Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Quiet Rebellions: An Interview With Gothataone Moeng, Anupama Arora, Sandrine Sanos

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From “A Room Of Your Own” To “A Room Of Her Own”: Women Rewriting Women And The Path To Feminist Practice, Vasiliki Misiou

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) was first translated in Greek by Mina Dalamanga (Odysseus Editions) in 1980. Almost forty years later, in 2019, Vasia Tzanakari was assigned the translation of Woolf’s seminal text by Metaichmio Publications. And in 2021, a new translation by Sparti Gerodimou saw the light of day, published by Erato Publications (2021). Three different women translators have thus rendered Woolf’s text in Greek with all three publications coming out at times marked by significant changes in Greek society. Exploring the context in which the agents were situated and drawing on feminist translation practices and …

Delving Into The Forbidden: Banned And Challenged Literature Syllabus, Grace Burns

Senior Honors Projects

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them,” (Ray Bradbury).

Literature is a mirror which unites even the most unlikely characters, invites us to reflect on our lives, promotes critical thinking and discussion as well as explores the themes of humanity over time. As the world around us changes, then, it is only natural that literature changes along with it. Exposure to literature of many kinds can only aid in the development of a richer appreciation for the world around us and the many lives within it.

Further, the consistent evolution …

Love And Romance In Early Modern British Literature, Sophia Szeneitas

Senior Honors Projects

This paper seeks to describe and analyze the way in which themes of love and romance were presented in literature in early modern Britain, and how those may differ from or be similar to romantic themes in the media of today. The works being analyzed include plays by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, as well as some of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A few different lenses will be explored, including the interaction that love could have with the societal power structure and hierarchy present within the literature (such as the ways in which someone being the lover of a powerful person might …

Pedagogies Of The “Irresistible”: Imaginative Elsewheres Of Black Feminist Learning., Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In her foreword to the groundbreaking anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Toni Cade Bambara (1983) famously argues that the great work of feminist writing is “to make revolution irresistible.” This statement is often read as a founding call of women-of-color feminism, and of feminist literary expression in particular. Yet Bambara’s notion of the “irresistible” extends beyond the page; throughout her works, she also uses the term as a key descriptor of her pedagogy, and her vision of the classroom. Bambara joins Audre Lorde and other Black feminist writer/teachers in insisting on a …

Hettie Jones And Bonnie Bremser: Complicating Feminist And Beat Master Narratives, Nancy Effinger Wilson

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The Beat master narrative suggests that all Beats ignored racism; the feminist wave model suggests that there was no feminist activism between the first and second wave of feminism and no attention to the intersection of race and gender prior to the third wave. Both models discount and in the process erase the efforts by Beat writers Bonnie Bremser and Hettie Jones who challenged racism and sexism before the more visible civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s. Employing Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity to analyze the intercultural/interracial attitudes present in Bonnie Bremser’s Troia and Hettie Jones’ …

Peeta’S Virtue In The Hunger Games Trilogy, Gabriel Ertsgaard

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The Latin virtus literally means “manliness” (vir = man) and, by extension, the positive qualities that a man should have. During the transition from Latin to French to English, “virtue” lost its gender specificity, but retained its reference to positive qualities. Thus, by the Enlightenment period, separate standards of virtue had emerged for women and men. Suzanne Collins disrupts this gendered virtue dichotomy in her Hunger Games trilogy. Peeta Mellark is a natural diplomat and peacemaker, a gentle soul who fits the feminine model of virtue better than the masculine model. Although Peeta engages in violence when necessary, he …

Kate O’Brien: Queer Hauntings In The Feminist Archive, Naoise Murphy

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The archive of Irish writer Kate O’Brien is a notable example of how queerness haunts the mainstream of feminist literary spaces. The 2019 Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) exhibition Kate O’Brien: Arrow to the Heart, which set out to restore this censored novelist’s place in the archive of twentieth-century Irish writing, provides a case study of these dynamics. Queer and feminist perspectives on the archive, with a focus on affect, hauntings and Sara Ahmed’s “queer use,” illuminate the conflicting epistemologies regulating the O’Brien archive. Reading this exhibition as an Irish queer, affective experience collides with entrenched structures of power …

Tolkien, Wordsworth And Escapism Eng 150x, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Finding Tender Roots: Affiliation, Disability, And Racial Melancholia In Monique Truong’S Bitter In The Mouth, Amanda Ong

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Early on in Bitter in the Mouth, we learn that the protagonist, Linda Linh-Dao Nguyen Hammerick, has auditory-gustatory synesthesia—that is, nearly every word she hears evokes a specific taste. Hammerick, for example, tastes like Dr. Pepper and Linda tastes like mint. There are many articles that analyze Linda’s synesthesia but few articles approach the text through the lens of disability studies. In this article, I employ feminist disability studies and diaspora studies to argue that Linda's identity as a disabled transracial adoptee allow her to seek out additional forms of affiliation and kinship. By constructing an alternative family tree …

The Sensuous Sentence: Grammar For Grammarphobes Eng 333, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Reading Sport Seeing Life Eng 210, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Poplife: How Popular Culture Explains The World Eng 122, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Capstone Seminar In Literary And Cultural Studies Eng 410, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Outrage! Literature Of Protest And Dissent Eng 121, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

The Young Adult Novel Eng 211, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Poetry Out Loud Eng 120, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Bad Gurley Feminism: The Myth Of Post-War Domesticity, Erin Amann Holliday-Karre

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

According to feminist history, the 1950s constitute a lapse in feminist literature as women in the post-war era were ushered into the realm of domesticity. In this article I argue that this perceived literary “gap” was both created and perpetuated by feminist historians and scholars who insist that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) was the defining feminist text of the time. I offer an alternative discourse to that of Friedan by presenting feminist writers who challenge, rather than adopt, masculine ideology as the means to women’s empowerment. I end by encouraging feminists to allow commonly dismissed feminists from the …

Redactándome A Mi Misma: Writing Place, Process, And Identity Across Two Languages, Jenna Ziegelmayer

Senior Honors Projects

Emily Dickinson once wrote a poem titled “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” where she advises writers to do just that. One should tell the truth about their experiences, but tell it through their own unique perspective in order to make it “dazzle” on the page. My slant? Una segunda lengua.

As a student of Spanish, learning a different language has impacted the way that I see the world and my place in it. Studying abroad taught me about the language and culture of Spain, but it also taught me a lot about myself, my own native language, …

Performing Race Eng 450g, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Bilingualism And The American Family, Caitlin M. Nickerson

Senior Honors Projects

Bilingualism is the ability to speak more than one language fluently. People of all ages may aspire to learn a second or third language in order to fulfill both personal goals and communicate with a variety of people in different contexts. Irrespective of one’s walk of life or socioeconomic status, being bilingual is a valuable skill. Although English is the language of power in the United States, there are hundreds of other languages spoken in this country.

There are a number of different ways in which children can become bilingual. For example, they may enter the school system speaking the …

Healing Through Bibliotherapy, Kristina N. Spinelli

Senior Honors Projects

Emotions that adolescents face while experiencing their parents’ divorce can be traumatic. They often feel as though they have no one else to turn to, and feel alone. There are different types of therapy that can help individuals cope with their emotions and bibliotherapy can be used as a self-coping technique.

Bibliotherapy is a method used to cope with certain feelings from different experiences. It is a reading program that includes a variety of literature to offer emotional therapy. It is effective by aiding the individual who is struggling with his or her feelings to identify with a particular character, …

Close Reading Workshop, Nida Islam

Senior Honors Projects

Close reading is an in-depth analysis of a text’s features (e.g., syntax, punctuation, tone, and vocabulary) to acquire a comprehensive understanding of a piece of literature. At the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in 2001, Robert Scholes, a retired professor of English at Brown University, voiced his concern about the lack of ability in freshly enrolled college students to engage with the intricacy of texts. Jane Gallop, Professor of English at University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, further argues the interdisciplinary benefits of close reading and attests to the consequences of students’ inability to perform intense reading of literature. As a …

The World Of The Cat's Table: Literature Through Production Design Analysis, Andrea J. Johnson

Senior Honors Projects

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje is a rich piece of literature that has a diverse set of characters confined to one pivotal location, a ship. Just as the novel builds a world around its characters, in this project I attempted to build a space around immersive design choices.

Production Design is a visual response to analytic reading. By taking a written piece or concept and creating the physical/visual atmosphere for the work, a production designer’s job is to create the overall look and tone of a creative production, be it for a film, play, or museum space. This is …

Setting Fires: Literary Women Blazing Trails For Contemporary Women, Laura Salinas

Senior Honors Projects

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim” — Nora Ephron

Literature has always provided an outlet for writers to express their commentary on society tracing from Shakespeare’s plays in the 1600’s to Jane Austen’s classic novels to the modern literary narrative. These writings are often more than just tales to entertain a crowd or a reader; they create dynamic characters that call into question the standards and expectations that society deems acceptable.

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has created an iconic and dynamic character that resists and challenges what it means to be a woman in terms …

English National Identity In English Colonial And Imperial Literature And Undergraduate Publication Research, Megan A. Medeiros

Senior Honors Projects

This project is divided into two parts. The purpose of the first part was to construct, research and write a substantial historical thesis paper on a topic relevant to nationalism and national identity in Modern European history. The purpose of the second part was to research and explore the process of publishing a historical paper in an academic journal.

In reference to the first part of the project, the thesis paper concerns English national identity as represented by several renowned and well-read English authors in their works of literature. In doing so, the paper considers the characteristics, norms, and structures …

Marriage And Gender: A History Through Letters, Victoria Kern

Senior Honors Projects

Research on the evolution of marriage can be found quite easily, but the opportunity to see into the lives of married couples from the past is rare. Through the analysis of letters between my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, I provide a glimpse of what being married has meant throughout the 20^th Century for heterosexual couples. Societal ideas about what makes a marriage ideal have changed over time, but they have always been closely linked with gender expectations (Berk, 2013), so a feminist approach to the analysis of the evolution of marriage is used with my family’s letters as a …

Working Memory, Sonya Badigian

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Virginia Woolf & Michel Foucault: Methods Of Justice, Elizabeth K. Doré

Senior Honors Projects

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is primarily known today as a central British modernist novelist. In addition, she was also an important theorist of power, subjectivity, and ethics, especially as she turned her attention in the 1930s--as fascism spread and intensified across Europe--toward the public sphere in which European women were still then more or less without (easy) access. I read her late novels and essays alongside her diary in order to excavate the theoretical/political/ethical premises of her thought. I contend that she shares with the late thought of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) an original conception of ethics. Woolf and Foucault’s …

Care Of The Self, Foucauldian Ethics, And Contemporary Subjectivity, Christopher J. Menihan

Senior Honors Projects

Through studying literature, literary theory, and poststructural philosophy within the English Department and Honors Program, I have learned to critically analyze texts and other media. Narratives, objects, and situations are so often other than what they appear to be, greater than what they offer through the first read, and are thus always in need of further analysis. Our lives, societies, and even our own subjectivities are no exception. Not only is what we observe and believe not as simple as it seems, but often what we regard as “true” may actually be far less stable than what that label denotes. …