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Encouraging Activism In Secondary English: Reading And Writing For Social Justice, Elisabeth Spinner

Dissertations

This dissertation presents researched backed, social justice oriented teaching strategies secondary English teachers can implement to encourage their students to think critically and take action on issues that matter to them. Foundational to this research is critical inquiry which encourages students to not read or listen to information passively, but rather to investigate, critique, explore, and ask questions of what they are reading. This approach is necessary when encouraging students to dispel myths and stereotypes, understand questions of rights and justice, and find the right way to be involved. The English classroom is an ideal place for students to do …

George Macdonald's Phantastes As A Bildungsroman Of Spiritual Reality, Hannah O'Malley

Senior Theses

George MacDonald's 1858 novel Phantastes is one of the first fantasy novels written for adults, but it has received little attention in part because of its confusing structure. I argue that Phantastes is best understood as a Bildungsroman, a novel of formation. While the Bildungsroman is usually a realist novel of commercial society, Phantastes’ fantasy elements allow the protagonist to grow up into a spiritual reality that contrasts with many commercial values. MacDonald uses the fantasy genre to show his protagonist's inner development as he learns humility, gains feminine and childlike virtues, and leaves behind the old self

English And Cultural Studies, Spring 2022, English And Cultural Studies Department

Bryant University Communications and Press

No abstract provided.

"You Can Disagree Without Being Disagreeable": A Rhetorical Study Of Tweets About Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Amy Coney Barrett, Lauren Durham

Honors Theses

The selection, nomination, and swearing in of Justice Amy Coney Barrett took place amid an already tension-ridden political and cultural landscape. As a figurehead of women’s rights and equality, Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not want President Trump to choose her successor. Her dying wish was for her seat to be replaced after the 2020 presidential election. Nevertheless, Trump moved his Supreme Court nominee through the process at an unprecedented rate, and within six weeks of Ginsburg’s passing, a conservative constitutional originalist named Amy Coney Barrett took her place.

The nature of the Supreme Court position, the contrasts between the two …

Gonzo Eternal, John Francis Brick

Dissertations (1934 -)

Gonzo Eternal enters the recent surge in scholarly attention to the work of Hunter S. Thompson and his practice of Gonzo journalism by examining the growing conflict between the dominant view of Gonzo journalism as Thompson’s unique and proprietary style, and the relatively new trend toward an understanding of Gonzo as a continuum of literary practice that both predates Thompson and continues to adapt and evolve beyond his death in 2005. I contend that this problem is fundamentally one of definition, and that the continued growth of the field depends on a reassessment of Thompson that reframes him from Gonzo …

2022 Greenleaf Review-- The Gen Z Survival Guide (No. 35), Sigma Tau Delta

The Greenleaf Review

No abstract provided.

Britain's Extraterrestrial Empire: Colonial Ambition, Anxiety, And Ambivalence In Early Modern Literature, Mark Edward Wisniewski

Dissertations (1934 -)

This project uses the context of early modern English colonialism and empire building to examine five British authors whose fiction focuses on extraterrestrial spaces: Edmund Spenser, Margaret Cavendish, Francis Godwin, Aphra Behn, and John Milton. I frame the relationship between extraterrestrial settings and British colonialism through Jeffery Knapp’s conception of trifling, that even though early imperial England had little geopolitical power, the nation could differentiate itself as an otherworldly empire, both in origin and aim. Additionally, I build upon the connections drawn between colonialism and early modern literature by theorists such as Richard Helgerson, David Quint, and Stephen Greenblatt. I …

Innovation, Genre, And Authenticity In The Nineteenth-Century Irish Novel, David Aiden Kenney Ii

Dissertations (1934 -)

Attempts to reintegrate nineteenth-century novels into the narrative of Irish literary history have been greatly hampered by their long neglect and persistent critical narratives that regard the literary output of this era as either an ingenuous or inartistic failure to establish an authentic literary tradition. Through four case studies, this dissertation explores how national romance and picaresque novels of the mid to late nineteenth-century made significant contributions to the development of the novel form within the Irish literary tradition through stylistic dexterity and cultural subtlety that has long gone unrecognized. To illustrate this, I first analyze Sheridan Le Fanu’s The …

Intertextuality And Sociopolitical Engagement In Contemporary Anglophone Women’S Writing, Jackielee Derks

Dissertations (1934 -)

My project examines contemporary Anglophone women’s rewriting to locate an emerging mode of intertextuality that defies existing literary categories. Together, the writers in my project present a new and formally innovative intertextuality that rebels against available terminology and requires new ways of reading. This project centers authors from a variety of historical contexts, including the African diaspora and former British colonies, whose intertextuality is grounded in the interrogation of Western forms and conventions. I argue that the rewritings of Ali Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne deploy intertextuality to recuperate women’s experiences while interrogating the mechanisms responsible for their …

Negotiating Ideology, Self, And Classroom Instruction: A Framework Of Critical Text Selection For High School English Language Arts Curricula, Abigail Bautista , '22

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy, Lena Nighswander

Honors Projects

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy is a new play that takes up the issues of adaptation, translation, and temporality in regards to Frank Wedekind's Frühlingserwachen, a play infamous in its revelry in controversy and unflinching nature in the face of social issues many would prefer to ignore. Several modern adaptations of the original text exist, but none have utilized the 2020s as a setting nor have they used the fertile landscape of the American midwest as a background.

This play, set in Toledo, OH, leans into the Wedekindian tradition of cutting social criticism and controversy in its exploration of …

Wave By Wave: A Fantasy Author's Guide For Refining A Creative Writing Style, Michael Bose

Senior Honors Theses

Writing a novel is a great undertaking. Many would-be writers have set out to create a novel and give up halfway through, uncertain where or how they failed. This project aims to help prospective authors get past that barrier. By analyzing one’s own writing style, a writer can ascertain greater insight into the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own work and therefore help rectify mistakes one might make otherwise, or learn to see a chapter from a new angle. The author will demonstrate this method on himself first by way of focused revisions. A sample chapter of a fantasy novel, …

Yahweh’S Benevolence Vs. Anat’S Malevolence: A Comparative Analysis Of Judges 4–5 And Col Ii 1–Col Iii 2, Michaela Misantone

Senior Honors Theses

The actions of ancient Near Eastern warrior gods are often depicted as acts of vengeance, greed, and brutality, serving selfish ambition and never-ending power struggles. These gods and their warfare ethic dominated the worldview of the ancient world in which the events of the Old Testament took place. The actions of the Hebrew God are often included, even emphasized, in discussions of ancient divine warfare today. There are supposed similarities between the actions of war gods like Anat from the Ugaritic pantheon and those of Yahweh from ancient Israel. Unfortunately, this has led to the present-day belief that the God …

Focused And Autonomous Writing Through Objects, Yvonne Houy

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Objects—carefully curated—help focus discussions and knowledge explorations, and become the basis of student-centered scholarly writing when Object-based learning (OBL) is combined with structured research writing assignments using the Cornell Notes questions in a Google form.

Educators cannot eliminate distractions but can encourage focus and attention (Lang, Distracted, 2020, 1-24). I propose using curated objects to focus student attention: Such object-based learning (OBL) allows students to engage holistically with otherwise abstract facts, figures and frameworks (Chatterjee and Hannan, 2016). Combining OBL with structured active note taking, such as through the Cornell note taking method, “can lead to efficient study practices, better …

Tales From Ladouleur: Fictive Grief And Blackness Through The Lens Of Fairytales, Exquisite Williams

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Cover And Front Matter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Kindness In The Bardo: Empathy As A Catalyst For Healing In Victims Of Dissociation, Julia Dorothea Chopelas

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, a host of undead characters find themselves in a spiritual limbo based on the bardo. Although they won’t admit it to themselves, Roger Bevins III and Hans Vollman are most certainly dead. Despite their supernatural makeup as ghosts, Bevins and Vollman bear strong psychological resonance with the living: they are human, heartbroken, and lost. For the ghosts of Oak Hills Cemetery, the inefficient coping mechanism of dissociation perpetuates their afterlife imprisonment in the bardo. Bevins and Vollman suffer from a variety of dissociative symptoms, their minds’ psychological defense against the trauma that has …

Assimilation In The United States: Semitism And Asian Americanism, Megan Gibson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

How Gender Affects Writing: Jackson’S And Fitzgerald’S Portrayals Of Mental Illness, Cryslin A. Ledbetter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Cryslin Ledbetter's essay, "How Gender Affects Writing: Jackson’s and Fitzgerald’s Portrayals of Mental Illness" examines the similarities and differences between Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. Through a careful comparison of male and female writers, the author analyzes defining factors that effect the final product of each novel.

“One Aims At The Officers First”: Reassessing The Relationship Of C. S. Lewis And T. S. Eliot, Ben Reinhard

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

This article challenges the received account of the relationship between C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot, arguing that Lewis's antipathy towards Eliot was a defining feature of his career as a scholar, critic, and literary artist. By attending to the anti-Eliotic strain in Lewis's thought, we gain new insights into the development of his imagination and the creation of his own works, including The Chronicles of Narnia.

Being Psyche: The Jungian Soul In Glome, Kelly Webber

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

In C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, Orual undergoes a psychological transformation as a predecessor to her spiritual conversion. Understanding her psychic journey through the lens of a Jungian archetypal story assists the reader in understanding how she is eventually able to approach the gods bareface.

Who Is Merlin? A Closer Look At The Character In Charles Williams’ Taliessin Poetry, Joseph Thompson

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

By understanding how Merlin and Brisen manifest the influence of archaic ideas concerning time and the esoteric teachings of the Zohar in Williams’s Taliessin cycle, we are able to account for their roles in the story, and to understand more clearly Williams’s eschatological vision of unity to which all events in the cycle are either directed or opposed. This vision incorporates both Platonic (or Neoplatonic) and Kabbalistic elements in harmony with one another, adapted through the filter of Williams’s own esoteric ideas and Christian beliefs.

Sterner Stuff; Sansa Stark And The System Of Gothic Fantasy, Joseph R. Young

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

Contests the suggestion that Sansa Stark, a character in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, is a weak and indecisive by analyzing her in relation to William Patrick Day’s system of Gothic fantasy. While Sansa is indeed physically passive, she manages to retain her own identity in a challenging literary environment. This physical passivity allows her to assert herself intellectually, analyzing and indicting the misdeeds and abuses she suffers. This combination of passive and active attributes precisely instantiates the skill set of the detective, a species of literary being developed from the Gothic fantasies Day analyses, and …

Soup, Bones, And Shakespeare: Literary Authorship And Allusion In Middle-Earth, Owen Dugan, James Krasner

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

Examines Tolkien’s theory of authorship and storytelling by exploring the literary allusions to Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the Witch-king’s fall and the theory of creation in Tolkien’s description of the Silmarils. Tolkien alludes to Macbeth to undercut both the modern view of the author as an isolated genius and to critique the approach to literary allusion that reinforces this view. Fëanor’s creation of the Silmarils serves as a symbolic representation of modern authorship, suggesting that Tolkien not only disagrees with a singular model of authorship but also believes it to be a manifestation of corrupted artistry. Ultimately, both the Witch-king and …

No Ordinary People: 21 Friendships Of C.S. Lewis By Joel D. Heck, James Stockton

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

No Ordinary People: 21 Friendships of C.S. Lewis. Joel D. Heck. Hamden, CT: Winged Lion Press, 2022, 395 p. 9781935688228. $19.50.

The Undiscovered C.S. Lewis: Essays In Memory Of Christopher W. Mitchell, Edited By Bruce R. Johnson, Melody Green

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

This is a review of The Undiscovered C. S. Lewis edited by Bruce Johnson.

Correspondence: 1927-1987 By Joseph Campbell, Phillip Fitzsimmons

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

Correspondence: 1927–1987 by Joseph Campbell, edited by Dennis Patrick Slattery and Evans Lansing Smith is a fine addition to The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series. It is a solid work and a pleasure to read for fans of Joseph Campbell and his works. The book provides a balance of letters written by Joseph Campbell to friends and colleagues with letters written to him by the same people over the span of his adult life starting at age twenty-four. The letters provide a picture of the remarkable life of a man who was both a friend to many and a …

Tolkien And The Sea: Proceedings Of The Tolkien Society Seminar 1996, Edited By Richard Cranshaw And Shaun Gunner, Kris Swank

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

Review of the book Tolkien and the Sea: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Seminar 1996.

A Sense Of Tales Untold: Exploring The Edges Of Tolkien's Literary Canvas By Peter Grybauskas, Robert T. Tally

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

A Sense of Tales Untold: Exploring the Edges of Tolkien’s Literary Canvas. Peter Grybauskas. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2021. 176 pp. ISBN 978-1-60635-430-8. $55.00 (hardcover)