Digital Commons Network^™

True Crime Podcasts As A Scene Of Feminist Reckoning: A Comparative Analysis Of My Favorite Murder And Sistas Who Kill, Rachel C.C. Matteri

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This research examines the cultural impact and ethical implications of true crime podcasts (TCPs). In recent years, TCPs have become a powerful cultural force, with White women often emerging as the primary storytellers and most visible participants in the genre. Their dominance in this space is not neutral and it carries representational weight. It explores the potential for feminist activity made possible by the auditory, self-publishing genre of podcasting. This work focuses on the buddy-comedy subgenre of TCPs. The concerns of this text are that TCPs are dominated by White feminist values and are not an intersectional feminist project. Textual …

Breaking Barriers: The First-Generation Experience In Pursuit Of The American Dream, Milagros Ortega

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project examines the common misconceptions surrounding First-Generation Latino college students and challenges the dominant narrative that portrays them as unprepared, unsupported, and unmotivated. Through narrative and content analysis of the short films, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá and Turns in the Road, this project explores the overlapping challenges that complicate their educational journeys. These challenges, financial instability, lack of guidance, and sociocultural dissonance, represent three core barriers commonly faced by first-generation Latino college students. Guided by theoretical frameworks such as the Immigrant Optimism Hypothesis, W.E.B Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness, Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of Nepantla, and Yosso’s …

Dismembering The Final Girl: Examining The Shifting Trope In Contemporary Horror Films, Abby Divine

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research explores gender representation in horror films as it moves away from representation shaped by the male gaze and, instead, showcases social values related to current feminist movements. While the horror genre is largely considered to be lacking complex messages or social commentary, many contemporary horror films actually utilize well-known tropes to cultivate a larger discussion on social issues. With the rise of the slasher film in the 1970s and 1980s, the character of the Final Girl was popularized. These final surviving female victims are usually defined by a constricting set of rules; however, newer trends in horror films …

Lost In Translation: The Absence Of Untranslatable Words In The English Classroom, Ashley Boledovic

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This qualitative study explores the impact of lexical gaps and untranslatable words on self-expression and communication in English-speaking classrooms. Seven interviews were conducted with bilingual or non-native English speakers representing a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, including Arabic, Portuguese, Marathi, Hindi, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Each interview investigated how language impacts self-expression, or the ability to communicate thoughts, emotions, and identity within the classroom. The findings suggest that untranslatable words and cultural concepts from participants’ native languages offer insights into cultural perspectives, which are often undervalued and not represented in English-speaking classrooms. Additionally, all participants desired greater language inclusivity …

Eros And The Sublime: Tools For Reaching Toward An Altered Ecological Consciousness, Aineka Carlson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores connections between the Kantian sublime and Anne Carson’s ideas regarding “eros.” Since Kant’s Critique of Judgement was published in 1790, the Kantian sublime has grown in popularity and been utilized by theorists and creative writers alike. While the Kantian sublime is often associated with nature in popular culture, there are certain egocentric and phallocentric elements of this mode of thinking that might inhibit a biocentric mindset. Through a character study of Oryx from Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, this thesis draws relations between the subjugation of women, nature, and the ways in which the popularized …

Slaying The Windigo: Fear And Faith In The Anthropocene, Daniel J. Irwin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the changing affect of fear in the environment and how it is influencing writing in the Anthropocene. Chapter one lays the groundwork for the present moment of ecocriticism, examining how the relationship with the environment has changed throughout the history of ecocritical writing. The second chapter examines how fear has been an intrinsic element of environmental storytelling, starting with the romantic ideas of the sublime. With the recognition of the impact that humanity has had on Earth over the past several centuries, and the accelerating acceptance of the idea of the Anthropocene since the turn of the …

"A Changed Understanding Of Our Present": Moby-Dick As Prophetic Ecological Activism, Katie Ann Schini

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale is a classic of American literature, spanning multiple genres and remaining culturally relevant nearly 175 years after its original publication. Though on the surface Moby-Dick reads as an adventure story of a man who experiences the whaling industry firsthand, Herman Melville’s text continues to invite new generations of readership through the framework of the twenty-first century climate crisis.

In this thesis, I position Moby-Dick as a text that can be used to understand our modern society’s current dispositions of ecological grief. My thesis operates at the intersection of three main literary critical theories: ecocriticism, affect, and …

Representation In Higher Education: A Closer Look Into Cal Poly Humboldt’S Hsi Designation Through The Courageous Cuentos Retrospective, Audriana Peñaloza

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

When it comes to representation in education, it can be inconsistent. For many students of color, it can either feel like their identity is included in the conversations in the classroom and on campus, or it can feel like an afterthought — especially in higher education. Many colleges in the country are classified as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), Cal Poly Humboldt being one of them. This designation claims that Humboldt has the resources and support systems for all students of color, especially for the Hispanic/Latine population on campus. However, it looks like it is the student population that rise …

The Experience Of Child Language Brokering In Latin/Hispanic Students: Understanding How Clb Shapes Attitudes Towards Higher Education, Noemi Maldonado

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Immigrants often pursuing a better life than that in their own places of birth migrate to the states. In order to make lives in the states they bring their families with them or begin to create their own already inside the host country. With little knowledge of the place, they arrive and with nothing more than the help of their children, they seek to find a place in the society they became a part of. Immigrant children or those who come from migrant families often must help their parents, caretakers, or extended family manage the English language and American culture …

Dystopian Politics In The Hunger Games Series, Tristan Hogan

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series takes readers to a fictional country known as Panem that hosts an annual nationwide celebration in which adolescents compete in a battle to the death. In this analysis, I approach this book series with a Marxist lens to argue that the capitalistic system in Panem satirizes American culture in the early 21st century. Every novel in the series, through this theory, can be read as what scholars identify as a “critical dystopia,” a defamiliarized version of our culture, upheld through institutions and social participation in a way that satirizes ours. I argue that the …

L1 Chinese Learners’ Interlanguage Of English Infinitive And Gerund Verbal Complements, Sixin Qin

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This research, following the Interlanguage Hypothesis (Selinker, 1972), examined L1 Chinese learners’ interlanguage of English infinitive and gerund constructions and probed into the psycholinguistic factors influencing the development of their interlanguage. The targeted verbs were verbs that can be followed by both infinitive and gerund complements, depending on the contexts, i.e., forget, remember, stop, and regret. A guided story oral production (GSOP) task and a semi-structured interview were conducted individually with 31 L1 Chinese learners, whose English proficiency was at an intermediate level. The results showcased that L1 Chinese learners’ interlanguage of English infinitives and gerunds was motivated by multiple …

New Reader Response: An Examination Of Three High-Achieving High School Readers And Their Literacies, Minkyu Kim

Essays in Education

Since its inception, reader response theory has battled misrepresentations. It was reduced to discursive anarchy, perceived as not rigorous, and set apart from important scholarship movements like critical theory. This research argues that by expanding the definition of “reader” in “reader response” to include digital (aka “new”) literacies, the reader-text transaction can be much more inclusive, dynamic, and most importantly, true to our students’ everyday literacies. This article also includes a discussion of why it is so important for teachers to include digital platforms as sites of interrogation in a safe educative setting. By studying the out-of-school literacy behaviors of …

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

"Everything That He Sees": Placing The Egotistical Wordsworth In The Yarrow Poems, Gabriella Schwartz

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Migrating Languages: Cultural Mistranslation In Sembène Ousmane’S “The Promised Land” And Ágota Kristóf’S The Illiterate, Ester Luna

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Weird Geometry: The Operation Of Anti-Sacred Spaces In “The Immortal” And “The Call Of Cthulhu”, Washington C. Pearce

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

“Whilst In The Walrus Suit, You Must Be A Walrus”: Human-To-Animal Transformation Through Body Modification And Performance In Kevin Smith’S Tusk, Ahmet Ergün

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

No One Lives In The Future: Family Dynamics And Environmental Discourse, Morgan Vanek

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

In the context of catastrophic climate change, the optimism that underpins our economic models for calculating the future cost of present risks has become both untenable and dangerous. Nonetheless, even writing urgently concerned with these risks continues to invoke a version of the Child as a figure of futurity that appears to naturalize both this optimism and our present inaction. In this essay, I argue that we might find another path forward by looking back to the eighteenth-century stories that seem to demonstrate a similar preoccupation with children in danger. Taking Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress as a representative example, I …

A Review Of Glenn Mcgillivray's Actors, Audiences, And Emotions In The Eighteenth Century: Communities Of Sentiment, Semane Parsons

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

A Review of Glen McGillivray's book Actors, Audiences, and Emotions in the Eighteenth Century: Communities of Sentiment (2023).

“Strange And Unusual Things”: Teaching The Speculative Fiction Of Margaret Cavendish, E Mariah Spencer

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

Margaret Cavendish, a prolific author and natural philosopher, defies categorization with her multifaceted contributions to literature and philosophy. While she is recognized for her groundbreaking work in various academic fields, her literature also resonates within the realms of science fiction, weird fiction, and speculative genres. This essay explores innovative approaches to teaching Cavendish's work, particularly within the realm of speculative literature, using an interdisciplinary lens. Drawing on perspectives including monster theory and the concept of the abject, students are prompted to critically engage with Cavendish's texts. By examining themes such as the monstrous, the supernatural, and the occult, students uncover …

Jumping Pens And Historical Vertigo: Teaching Cavendish In The Twenty-First Century, Anne M. Thell

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

"Jumping Pens" considers "historical and epistemological vertigo" as a useful pedagogical rubric for teaching the works of Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) in contemporary university classrooms. Specifically, it looks back across more than a decade of teaching Cavendish in diverse settings in order to show how exciting this author can be for students who are just starting out in the discipline of literary studies. As this essay argues, Cavendish can make us all better, more self-aware instructors, while also developing critical and historical acumen in our students.

Estha And Trans Identity In The God Of Small Things, Clara Reid

Critical Humanities

Gender relationships in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy change over the course of the book. In many ways, gender and caste are inseparable from one another in how they interact; it is Estha who bridges the gap between both. Whether consciously or subconsciously, he engages in this transgressive behavior in order to become his sister Rahel. This essay positions Estha as a trans woman longing for a becoming, and it is through his successful pursuit of Rahel in both a queer and psychoanalytic sense that he becomes a woman. This pursuit manifests through transgressive behavior, putting him …

Appraisal Resources In Cyberspace Discourse On Capital Punishment And Corruption, Adetutu Aragbuwa

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

Discourses on the public agitation to codify capital punishment for corrupt Nigerian officials are growing in cyberspace thus opening up the subject for scholarly investigation. This study, therefore, examines cyber citizens’ use of language in constructing their attitudes to the agitation, with a view to analysing dominant ideologies embedded in the discourses. Data for the study, downloaded from Nairaland forum, comprise six hundred comments from ten threads on the anti-corruption clamour. The data is subjected to qualitative analysis hinged on the appraisal theory. The study’s findings reveal upscaled lexicalised judgements of negative normality, tenacity, propriety and veracity towards not just …

Mundane And Magical: How Studio Ghibli Adapts Female Protagonists Toward Gendered Narrative Reconstruction, Lauren F. Frymire

Masters Theses

This paper explores the literary significance of film adaptations, specifically focusing on Studio Ghibli's adaptations of children's novels. Through examining the themes of self-discovery, transformation, and cultural representation in films like *Kiki's Delivery Service*, *Tales from Earthsea*, and *Howl's Moving Castle*, it discusses how Ghibli’s choice of young female protagonists connects with both their original audiences and broader cultural narratives. Drawing on Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious, Linda Hutcheon's theory of adaptation, and Mariah Chiara Oltolini’s insights on mass media adaptations, the study argues that these films successfully preserve the "magic" of their source material while offering unique, culturally-infused …

Earnest And Authentic Translation From Victorian England To The Wilde West, Carly E. Mcclure

Masters Theses

Oscar Wilde’s critical, theatrical, and fiction works (notably The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray), critique Victorian societal norms through themes of authenticity, duplicity, and identity. In a period marked by strict domesticity and concealed social contradictions, Wilde’s satire dismantles rigid ideologies, exploring self-discovery and societal expectations. Through a retroactive and contemporary definition of authenticity, Wilde’s works exhibit an advocacy for art as a central pursuit rather than purely a reflection of societal norms, which is a defining value of his Authenticism. Wilde’s emphasis on Aestheticism is a key component of his authentic representation of self, …

Diverse Possibilities Of Shakespeare: Teaching Twelfth Night Through A Queer Lens, Julia Ritzler

Honors Projects

This project seeks to understand the ways in which Queer Theory can be applied to secondary language arts education to enhance students' understanding of identity and gender in literature. For the purposes of this project, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is being used as a case study text. This project includes a thorough analysis of Twelfth Night through a queer lens, a literature review of Queer Theory and educational pedagogy, a block plan and related instructional and assessment materials, a rationale for the block plan, and project limitations and implications for future research. By analyzing scholarly texts and applying the theories within …

Career Preparation In English And Creative Writing, Katherine Fischer

Honors Projects

The information presented within this Honors Project considers and evaluates career preparation within English and Creative Writing (CW) majors. The project is divided into three parts titled Business Curriculum, Field Research, and Connections with Businesses. The Business Curriculum section analyzes how the Schmidthorst School of Business career preparation curriculum can be applied to the CW or English major; the Field Research section explores current CW and English students’ perceptions of career preparation at BGSU; and the Connections with Businesses section discovers businesses regional to BGSU for potential future experiential learning opportunities. Ultimately, the results of the project's sections include: a …

Mapping The Modern Geography Of Floyd Dell’S Port Royal And Susan Glaspell’S Freeport, Megan Yarusso

English: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

The 'Biographer' And Her 'Subject': Vita Sackville-West's Influence On Virginia Woolf, Sydney Sherman '28

Best First-Year Seminar Writing

Woolf and Sackville-West's relationship has been scrutinized and celebrated since its beginning. While deeply affectionate, their bond also blurred boundaries between personal intimacy and artistic exploitation. Woolf immortalized Sackville-West in her 1928 novel Orlando, a work both heralded as a groundbreaking exploration of gender fluidity and critiqued for its appropriation of Sackville-West's life and identity. Orlando, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, and Portrait of a Marriage serve as unique lenses to observe the relationship between Woolf and Sackville-West. Orlando is a testament to the true love between a biographer and her Orlando, but as an artist, Woolf's …

Nieve En Junio/Snow In June, Luisanny Castillo

Our Heritage: Short Stories of Bilingual Youth in the Northeastern United States

No abstract provided.