Digital Commons Network^™

Degrees Of Emotion: Judicial Responses To Victim Impact Statements, Mary Lay Schuster, Amy Propen

English

Emotional standards and hierarchies in the courtroom may affect judicial reactions to victim impact statements. Based on judicial conversations and courtroom observations in two judicial districts in Minnesota, we suggest that judges contrast emotion with reason in order to maintain control of their courtrooms; when faced with emotional expressions in victim impact statements, judges appreciate expressions of compassion and tolerate expressions of grief but are uncomfortable with expressions of anger. These judicial responses to emotional expression, however, must be contextualized; for example, the judges we spoke with often articulated different reactions to impact statements given by victims of sexual assault, …

Wiki-Hacking: Opening Up The Academy With Wikipedia, Adrianne Wadewitz, Anne Ellen Geller, Jon Beasley-Murray

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Beyond Sacrifice: Milton And The Atonement, Gregory Chaplin

English Faculty Publications

In Paradise Lost, Milton imagines a cosmos at odds with orthodox theology, making a heretical departure that parallels his reluctance to dwell on the Crucifixion and his Arian Christology. Belief in a plurality of worlds threatens the integrity of the Trinity: it exalts the omnipotence of the creator, while it limits the significance of the redeemer. In effect, it produces a tension best resolved by Milton’s position that the Father and the Son are two distinct beings—the former uncreated, infinite, and immutable and the latter created, finite, and changeable. This distinction enables Milton to fashion a theory of salvation …

Ambivalent Kabbalah: Myla Goldberg's 'Bee Season' And The Vicissitudes Of Jewish Mysticism, Paul Eisenstein

English Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Mutual Development In James, Henry, And Jane Austen's Early Writings, Margaret K. Antone

ETD Archive

Critics have long debated over whether or not Jane Austen contributed to her brother's literary periodical The Loiterer, specifically with the Sophia Sentiment letter. Observing Jane Austen's early writings in her juvenilia and Northanger Abbey, strong similarities are found in the writing styles of Jane, Henry, and James Austen. Taking into consideration the close relationship of the Austen siblings, this paper examines the recurring themes and the similarity in Jane Austen's early writing style to that of her siblings' periodical and the strong likelihood that she did contribute to The Loiterer. This study also asserts that the style of Northanger …

The Reawakening Of Steinbeck, Christine E. Jacobs

ETD Archive

This analysis of the works of John Steinbeck will show that Steinbeck's works have more depth and revelation that has been previously discovered. Through application of the concept of queer theory from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, this work will examine the relationships of John Steinbeck's Lennie Small and George Milton and Danny and his friends from the classic novels Of Mice and Men and Tortilla Flat, respectively. This theory states that there is a fine line between what is considered a homosocial behavior and what is homosexual desire. Because Steinbeck's novels and characters are regarded with an almost child-like innocence, many …

The Evolution Of The Robotic Other In Science Fiction Film And Literature: From The Age Of The Human To The Era Of The Post-Human, Gregory M. Humphrey

ETD Archive

Science fiction film and literature establishes one of the most effective mediums for providing incisive critical analysis of complex sociopolitical issues. An observation of the robotic Other in Karel Capek's early 20th century play R.U.R.:(Rossum's Universal Robots), Philip K. Dick's acclaimed novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and Ronald D. Moore's re-envisioning of the pop-culture, science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica, provides an illustrative study of how the creators of these varied science fiction works utilize the robotic Other to destabilize the more traditional boundaries of the Other and create a narrative that demands critical examination of the post-human …

Hunger, History, And The Shape Of Awkward Questions: Reading Sarah Klassen’S Simone Weil As Mennonite Text, Tanis Macdonald

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Writing Renaissance Emblems: Flaming And Tortured Hearts In The First Part Of The Countess Of Montgomery's Urania, Julie Campbell

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

“A Young Voice, A Statue, And Marvell's 'The Nymph Complaining', Matthew Harkins

English Faculty Publications

The allegorical flexibility of Marvell's ‘The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn’ is consonant both with shifting ideas of youth in early modern England and with Marvell's complicated fascination with the young. A companion poem by Marvell's contemporary, Thomas Philipott, also describes how a young nymph in a garden turns into a weeping statue: the differences between these two poems underscore how Marvell's young narrator, rather than satisfying familiar interpretive practices, prompts investigation into the cultural implications of these practices. Ultimately, the poem reconsiders the nature of pastoral and the consequences of circumscribing the voices of the young.

Is Gothic Dead?:Tthe Evolution Of The Vampire Novel, Janis Haigwood Hudson

Theses Digitization Project

Critic Fred Botting claims that the gothic genre is dead due to reader's assimilation of horror in their everyday lives. He cites violence on the news and graphic documentaries as ways in which people can be desensitized to gothic books and movies. This, according to Botting, results in a lack of expected reader/viewer reaction and is the basis of his assertion. This thesis examines three vampire novels: Dracula (1897), I Am Legend (1954), and Carrion Comfort (1984). These three novels were written over a span of one hundred years and published almost fifty years apart. When examined from a male …

Understanding Genre Through The Lens Of Advocacy: The Rhetorical Work Of The Victim Impact Statement, Amy D. Propen, Mary Lay Schuster

English

Through interviews with judges and victim advocates, courtroom observations, and rhetorical analyses of victims’ reactions to proposed sentences, the authors examine the features that judges and advocates think make victims’ arguments persuasive. The authors conclude that this genre, recently imposed upon the court, functions as a mediating device through which advocates push for collective change, particularly for judicial acceptance of personal and emotional appeals. This study understands genres as responsive to changes within the activity systems in which they work and extends knowledge about genres that function as advocacy tools within internal institutional systems.

A Hybrid Genre Supports Hybrid Roles In Community-University Collaboration, Timothy Henningsen

English Faculty Scholarship

This chapter describes how community-university collaboration is created

by the Chicago Civic Leadership Certificate Program (CCLCP), an

undergraduate program offered at the University of Illinois at Chicago

(UIC). In CCLCP, partners from community-based, not-for-profit organizations

mentor first- and second-year students who complete writing and

research projects that their partner organizations need. In effect, then,

CCLCP’s community partners function as co-teachers, collaborating with

university instructors to direct, monitor, and evaluate student work; this

teaching relationship builds on a deeper and more interesting collaboration:

the bilateral development of students’ community-based projects.

The Political Repercussions Of Homosexual Repression Of Masculinity And Identity In Martin Sherman's Bent, Melissa C. Lupo

ETD Archive

There are very few works of gay holocaust literature, mostly due to the fact that even post Nazi-Germany, homosexuality was outlawed. Bent, thereby serves as a testament of the persecution faced by homosexuals at the hands of the Nazis. This paper argues that the play is developed to display the main character Max having a better chance of survival if he denies his sexual preference and instead claims he is a Jew. While some may argue that such a decision privileges being Jewish over homosexuality, the final argument proves that this is not the case. Art is category of its …

"Passing" And Identity: A Literary Perspective On Gender And Sexual Diversity, Pamela L. Caughie

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

For the literary scholar as for the gender theorist, truth is what makes sense in terms of a particular narrative. What is true is not simply that which corresponds to the real; rather, what is true is what is accepted as being true within a given discourse, institution, or discipline. Unlike biologists, literary scholars don’t ask “Is it true?” but “How is it true?” This question requires interrogating the normative standards by which claims of truth, authenticity, and legitimacy are established. And that means learning to read people the way many of us have learned to read literature, taking into …

Byron And 'The Barbarous . . . Middle Age Of Man': Youth, Aging, And Midlife In Don Juan, Melanie J. Parker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For Byron, the knowledge that he would one day have to become old was always on his mind. By the time Byron had relocated to the Continent, the idea had become something of an obsession. Thirty had always been Byron's turning point, the age at which youth would have to end and he would have to become an old man. Upon finally reaching that age, Byron found himself in a place much like Dante's selva oscura--dark, confusing, fearful, but with no other way left to go. There are allusions to this opening scene throughout Don Juan. It is …

Voices: On Stage And In Print, 2010, Utah State University Department Of English

Voices of USU

This collection of student writing represents the voices of over 2,000 students who enroll each academic year in Utah State University’s second-year composition course, Intermediate Writing: Research Writing in a Persuasive Mode. Voices of USU celebrates excellence in writing by providing undergraduate students of diverse backgrounds and disciplines the opportunity to have their work published.

Sources Of Fear In American Society: Representations In Short Horror Fiction, 1950s-Present, Mona Moin Syed

Theses Digitization Project

This study examines the ways in which short American horror fiction has always revolved around fundamental fears of mortality, and how these fears have shifted across the span of three specific timeframes. Using a historical lens, this study also explores what the specific nature of mortality fears, as reflected in particular instances of short horror fiction, historically reveal about contemporaneous cultural attitudes toward end of life issues, loss, doubt, and grief. This study also traces how the perceptions of mortality have dynamically changed in American society from 1950s to present times in accordance with powerful historical events, varying cultural contexts, …

The Fear Of Castration And Male Dread Of Female Sexuality: The Theme Of The “Vagina Dentata” In Dracula, Laura Linneman

Journal of Dracula Studies

Bram Stoker’s Dracula reflects the Victorian fear of reverse colonization by the “Other” or the encroachment of the outsider on the British Empire as well as the repression of sexuality in Victorian England; however, there is one facet of the text that has never been fully explored: the inherent male fear of castration and feminine sexuality as well as its relationship to the “vagina dentata” motif. Furthermore, this dread of female sexuality has not been adequately explored in light of the novel’s historical context. Written during the rise of the New Woman, Stoker crafts a response to the increasing independence …

Our Lady Of The Telegraph: Mina As Medieval Cyborg In Bram Stoker’S Dracula, Eric Brownell

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

All In The Family: A Retrospective Diagnosis Of R.M. Renfield In Bram Stoker’S Dracula, Elizabeth Winter

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Fahrenheit 451: Tempreture Rising, Douglas C. Moore

ETD Archive

Fahrenheit 451 is acknowledged by many theorists as one of the most symbolic dystopias of the twentieth century, and although the novel has been analyzed extensively with a focus on the influence of mass communication, no study has addressed the hyperreal factors of television in Bradbury's world. Bradbury has expressed his concern about the influence television has on the masses, not only in his fictional dystopia, but in American society today. Television's capability of mass-producing simulacra promotes hyperreality, which results in a distortion of meaning and implosion of reality. This study will use Jean Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality as a …

Richard Powers's The Echo Maker And The Trauma Of Survival, Nicolas J. Potkalitsky

ETD Archive

In this study, Cathy Caruth's innovative description of trauma as a crisis of survival in works such as "Traumatic Departures: Survival and History in Freud" and Unclaimed Experience (1996) is applied to the story of Mark Schluter's traumatic experience in Richard Powers's The Echo Maker (2006). Theoretically, Caruth's description owes much to Freud's classic accounts of trauma in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and Moses and Monotheism (1939). In particular, Caruth capitalizes in on Freud's reference to the experience of awakening from traumatic unconsciousness as an "another fright" in the second section of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud 11). For …

Shells, Joline L. Scott

ETD Archive

This thesis combines four short stories which revolve around themes of loss and disorientation. The first three stories, "Costa Rica," "Greece," and "On the Way Down to Florida" are derived from a larger work entitled GhostShells, and are connected by character development and a common mystery. The fourth piece, "Car Crash," is an independent piece that centers around a minor auto accident and the community activity it creates. All four pieces are linked by a central assertion that our physical bodies are merely shells for the souls within, and may be empty or full depending on the state of the …

Upstart Crow Index, Upstart Crow

Upstart Crow (Table of Contents)

No abstract provided.

Kittens In The Oven: Race Relations, Traumatic Memory, And The Search For Identity In Julia Alvarez’S How The García Girls Lost Their Accents, Natalie Carter

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The search for an ever-elusive home is a thread that runs throughout much literature by authors who have immigrated to the United States. Dominican authors are particularly susceptible to this search for a home because “for many Dominicans, home is synonymous with political and/or economic repression and is all too often a point of departure on a journey of survival” (Bonilla 200). This “journey of survival” is a direct reference to the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who controlled the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. The pain and trauma that Trujillo inflicted upon virtually everyone associated with the Dominican Republic …

Review: Three New Offerings From Red Dragonfly Press, Christine Stewart-Nunez

English Faculty Publications

Book Reviews of:
Quiver, by Sarah Busse,
31 Mornings in December, by Thom Tammaro,
Lida Songs, by Scott King (Thistlewords Press, an imprint of Red Dragonfly Press)

Short Story, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2010 [Download Entire Issue]

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Layla, April L. Ford

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Narrative Point Of View, Irony And Cultural Criticism In Selected Short Fiction By George Saunders, Richard Lee

Short Story

No abstract provided.