Digital Commons Network^™

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Animals In Irish Literature And Culture Edited By Kathryn Kirkpatrick And Borbála Faragó, Geneviève Pigeon

The Goose

Review of Kathryn Kirkpatrick and Borbála Faragó's Animals in Irish Literature and Culture.

"Do Not Fashion The Other": Representing Contemporary Haudenosaunee Literature 2016, Michael Patrick Brewster

Master's Theses

Historically, the issue of representation in postcolonial studies is one of some contention. While scholarship might recognize the necessity for highlighting the plights and struggles attendant to postcolonial societies, the primary literature being studied is most often written by natives of those societies themselves. This gap is especially evident with Indigenous cultures, because there are relatively few Indigenous scholars working in the academy. We are at the point now when we have a multiplicity (but not a plurality) of Indigenous voices writing literature (poetry, memoir, fiction, film, etc.) and academic criticism. However, there is value in non-Natives reading and writing …

Uncovering America’S Horror Story: A Content And Critical Analysis Of American Horror Story., Jessica Maio

Honors Projects in Communication

The popular television series American Horror Story has captivated millions of Americans with its shocking and twisted plotlines that never fail to surprise. Perhaps one of the reasons that the show has become so popular is that it uses the horror genre as a way to explore controversial topics. The purpose of this project is to examine the controversial topics that are presented in American Horror Society and compare them with the current views of mainstream society to determine whether the show primarily reflects the views of the larger society or challenges them. In other words, how does American Horror …

Reflections On The Arts, Environment, And Culture After Ten Years Of The Goose, Pamela Banting, Theresa Beer, Sarah Van Borek, Rob Boschman, Nicholas Bradley, Nancy Holmes, Franke James, Jenny Kerber, Sonnet L'Abbé, Larissa Lai, Daphne Marlatt, Stephanie Posthumus, Catriona Sandilands, John Terpstra, Harry Thurston, Rita Wong

The Goose

To mark the tenth anniversary of The Goose, we asked prominent ecologically-minded scholars, writers, artists, and educators from across Canada to reflect on the relationship between the arts, culture, and the environment. Their comments illuminate a wide range of triumphs and tensions, from the politics and practices of environmentalist writing and art, to the connections between the environment and matters of diversity and justice, to the past and future of ALECC (Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada), to the world of a single poem.

Applied Literature: Expanding Cultural Understanding For Language Learners, Ahmed Sallam

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This study contributes to the empirical research on the use of literary texts in language learning. Specifically, it focuses on two groups of adult English language learners who are students at an American university as they read, write about, and discuss literature written by an author from the local area and which portrays the local culture in which the university is situated. This study seeks to examine how adopting an aesthetic stance can help foreign students, new to the university, evoke a wide range of responses and pay attention to language input and cultural context.

Negotiating Gender And Sexuality In Contemporary Turkey, Jaspal Kaur Singh, Mary Lou O'Neil

Books

Turkey is often visualized as a modern nation-state having a perfect balance of Eastern and Western cultural mores and traditions within dominant ideological constructions and representations, but on closer inspection, one can detect conflicts and contradictions within various texts—particularly in regards to depictions of gender and sexual identity. Upon its foundation as a nation, Turkey embarked on a state-centered, elite-driven path toward modernization and Westernization while also seeking to produce a monolithic culture. At the time, it was widely believed that Turkey could not rank among modern,

Western countries without the emancipation of women. As a result of the founding …

The Significance Of John S. Mbiti's Works In The Study Of Pan-African Literature, Babacar Mbaye

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

“He Asked If I Knew Anything About The Universe. And I Told Him No”: Alien Abductions In American Literature, Stephen James Fleming

Theses & ETDs

Stories about aliens saturate American culture, but few critics explore them as figures that span decades and genres and that reveal a great deal about the people who are drawn to alien imagery. This thesis examines aliens in two ways: as very real extraterrestrial beings sexually assaulting abductees and assimilating into humanity; and as fictional responses to our fears of the racial Other. I speak to cultural studies scholars, since the abduction masterplot takes on the issues of social anxieties, conspiracy, politics, and entertainment history, also found in canonical literature. The first chapter traces the evolution of nonfiction abduction narratives, …

The Many Transformations Of Albert Facey, Ffion M. Murphy, Richard Nile

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In the last months of his life, 86-year-old Albert Facey became a best-selling author and revered cultural figure following the publication of his autobiography, A Fortunate Life. Released on Anzac Day 1981, it was praised for its “plain, unembellished, utterly sincere and un-self-pitying account of the privations of childhood and youth [...].

Inviting Students To Determine For Themselves What It Means To Write Across The Disciplines, Brian Hendrickson, Genevieve Garcia De Mueller

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

Situated in the literature on threshold concepts and transfer of prior knowledge in WAC/WID and composition studies, with particular emphasis on the scholarship of writing across difference, our article explores the possibility of re-envisioning the role of the composition classroom within the broader literacy ecology of colleges and universities largely comprised of students from socioeconomically and ethno- linguistically underrepresented communities. We recount the pilot of a composi- tion course prompting students to examine their own prior and other literacy values and practices, then transfer that growing meta-awareness to the critical acquisition of academic discourse. Our analysis of students’ self-assessment memos …

Photography, Writing, Literature: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Brunet And Beckman And Weissberg, Geert Vandermeersche

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Cambridge Companion To Literature And The Environment Edited By Louise Westling, Randy Lee Cutler

The Goose

Randy Lee Cutler reviews The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment, edited by Louise Westling

Facing The Change: Personal Encounters With Global Warming Edited By Steven Pavlos Holmes, Geoff R. Martin

The Goose

Geoff R. Martin reviews Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming.

The Art And Science Of Literary Study, Jamie Carr

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The discipline of literary studies has recently gained powerful allies in the sciences and popular media. Scholars in the cognitive sciences, including neuroscience and cognitive psychology, have newly taken up literature's defense, conducting empirical studies to prove that literature has value—particularly researching whether fiction reading produces empathy. Both the media reports, and the empirical studies themselves, however, fail to acknowledge a long history of literary criticism and theory that articulate similar claims. Implicit in this subtext, is the privileging of empirical over interpretive or theoretical ways of knowing. In this discourse, literary criticism is broadly criticized for its variability and …

The Fascination Of Manga: Cross-Dressing And Gender Performativity In Japanese Media, Sheena Marie Woods

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The performativity of gender through cross-dressing has been a staple in Japanese media throughout the centuries. This thesis engages with the pervasiveness of cross-dressing in popular Japanese media, from the modern shōjo gender-bender genre of manga and anime to the traditional Japanese theatre. Drawing on theories from gender-studies and performance aesthetics to delineate the female gender in traditional Japanese theatre, I follow the roles of, representation of, and media for women, concentrating on (1) manga, a form of sequential art featuring illustrations with corresponding text, (2) anime, animated productions (where the word anime is the abbreviated pronunciation of “animation” in …

The Search For Authentic Travel In Early Twentieth-Century British Magazines, Christina Bertrand Firebaugh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Edwardian travel writing between roughly 1905 and 1914 serves as a bridge between the closing of the long Victorian period, the beginnings of modernism, and the changes to come in the twentieth century. The search for authentic experience characterizes travel writing in the Edwardian era. Significant cultural, technological, and social changes caused Edwardians to examine their perceptions about possibilities for authentic engagement with other places and people in their travels. As a result, Edwardian travel writers explore various methods by which to engage authentically with other cultures. Drawing on literary theory, anthropology, and cultural studies, this dissertation examines a number …

Becoming All Things To All Men: The Role Of Jesuit Missions In Early Modern Globalization, Ann Louise Cole

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From its founding, the Society of Jesus was globally minded, and Iberian imperial and mercantile expansion during the early modern period granted Jesuit missionaries unprecedented access to the globe through navigation. With its unique emphasis on both global missions and pedagogy, the Society of Jesus was in an ideal position to both generate and disseminate knowledge about the world. As missionaries scattered across the globe constructed the identity of the ethnic and cultural Other encountered on mission in the East and in Latin America, Jesuit missionaries and scholars, both at home and abroad, likewise attempted to construct a global Catholic …

What's Below The Peak? Perceptions Of Media From Those That Live Below The World's Most Famous Mountain, Jonah P. Lucas

Student Publications

This research seeks to explore the perceptions the Sherpa people in the Khumbu region have on the media that has been created about them and their communities. Interviews conducted in the Khumbu region of Nepal with a variety of individuals gave insight into how different socio-economic and educational backgrounds affect these perceptions. This research found that all Sherpa are aware to some extent of the media about them, and its biggest effect is the international tourism trade that it promotes. Furthermore, journalists visiting the region are regarded as normal tourists, and the work they do is considered accurate and suitable …

Editor's Notebook, Lisa Szabo-Jones, Paul Huebener

The Goose

Editorial introduction to The Goose Volume 13, Issue 2 (2014).

The Trialectics Of Transnational Migrant Women’S Literature In The Writing Of Edwidge Danticat And Julia Alvarez, Jennifer Lynn Karash-Eastman

Theses and Dissertations

While a considerable critical field has developed around US Latino writing, due to the historical, cultural and sociolinguistic barriers between the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, critical investigations of these migrant literatures are often not bridged, but rather isolated into respective Haitian-American and Dominican-American designations. My comparative, critical framework defines the interactions between gender, culture and the diverse spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola, the Atlantic and the United States. The carefully differentiated objects of study that I articulate in each chapter offer a desirable interdisciplinary orientation inclusive of gender theory as well as cultural studies. …

Damas Y Caballeros, Guadalupe Mendez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Collected Poetry - Manuscript over socio - political and culturally relevant context.

How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(Con)Figures Race And Gender, Beatriz Revelles-Benavente

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(con)figures Race and Gender" Beatriz Revelles-Benavente explores Morrison's Facebook page and comments on it. In 2010, Morrison opened a Facebook page where she received a large amount of comments and created debates and Revelles-Benavente analyses how these comments navigate questions of race and gender. Based on theoretical considerations about issues of race and gender in cyberculture and applied to the narratives posted on Morrison's Facebook page, Revelles-Benavente argues that the problematics of race and gender are relational and the question needs to be centered on the object of study as the relation …

Tales That Tell All: A Political Analysis Of Folktales Of Iran, Yass Alizadeh

Doctoral Dissertations

This research presents an analytical study of the rewritten folktales of Iran in 20^th century, and investigates the ideological omissions and revisions of oral tales as textual productions in modern Iran. Focusing on the problematic role of folktales as tales about the unreal and the fantastic serving a political purpose, this study traces the creative exercises of Iranian storytellers who apply ideological codes and meanings to popular folk language. The works of Mirzadeh Eshqi (1893-1924), Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951), Samad Behrangi (1939-1968) and Bijan Mofid (1935-1984) are examples of a larger collection of creative writing in Iran that through the …

Japanese Poetry And Nature In Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Ōishida, Shoshannah Ganz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Japanese Poetry and Nature in Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Ōishida" Shoshannah Ganz shows how the limited focus of research on Roo Borson oversimplifies the poetry and ignores the tradition that Borson is aligning her work with both in form and content: classical Chinese and Japanese poetry and their perspectives on nature. Further, Ganz explores the ways in which Borson's poetry overcomes intuitively the binaries of East/West, human/non-human, and the further binaries within the human/non-human created through representational language. Ganz contextualizes Borson's work within the master/disciple lineage of Chinese and Japanese tradition and explores how Borson …

Remapping The Present: Dave Eggers's Spatial Virtuality And The Condition Of Literature, Nathan Frank

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Piggy-backing on the spatial turn in literary studies, this paper "remaps the present" by making a parallel spatial turn in virtual theory. Surveying and synthesizing the many invaluable contributions to conceptualizing virtuality - from those of Bergson and Deleuze through to those of Daniel Downes and Brian Massumi - a "spatial virtuality" accounts for an increasing focus on digitization without dismissing the previous (and, at times, prescient) preoccupations with temporal virtualities. But I also frame spatial virtuality in terms of N. Katherine Hayles' compelling work in which virtuality is a condition. Within such a framework, many things happen, not the …

Literature And Science In Nineteenth-Century Realist Novels: A Book Review Article About Ambrière's And Bender's Work, Anne-Marie Reboul

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Tracing The Origins Of Success: Implications For Successful Aging, Nora M. Peterson, Peter Martin

French Language and Literature Papers

Purpose of the Study: This paper addresses the debate about the use of the term “successful aging” from a humanistic, rather than behavioral, perspective. It attempts to uncover what success, a term frequently associated with aging, is: how can it be defined and when did it first come into use? In this paper, we draw from a number of humanistic perspectives, including the historical and linguistic, in order to explore the evolution of the term “success.” We believe that words and concepts have deep implications for how concepts (such as aging) are culturally and historically perceived.

Design and Methods: We …

The Wizarding Words Of J. K. Rowling: Literary Merit In The Harry Potter Series, Brenna Sherrill

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Since hitting bookshelves in 1997, the Harry Potter series has taken the popular culture world by storm in an unprecedented way, breaking sales records for both books and films, and dramatically increasing readership among young readers. Despite its immense and unique success, this series, like many other examples of pop culture, doesn’t often receive the credit it deserves with respect to its literary merits. However, it is undeniable that the Potter books reflect many of the traits found in all great works of literature, including complex character development and abundant literary devices that elevate the intellectual level of the series. …

Representations Of Elite Masculinity In Medieval Castilian Narrative, Megan Elizabeth Havard

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

My dissertation the first book-length project to address long-held notions about elite masculinity in medieval Iberia. I contend that the study of masculinity must transcend our understanding of the male subject as a fixed point of reference; rather, he is to be understood as a mobile and multivalent construct in constant negotiation with cultural artifacts. I understand masculinity to be the set of socially constructed meanings and values imposed upon biologically male persons. The social norms associated with masculinity exist in relation to a given historical and cultural context, and are subject to change. Even within a particular moment in …