Digital Commons Network^™

Poetry, Prose, And The Loss Of Verse, Jackson Rowe

Honors Theses

In this essay, I argue that the presence of verse in a text initiates a mutually generative relationship between a text’s sonic and semantic qualities, and that critics’ tendency to praise great prose passages as “poetic” is a result of poetry’s historical connection to verse and the semantic elegance which said verse tends to inspire. I base this argument on Fredrich Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and explore, through it, various examples of prosimetrum - that is, works combining poetry and prose.

Cinematic Poe: A Survey Of Films Inspired By Edgar Allan Poe And Their Importance In Film History, Devon V. Bradley

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, their respective adaptations, and their place in film history remains underappreciated in contemporary scholarship. Additionally, many of the most significant director/auteurs in cinema history have Poe inspired films. This project explores the filmic legacy Poe and his stories share across a survey of significant filmmakers, who have created memorable interpretations of Poe’s works. This thesis seeks to consider connections between several well-known Poe film adaptations and what I consider to be their significance in the development of film as a medium over its history. My investigation compares a range of films inspired by …

The Women Of Brewster Place : A Dream Deferred And Unactualized, Lauren Fuentes

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place is a landmark novel of black female empowerment, yet even as the novel affirms the necessity for black women to band together, Brewster Place simultaneously points to the idea that systemic racism and sexism may be a hurdle over which the community cannot leap—other systemic changes must be implemented before true equality can be achieved. This novel forces readers to grapple with questions that may present unsavory answers: Is it possible to eradicate systemic racism? To what degree do the subjugated have the ability to change the prejudicial system in which they live? …

The Framing Of Black And White Masculinities In Toni Morrison’S Beloved, Felesha Beckford

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study is an examination of white hegemonic masculinity and its effect on tyrannized black male figures in Toni Morrison’s Beloved . These disenfranchised figures suffered psychological trauma through the perpetuation of marginalized and subordinate masculinities within the “blues epistemological” apparatus by means of self-realization. Blues epistemology is a term that Clyde Woods describes as “a longstanding African American tradition of explaining reality and change. This form of explanation finds its origins in the processes of African American cultural construction within, and resistance to, the antebellum plantation regime” (25). Beloved serves as a form of historical text by means of …

“I’M Not Like That!” : Reframing Contemporary Ecopoetic Criticism And De-Metaphorizing The Nonhuman Animal, Alexandra Franke

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In this paper, I seek to highlight the benefits and necessity of reframing our critical approach to ecopoetry. In order to do so, I attempt to define “ecopoetry,” as well as terms like “nonhuman animal” and “anthropocentrism.” Historically, critics have routinely romanticized the nonhuman natural world, rendering it something two-dimensional, like a painting or landscape, rather than an encompassing environment. As a result, critics have often failed to consider the legitimacy of the animals who populate the nonhuman natural world. Instead, these animals are typically romanticized and metaphorized, ultimately furthering anthropocentric hierarchies and distancing us from them. When anthropocentric thought …

Lgbqt Immigrants Coming To The United States: The Problems They Face, Nya Brewster, John Holman

Immigration Scholarship: History, Trends and Development in Global Immigration

This reading focuses on research specific to Crime Rates against the LQBTQ+ immigrant community in South American Countries during the 2000’s era to current times. It illustrates the difficulties asylum seekers face in the United States while also discussing crimes that happen to immigrants of different sexualities and gender orientations. This emerging topic of gender and sexuality of immigrants will pertain to societal as well as political factors. Typically in rural and communist countries, the government outlaws the LGBTQ community and has the strictest consequences for individuals who are a part of that community . Living with consequences of that …

The Environmental Bioethics Of Space Travel: ‘Alien’ Bodies In C. S. Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy, Journee Cotton

Mythcon

C. S. Lewis lived through numerous significant historic events. Notably, he was alive during the space race and spoke to the potential philosophical and ethical dilemmas that may arise through space travel, especially concerning contact with ‘alien’ life. While the idea may be found in other parts of his oeuvre, Lewis explicitly considers space travel and contact with aliens in The Cosmic Trilogy. His texts offer unique perspectives on space travel that is not centric to the earth-born ‘human,’ rather it notes man’s destructive attitudes towards progress and the potential harms man may enact on other sentient beings and environments …

Pride And Prejudice: A Modern, Queer Retelling For The Stage, Kate Isabel Foley

Theater Summer Fellows

In the course of studying LGBTQ topics in a queer drama class, I noticed that there was a glaring omission in our readings: the “B.” However, this lack of bisexual representation wasn’t due to a poor syllabus, but to a dismaying lack of bisexual representation in theatre as a whole. This observation, as well as my own experience as a bisexual woman, motivated me to use my love of writing and theatre to fill the void. After performing in Pride and Prejudice at Ursinus, I knew that Jane Austen’s story was the key to me bringing visibility to an underserved, …

Queer Horror, Laura Westengard

Publications and Research

This chapter examines the queer Gothicism of American horror to consider the ways in which marginalized genders and sexualities have been either condemned or covertly endorsed through horror’s textual and visual mediums. In mainstream cis-heteronormative society, queer genders and sexualities have been an abjectified, “horrific” presence, and these mainstream investments represented via horror, as a mode of expression devoted to irruptions of the body, means that the presence of queerness is often registered as an a priori spoliation of bodily norms. Like the term “queer” itself, audiences have often reappropriated the Gothic figures that appear in horror, and some queer …

Mini Memoirs: Poetry As A Medium For Memories, Liesl Anna Counterman

Masters Theses

For the critical paper, I explore the use of poetry as a form of memoir. Over the years, I have journaled by writing poetry, and for the purpose of this paper, I have studied the marriage of poetry and memoir. My critical paper research has directed me towards how memoirists (including autobiographers and biographers of the past) have used poetry in their writings and how the truth about the past is verified and enhanced by poetic works. Poetry seems to be a vehicle of preserving truth, thus proving the veracity of the emotions and experiences within a historical context. Since …

Exploring The Impact Of Workshops And A Mini-Project In Student Teachers Becoming Qualitative Researchers, Junjun Muhamad Ramdani, Elih Sutisna Yanto, Melisa Sri, Rahmat Djunaedi

The Qualitative Report

Drawing on Vygotsky's "space framework" (Harré, 1984; Mostofo & Zambo, 2015), this article reports the findings of our action research project that examined student teachers' beliefs and behavior changes while completing a qualitative research project. Our research question was, "to what extent do student teachers change their beliefs and behaviors about qualitative research (QR) after participating in a two-workshop series of qualitative designs in language classrooms and doing a mini-project?" The participants of this study were eight student teachers at an Indonesian university, and the research data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. The study's findings show that student teachers …

Beyond Seeing: Sight, Mind, And Power In Early-Medieval England, Kevin S. Jackson

English Language and Literature ETDs

Before the development of optical science, sight was largely understood to function extramissively, with rays emitted from the eyes effectuating sight as they came into contact with the physical world. In early-medieval England in particular, a very strong correlation between extramissive sight and an extracorporeal mind is evident, based in part on a potential source for this model that has yet to be identified in scholarship: De opificio Dei, by Lactantius. The connection between sight and the mind accounts for anxiety about the possibility of seeing God, manifest in some early-medieval English translators’ careful revision of biblical texts. Sight …

Writing Methods Key In Preparing Hope-Focused Teacher-Writers And Teachers Of Writing, Nicole Sieben

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This manuscript emphasizes the need for positioning students (preservice and inservice teachers) in methods courses as both teacher-writers and teachers of writing. It demonstrates the importance of teaching writing methods with a hope-focused, process-driven approach grounded in social justice reasoning and includes ways of positioning students in methods courses as teacher-writers with valued professional presence in the field of English education. By way of example, the piece includes a description of a specific “Professional Writings” assignment from a methods course for pre- and inservice teachers and models the value of choice and voice for writers at all levels. It then …

The Evolution From Mentor Texts To Critical Mentor Text Sets, Margaret O. Opatz, Elizabeth T. Nelson

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article chronicles how two teacher educators changed the mentor text set assignment--one component of a larger writing unit plan--from a simple list of texts to a critical mentor text set that includes intentionally selected, culturally and linguistically diverse texts. The goal of the critical mentor text set was to support preservice teachers’ understanding of how to implement culturally sustaining writing pedagogy through developing students’ identities, skills, and intellect as writers, and students’ abilities to read texts through a critical stance that evaluates the privilege and power within the texts while working towards anti-oppression.

Humanizing The Teaching Of Writing By Centering The Writer, Naitnaphit Limlamai

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In this work, the author explains how she prepared preservice secondary teachers to consider themselves as writers and to teach writing in more humanizing ways. She first describes how preservice teachers were guided to cultivate identities as writers and broaden ideas of “writing.” With new knowledge about themselves as they developed writerly identities, they surfaced and unpacked existing ideas about learning how to write and built knowledge about teaching writing, creating teaching artifacts like unit and lesson plans, interacting with local adolescent writers in pen pal letters, and participating in simulated feedback sessions with adolescent writers. Asking preservice teachers to …

Final Master's Portfolio, Faith Aleshire

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

The following is my final portfolio for the Master of Arts in English with an individualized track. An analytical reflective narrative explains the context of my education at BGSU, as well as providing specialized context for the projects included. These serve as the culmination of my research, writing, and growth as a writer during my time at BGSU. The projects include a research proposal, "Building Contextually-Reflective Thinking for Successful Postsecondary Writing" which advocates for a way to study and trace the effects of contextually-reflective thinking strategies being used in the classroom on students' postsecondary writing success, and a literary analysis …

Final Master's Portfolio, John Wilson

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This is my final master's portfolio for the M.A. in English, individualized track. It includes two essays: "Rhetorical Analysis of the EPA's AirNow Air Quality Mobile App," and the research and analysis selection titled "The Affordances of Multimodal Composition in Online Video Instruction in the Proper Use of Self-Administered COVID-19 Health Tests."

Final Portfolio, Denise Mccory

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains two projects. The first is an analysis of The Truman Show, which is an American comedy film from 1998. The paper discusses the film’s themes of control, discipline and hyperreality using the perspectives of postmodern theorists Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault. The second paper is a teaching-based project that demonstrates how composition instructors can use multimodal texts to teach academic argumentation. The selected projects reflect the variety of research-based knowledge, critical thinking skills, and writing skills that I acquired in the Master of Arts in English program.

A Valley Lost To Time, Washington C. Pearce

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis delivers a playable and functional module for the 5 th Edition of the World’s Greatest Role-Playing Game. The Critical Introduction uses reader response and performance theory to create a framework for reading role-playing games as literature, explains some of the recent scholarship surrounding role-playing games, and details the creative process and work of the creative thesis.

In A Valley Lost to Time, Adventurers recruited by the Trellin Prime Minister are sent westward, over the Drazlin mountain range, with a mission to discover the fate of a decades-lost failed colony. The route is long and treacherous, passing through a …

Master's Portfolio, Jennifer Cousino

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

I was a teacher at a high school in the Cabrini-Green complex in Chicago in the 1990s when the buildings were starting to be emptied. I saw firsthand the beginnings of the removal of nearly 15,000 people from their homes when the first building came down in 1995, three years after the first Candyman film. I wrote this academic paper as part of a graduate seminar with Dr. Piya Pal-Lapinski - Victorian Monsters: Fiction and Film 1837 to 2021 at Bowling Green State University in the United States. My paper examines the 2021 film and the sociopolitical and historical context …

Cross-Cultural Performativity Of Gender Communication In Heather Raffo’S Nine Parts Of Desire, Shaimaa M. Saeed

English Language and Literature

Since the mid-twentieth century, the study of gender has constituted a fundamental part of many interdisciplinary research works due to its multi-perspective nature which made it a fertile ground for analysis in diversified fields of science. Discussions over sex/gender distinction and the representation as well as perception of gender ceaselessly exist within controversially enriching, discursive frameworks. In 1990, Judith Butler (1956- ), one of the prominent feminist theorists in the field of gender studies, first coined the concept of “gender performativity,” where she challenged the conventional notions of ethnomethodologists and phenomenologists who restricted the perception and communication of gender to …

Watching The Tour Of California, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

Poem by Rick Magee.

The Flow Of (Re)Memory In African American And Nubian Egyptian Literature: Morrison, Oddoul, And Mukhtar, Bushra Hashem

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to define the term rememory, which Toni Morrison coins in her novel Beloved, and explore its interplay with water imagery in the novel and in two Nubian short stories, namely Haggag Oddoul’s “The River People” and Yahya Mukhtar’s “The Nile Bride.” The three narratives have core common features: they centralize water bodies as key sites of events, they depend heavily on the retelling of history and mythology, and they are told predominantly from the perspective of women. How do the writers weave rememory, history, and mythology to produce these narratives? Are they attempting to …

Marianismo And The Catholic Autobiographer: A Comparative Analysis, Nina Lee

Theses and Dissertations

As a version of femininity that derives from the figure of the Mother Mary, marianismo emphasizes the traditional roles of self-sacrifice, motherhood, spirituality, and nurturance. While marianismo is most often associated with Latin America, it can be traced back to Catholicism’s origins in Europe. Early and medieval Catholic theologians, such as Saint Augustine of Hippo and Peter Abelard, demonstrate marianista beliefs within their autobiographical writings. As autobiography is purported to be the most intimate window into both the personal and larger social situations of a given time and place, the autobiographies of such Catholic male theologians provide insight into the …

Hit By Cupid's Arrow: Hidden Violence In Love Metaphors, Isis Dornbrook

Anthós

Love is an emotion that typically brings joy. However, the ways in which society talks about love suggest otherwise. The process of metaphor analysis makes the violence in societal expressions of love salient. Additionally, metaphor analysis shows that violent metaphors can inform the way people interact with one another throughout the stages of relationship formation, such as using metaphors to justify sexual and other types of physical abuse. Thus, this paper argues that metaphors, by shaping our attitudes and expectations about love, sex, and relationships, have observable social and cultural implications.

Data Visualization: Analyzing An Evidentiary Archive, John Kohlepp

Anthós

This paper summarizes my approach to analyzing the evidentiary archive of Lisa Mendelman’s article “Character Defects: The Racialized Addict and Nella Larsen’s Passing” as part of Dr. Brenda Glascott’s HON 399 class in the Portland State Honors College. My teammates for this project were Joshua Allen, Elizabeth Estrada Torres, and Daman McConnell—I thank each of them for the hard work and insightful analysis they contributed to our collective work.

The 1929 novel Passing by Nella Larsen is a Harlem Renaissance masterpiece touching upon New Negro aspirations and the societal and psychological minefield of managing (and transgressing) racial boundaries as they …

Eng 5061a-600: Special Topics In Literature And Literary Theory, Melissa Ames

Fall 2022

No abstract provided.

Eng 2504g-001: Film And Literature, Marjorie Worthington

Fall 2022

No abstract provided.

Eng 5061a-601: Special Topics In Literature And Literary Theory, Melissa Ames

Fall 2022

No abstract provided.

“A Sick Eagle” And “I Am”: Hymns To Sculpture By Keats And Rilke, Ya-Feng Wu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

At the turn of eighteenth and nineteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sculpture came to serve as an emblem of humanity’s response to the challenges of the times. John Keats and Rainer Maria Rilke, felt compelled at their encounters with ancient Greek sculpture in the museum to reflect upon their vocation in an age disrupted by political upheaval and rampant commercialization respectively. Keats’s sonnet, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (1817), registers an intimation of his latent grandeur in the form of a “sick eagle,” confronting “a shadow of a magnitude.” To overcome this experience, Keats made attempts at epic on the …