Digital Commons Network^™

Fated By A Fallen World, Danielle Dentremont

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Owning The Body: Bodily Autonomy And Consent In The Works Of Octavia Butler, Korryn Plantenberg

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

During the 1980’s the Second Wave feminist movement provided more interest in interdisciplinary movements towards equity in the case of gender. One movement that slowly grew was Womanism, which included the intersection between race and gender. Specifically, the experiences of black women in the United States. Inspired by this movement authors such as Octavia Butler was a black science fiction author who wrote literature focused on black women. Alongside her preoccupation, with race in science fiction, Butler explores the nature of consent and bodily autonomy in utopian and dystopian futures. Within her novels, she uses Womanism to engage with futuristic …

The Gendered Shackles Of Clarissa Dalloway And Septimus Warren Smith, Abigail Coburn

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Tension In The Eye: Milton And Surveillance, Joseph Abrams

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Queer Representation: Revitilizing F. Scott Fitzgerald’S Place In The American Literary Canon, Olivia Wallace

Honors Theses

F. Scott Fitzgerald is colloquially known as one of the great American writers. His acclaim is most commonly attributed to his depiction of heterosexual romances set during the Jazz Age. However, under the surface, many of the male characters that he represents display queer behaviors that subvert this idea. The texts analyzed here include “The Rich Boy” (1926), Tender is the Night (1934), and The Great Gatsby (1925). These men commonly avoid perpetuating heteronormative culture, projecting a general air of cynicism towards the institution of marriage, and a subtle inclination towards feminine characteristics and queer love. Overall, the inclusion of …

Orientalism In Arthur Golden’S Memoirs Of A Geisha, Britany Castilaw

Honors Theses

Memoirs of a Geisha is a 1997 historical fiction novel by Arthur Golden. It is told as the fictional memoirs of the late Sayuri Nitta, a famous former geisha who worked in Gion in the 1930s as one of the most successful geisha in history. Since its publication, Memoirs has been criticized for an Orientalist and historically inaccurate depiction of geisha—particularly by Mineko Iwasaki, a real former geisha whom Golden interviewed when writing the novel. The first chapter of this thesis is dedicated to an explanation of Orientalism as the problematic, stereotype-driven depictions of the East made by the West, …

Poesis And Sympathy: Community Through Craftsmanship, Braden Dodds Taylor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A community is no more than a mass of individuals that is held together by the objects that connect them. The independent spaces occupied by a craftsman or consumer become dependent on their counterparts. These connected environments create the ecosystem of the community. Objects originating from the craftsmen of the community allow for sympathy to flourish. When these objects are created by well-educated craftsmen of the community, they originate with natural understanding, further extending their reach. While nonnatural things such as plastic items have an intrinsic connection to modern life, they do not encourage folk to connect with others in …

Demigod And Delinquent: Percy Jackson And The American Teenager, Katie Weber

Honors Theses

Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, the first novel in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, has achieved tremendous success with adolescent audiences nationwide since its original publication in 2005. Despite the widespread success of the books, the critical conversation about the novel and subsequent series remains fairly sparse. The existing critical literature on the series addresses its mythological aspects and adolescents’ reactions to the novel but does not analyze Percy’s status as an adolescent or what the novel suggests about adolescents as a whole through its portrayal of Percy. This thesis first provides an overview of the history of …

Humanizing History: Applying Media Storytelling To Lived Experiences, Benjamin Goeser

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

This creative project explores the tendency of individuals to avoid or alter deemed unfavorable, unflattering, or simply humiliating traits or actions in their written and spoken personal stories. Such choices come from fear and pressure to present oneself in a more perfected state for others to “like” rather than a human state for audiences to relate to and learn from. Through a series of written personal accounts to air on UNO’s college radio station and website MavRadio.FM, the project brings attention to habits of human nature more likely to remain unspoken. The goal is to encourage the sharing of …

Anti-Racist Resource Guide, Bank Street College Of Education

The Center for Children's Literature

An annotated list of anti-racist children's literature that meets the criteria of having a BIPOC protagonist, the experience of self discovery, self-advocacy, and realizations on the part of the main character and/or a joy or celebration of one's cultural or ethnic identity.

For further information and updates, see the Library Research Guide

Fairy Tales In Relation To Monster Theory: Stories Defining The Transformation Of Culture, Elsie Pak

Student Research

Fairy tales are stories that are defined and shaped by the cultures they are told within, lending them naturally fluid forms as the societal boundaries of each generation and change and expand. This research paper explores certain fairy tales under the lens of Monster Theory and the Seven Theses proposed by Jeffery Jerome Cohen from his introductory essay “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Through careful analysis and dissection, this paper offers a deeper look into the nature and construction of monsters and reveals the purpose monstrosity serves in society other than just to frighten. By delving into the insights proposed by …

“Inheritor” And “Originator”: Jane Austen’S Feminist Voice As Bridge Between Mary Wollstonecraft And Virginia Woolf, Stephanie Hyta '23

Honor Scholar Theses

This thesis explores the feminism of Jane Austen’s six novels: Sense and Sensibility (published in 1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, the last two published posthumously in December 1817. Austen’s feminism serves as a bridge between the 18th and 20th centuries: her novels include a critique of the patriarchal system that Mary Wollstonecraft analyzed so judiciously in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); they also anticipate ideas in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929), a six-part essay that originated as lectures that Woolf gave in October 1928 at …

Music And Literature: Reciprocal Tools For Analysis, Creation, Performance, And Education, Lily Rutledge '23

Honor Scholar Theses

Through research, written analysis, and live performance, this thesis will explore the different ways music and literature overlap and inform one another, drawing primarily on the scholarship of intermediality and the pedagogical approach of Arts Integration. As a student of both music and English literature, I am very attuned to the different ways these two forms of narrative already overlap. In my viola lessons, I have often discussed how a musical phrase could be turned into a vivid narrative to help me better understand the music I was performing. I also frequently have noticed musical elements in prose and poetry …

Riot, Revolution, And Remembrance: Modern Memory Of The Haymarket Affair, Maggie Westover '23

Honor Scholar Theses

In this thesis, I combine several disciplines to analyze multiple types of sources in order to get a better understanding of how the Haymarket Affair has been remembered. In this thesis, I combine history, musical theater, and literature to show how the memory of the Haymarket affair has changed in the last 137 years. Relying on newspaper articles, a musical performance, an episode of a television show, trial documents, and a collection of primary sources about Haymarket made available by the Chicago Historical Society, I am able to track the memory of the Haymarket Affair and how it has changed …

The Hate U Give As Counternarrative: A Rhetorical Site Of Competing Frames & The Disruption Of Dominant Narratives Through Counter-Storytelling & Homing, Jackeline Camacho

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Angie Thomas’s novel, The Hate U Give, is an African American Young Adult novel (AAYA) that captures the violence and devastating effects of police brutality and the gruesome rhetorical strategies that the dominant public sphere uses to criminalize, regulate, and dehumanize Black Americans. In this paper, I use the theoretical framework of counter-storytelling, the theoretical concept of homing, and the rhetorical strategy of framing, to analyze how Thomas exposes the ways in which the dominant public sphere silences, excludes, and discredits the voices and experiences of Black people to give readers access to the dominant public sphere in order …

Media Analysis And Journalistic Applications, Jose Villasenor Cervantes

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Media has been a part of our lives now for a better part of over a century or more. From newspapers, radio, tv, film, music. All of these have impacted our lives since their creation and have influenced our society for better or worse for educational or not so educational purposes. Media in all of its aspects have been around for many years and that has translated to every part of our society. We see a film and we quickly talk about its whether it was good or bad but we analyze it. This goes for everyone from children to …

Irreverent Womanhood: The Healing Of Intergenerational And Cultural Trauma In The Chicanx And Latinx Sonic Poetry Of Amalia Ortiz And Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Yasmine A. Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

The connections between nontraditional forms of literature and spiritual activism lie within the resistive practices of Chicanx Feminism. This thesis argues that cultural healing and social change is dependent upon the recognition of trauma as a step towards enacting social justice. Additionally, this thesis focuses on the figure of Coyolxauhqui and indigenous motherhood to reveal procedures for change. Through the theory of trauma, this thesis examines the nontraditional Chicanx/Latinx poetry of Amalia Ortiz’s sonic rock opera, Cancíon, Cannibal, Cabaret, & Other Songs and Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s novel in verse, Dreaming of You.

My investigation into the breaking of gendered …

The Processing Of /Ɪ/-/I/ And /Ɑ/-/Æ/ Contrasts In Spanish-English Bilingualism, Elizabeth M. Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The following study utilizes an experimental paradigm known as the Sequence Recall Task (Dupoux et al., 2001) to examine the processing of the English vowel contrasts /ɪ/-/i/ and /ɑ/-/æ/ among Spanish-English bilinguals. Using dominance scores calculated from the Bilingual Language Profile (Birdsong et al., 2011), this study examines the processing of these contrasts relative to a control contrast /u/-/ɛ/ as well as how the processing of these contrasts is modulated by participants’ English dominance. A total of 24 Spanish-English bilingual speakers participated in a Sequence Recall Task that targeted the processing of these three contrasts. The results indicate that participants …

The Witch In The Woods: An Exploration Of Female Representation In Mexican American And Japanese Folklore, Sydni D. Salinas

Theses and Dissertations

An exploration of female archetypes that examines their display and representation in Mexican American and Japanese folklore. The study ties the two cultures together for the purpose of juxtaposing an older and younger culture utilizing folklore in similar ways of control over women’s narratives. It examines how a patriarchal culture’s folklore provides punishments through the medium of storytelling for transgressive or deviant women. When women act outside of their preferred archetypes or behavior in folklore, they are met with severe narrative consequences. The archetypes discussed in this thesis, “La Virgen Armada and the Final Girl,” “The Bride,” “The Sacrilegious …

No Middle Ground: Demagogic Rhetorical Practices At The Truth And Courage Bus Stop In Harlingen, Tx, Kymberly O. Morquecho

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the rhetorical and discursive strategies embraced by conservative politicians and their supporters on the campaign trail. Using Dr. Patricia Roberts-Miller’s definition of demagogic cultures coupled with the five markers, or tendencies, of these cultures, I explore how the speakers at the October 22, 2022 Truth and Courage PAC campaign rally in Harlingen, TX deployed these tactics to galvanize voters to vote for TX-34 Republican candidate Mayra Flores. Through a combination of descriptive and rhetorical analysis, I demonstrate how these presenters engage in demagogic and anti-democratic rhetorical moves to an audience of Hispanics. Lastly, I outline how these …

The American Dream, The American Lie: An Examination Of Queerness, Disability And American Identity In Miss Lonelyhearts, Vivian Arias

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project, informed primarily by queer theory and disability studies, examines the ways in which queerness, disability, and marginality are central to Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, and his critique of the American Dream. Nathanael West, Jewish American novelist and screenwriter, is remembered for his work critiquing the American Dream; however, one aspect that has remained understudied is how his novels feature non-normative outsiders, past and present. The primary analysis of this project is focused on the 1933 novella Miss Lonelyhearts. Other works by West are also referenced. From West’s perspective, the American Dream was the American nightmare for …

Consuming The World: Poetic Appetite, Memory, And Identity In Li-Young Lee’S Food Poems, Claire Liszka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food is a universal human necessity, yet food often serves more than a biological purpose as it informs individual and communal identities, and even facilitates memory. This thesis explores personal memory, the development of identity, and an almost reverential connection to nature in several food poems by Li-Young Lee in Rose (1986) and Behind My Eyes (2008). Born in 1957, Lee has been writing poetry since he was young, studying under Gerald Stern in the late 1970s, and he is known for writing sublime, transcendent yet incredibly accessible and expressive poetry. This thesis gives an overview of food studies and …

Bibliotherapy: A Literary And Linguistic Analysis Of Literature, Matthew Curry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bibliotherapy—the process of utilizing literature for its therapeutic properties—has been around for centuries; however, it wasn’t until a surge of research in the 1920s that the process became recognized as an adequate method of therapy. With the rising mental health crisis looming over the United States, the time to develop, establish, and advocate for a bibliotherapeutic curriculum in K-12 public education is now. Using literary works such as Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, Helena Fox’s How it Feels to Float, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, this thesis establishes the literary, therapeutic, and pedagogical reasoning for the implementation of such …

Mankind Is Machine: A Monstrous Posthuman Reading Of Philip K. Dick’S Selected Works, Gabriel Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The works of Philip K. Dick act as an ideal template for readers to explore what it means to be human in a technologically dominated world. Dick’s emphasis on the usage of androids and artificial intelligence as literary monsters allows for a posthuman reading of the traditional literary monster, notably in how their uncanny nature and behavior helps reveal the synthetic tendencies of humanity. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, “Imposter,” and “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon,” each narrative incorporates artificial intelligence and androids acting as others to reveal the machine-like qualities of Dick’s human characters. This …

Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory, Rebekah Izard

English (MA) Theses

Fantastical narratives such as fairy tales and magical realist literature utilizes fantastic and intangible spaces to unpack that which is often beyond the limitations imposed on our understanding by reality: the stunting experience of individual and generational traumas. This study aims to contribute to the current literary discourse’s understandings of fantastic literature and its subgenres as a tool for healing from trauma through the application of ontological notions of Selfhood and Otherness supplied by 20th century philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, and the notion of Orientalism by postcolonial scholar, Edward Said. The dialogue generated by these schools of thought provide a space …

The Black Testament: A Portrait Of Female Genealogy In The African Diaspora, Raven Mcshan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

The Black Testament: A Portrait of Genealogy in the African Diaspora is a hybrid work of creative nonfiction and poetry. These pieces are based on my genealogical research into my family history. The collection traces from my discoveries in the present time back through my lived experiences, the lives of my relatives, and the lives of my ancestors. The subject of the work focuses on the women in my family and the various influences they have had in my life. The collection grapples with themes such as black womanhood, diasporic existence, and complex heritage. The traveling back of genealogical research …

From “Calling” To “Just Talking": An Exploration Of Changing Relationship Terminology As A Linguistic Societal Phenomenon, Leora Wasserman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will explore the correlation between societal and linguistic change,
specifically relating to the usage of the colloquialism “Just Talking” in 21st Century courtship vernacular. The usage of this term seems to be relatively new and does not appear in many scientific articles. In 2019, at the beginning of the research project which prompted this paper, there were no scientific articles that attempted to discuss this phenomenon. Since then, only two articles on the subject have been published. This thesis will attempt to understand why this term is being used and how it relates to the terms which have …

Führer And Father In Flux: Fascism And Desire In The Works Of George Saunders, Don Delillo, And David Foster Wallace, K. Tyler Wick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the end of World War II, the possibility of fascism and totalitarianism as a global threat continues to proliferate in American art and literature to the point that many individuals paradoxically desire the very things that seek to control them. Postmodern literature often portrays fascism and totalitarianism as it exists under contemporary capitalist systems as a multiplicity of discreet machines operating within objects of desire. These objects are complicated by the 24-hour news cycle and the popularity of solitary, on-demand entertainment that in turn mediates the desires and fears of a population through strict control of information. This thesis …

The Hysterical Woman: An Analysis Of Trauma In Gothic Women’S Literature And Modern Horror Film, Molly Holdway

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores trauma related to hysteria through themes of confinement, isolation, and motherhood in the works “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson, and The Babadook (2014) directed by Jennifer Kent. Hysteria is explored first as a diagnosis and then as a weaponized term meant to keep women facing isolation and grief in a continuous state of oppression. The gothic and gothic horror genres display these themes through the dark nature of the human mind, which is vital in understanding the stories of the female characters discussed and the …

Mythos Series (Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined, Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined, And Troy: The Greek Myths Reimagined) By Stephen Fry, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Articles & Research

Book review of Stephen Fry's Mythos series, reviewed by Phillip Fitzsimmons.