Digital Commons Network^™

A Loving Compilation Of Ecopoems: An Anthology Of My Favorites From The Ecopoetry And Climate Crisis Course Syllabus And Beyond, Emily Kerimian , '25, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

This anthology draws from a series of poems that I read as a college junior in a humanities-focused environmental studies class at Swarthmore College, as well as ecopoems that I have read in my own free time. It is meant to honor each of these poems that touched me in a unique way, which I will discuss in my commentary. For some, I was drawn to the poem’s overall message, or strong sensory language, or the identity of the poet that seeped through. I love poetry as a medium of expression, even though I sometimes struggle to find my poetic …

Poets Rooted In Nature: An Ecopoetry Anthology, Ian Chen , '24, Winston Zhang , '27, Riya Rao , '26, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

Anyone who has studied poetry has experienced its elusiveness as well as the profound impact that it brings upon its readers. Although poetry comes in many shapes and forms, the universal theme among impactful poetry is its ability to both evoke powerful emotions and inspire readers to action. In the somewhat bleak time of the present, individuals can easily feel insignificant among the masses; however, poetry can inspire wonder and break readers away from the screens and fickle distractions ever present in the modern world. In this anthology, we focus on the multifaceted genre of ecopoetry, a genre of poetry …

Wonder & Warning: The Salve That's Needed To Heal Our Planet, Benton Greenberg , '26, Elle Anthony , '26, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

Icebergs melting; plastic in the oceans; greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere; deforestation; industrial agriculture; pollution; overfishing. Humans have inhabited Earth for a mere fraction of its existence, comprising less than 1% of its total timeline, yet we are rapidly destroying it. The health of our planet is at a tipping point. Poets have been writing about the disharmony between the environment and humans for hundreds of years. Writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne plead us to change our ways through their haunting and ghastly works, while Jane Hirshfield and others speak through animals to hold us accountable for our faults. However, not …

Echoes Of Nature: Exploring The Intricacies Of Existence And The Environment, Lena Massengale , '25, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

In this anthology, the works from highly skilled authors allow the reader to peek into the existential through a celebration of the natural world. Featuring the unique writing styles of Charles Simic, WS Merwin, and bell hooks, the reader is transported into a world of ecopoetry that aims to touch on more than earthly space. Transcending the rigid bounds of environmental scholarship, these authors incorporate their personal experiences in their interpretation of environmentalism. From the spiritual and ancestral ties to masked social critique, my anthology “Echoes of Nature: Exploring the Intricacies of Existence and the Environment” invites readers to explore …

Before We Say Farewell: An Anthology Of Ecopoetry, Suhyun Kim , '24, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

When faced with the climate crisis, we humans have responded with varying levels of distress. Most of us swing between despair, when we fall into grief at our own stupidity and possible doom, and hope, that a solution is right around the corner. There is a middle ground of apathy, for those who’ve lost all hope and/or become paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the climate crisis. Regardless of where we are, life under the climate crisis is not easy, and we all need to be reminded that it’s worth going on from time to time. Ironically, many of us …

Understanding The Anthropocene, Monica Kramer , '25, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

The current climate crisis can be a daunting, anxiety-provoking topic. Terms such as “climate anxiety” are brought up because thinking about the prospect of future warming can cause extreme dread. Our current trajectory has even pushed people to forgo having children. Yet although this dread is very warranted and cannot be minimized, simply fearing for the future does not present any solutions to improving it. Ecopoetry can give us a window into helping deal with our grief, and can also suggest solutions for moving forward. This anthology presents poems that do both, helping us to better understand our current era …

The Whispers Of Magnolias, Nican Tlaca, And The World Around Us: An Anthology, Gabriela Rodriguez , '27, Qing Hao , '25, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

Why read poetry after all, for all the frustration it can stir and the immense degree of patience it often demands (particularly challenging in our age of distractions)? Jane Hirshfield’s quotes offer a lucid insight: good poetry often changes how we perceive our surroundings and our states of existence. It lets us experience life in a transformed way – different before and after reading the poem – and inspires us to view our world with a sharper, more curious eye.
Here, we have compiled an anthology of ecopoetry that features a diverse selection of poems, ranging in time, culture, and …

Death, Love, And Feathers: Poems Teaching Us To Fly, Isa Specchierla , '26, Sophia Cáceres , '26, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

Death, Love, and Feathers: Poems Teaching Us to Fly is an anthology that provides readers who are just starting to become interested in ecopoetry and want a place to begin their wonderful journey. We have incorporated some well-known ecopoets such as Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou, which have personally inspired our own interest and sparked our love for ecopoetry. We have also included a few other lesser-known contemporary eco-poets, whose work touches on how our environment has been transformed through climate change.
We also present poems by Wanda Coleman, Eleanor Wilner, and Joy Harjo.
Through this …

Inviting Submission: Isabella Beeton At The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1856-1865, Julie Megan Sorge Way

English Theses & Dissertations

Isabella Beeton, creator of the iconic domestic manual Beeton’s Book of Household Management, died suddenly in 1865, just before her twenty-ninth birthday. Her popular book survived to codify stereotypical Victorian female ideals. Yet the “Mrs Beeton” mythos camouflages a remarkable talent: far from domestic drudgery, Beeton maintained a vibrant career as a writer and editor at the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (EDM), traveling widely to research the latest fashions and laboring behind the scenes to ensure the magazine’s success. Closely examining Beeton’s EDM work demonstrates how these formative, productive years shaped her later, more popular writing. Such a …

Mythos And Logos: Foucauldian Subjectivities Of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Hayley R. Cisney

Student Publications

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography details a centuries-long battle between Orlando and the sexual structures of repressive power in England. The biographical framework of the novel implies its contribution to objective, historical fact, while the miraculous nature of Orlando’s sexual transformation directly conflicts with constituted epistemologies of being. This paper examines these contrasting forces through Michel Foucault’s post-structuralist considerations of knowledge, power, and sexuality, in addition to the incorporation of other scholarship on Woolf’s conceptions of gender. I specifically follow the timeline of Foucault’s interpretation of the repressive hypothesis as it unfolds throughout the course of Woolf’s novel. By establishing …

Escaping From Myth: Denver’S Reclamation Of Love In Toni Morrison’S Beloved, Lainey Terfruchte

Audre Lorde Prize

No abstract provided.

Sinning As Empowerment: Reclaiming God As A Black, Queer Woman In Alice Walker’S The Color Purple, Bethany Abrams

Audre Lorde Prize

In this paper, the author embarks on the task of re-imagining the seven sins of Christianity in the context of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, specifically in relation to the character Shug Avery.

Still Searching For Zora Neale Hurston, Khiara M. Bridges

Michigan Law Review

A review of Their Eyes Were Watching God. By Zora Neale Hurston.

2024 Greenleaf Review-- Catharsis (No. 37), Sigma Tau Delta

The Greenleaf Review

No abstract provided.

Bibliography For "Pico Iyer Display", Isabella Piechota, Arianna Tillman, Kalea Brown

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography created to support a display about Pico Iyer at the Leatherby Libraries during April 2024 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University.

Beyond The Looking Glass: Dreams And Somnial States And Spaces In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Anne N. Nagel

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Poised between a waning magico-theological tradition of symbolic dream interpretation and the rising influence of scientific dream theories, which equated dreaming with disorder, the dream occupied a unique space in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Dreams were coming untethered from signification, as natural philosophers deemed their content indecipherable and chaotic. Yet vestiges of early modern beliefs could still lend supernatural power and polyphony to dreams.

This was not simply a matter of making a binary choice between two ways of thinking about dreams but instead a site of collisions and coalescences. I contend that the ways in which dreams were conceptualized in …

Booktok's Potentials And Possibilities In Composition Studies: An Interactive Digital Collection, Hanna Varilek

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The following thesis, “BookTok’s Potentials and Possibilities in Composition Studies: An Interactive Digital Collection,” explores the phenomenon of BookTok, a vibrant out-of-school literacy program on the social media platform TikTok centered around books, reading, and literary discussions. As digital platforms continue to shape contemporary cultural landscapes, BookTok emerges as a unique space where users engage with literature and participate in discussions that influence their reading habits and preferences. This thesis explores the possibilities of BookTok in reimagining the current landscape of first-year writing and composition classrooms by introducing an interactive digital collection of BookTok content and educational resources titled, The …

0887: Gwenyth E. Hood Collection, 1889-2023, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Gwenyth Elise Hood was born on December 10, 1955, to Thomas Arthur Hood and Marion Louise Snee Hood in White Plains, NY, but moved with her family to Brandon, Vermont at the age of seven. She developed a love of reading and writing at an early age, discovering some favorite authors—Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, and J.R.R. Tolkien—at roughly the same time, in early adolescence. Then came Dante. Dante drew her to learn Latin and Italian; she had already started on French due to family heritage and the availability of the language in High School. In 1979 she won a University of …

Where The Blue Flowers Grow: Sehnsucht And Eucatastrophe In Christian Fantasy Literature, Ashley Shepherd

Senior Honors Theses

Sehnsucht is a longing for Heaven that cannot be fully described or fulfilled in this world. Eucatastrophe is an unexpected turn of events in a story that brings about incredible joy and a happy ending. This thesis examines how fantasy authors George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien explore both of these spiritual phenomena in many of their works. This thesis also discusses how sehnsucht and eucatastrophe appear in Scripture and can be used in stories to point readers to Heaven. Biblically, sehnsucht is a longing for Heaven, and eucatastrophe serves as the fulfillment of that longing. …

Supporting Identity Through Creative Writing: A Curriculum, Caleb Ehrenhaft , '25

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of The Gut-Brain Axis On Alzheimer’S Disease, Elissa Wakim

Best Integrated Writing

Elissa’s review for the Graduate Biomedical Review focuses on the links between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain; the gut-brain axis and the development of Alzheimer’s disease. As a student in the Microbiology and Immunology Masters Program Elissa was particularly interested in the gut microbiota and their connection to neurodegenerative disease. She tidily reviewed the literature and wrote a fascinating and compelling piece of work.

Best Integrated Writing Spring 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. This is the first issue after a 5 year hiatus.

Hidden Monstrosities: The Transformation Of Medieval Characters And Conventions In Shakespeare's Romances, Lynette Kristine Kuliyeva

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When Shakespeare’s First Folio was published in 1623, it was entitled Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, the title designating the three genres under which his plays would be categorized for the next 250 years. Later, Irish critic Edward Dowden took it upon himself to restructure the Shakespearean canon by adding plays that were not previously published in the First Folio, reclassifying the genres of several of the plays, and establishing a new genre to accompany the previous three: romance. Within this fourth generic category of romance, Dowden situated four of the Shakespearean plays: Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; …

“Manne, For Thy Loue Wolde I Not Lette”: Eucharistic Portrayals Of Caritas In Medieval And Early Modern English Literature And Drama 1350-1650, Rachel Tanski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The religious Reformation in England heralded significant changes in Christian theology, clerical and lay practices, and textual interpretation. These sweeping changes encompassed nearly all avenues of intellectual thought, and debates ranged from whether or not religious texts should be written in the traditional latin or the vernacular, thereby determining whether interpretive authority remained within the clergy or became available to laypersons, to arguments over very specific aspects of theological doctrine, such as the substantive nature of the Eucharist. These debates were not confined among Church officials; politicians, monarchs, commoners, and literary authors engaged in these discussions and had been doing …

Lawful Injustice: Novel Readings Of Racialized Temporality And Legal Instabilities, Danielle N. Mercier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project, “Lawful Injustice: Novel Readings of Racialized Temporality and Legal Instabilities,” examines three specific BIPOC communities across literature—Native American, African American, and Asian American—to understand the influence of U.S. legal frameworks and temporalities upon both the collective and the individual. I assess how legal frameworks create and protect their own instabilities as well as understand how they are produced by the uneven temporal structures of the law. I examine how such legal and settler colonial temporalities are at odds with Native American, African American, and Asian American temporalities. These temporalities—a legal/juridical temporality which reinscribes settler colonial oppression and the …

Textual Variants In Eudora Welty’S "A Piece Of News”, Brooke Derrington, Abby Choe

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Eudora Welty’s “A Piece of News” presents the question, how does one achieve self-actualization? For the protagonist Ruby Fisher, the answer is language, although that answer is not clear in the original 1937 published version of the story. That story’s focal point is Ruby’s tumultuous and complicated relationship with her husband, Clyde. In contrast, the revised 1941 version from Welty’s collection A Curtain of Green shifts the focus from Ruby’s abusive marriage to her interiority. The subsequent increase in word count, shifts in narration, and emphasis on Ruby claiming her name when she reads it in a newspaper elevates the …

Analyzing The Cynical Perspective Of Death In The Book Thief, Dorothy Elizabeth Hollar

Masters Theses

In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, death is used as a theme and a character to convey the plot of the story. The character of death is used as a device to show the life of a young girl living in Nazi Germany through the eyes of something more sinister and pessimistic. The story explores trauma, friendship, and the power of words when it seems all hope is lost. This thesis will explore the aspect of death as a character and will examine how it works in the story. The creative portion of my thesis will examine the themes …

"We Are Bad Feminists!": Understanding Genre And Rhetoric In (Post)Feminist Dramedy Television, Cailin Rolph

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Centered on Lena Dunham’s Girls (2012) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (2016) this thesis examines the use of genre conventions in dramedy to facilitate feminist critiques of postfeminist ideals. In conducting a case study of feminist rhetoric present in the shows Girls and Fleabag, this thesis addresses a gap in genre studies concerning the social and political potency of the dramedy genre. The thesis utilizes rhetorical critique, through generic methods, to identify the specific techniques used by Dunham and Waller-Bridge. Through its analyses, this thesis argues that dramedy can uniquely operate as a work of social action and critique, using …

“Éowyn It Was, And Dernhelm Also”: Reading The ‘Wild Shieldmaiden’ Through A Queer Lens., Sara Brown

Journal of Tolkien Research

The Éowyn we first meet in 'The Two Towers' is a woman who has been traumatised by the loss of her parents at a young age, the recent loss of her cousin Théodred, the apparent weakening of her uncle Théoden, and her inability to escape the lascivious gaze of Wormtongue. Marginalised by her gender and by social expectation, her desire to find purpose in her life as a shieldmaiden is repeatedly thwarted. Seeking to reclaim control over her life and to make her own choices, she rides out with the Rohirrim not as Éowyn, but as Dernhelm.

Past scholars have …

Norse Inspired Tales: Four Changes Of Fate, Pete Wille

University Honors Theses

Norse Inspired Tales: Four Changes of Fate is a collection of four original short stories meant to act as an introduction to a broader literary world where Norse myth meets late eighteen hundred's, San Francisco. The introduction gives background on my literary journey and explains some of the choices made within these stories. Each following story reveals the characters and the world they currently inhabit.