Digital Commons Network^™

A Teacher, A Supervisor, An Undefined Self, Alexa Muse

The Qualitative Report

This article follows the experiences and reflections of an American high school English teacher while evolving a single tenth grade memoir and grammar unit into a published student-led research project over the span of 3 years. As a partner piece, this article supplements my students’ published project, titled “A Teacher, a Tutor, a Friend,” that explores ChatGPT and student perspectives through a thematic discourse analysis under the framework of Figured Worlds (Holland et al., 1998); as their teacher-turned-supervisor, I found that preparing 10th grade students—now called the Lexington Student Research and Publication Collaborative—to grapple with such complex material was a …

The Power Of Storytelling: Creatively Facilitating Conceptual Change In The Classroom, Mackenzie S. Rose, Marcus Johnson

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

Conceptual knowledge encompasses understanding the interrelationships among multiple pieces of information. Misconceptions of these interrelationships illustrate the need for effective educational strategies to facilitate conceptual change, with the goal of facilitating changes in learner understanding to appropriate, accurate, and complete concepts. Strategies, such as refutation texts, have proven effective in addressing science misconceptions, yet there is a prominent gap in research on conceptual change in nonscience subjects and the use of storytelling to facilitate such change. Storytelling, presented in a range of educational subjects, invites learners to engage in social discourses and problem-solving exercises. Prompted by classroom storytelling practices, creativity, …

The Sauce To Meat Is Ceremony: Cannibalism And Hospitality Serve As Horror And Culture Tropes In Hannibal And Macbeth, Shay Williams

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

When examining Macbeth (1623) as a case study within Shakespeare’s canon, we see all the obvious horror tropes - murder, witches, a ghost, bodies, blood and gore. What is less pronounced is the horror that lies within eating, drinking, feasting, and the ceremony of banquets. On the other side of the spectrum, and unlike the character of Macbeth, we have a figure that epitomizes all things horror, and has been read about in novels, watched on film, and as of late (2013-2015) has been the subject of a Television show, aptly named: Hannibal. In both works, we encounter men/monsters/killers …

Science And The Humanities: Are They Two Polar Entities?, Elizabeth Mckenna Silvey

Masters Theses

Science and the humanities are often perceived as being separate entities. In academic settings, there is little to no overlap in these courses of study. One can obtain a Bachelor of Science or a Bachelor of Arts degree, but there are no academic majors that allow for the study of both the humanities and the sciences. Despite the seemingly different courses of study, it is through careful examination of literature and thoroughly delving into pieces of literature in order to excavate the meaning and purpose behind the work, that one is able to see the distinct connections between the two …

The Craft Of Christie: A Dissection Of Agatha Christie’S Creation Of Character, Rachel Grace Olds

Masters Theses

Agatha Christie’s writing is widely known, but not deeply known. She is a master of the genre of mystery, and many critics and scholars have lauded her genius. However, she is not often recognized for her mastery of the craft of character. In fact, several critics have misunderstood her characters as two-dimensional beings that exist only to advance the plot. This thesis aims to examine the way Agatha Christie crafts her characters, how her methods of the craft of character work to perfectly mislead her readers, and her ultimate purpose for creating and implementing manipulative elements for the reader. In …

From Comics To Courage: The Real Life Impact Of Superheroes, Dylan A. Perkins

Masters Theses

Are superheroes good for society? Do fictional stories of heroism have nuggets of applicable truth for the every day, normal citizen? Can it even be a motivation for people who follow religion? All of this and more are explored in this thesis assignment as we examine the history of Marvel and DC Comics and how superheroes have been developed during times of war and uncertainty throughout history. Much of this discourse serves as inspiration for the creative draft which is an original novel excerpt that goes into the life of Jack, a child experiment born with extraordinary abilities set against …

A Deconstruction Of The American Dream Through An Analysis Of 'The Great Gatsby', Juliet Hila Katherine Sage

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses the physiological, social, relational, and spiritual issues associated with materialism through Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It examines wealth and prosperity, “The American Dream” through Jay Gatsby, and argues that Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship was shaped by Fitzgerald’s personal life experiences. Fitzgerald concludes that financial success and societal achievement cannot replace human connections. Through the character Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates that obtaining “The American Dream” does not guarantee success in all areas of one’s life. This paper dives deeper into the psychological, social, and spiritual ramifications of materialistic gain. As a result, the premise of this thesis concludes …

Strange Bird, James L. Wilson

Masters Theses

Strange Bird is a deeply emotional, character-driven novel about loss, resilience, and the unexpected bonds that heal us. When Camille dies suddenly, her son Malik—an autistic boy navigating a world already challenging to him—is left in the care of those who loved her most but who struggle to fill the void she leaves behind. Margaret, Camille’s fiercely protective mother, and Marcus, Camille’s former partner, battle grief, strained loyalties, and an emerging threat from Malik’s estranged biological father, Daryl.

As Marcus fights to protect Malik's future, hidden truths unravel, testing friendships, family ties, and the meaning of true guardianship. The novel …

Surveillance, Punishment, And Rebellion: The Eye Of Sauron And Foucauldian Panopticism In J. R. R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Isabel M. Birge

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article uses Michel Foucault's theory of Panopticism, as outlined in his book Discipline and Punish as a framework for understanding the role of surveillance in Middle-earth throughout J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Drawing parallels between Foucault’s understanding of the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham and Tolkien’s depiction of Sauron’s totalitarian vision, the paper explores the ways in which power operates invisibly through intermediaries, such as the Orcs and the Nazgûl, who internalize Sauron’s all-seeing gaze and perpetuate his dominion as well as through magical/technological means of gazing such as the Palantíri. This essay argues that, …

Poetries Of Abandonment: A Study Of Plath And Glück, Yara Abdelmoneim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersection between literature and trauma, which can be discerned in the key works of two poets, Sylvia Plath and Louise Glück. While offering readings of crucial poems, the thesis also examines the interrelations among trauma, memory and narrative as theorized by two contemporary psychiatrists, Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman. Both Plath and Glück wrote about personal and generational trauma after going through different experiences of abandonment. Absence, indirection and repetition provide the basis for literary techniques that allow their traumas to be better understood by authors and readers alike. The degree to which each …

Surviving The Void: Identity Threats And The Plague Of Violence In Rawi Hage’S De Niro’S Game, Yasmine Nabil M. A. Ahmed Dr

Computer Science

Abstract In the postcolonial era, many third-world countries, instead of enjoying prosperity, were driven into longterm civil wars and political unrest. Among the Arab countries which were plagued by a prolonged social conflict is Lebanon where the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) lasted nearly 15 years, devastating the social fabric of the country. Among the novelists who capture this critical period in the history of Lebanon is the Lebanese-Canadian author Rawi Hage. Characterized by his nihilist and apocalyptic tone, Rawi Hage portrays, in his De Niro’s Game (2006), the chaos of war and its impact on personal and national identities. Through …

Leaving The (Mother)Land: Nationalist Entrapment Of The Doubly Colonized Irish Woman In Joyce’S Dubliners And Boland’S Poetry, Blake Harrsch

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper explores how James Joyce’s “A Mother” and “Eveline” and Eavan Boland’s “The Lost Land” and “Mother Ireland” illuminate the gendered sacrifices underpinning Irish nationalism through the lens of double colonization. Joyce’s female protagonists are caught between personal desire and cultural obligation: Mrs. Kearney’s assertiveness leads to public dismissal, while Eveline’s paralysis reveals the psychic toll of conflating domestic labor with patriotic duty. Boland’s poems, in turn, demonstrate how both staying and leaving reinforce women’s entrapment within nationalist ideologies. In “The Lost Land,” the mother’s grief is naturalized as part of her expected role in preserving the homeland, while …

Quixotes, Quacks, And Laughing Philosophers: Humor And Intellectual Authority In The Long Eighteenth Century, Macklin Fanning

English Theses and Dissertations

Quixotes, Quacks, and Laughing Philosophers: Humor and Intellectual Authority in the Long Eighteenth Century recovers the fascinating and forgotten story of John Elliot (1747–1787), a novelist, physician, mad scientist, pioneering optical theorist, criminal lunatic, and Gothic antihero whose life and work illuminate a strange new history of science, medicine, law, and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

“Umble” Vampirism: Socioeconomic Scapegoats And David Copperfield, J.R. Rizzo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The narrative framing of David Copperfield is oriented in a way that ignores the flaws of its titular hero. Dickens’ autobiographical David Copperfield is compounded to entertain readers. His social mobility refines their perception of David into a middle class gentleman who is neither aristocratic, nor working class. It is David’s narration which helps facilitate such a companionship between himself and the reader, clouding any serious criticisms behind the guise of his charm. The doubling of bias layered within the novel’s narrative structure thereby poses David as a sort-of golden boy. That is, Dickens’ adoration for his protagonist, coupled with …

Negotiating (Im)Migrant Identity In The (Un)Assimilated Nation: American Literature Of The Late Nineteenth Century, Haley M. Steffens

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation examines representations of immigration, assimilation, and multinational cultural identity in late nineteenth-century American literature, autobiography, and print culture. Through a comparative analysis of diverse authors and immigrant communities, the project explores how literary and popular culture narratives framed the expectations and limitations of assimilation for disparate populations. By contextualizing these works within historical immigration policies, labor economies, government instability, and burgeoning nationalism, this study reveals how fiction and media shaped public attitudes toward assimilation and influenced policy. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that late, long-nineteenth-century literature functioned as both a reflection of and response to national debates about immigration, …

“Sonnet 29”: The Transcendent Power Of Rich Love, Emily M. Lewan

2025 Symposium

Shakespeare's "Sonnet 29" highlights the journey of the human condition from lowly self-deprecation to high self-sentiments when affected by love. This paper analyzes the poignant fourteen lines penned by William Shakespeare and draws parallels between their sentiment and modern research on love's positive impact on preexisting low self-esteem and self-worth. "Sonnet 29" develops a story of the natural stages from self-deprecation due to low self-esteem into heightened self-worth due to the potent integration of love. Modern, scientific research by Harris and Ulrich, Răşcanu, and Zhang and Hawk, lends credence to the assessment of love's powerful and positive impact on a …

Volume 30

Articulāte

No abstract provided.

Echoes Of The Plague: The Black Death And The Evolution Of Religious Music In Medieval Italy, Emily Bost

Articulāte

No abstract provided.

“Restless And Uneasy…Thin And Stretched”: The Ring, The Ringbearers, And Bodies In Psychological Crisis In Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings., Sara Brown

Journal of Tolkien Research

The attachment that Tolkien’s Ring-bearers have for the Ring, a twisted and perverted form of love, is sterile and barren; it leaves those affected unable to settle and form fruitful, loving relationships with others, an effect that Tolkien referred to as a “Ring-restlessness.” Gollum, Bilbo, and Frodo all suffer, to their own degree, from the psychological crisis caused by the Ring that renders them uneasy and agitated. This paper examines this crisis through a psychological lens, exploring how the Ringbearers are living in discord with their true selves, and struggling with the meaninglessness of life that the Ring leaves behind.

Grief, Grieving, And Permission To Mourn In The Quenta Silmarillion, Dawn M. Walls-Thumma

Journal of Tolkien Research

Tolkien asserted on multiple occasions that death was a primary theme of his work, and there are over ninety deaths of named characters in the Quenta Silmarillion alone. In reading the Quenta Silmarillion as historiography, the universality and psychologically powerful experience of death, grief, and mourning allows the narrators of the Quenta Silmarillion to shape how readers perceive characters, events, and themes in the text. Assuming Pengolodh as the primary narrator, this paper investigates how Tolkien used a limited, flawed, and biased narrative point of view as a strategy to shape reader responses and theme. Characters who die in the …

Mourning And Melancholia In The Lord Of The Rings, Ali Mirzabayati

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper analyzes how Denethor and Théoden respond differently to the deaths of their sons in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Initially consumed by grief, Théoden embraces hope with Gandalf's support, while Denethor descends into despair. Employing Freud's essay "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917), we examine how Théoden and Denethor illustrate differing reactions to mourning and melancholy in the face of loss. Recognizing developments in psychoanalytic theory, the paper moves beyond simple binaries to offer a nuanced exploration of grief and attachment in Tolkien's narrative.

The Only Thriller J.R.R. Tolkien (Never) Wrote: Jungian Shapes Of Evil In “The New Shadow”, Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen, Bo Kampmann Walther

Journal of Tolkien Research

J.R.R. Tolkien's The New Shadow, a fragment set in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, offers a rich but often overlooked exploration of the psychological and cultural implications of peace following the defeat of Sauron. Although Tolkien abandoned the project, dismissing it as a mere “thriller”, the text presents significant insights into the dynamics of generational conflict, the origins of Evil, and the moral challenges of a post-heroic world. This paper examines The New Shadow through a dual lens: first, by contextualizing Tolkien’s depiction of good and evil within Christian ethical frameworks, and second, by applying Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological …

The Moral Function Of Invented Languages In J.R.R Tolkien's Legendarium, Mareike Huber

Journal of Tolkien Research

For J. R. R. Tolkien, the languages he invented for Middle-earth came first, the stories second. Much of his linguistic creation was based on the idea that the sound of a language can create a sense of pleasure or displeasure in those hearing it, irrespective of the meaning behind the words. This can be seen in the ways the sound of the elvish languages on the one hand and Tolkien’s other invented languages such as Khuzdul or the Black Speech on the other, are described not only by Tolkien himself but also by readers of his works. The way a …

Tolkien And Attachment Theory : A Theory To Bind Them All?, Lelie Bremont

Journal of Tolkien Research

Tolkien and Attachment theory: One Theory to Bind Them All?

Ever since the first publication of The Hobbit in 1937, Tolkien’s works have been dominating the fantasy genre, often imitated but rarely equalled. Dozens of scholars over decades have looked for the reason behind this success, the secret ingredient that made Middle-earth so compelling.

Nicole Guédeney is a French psychiatrist specializing in Attachment Theory. Attachment Theory emerged in the early 20^th century and combines psychology with anthropology and ethnology to explore the early attachments created between a baby and the adults surrounding them and how these attachments determine the …

Perceiving The Perceiver: “Viewing” Sauron Through The Gestalt Theory Of Perception, Cameron Bourquein

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper uses Gestalt theory, the Gestalt laws of perception, and the reception theory of Wolfgang Iser to elucidate the character “Sauron” as he appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, and Tolkien’s wider legendarium. It argues firstly that Sauron’s high degree of indeterminacy and ambiguity suggests he can be read as a gestalt entity, one the reader creates by mentally constructing a whole from (seemingly) disparate parts. Building on the semiotics work of Nagy (2013), it argues that Sauron in The Lord of the Rings can be read as gestalt across the spatial, …

Fears And Pains And Rages: The Psychology Of Gandalf's Anger, Nicholas Birns

Journal of Tolkien Research

We are used to seeing emotions in Tolkien as coded morally. Lust or possessiveness is evil whereas care and forbearance are good. There are some emotions, though, that cross these moral boundaries and one of these is anger Moreover, anger in Tolkien is very coded in terms of gender, as it is nearly always male rage. After examining the cases of Saruman and Wormtongue (angry because the world will not cooperate with their plans) and Thingol (angry because he realizes he has just postponed his doom rather than staved it off), we will examine the case of Gandalf. Gandalf is …

“What Ship Will Bear Me Ever Back”: Woundedness And The Western Sea, Janet Brennan Croft

Journal of Tolkien Research

The sea journey into the West is a multi-faceted symbol-system in Tolkien’s works. It is connected with healing, loss, and the numinous. A character may sail to find peace, to lay down burdens, or to challenge the gods or to beg their help. I will be considering both Tolkien’s literary inspirations in medieval and Arthurian literature, and the personal resonances arising from the significant sea voyages (to England as a young child, and to and from France during the Great War) which twice upended his life.

Absent Mothers And Their Effects On The Heroines' Self-Actualization In Jane Austen's Final Three Novels, Gillian Carter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Healing Through Collective Memory: Exploring Psychological Trauma And Community In Toni Morrison’S Beloved And Audre Lorde’S “The Uses Of The Erotic”, Cassia Mcphilliamy '25

Student Research

My project “Healing Through Collective Memory: Exploring Psychological Trauma and Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic”” is motivated by the traumatic images of the experience in enslavement. The symbolism that Morrison uses in Beloved through the dual role Beloved plays as both a spectator and experiencing trauma firsthand. Morrison surpasses the generic gothic tropes of the ghost through Beloved’s ghostly presence at 124 Bluestone, and later her ability to physically haunt Sethe, forcing her to confront her trauma. Beloved’s appearance collapses the past and the present, forcing Sethe to face her past in …

Theodore B. Taverner, Joshua Holt

Persimmon Creek

A war veteran with PTSD wakes on abandoned train tracks, a gun in hand, blood on his clothes, and a body by his feet. Disoriented and haunted by fragmented memories, he struggles to piece together the truth as sirens close in.