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The Mechanical Aspirations Of Written Things In Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Maxwell Harrison Cohn

Honors Papers

Of the many devices and doodads Laurence Sterne describes in Tristram Shandy (1759-67), the most surprising remains the machinery of Tristram Shandy itself. I use Sterne's frequent descriptions of Tristram Shandy as a machine to question how texts behave as (faulty and outdated) technologies in this eighteenth-century text. I look at Agostino Ramelli's book wheel--a sixteenth century device which allows its user to quickly cross-reference various texts--to illustrate the latent challenges in Sterne's book-machine metaphor. My essay suggests that Sterne's various registers of literary allusion signal moments in which the book realizes its potential, but also its limitations, as a …

Science Fiction In The United States, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur’S Niagara: Redefining A Sublime Landmark, James P. Myers Jr.

English Faculty Publications

Working from Crèvecoeur’s two accounts of visits to the Niagara peninsula, together with the two maps accompanying those narratives, this essay argues that Crèvecoeur never visited the area during the years he claims, 1785 and 1789. Although the narratives thus reflect the centuries-old convention of the traveler/explorer as liar, more significantly they reveal Crèvecoeur’s substantial reworking of the received eighteenth-century response to the natural sublime. Both the 1785 Letter to his son and the longer retelling of his supposed 1789 visit in A Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York predictably record an initial, expected reaction to …

Aspects Of Allegory In Medieval Literature: Monstrous Punishments And Monstrous Women As Symptoms Of A Decaying Society / Social Structure In Tristan, Beowulf, And Piers Plowman, Samantha M. Valcarcel

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Women In Space: Feminist Pulp Science Fiction From 1927-1948, Matthew Martin

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Humor, Romance, Horror And Epic In Text And Film Of Arthurian Legend Adaptations, Khanh Le

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

“Lifted Moments”: Emily Dickinson, Hymn Revision, And The Revival Music Meme-Plex, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

This essay focuses on Dickinson’s poem “The Soul has Bandaged moments - ” (Fr360), placing it in relation to several interrelated hymns (Independent, Unitarian, and gospel) that share a common pattern of imagery deriving from the popular “Crowning Day” motif. Through a linked sequence of paired readings, it shows how connections between two loosely related texts sharpen and become meaningful when the two texts are brought into dialog with a third text. Juxtaposing three overlapping pairs of lyrics—first by Daniel Webster Whittle and William Channing Gannett, then by Philip Doddridge and Emily Dickinson, and, finally, by Gannett and Dickinson (with …

Transformative Pedagogy For Social Justice Education: Teaching Technical Communication Students To Bridge Anzalduan Theories Of Social Change, Carlos Munoz

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This thesis discusses the growing challenge facing teachers of technical communication in preparing educators with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives to effectively work with an increasing diverse student population, especially with those students whose cultural, racial, language, professional, and ethnic backgrounds are different from the educator’s background. Therefore, Anzaldúan theory offers another productive way of bringing together theory and practice to address the challenge of seeing and practicing technical communication’s critical and civic aspects within diverse communities. This essay provides insight into how Anzaldúa theories for social change might fulfill civic objectives.

Global And Local Perspectives In Spanish And New World Performances Of Calderon's Four Parts Of The World, Beth K. Aracena

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

The first published collection of Pedro Calderon de la Barca's autos sacramentales(sacred dramas) dates from 1677, during Calderon's lifetime (1600-1681), and includes an explanation of the works penned by this great Spanish dramaturge. In his preface, recognizing that readers may be annoyed at similarities in the printed repertoire of more than seventy autos, Calderon justifies the collection: "The autos were performed but once [sic] a year, and this volume contains works which were produced at intervals over a period of more than twenty years. They were not written to be printed together and read one after another:" Calderon also …

Christian Indians At War: Evangelism And Military Communication In The Anglo-French-Native Borderlands, Jeffrey Glover

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In his chapter, "Christian Indians at War: Evangelism and Military Communication in the Anglo-French-Native Borderlands," Jeffrey Glover explores the complicated position of Christian natives in the French and Indian War.

Session I, Yongan Wu Dr., Nicholas De Villiers Dr., Meredith Wilson, Cory Chamberlain

English Graduate Organization Conference

Session 1: 6:00pm-7:00pm

Dr. Yongan Wu and Dr. Nicholas de Villiers, "Disorder and Excavating the Future from the Past,” Meredith Wilson, “Dystopian Visions in The Hunger Games and Atlas Shrugged,” and Cory Chamberlain, “Ideologies of the Insane: A Reading of Gogol and Althusser.”

Respondents: Dr. Betsy Nies, Professor Linda Howell

Between The Man And Beast: Reactions To Evolutionary Science In Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylls Of The King And T. H. White's The Once And Future King, Mary Feldman

Masters Theses

The development and popular acceptance of evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century, of which Charles Darwin was perhaps the leading voice, produced perhaps the greatest cultural cataclysm of the Modern age. It held theological and philosophical implications beyond the scientific realm, profoundly impacting the humanities as well as science. The Arthurian legend, a story that has been told and retold for centuries before and after Darwin, offers us a unique opportunity to examine how a preexisting story was radically altered in the light of evolution. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King and T. H. White's The Once and Future …

Reviews, Damien Bador, Gregory Bassham, Joe R. Christopher, Janet Brennan Croft, Hugh H. Davis, Melody Green, Holly Ordway, Robert T. Tally Jr

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The International Relations of Middle-earth: Learning from The Lord of the Rings. Abigail E. Ruane and Patrick James. Reviewed by Robert T. Tally Jr

Moments of Grace and Spiritual Warfare in The Lord of the Rings. Anne Marie Gazzolo. Reviewed by Damien Bador.

The Wizard of Oz as American Myth: A Critical Study of Six Versions of the Story, 1900-2007. Alissa Burger. Reviewed by Hugh H. Davis.

Plain to the Inward Eye: Selected Essays on C.S. Lewis. Don W. King. Reviewed by Holly Ordway.

Tolkien's Poetry. Ed. Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner. Reviewed by Joe R. Christopher.

The …

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

Jane Austen In The Twenty-First Century, Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer, Andrea Coldwell Cabus, Karen C. Hadley, Cheryl Comparativo

Pride and Prejudice: The Bicentennial

In this session Phyllis Bottomer, Andrea Coldwell Cabus, and Lori Halvorsen Zerne presented the following papers:

• “Social Awkwardness: Viewing Some of Austen’s Characters Through the Lens of Twenty-First Century Knowledge of Autistic Spectrum Disorders” - Phyllis Bottomer
• “Imagining Future Janeites: YA Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice” - Andrea Coldwell Cabus
• “Jane Austen, Regency Zombies, and the ‘Monstrous Future’ of Capitalism” - Karen C. Hadley
• “The Austen Obsession: Jane’s Continuing Relevance and Cultural Power in the Twenty-First Century” - Cheryl Comparativo

At the end of the session the presenters answered questions from the audience.

New Undergraduate Research On Jane Austen, Katherine Mullins, Victoria Lane, Heather Weis

Pride and Prejudice: The Bicentennial

In this session Wright State University Undergraduates presented the following papers:

• “‘Practise Very Constantly:’ The Politics of Accomplishment in Pride and Prejudice” - Katie Mullins
• “Order in the Courtship: 200 Years of Assigning Meaning to the Courtship Practices in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice" - Tori Lane
• “Dreaming of War: The Culture of War as Entertainment in Pride and Prejudice” - Heather Weis

At the end of the presentations the students answered questions from the audience.

Divine Comedy As An American Civil War Epic, Joshua Matthews

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This essay argues that nineteenth-century Americans interpreted Dante's Divine Comedy in terms of national and transnational discourses of federalism and republican nationalism, which helped introduce Dante to the United States and boosted the popularity and circulation of his works there. By the late 1840s, Dante--representing an Italy struggling to become an independent nation--was a useful, authoritative voice in political debates over national expansion and states' rights. His role expanded as these debates intensified. During the Civil War, Dante became an important discursive connection between republicanism, the new Italian nation-state, and the struggle to re-unify the American nation--a connection exemplified by …

'A Moment Of Magic': Coyote, Tricksterism, And The Role Of The Shaman In Rudolfo Anaya's Sonny Baca Novels, Roy Turner

English Language and Literature ETDs

In Rudolfo Anayas Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring, the protagonist—Sonny Baca—undertakes a murder investigation that ultimately leads him to confront Raven, a mysterious figure whose acts of violence threaten the social fabric of Albuquerque, the American Southwest, and the entire world. In battling Raven, Sonny comes to realize that both he and his foe have the ability to access a spiritual power that takes root in the myths and belief systems of various cultures, including Sonny's Chicano community, Native American peoples of the region, and ancient civilizations throughout the world, from which Sonny draws power …

The Emergence Of The Digital Humanities, Steven E. Jones

English Faculty Publications

The past decade has seen a profound shift in our collective understanding of the digital network. What was once understood to be a transcendent virtual reality is now experienced as a ubiquitous grid of data that we move through and interact with every day, raising new questions about the social, locative, embodied, and object-oriented nature of our experience in the networked world.

In The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, Steven E. Jones examines this shift in our relationship to digital technology and the ways that it has affected humanities scholarship and the academy more broadly. Based on the premise …

The Ambivalence Of Science Fiction: Science Fiction, Neo-Imperialism, And The Ideology Of Modernity As Progress, Graham Hall

HIM 1990-2015

This thesis sets out to examine the relationship between science fiction and its conditions of production, specifically interrogating the genre's articulations of the ideology of modernity as progress. Sf has been characterized variously as a characteristically useful critical engagement with the ideologies of its context and as wholly ideological at the level of form, relying on the authority of a scientific episteme in its "cognitive estrangements," while not obligated to operate within the boundaries of this episteme. As such, the genre is unparalleled in its capacity to articulate ideologies under the guise of a putatively neutral science and reason. However, …

Just Across Town, Robert Weaver

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Reconceiving Self-Abnegation: Female Vulnerability As Embodied (Un)Sovereignty, Renee Lee Gardner

Dissertations

Liberal feminism views vulnerability as weakness and dominance as strength. This binary parallels nationalistic assertions of sovereignty. Within militaristic responses such as the U.S. retaliation to 9/11, however, we see the cost of refusing to acknowledge our vulnerability. In my analysis of eleven novels arising from eight distinct nation-states and representing historical moments from the final decades of slavery through the early post- 9/11 years, I use alternative (queer, postcolonial, Islamic) feminisms to read power in vulnerability. I explore female characters who deliberately self-abnegate – sacrificing their lives, bodies, voices, and children – but whose actions can be read as …

Anna Seward And The Sonnet: Milton's Champion, Claudia Thomas Kairoff

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

No abstract provided.

What Is Woman? : Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ladies Almanack, And Woman's Search For Her Identity In The 1920s, Timothy Coyne

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In the introductory chapter of her book, The Gender o f Modernity, Rita Felski writes, “If our sense of the past is inevitably shaped by the explanatory logic of narrative, then the stories that we create in turn reveal the inescapable presence and power of gender symbolism” (1). Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Djuna Barnes’s Ladies Almanack are two such stories; however, they both do more than simply reveal gender’s presence and power. These works of literature question the gender ideologies of the early twentieth century, challenging their power and inescapability by producing other, perhaps unknown, unthought of or …

The Living Dead Austen : Exploring The Zombie Trope In American Culture, Film, And Literature, Katherine Godin

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis explores the origin, rise, and resonance of the zombie trope in American film and literature, focusing on three cinematic stages and culminating in an analysis of Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 mash-up novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. While many critics have casually dismissed zombies as a trend, this thesis argues that these creatures reflect a variety of Western fears that have surpassed the obvious association with death and decay. Indeed, as this thesis argues, zombies have come to reflect a myriad of anxieties concerning the gendered and racial Others, as well as consumerism, technology, and even, as will be …

Reading War : Modern Warfare In The Age Of Terror And Recent American Literature, Kyle Anthony Kovacs

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

No abstract provided.

Towards A Hibernian Hybridity: Joycean Appropriations Of Celtic Mythology And The Realization Of A Modern Irish Identity, Robert C. Ware

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In nineteenth-century Ireland, the Celtic Revival established an Irish identity in opposition to British colonialism through a nativist construction of true Irishness based on premodern, precolonial Celtic mythology, language, and culture. This created a primitive Irish identity situated in a binomial dialectic with a civilized British identity, establishing the Irish as an internal Other for the British imperial self. This effectively justified British colonialism as a necessary catalyst in a teleological progression intended to save Ireland from the uncivilized Irish. This thesis explores how Joyce’s appropriation of literary artifacts of Celtic mythology in “The Dead,” specifically the sovereignty goddess mythology …

Symbolic Capital And The Performativity Of Authorship: The Construction And Commodification Of The Nineteenth-Century Authorial Celebrity, Whitney Helms

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Victorian and Antebellum writers were the first literary figures to construct and perform their authorship within the sphere of celebrity. Unlike their Romantic predecessors who endured fame as an unexpected consequence of their popularity, the Victorians and their contemporaries understood celebrity as a condition of authorship. This dissertation takes as its subject the origins and development of symbolic power for authors as it was expressed in the trappings of celebrity and mass culture and argues that authorship became no longer strictly a profession of writing, but rather a performative endeavor that could be presented through diverse commercial markets. Investigating the …

Sexual Iconoclasm In Early Modern Drama, Lynnette Macomber

Honors Theses and Capstones

My thesis examines the relationship between sexuality and the destruction of images – iconoclasm – in the context of post-Reformation English theatre by analyzing three plays: Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, and Aphra Behn’s The Rover. I argue that the idea of sexual iconoclasm is not only present in these plays but also contributes to the discussion of the religious and sociopolitical contexts (and perhaps commentary) of these plays and early modern theatre in general. So what exactly is sexual iconoclasm? In short, it describes the destruction of sexual images, and by sexual images I …

Lost In The Labyrinth: Review Of I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick By Laurence A. Rickels, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.