Digital Commons Network^™

Towards More Inclusive Practices In Applied Linguistics: A Study Of Journal Editors’ Views On Using ‘Who’ With Nonhuman Animals With Implications For Language Education, Denise Dillon, George M. Jacobs, Meng Huat Chau

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

Like racism or sexism, speciesism highlights how people fail to give due respect to nonhuman animals. After more than 20 years since the publication of Dunayer’s (2001) seminal work, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation, speciesism appears to remain a controversial issue. In this article, we explore the issue of speciesist language by considering the views of journal editors on one point raised in the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020): that the relative pronoun who should only be used with humans and not with other animals. The results of this study suggest that while …

When Critics Are Artists: Ekphrasis In Erotic Art Criticism, Joanna A. Ligon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag argues for an erotics of art in art criticism in place of hermeneutics. In this thesis, I examine erotics of art, a focus on form and experiencing art instead of exclusively on content, in practice. Drawing on other essays by Sontag, specifically the essay “Godard” in comparison with the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s own filmic criticism in Breathless, criticism according to an erotics of art becomes a new artwork itself. Subsequently, I present a definition of erotic through Anne Carson and Roland Barthes and juxtapose the term with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The comparison ultimately undoes …

Time Ripens On The Counter: A Literary History Of The Americas, Judah Rubin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The tumultuous years of the 1970s and 1980s are generally seen as marking the ends of the New Left in the United States and the Americas at large. With shifts afoot in US policy that would see the drawdown and close of the Vietnam War, increased subversion and infiltration of Left-wing movements, these decades are often remembered as a holding pattern and, later, nadir in progressive, not to mention revolutionary, gains. The same was true, if not amplified, across the Americas where, tens of thousands were murdered, imprisoned and disappeared across the Southern Cone and into the Andes, and where …

Ekphrasis: An Exploration Of Poetry Inspired By Art, Caitlin Cacciatore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Ekphrasis: An Exploration of Poetry Inspired by Art” is an Open Educational Resource (OER) that occupies the underdeveloped niche of freely available teaching and learning materials about the interdisciplinary poetic medium of ekphrasis. Ekphrastic poetry is a form dating back to Book XVIII of the Iliad, experiencing a revitalization in the latter half of the 18^th century, when demand for written descriptions of paintings was in high demand, and again taking on a new, modern meaning in the early 19^th century, with poems like John Keats’ 1819 “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Ekphrasis is …

Queer Impersonality: Compulsory Visibility And The Politics Of Form In Modernist Women's Life Writing, Margot Kotler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modernist impersonality is an aesthetic practice typically associated with Anglo-European formalism and the doctrine of artistic autonomy. Although central to the modernist canon, impersonality has not been taken up by queer and feminist studies because critics have considered its implied evacuation of emotion and personal identity to be apolitical, and even dangerous. At its worst, impersonality reproduces an unmarked, white, and masculine subjectivity, yet it also questions the parameters of selfhood, posing a radical challenge to liberal-humanist conceptions of identity. Queer Impersonality moves beyond this critical impasse by tracing impersonality’s queer and feminist histories among modernist women writers whose engagement …

Defying Normativity: Reclaiming A Narrative Of Queer Resistance In Young Adult Literature, Christopher Morabito

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the heart of this dissertation lies a single question: how Queer is Queer Young Adult Literature? As many scholars have argued, Queerness is, in many ways, a literacy, and literature is one of the greatest sponsors of Queer Literacy. While there is certainly no one comprehensive definition of what it means to be queer, it is also true that the general understanding of queerness has changed quite drastically in the last few decades. What was once used as a term to describe someone who is outside of social conventions has slowly begun to lose its sense of “otherness,” and …

“The Hero Of My Own Life”: The Purpose Of The Fictional Self In The Life Writings Of Mary Wollstonecraft And Charles Dickens, Jessica M. Day

Honors Projects

This paper looks at Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens as significant texts that combine fiction and life writing. Looking at fictional and autobiographical elements within each text, this paper argues that these authors manipulate genre to make significant claims about feminism and child activism. They participate in self-crafting—taking the self, something that is personal, and making it public and political. This paper argues that fiction allows the life writer to expand past the limitations of a single lifetime and speak to truths larger than the self. Letters written …

Moving “Passed” Life For Death, Gwyneth Morrissey

The Criterion

The paper Moving “Passed” Life for Death explores Emily Dickinson's poem #479, "Because I could not stop for Death," focusing on the theme of movement expressed through the word "passed." It analyzes the contradictory qualities of movement and stopping and how they interplay. At the same time, it looks into how the poem's periodic stopping points highlight the natural cycle of life and death, challenging the conventional and fearful understanding of dying. Dickinson's use of "passed" ultimately alludes to the persistence of life after death, altering readers' perceptions of mortality. The essay presents an intriguing interpretation of life, death, and …

The Search For Worth: How Relationship Conflicts Reveal The Universal Nature Of Insecurity, Grace C. Conroy

The Criterion

Since the beginning of time, romantic relationships and their dynamics have taken center stage in media--whether in books, plays, or other forms of literature. In this essay, a comparison of couples' relationships in James Joyce's "The Dead" and Marina Carr's play "The Mai" reveals the core human element of insecurity, prevalent in moments of marital conflict.

Zombies From Cultural Origin To Contemporary Uses, Conor Davenport

University Honors Theses

This piece explores the evolution of the Western cinematic zombie, from its spawning to its reappropriation and echoes that are seen throughout the current landscapes of cinema today. It presents the axiom of the genre with White Zombie (1932) and how it has evolved into the contemporary creature we know and love today. The paper examines a throughline from cultural origin and how this has developed and becomes a critical lens for widely spread bureaucratic systems currently in place.

Thesis Proposal And Project: The Christmas Fiddle, Tamara N. Canty

Masters Theses

The thesis discusses how Christian creatives can create art that glorifies God, while shining light into a dark world by highlighting the contributions of Christian creatives in the entertainment industry. The research heralds the testimonies of several notable Christian creatives and how they have successfully navigated their way through a largely secular industry.

Iii Middle English, Kate Ash-Irisarri, Laurie Atkinson, Sarah Brazil, Natalie Calder, Darragh Greene, Samira Lindstedt, Rebecca Menmuir, Mark Ronan, Seth Strickland, Mary F. Wheaton

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This chapter has 12 sections: 1. Early Middle English (c.1050–1350); 2. Manuscript and Technical Studies; 3. Religious Prose and Verse; 4. Secular Prose; 5. Secular Verse; 6. Piers Plowman; 7. Gower; 8. Older Scots; 9. Drama; 10. The Gawain-Poet; 11. Romance. 12. Hoccleve and Lydgate. Section 1 is by Samira Lindstedt; section 2 is by Mary F. Wheaton; section 3 is by Natalie Calder; section 4 is by Mark Ronan; sections 5, 10, and 11 are by Darragh Greene; section 6 is by Seth Strickland; section 7 is by Rebecca Menmuir; section 8 is by Kate …

“I Don’T Want To Be Human”: The Neurodivergent Reader Response To Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries Series, Rachel S. Anderson

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This article explores how readers have responded to the Martha Wells series The Murderbot Diaries by identifying the titular character as neurodivergent and the recent ways in which the author has responded to questions about the character—and herself—as potentially autistic. While initially resisting this reader-supplied diagnosis, Wells has more recently acknowledged a neurodivergent identity. By examining Murderbot’s sense of self and relationship with the humans around it, this article will explore our current society’s relationship with human/machine intelligences and how we define such concepts as “neurotypical” and “human.” Specifically, this article will examine how the concept of a “governor module” …

Space For The Savant: An Update On Henry Higgins’S Autism, Abby Zwart

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Henry Higgins, one of the leads of Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, has been retrospectively diagnosed as an autistic character by lay readers and two scholars (Rodelle Weintraub, 2006; Sonya Loftis Freeman, 2014). Weintraub’s work is accurate but outdated, and Loftis presents several valid concerns about labelling Higgins an autistic savant, but Henry Higgins should be embraced as a neurodivergent character because today, a decade after the last publication addressing his neurostatus, society has a much more nuanced understanding of autism that can easily make space for his inclusion in the retrospective canon of neurodivergent characters.

Marvelous Ordinariness: Re-Engaging With Realism’S Social Function, Miranda Ochoa Natera

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Against Romanticism, European literary realism of the 19th century aimed to provide an objective representation of reality through mimesis that could capture the truth in an objective way. Yet, its positivist approach severely narrowed down the complexity of truth, reality, and the mundane by wrongfully drawing the universal from the particular. A new way of engaging with realist literature from any time period, called Marvelous Ordinariness, rearranges this triad in ways that expand our understanding of our own and other realities portrayed. Using Alejo Carpentier’s description of “lo real maravilloso,” Marvelous Ordinariness unfolds in three layers that resemble Carl Jung’s …

A Romantic Austen: The Discordant Feminist Discourse Of Adapting Sense And Sensibility, Evan Teigland

Honors Projects

This undergraduate thesis explores the intertextual and critical conversations around Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and the 1995 screen adaptation of the same name, with a focus on how each text understands the interplay between feminine romance and feminine agency. A non-essentialist theory of adaptation is applied to construct an interpretive model that esteems Emma Thompson’s version of the story and considers its consequence to different communities of Austen readership, which is measured by the distinctly feminist themes detectable in the sexuality of Sense and Sensibility fanfiction. This investigation uncovers the importance of expanding the interpretive power and possibilities of …

“Class And Consciousness”: An Application Of Marxist Theory And Posthumanism To Kazuo Ishiguro’S The Remains Of The Day, Never Let Me Go And Klara And The Sun, Renee Elizabeth Samuel

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s works are introspective explorations of how one’s prescribed role in society shapes one’s identity; this self-reflection is evident in three of his novels, The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and Klara and the Sun. All three novels heavily rely on the point of view of a member of the subservient class, and this perspective provides insight into the unnamed hierarchies within society and the relationship, or lack thereof, between divided classes. Despite their similarities in structure, each novel explores class relationships in different ways. The Remains of the Day focuses on an individual living …

Teaching Poetry With Anne Finch: Manuscript Culture As Early Modern Social Media, Jennifer Keith

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay discusses two approaches I use to teach Anne Finch's—and others'—poetry. Drawing on certain habits of early modern manuscript culture, I make visible to my students ways that reading and writing are socially embedded practices, which may variously involve exchange, reciprocity, or censorship. By adapting the "quaint" habits of manuscript culture practiced by Finch and many others to specific assignments, I encourage students to experience poetry as living, sociable occasions of reading and writing. To augment my students' engagement with early modern poetry I connect it to frameworks from their twenty-first-century reading and writing worlds. These exercises in "early …

Anne Finch On The Patio: A Scholarly Eat And Greet, Melissa Schoenberger

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article recounts an instructional event for English majors held in the central campus library. Students engaged with various materials related to the career and editorial history of Anne Finch. The event offered students an introduction to questions of information literacy, textual history, and literary studies.

Teaching Finch And / In Performance: A Media Studies Approach (With Toolkit), Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Teaching the birdsong poems and compositions for musical settings of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, through media theory allows students to connect their own social-media-based expressive arts practices with the multimedia practices of early modern women writers.

Introduction: Teaching The Works Of Anne Finch, Part Ii, Jennifer Keith, Tiffany Potter

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay introduces Part Two of the two-part “Concise Collection on Teaching the Works of Anne Finch," guest edited by Jennifer Keith (Aphra Behn Online, vol. 14, no. 1, 2024). The first part of this collection appeared in Fall 2023.

“Always Unguarded And Often Uncivil”: A Case For Lydia In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Leah Benedict

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Despite decades of feminist scholarship, Lydia Bennet has consistently been taken at Jane Austen’s word: she is viewed as capricious, difficult, and silly, and in most cases found to be deserving of her fate. But with the adaptation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Lydia became the character most likely to inspire a heightened emotional bond with viewers. Because of the show’s format, Lydia’s voice and experiences became more central, and were conveyed with greater sympathy than prior adaptations. Against all anticipation, many viewers immediately identified not with Lizzie, but with Lydia. My paper explores the cultural contexts surrounding the web …

Reinvigorating The Post-Covid Gen Z English Major, Gaby Bedetti

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here.

The decline in English majors has energized instructors to upskill for the post-COVID Gen Z student. Toward that end, this small-scale (n=20), one-semester study of an upper-division literature class identifies the preferred learning styles of English majors at a public comprehensive regional university in Kentucky. The participants represent national English major demographics. The research methods are quantitative and qualitative. Eight figures and an appendix are included. Three guidelines emerge for responding to the needs of Gen Z students: 1) keep communication brief, 2) co-create, and 3) interact in-person. The findings about …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Dredging The Wetlands, Tilling The Field: Ecotonal Poetics Of The Anthropocene, Stacey Balkun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the use of poetic fragmentation as a tool of ecological representation and coins the term “ecotonal poetics.” Ecotonal poesis, this dissertation explains, is the stretching of lyric across the field of the page, using space, sound, language, and parataxis in its attempt to not only represent but create ecotonal ecologies through text, sound, and visual cues. This dissertation puts forth four case studies of contemporary American women poets turning the space of the page into an ecotone where text, white space, author, reader, body, and environment meet. The poets studied here rely heavily on textual experimentation, suggesting …

Finding Liminality In Literature: The Decentered Voice And Its Power To Rewrite Cultural Narratives, Melissa M. Damico

Masters Theses

This thesis will dissect the flaws within the current Western culture narrative and how specific works of literature have the ability to challenge and subvert this outdated narrative, teaching society to embrace and empathize with both marginalized and oppressed human and non-human communities. It will address how the decentered voices within the literature I have selected create liminal experiences for readers, blurring subjectivity and eradicating the cultural boundaries and binary oppositions that have kept us trapped and blinded for decades. My first chapter will explore the psychological functions of the current cultural narrative, specifically Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal as …

Centerless? Making Sense Of Disruptions In The Graduate Writing Center, Shannon Mcclellan Brooks

The Writing Center Journal

This critical self-reflection is not a success story; rather, it is an effort of decolonial thinking that reckons with the idea, experience, and practice of centerlessness during pandemic-induced online transitions and operations in a graduate writing center (GWC). By tracing the contours of a series of interlocking disruptions the author and her graduate writing center community experienced during COVID-19, this article brings into sharp focus present colonial legacies inhibiting effective developments, moves, and adaptations to the GWC physical center space and praxis. Through retrospectively following pandemic-induced disruptions to her center, the author critically engages how epistemologies of coloniality and modernity …

Vol. 61 No. 1 - Whole No. 408, Megan Abrahamson

Mythprint

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

The Musical, The Spectacle, The Spiritual, And The Political: An In-Depth Analysis Of Amiri Baraka’S 1972 Album, It’S Nation Time – African Visionary Music, Ryan St. Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Perhaps no work is a better representation of Amiri Baraka, the Black nationalist, than the 1972 album, It's Nation Time – African Visionary Music. The album serves as an amalgamation of the most present themes during that point in his career: the musical, the spectacle, the spiritual, and the political. Through a track-by-track analysis of the album, we can better understand Baraka's social outlook at such a pivotal period in the Black culture visionary's career.

Withholding In Shakespeare: An Analysis Of King Lear And As You Like It, Nylene R. Ward

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Shakespeare is a name familiar to most people who have had the opportunity to study beyond the third grade. Withholding is a practice that isn’t as well known to us until we reach teenage and young adult years. This essay examines both of these topics, exploring the causes and effects of withholding in King Lear and As You Like It while comparing them to real-world definitions and findings. No concrete resolution is formed, instead leaving the outcome to readers as they consider the ethical, relational, and logical implications of the adult hide-and-seek that is withholding.