Digital Commons Network^™

Adoration Above Objectification: The Promotion Of Other In Black, Mexican And Arabic Love Poetry, Joycelynn L. Baker

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the philosophical fundamentals of sexual objectification and presents opposing literature, written in the 20th century, by Black, Mexican and Arabic male poets in contrast. In vigorous patriarchal environments that provide more opportunities to practice sexual objectification, the poets reframe male metaphysical perception and behavior in romantic or sexual contexts by promoting the autonomy and agency of women above themselves, and displaying their enjoyment of that situation. This paper will discuss how Western metaphysical philosophy impacts self-perception and belief in contemporary romantic contexts.

Graphic Diaspora: Reframing Narratives Of American Identity In Black Comic Books, Ashley Wilson

ETD Archive

Comic books with Black main characters have been the subject of much critical exploration over the years. Typical analyses of these comics have focused on identity politics and representation of Black characters. However, critical discussion has not yet determined a method for interpreting representation of Black characters within comic books. This study incorporates approaches to reading Black expressive texts, caricature, and narratives of Black characters written by white authors to analyze the comic books All Negro Comics, The Black Panther, Black, and Bayou. Additionally, it argues that Black-authored Black comics require a reframing of the text through an African American …

The Struggle For Identity: How Female Writers Find Their Voice, Allison Joanne Call

Masters Theses

The purpose of this project is to examine the value and purpose of the female voice in literature. In the first part of this project, my artist’s statement clarifies my intent as a writer and an academic. This statement describes certain specific works that have influenced my writing style and content, and my literary aspirations. The second part of the project is the critical paper, which analyzes the importance of the feminine voice and identity in literature throughout different time periods and through different lenses. Within this paper, I examine how male writers have dominated the writing world and explore …

Gender, Sexuality, And Class In Selected Works Of Kesey, Cunningham, And Woolf, Harper Savage

English and Creative Writing | Senior Theses

At its best, literature illuminates the issues facing society. In the works of Ken Kesey, Virginia Woolf, and Michael Cunningham, these authors hold a mirror up to the issues of class, sexuality, and gender. While it is apparent that the times in which One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Mrs, Dalloway, and The Hours were written heavily inform the individual character’s choices and their destinies, the themes presented are timeless. This essay explores how even today, years after these novels were written, society continues to struggle with these issues, and argues that, perhaps, through literature, a pathway to understanding can …

'The Game Is Afoot': An Exploration Of Mystery Novels And The Gentleman Detective, Anna Pietropaolo

Senior Honors Projects

In the mystery genre, The Gentleman Detective has become a kaleidoscopic icon depicted continuously over the past 200 years. The brilliant sleuth’s image has been used to highlight the contemporary culture of thoughts, faiths, and fears. As a longtime fan of the mystery genre, I wanted to explore this iconic figure and see some of the ways it could be used to reflect upon current values. There was no better way to do that than to write a book of my own, featuring a master of deduction but viewing them with an outside perspective, through the eyes of my main …

Caliban The Savage : Shakespeare’S Critique Of Colonialist Misappropriation Of Indigenous Identities, Leonard Aquil Hughes

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis engages with Shakespeare’s The Tempest, analyzing the character Caliban as a critique of British colonialism. I argue that Caliban is not intended simply as a begrudged antagonist, but as a figure intended to represent New World natives. Shakespeare’s “savage” also acts as an on-stage embodiment of Africans and other victims of British imperial exploits that suffered subjugation and hegemony. With this character, Shakespeare provides a demonstration of the relationship between Europeans and the colonized, while challenging the very institution of colonialism. Such a work provides valuable post-Shakespearean insights as well. Caliban contributes directly to the dialogue surrounding the …

Blurred Realities: Aids Plays As Activism, Maya Lieberman

Honors Theses

The AIDS epidemic in 1980s and 1990s America can—and must—be read not simply as an epidemic of disease, but also as an epidemic of hateful discourse that perpetuated the damaging perceptions of HIV/AIDS and those it most severely impacted. The onset of an epidemic has a way of unmooring society from the structures that it has built itself on. The indiscriminate spread of a deadly disease exposes, amplifies, and unsettles divisions of class, race, sexuality, gender, and perceived morality. In the sensory experience of living through the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a virus may seem to take on an almost magical component, …

Noble Pagans And Satanic Saracens: Literary Portrayals Of Islam In Medieval Italy And Iberia., John Spencer Jones

Honors Theses

The medieval Christian world is generally associated with a kind of religious zealotry that would seem to preclude the development of nuanced understandings of the religious Other. The heightened interreligious contact in regions such as Iberia and the Italian Peninsula, however, made room for relationships with members of other faiths that resulted in more developed ideas about these other creeds. This honors thesis examines the portrayal of Islam in the Christian literature of medieval Italy and Iberia, dating from the late 11th century to the middle of the 14th century. It categorizes a few types of the literary “use” of …

“A Meaningless Institution”: Allen Ginsberg And The Struggle To Resist Dehumanization, James Altman

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

This presentation details how in poems such as “A Meaningless Institution,” “Howl,” and “American Change” Allen Ginsberg depicts individuals striving as best they can to maintain their freedom, especially freedom of thought in the face of lockstep conformity. In doing so, they seek to hang onto and reassert their humanity. In virtually every line, Ginsberg’s ideas about free speech, democracy, patriotism, inclusiveness, the environment, and community collided with the dehumanizing ideals of mainstream Cold War America. Ginsberg’s reverence for the United States as celebrated by his artistic “father” Walt Whitman functions as the catalyst for him to protest what the …

First Person Narration In Postwar British Women’S Fiction, Julia Mccoy

English Student Scholarship

Julia McCoy ’22
Majors: English and Political Science
Faculty Mentor: Dr. William Hogan, English

A study of postwar English novelists Margaret Drabble and Jeannette Winterson, looking particularly at the way these writers use first person narration in their works. Both writers explore how women’s identity can be ‘written into being’ against external pressures and authorities that seek to define women’s ‘proper’ role.

Black-Eyed, Abigail Sipe

Honors Theses

Black-Eyed tells the story of Rowan Mae Baker, a ten-year-old girl dealing with too-big-for-a-ten-year-old problems. In the past year, Rowan moved from Jackson to Winona after the unexpected arrest and sudden death of her father. Then, almost a year later, Rowan is sexually assaulted by an older boy from her school. Rowan understands neither of these things. Throughout Black-Eyed, Rowan spends twelve hours running away from home while trying to figure out how to talk to her mom about the assault. Alone for the first time, she begins to observe and question the world around her, to process her …

O Ventre Como Espaço De Resistência Em Maria Firmina Dos Reis E Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Jessica Luana Bueno Dos Santos Ms.

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The issue of violence against reproductive capacity and the right to motherhood in the context of the African diaspora in Brazil and Puerto Rico was systematically placed in the background, especially in the literary field, as was the case with the attitudes of resistance practiced against such violence. Considering this reality, this thesis compares two texts that approach such violence from a place of resistance, evidencing practices of insubordination common to such contexts: “A escrava” (1887) by Maria Firmina dos Reis (1822-1917) and “Matronas” (2012) by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (1970). Specifically, this study examines and compares the representational strategies used …

Song Of Exile: A Cultural History Of Brazil’S Most Popular Poem, 1846–2018, Joshua Alma Enslen

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Song of Exile: A Cultural History of Brazil’s Most Popular Poem, 1846–2018 is the first comprehensive study of the influence of Antônio Gonçalves Dias’s “Canção do exílio.” Written in Coimbra, Portugal, in 1843 by a homesick student longing for Brazil, “Song of Exile” has inspired thousands of parodies and pastiches, and new variations continue to appear to this day. Every generation of Brazilian writers has adapted the poem’s Romantic verses to glorify the wonders of the nation or to criticize it via parody, exposing a litany of issues that have plagued the country’s progress over the years. Based on a …

Dehumanization And The Power Hierarchy In Black Mirror’S “Men Against Fire”, Christine Gullic

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Charlie Brooker’s popular Netflix series Black Mirror has never failed to reflect society’s shadows, and season three’s “Men Against Fire” carries the torch in revealing that our dependence on technology leads to othering, dehumanization, and a perpetual power struggle. As technology rapidly evolves, its tendrils sink further into the human, organic world, making it increasingly difficult for humans to behave ethically as we gain power. Simultaneously, those at the other end of the spectrum are dehumanized as they are monitored and manipulated through the use of technology and power. The links between “Men Against Fire” and both historical and modern …

Eudora Welty’S “Clytie”, The Mirror Stage, And The Grotesque, Samantha Miller

Global Tides

At first glance, Eudora Welty’s short stories seem to exist in paradox with the writer’s own intentions. Welty is well known for co-opting the “plots, settings, characters, image patterns, and vocabulary” of Gothic literature, yet upon being asked if she was a Gothic writer, she responded vehemently: “They better not call me that!”. What is a reader then to make of Welty’s short story “Clytie” which is saturated with homages to the imagery of the Gothic— the display of psychological breakdown of an isolated family trapped in a crumbling, memory-haunted mansion, centering on a trapped, unmarried woman who slowly realizes …

From Reality To Fiction: How Women’S Mental Health Was Portrayed In 19th Century Literature, Sara Mason

Honors Theses

This thesis is an examination of the history of mental health treatment for women in the 19^th century. Fictional literature written during this time by American and English female authors is used to explore the underlying attitudes towards women who were perceived to have a mental illness. This thesis explores the three works Jane Eyre, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and The Awakening, as well as the biography of the female authors. This information is used to explore the patriarchal society represented in these works and how that is shown through the authors’ writing. The medical profession is also …

The Death Of The Knight: The Relationship Between British Heroic Art And Literary Tradition To The First World War, Madelynn Hobson

Senior Honors Theses

Art and literature are tools that can be used to gauge the mood of a particular time. Paintings, poetry, and other works hold clues which tell popular opinions and ideals of the era. Leading up to World War I, British art and literature defined the heroic figure as one who resembled the chivalrous knight of days gone by. Warriors were to be virtuous and fight for the vulnerable, upholding peace through their God-given quests. During and after the war, however, British art and literature painted the warrior to be a bleak, even disfigured and incomplete, character. The Great War's severity …

Replicas Of Social Change: Examining Reflections Of Religious Shifts In Japanese Society Through Literary Depictions Of Kitsune Characters, Sophia Pressler

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the roles of female kitsune (fox) characters in Japanese literature in different historical eras: the Heian period (794-1185), the Edo period (1603-1868), the Meiji period in addition to the period before the end of World War II (1868-1945), and the modern day (late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries). The goal of this analysis of kitsune folk tales, legends, and stories is to reunite the ‘folk’ with their folklore - providing evidence of how the content of folk tales, legends, and other stories are shaped by their contexts and thus serve as valuable historical records of the lives …

The Unfinished Hope Of Gower's Transgender Children, Gabrielle M.W. Bychowski

Accessus

This article examines two of Gower's tales from the Confessio Amantis that deal with trans youths: Iphis and Narcissus. Considering these two tales together, I ask the question: why does one story end with hopeful futurity for the trans masculine youth and the other end with death and the absence of futurity for the trans feminine youth. Connecting these medieval texts to premodern contexts and then with modern contexts, I map the trajectory of centuries long problems facing trans youths. In the end, I conclude that trans youth possess a healthier and more stable future when they receive trans affirming …

Oxford Conference For The Book Returns As An In-Person Event, Rebecca Lauck Cleary

Blog Posts

The Oxford Conference for the Book returns to Oxford and the University of Mississippi March 30-April 1 as an in-person event. Conference sessions will be held on the UM campus and in downtown Oxford. "I'm so pleased to hold this conference in person this year," said Jimmy Thomas, conference director. "We've put together an amazing lineup of authors, and I'm looking forward to meeting them and hearing each of them read and discuss their work."

Historical Sisters: Black Feminist Actions Across History And Literary Studies, Jazz A. Milligan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to understand how the actions of Black women from the past have inspired the modern Black female literary movement. This thesis focuses on three historical women: Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Freeman, and Cathay Williams, and their literary sisters: bell hooks, Barbara Smith, and Patricia Hill Collins. By viewing the lives of these historical women through a modern-day lens, we can understand how their actions created a ripple effect that Black women are still discussing today. Black feminism did not start in a vacuum, and the actions of everyday Black women have pushed us forward to being more accepting …

Parnassus

Parnassus

The 2022 edition of the student literary journal, Parnassus, published by Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.

Theology At Theologos, Christopher Bakken

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 60

On The Anniversary Of A Day Lorca Did Not Die, Sean Thomas Dougherty

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 86-87

Let Me Tell You, Sean Thomas Dougherty

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 88-89

Iggy Pop Died For Our Sins, Alexis Maginnes

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 107-109

Against "The Dover Bitch", Jenny Molberg

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 116

The Living Room, Jenny Molberg

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 117

What The Army Taught, Juli Olson

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 121-122

Ka, Michael David Sowder

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 136-138