Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Nature, Magic, And Healing: How Leslie Silko Builds Her Native World, Ashton Q. Record

Student Publications

An essay examining how Leslie M. Silko utilizes the relationship between Nature and Native American Mystic Arts to create a full and vibrant world in her novel Ceremony.

Olympia, Wilderness, And Consumption In Laird Barron’S Old Leech Cycle, John Glover

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This book chapter considers the cosmic horror fiction of Laird Barron through a blended ecocritical/postcolonial lens, focusing on its representation of the Pacific Northwest and Olympia, Washington. Wilderness and consumption are both strongly represented concepts in Barron’s Old Leech Cycle of stories, aligning with colonial perceptions of the American West as a largely unpeopled space ripe for exploitation. The eldritch horrors of these tales align with well-established traditions in weird fiction, and they are also perfectly suited to locations historically identified with resource extraction.

Topics Of The Sky: Ashbery's Involving Search For The Poem, Tom M. Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An essay lived by John Ashbery's Three Poems with special attention to the possibility of cosmic relevance. This paper attempts to imagine priorities and needs proper to celestial bodies. Three Poems is the consciousness that gives possibility to the text, while Blanchot, Nietzsche, and other thinkers ground its exploration in philosophical analysis.

Natural Elements Representing The Cycle Of Life And Death Through Whitman’S “Song Of Myself” And “When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’D”, Priya Patel

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In Emerson’s essay “The Poet,” he writes that we have “no genius in America” and that we need to find a poet who can be America’s Shakespeare. He continues to say that “America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination…” Not long after Emerson published “The Poet,” Walt Whitman emerged becoming “The Poet” that Emerson was seeking to find. Whitman soon became the “one who would sing of the new country in a new voice.”

In 1855, Whitman published his first edition of Leaves of Grass and shed light to the wonderful landscapes that America …

Writing The Northland: Jack London's And Robert W. Service's Imaginary Geography, Cara Erdheim

English Faculty Publications

Book review by Cara Erdheim.

Giehmann, Barbara Stefanie. Writing the Northland: Jack London's and Robert W. Service's Imaginary Geography. Würzburg, Germany: Könighausen & Neumann, 2011.

Jefferson's "Laws Of Nature": Newtonian Influence And The Dual Valence Of Jurisprudence And Science, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Jefferson appears to have conceived of natural law rather differently from his predecessors - namely, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Richard Hooker, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke, and, among others, William Blackstone. This particular pedigree looked to divine decree or moral order to anchor natural law philosophy. But Jefferson’s various writings, most notably the Declaration and Notes on the State of Virginia, champion the thinking of a natural historian, a man who celebrated reason and scientific method, who extolled fact over fancy, material over the immaterial, observation over superstition, and experiment over divine revelation. They reveal, in other words, an …

Wolves And The Wolf Myth In American Literature, Cara Erdheim

English Faculty Publications

Book review by Cara Erdheim:

Robisch, S. K. Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature. Reno, Nevada: Uniiversity of Nevada Press, 2009.

Ecology And Spirit: Reflections On The Cit Seminar, Richard M. Magee

Presidential Seminar on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition

Professor Magee entered the CIT seminar in May of 2007 with some ideas about spirit and nature in American literature, and now, over a year later, he has, in the best traditions of philosophical enquiry, even more questions about how this complex relationship works. These new questions, however, have led to a significantly deeper and richer understanding of the texts I read, study, and teach, enlarging my intellectual horizons and sharpening my inquiries. His enriched scholarship has taken a number of forms, and in this report, hel briefly presents three specific and important examples.

Mystics Of Desolation: Craig Childs And Ellen Meloy, Jan Wellington

Jan Wellington

No abstract provided.