertextual framework for examining the connection between …

Review: 'Action Chicks: New Images Of Tough Women In Popular Culture', Ione T. Damasco

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Major Literary Award Winners In The Medium-Sized Academic Library, Todd Spires

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Abstract

This article addresses the role of major literary award-winning books and authors in the medium-sized academic library. It details a study performed at Bradley University’s Cullom-Davis Library in early 2006. The project surveyed award-winning books held by the library at the time of the study. The purpose of the survey was to evaluate past selection performance of these materials, to provide data on items that the library needs to acquire and to encourage library faculty to watch for and make use of literary and other prize winning materials. The article describes the thought-process involved, the actual workflow and the …

Theorizing The Diaspora, John C. Hawley

English

In his provocative essay on the place of the committed writer in contemporary western society (“Inside the Whale”), George Orwell makes a passing observation about the effects of exile, self-imposed or otherwise, on the scope of a writer’s subject and purpose: “[L]eaving your native land,” he suggests, “[. . .] means transferring your roots into shallower soil. Exile is probably more damaging to a novelist than to a painter or even a poet, because its effect is to take him out of contact with working life and narrow down his range to the street, the cafJ, the church, the brothel …

Negotiation Through Identification: Elizabeth Tudor's Use Of Sprezzatura In Three Speeches, Alisa Brough

Theses and Dissertations

Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, weaves the courtier's strategy of sprezzatura throughout her public orations in order to help her identify with her audience of courtiers, scholars, and politicians. Through her use of sprezzatura, Elizabeth woos her audience and transcends the differences of opinion that lead to conflict between the Queen and her audience members. Using Kenneth Burke's theory of rhetoric as identification, this thesis employs rhetorical analysis in order to discover how Queen Elizabeth's use of sprezzatura enables her to portray herself as a humanist scholar, a political servant, and a dedicated defender of her country and thus, identify …

Controversial Politics, Conservative Genre: Rex Stout's Archie-Wolfe Duo And Detective Fiction's Conventional Form, Ammie Cannon

Theses and Dissertations

Rex Stout maintained his popular readership despite the often controversial and radical political content expressed in his detective fiction. His political ideals often made him many enemies. Stances such as his ardent opposition to censorship, racism, Nazism, Germany, Fascism, Communism, McCarthyism, and the unfettered FBI were potentially offensive to colleagues and readers from various political backgrounds. Yet Stout attempted to present radical messages via the content of his detective fiction with subtlety. As a literary traditionalist, he resisted using his fiction as a platform for an often extreme political agenda. Where political messages are apparent in his work, Stout employs …

Full Issue 2006 (Volume V)

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

No abstract provided.

The Sympathetic Imagination: Healing The Wounds Of Individualism In The Incarnational Aesthetics Of C.S. Lewis, Philip Harrold

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

No abstract provided.

Charles Williams, The "Other" Inkling, Thomas Howard

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

No abstract provided.

Screwtape's Millennial Toast, Louis A. Markos

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

No abstract provided.

Ua32/4/1 Women & Kids Learning Together Summer Camp, Wku Gender & Women's Studies

WKU Administration Documents

Booklet reviewing events at Women & Kids Learning Together Summer Camp.

Performing Remediation: The Minstrel, The Camera, And The Octoroon, Adam Sonstegard

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Magic Lotus Lantern And Other Tales From The Han Chinese, Haiwang Yuan

DLPS Faculty Publications

This chapter is the first of the three parts of the book, The Magic Lotus Lantern and Other Tales from the Han Chinese. This chapter introduces many aspects of China that may intrigue American readers. It provides some background knowledge of the Chinese culture so that readers can have a better understanding of the tales retold in the book. The second part includes crafts, games, and recipes; and the third part, the tales.
Focusing specifically on the stories of the Han Chinese (the largest ethnic group in China, numbering over a billion people), the book presents more than 50 tales, …