Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Making Of A Survivor: Chopin's Use Of Identity And Rebirth In The Awakening, Amber L. Budd

The Confluence

In recent research of American literature, many scholars have read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and construed the novel’s ambiguous ending as an indication that the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, commits suicide after the ending. Scholars have developed this hypothesis due to contextual evidence, societal expectations at the time Chopin wrote the novel, and Edna’s perceived development of identity over the course of the novel. In this paper, I analyze the popular theories arguing for Edna’s suicide or survival and then examine those articles in conjunction with my own analysis of The Awakening. By doing so, I aim to prove that, …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Diaspora And Identity In Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, Riley Prater

Student Research Submissions

My paper, entitled “Identity and Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth” was written for and approved by Dr. Haffey in her 21st Century Fiction (449U) seminar class. The paper explores the complex relationship between first generation Bengali American characters and their identities in the wake of diaspora. This paper shows that Lahiri works to create a kind of liminal space in which her first generation characters exist - a space between being both Bengali and American. Lahiri does so through exploring family relationships, culture, and the pull between heritage and assimilation in order to highlight a new culture of existing …

The Story Of Identity: Narrative Self-Fashioning In Kazuo Ishiguro’S A Pale View Of Hills And When We Were Orphans, Hayley Angle

English Theses

The moments we remember from our lives are the foundation of the stories we tell about ourselves. I have spent many a night trying to fall asleep by running through my memories like the montage scene of a movie—clips of a funny moment with a friend, the smile of a loved one, a stupid thing I said to someone I was supposed to impress. These moments I remember portray, at the deepest level, who I want to be, who I am scared to be, and who I most understand myself to be. Intentional remembrance, as opposed to actual experience, tends …

Cognitive Borderlands: Understanding Marginalized Identity In The Work Of Ada Limón, Ashley Hope Pérez, And Carmen Maria Machado, Monica Barbay

English Theses

Gloria Anzaldúa’s groundbreaking theoretical and creative collection of essays entitled Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza provides foundational ideas and principles to consider the physical, mental, and emotional struggles of those living along the U.S.-Mexican border. This thesis furthers this discussion by contemplating what happens psychologically to those residing in physical and cognitive borderlands, including but not limited to the U.S.-Mexican border. Specifically, I develop a framework to conceptualize borderlands of the mind, focusing on people-groups who experience multiple kinds of marginalization. I argue that these layers of marginalization negatively impact one’s sense of self, fostering a cognitive divide …

Final Master's Portfolio, Ayotunde Afolabi

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio explores themes of gender and race, identity representation, and agency within various literary texts. It encapsulates a series of analytical essays that scrutinize how these themes intersect and manifest across diverse literary landscapes, emphasizing the ways in which authors address and challenge societal norms and structures through their narratives. Each essay within the portfolio not only mirrors the engagement with these themes but also showcases the development of a theoretical approach that bridges classical literary analysis with contemporary issues of identity politics and social justice.

Navigating Identity Through Education In Literature And In The Classroom, Sofia Sakzlyan

English (MA) Theses

This thesis explores the intricate relationship between education, identity formation, and oppression, drawing from psychosocial and sociocultural perspectives. I delve into how education serves as a critical arena where individuals encounter various internal psychological conflicts and external social influences that shape their sense of self. By analyzing the perspectives of writers such as Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Kate Chopin Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Erin Gruwell, the thesis seeks to answer how education impacts the self and how it intersects with systems of oppression. Furthermore, I explore the role of education in fostering critical consciousness and empowerment, particularly in the face …

Bedeviled Beauty: My Journey Through White American Theater Institutions, J'Aila C. Price

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Game console: Oculus Quest

World: American Theater Institutions

Player: Minority

Place: United States

Level: “Ain’t no way.”

This thesis explores the contrast between the Westernized philosophies ingrained in my education and my identity as a Black female artist. It sheds light on the difficulties of pursuing higher education in the arts and the gaps that arise from limited exposure to culturally diverse Black resources, revealing the systemic issues in Western performance education. The paper also discusses the insights gained from my journey as a Black female artist, focusing on my thesis performance of Blood at the Root, which is …

Conflicting Ethe In _Anna Karenina_: A Reexamination Of Tolstoy’S Complex Female Protagonist, Hannah Diles

Honors Theses

Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina depicts the world as an endless array of choices and experiences to which one assigns meaning to. His characters, like real people, must navigate their world of complex ethical systems using their own moral ethos. Readers and critics alike critique Anna as a heroine for living out her moral ethos, pitting it against the social and feminist ethos of late 19th century upper class Russian society. Anna’s story is either interpreted as a cautionary tale or Anna is portrayed as a feminist heroine who tragically died for love. Throughout this paper, I argue that Anna is …

Evermore And Evermore: A Discussion Of Spiritual Fulfillment As Found In Stoppard And Kerouac, Duncan Soughan

English Senior Capstone

Mankind has often struggled with the question of who am I? What am I if the institutions speaking into my life cease to adequately represent me? Nietzsche tackled this question and came to the conclusion that man should turn to his desire to fulfill that lack of direction. Tom Stoppard in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as well as Jack Kerouac in his novel, On the Road, interact with Nietzsche’s proposals in fascinating ways with Stoppard’s work essentially proving Nietzsche’s point, and Kerouac clarifying that yes, outside the self should not be the sole input for direction but it …

Textual Variants In Eudora Welty’S "A Piece Of News”, Brooke Derrington, Abby Choe

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Eudora Welty’s “A Piece of News” presents the question, how does one achieve self-actualization? For the protagonist Ruby Fisher, the answer is language, although that answer is not clear in the original 1937 published version of the story. That story’s focal point is Ruby’s tumultuous and complicated relationship with her husband, Clyde. In contrast, the revised 1941 version from Welty’s collection A Curtain of Green shifts the focus from Ruby’s abusive marriage to her interiority. The subsequent increase in word count, shifts in narration, and emphasis on Ruby claiming her name when she reads it in a newspaper elevates the …

A Gaelic South African Revival?: The Irish Republican Association Of South Africa, The Republic, And Irish South African Identity, Tom Mcgrath

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

In September 1920, at a meeting in Johannesburg, the Irish National Association of South Africa rebranded itself as the Irish Republican Association of South Africa. The IRASA was unique within the history of the Irish in South Africa. While it existed only until 1923, it was the largest Irish group in South African history, made evident by the establishment of its own journal, The Republic. The association was fundamentally devoted to nurturing an “Irish Afrikander” identity and culture within South Africa, primarily through the promotion of Irish works in its journal, from excerpts of Thomas Davis’ writings to a full …

Countering Dominant Narratives In Community: The Many Voices In Spoken Word Poetry, Natalie Raquel Acuña

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In this project I research the counternarratives within spoken word poetry by authors of color (i.e., Rafeef Ziadah, José Olivarez, and Denise Frohman) and how they resist the dominant narratives that are broadcast towards a larger audience. I analyze categories of counterstory through the following paired themes: immigration/citizenship, and joy/trauma. I delve into the heavy importance of community within my project in the realm of spoken word poetry. A lot of poetry is going against dominant narratives, community within this discourse gives a sense of belonging and relatability to the experience of the spoken word performers.

“That’S Because Of The Trauma”: Repetition, Reflection And Refraction In Social Media In Louise O’Neill’S Asking For It (2015), Eugene O'Brien

Journal of Franco-Irish Studies

This essay will look at different modes of trauma that are represented in Louise O’Neill’s novel Asking For It (2015). These modes of trauma will be looked at in terms of how the repeated visualization and production of an initial act of violence and rape across social media platforms actively transforms post-traumatic stress into a repeated and ongoing sense of traumatic stress which has profound implications for the sense of selfhood and identity of the protagonist of the novel Emma O’Donovan. Emma is not remembering a repressed experience; she is re-living it virtually in the present as the images are …

This Passing Shadow: The Role Of Trauma In Reforming Individual And Cultural Identity In The Lord Of The Rings And Anglo-Saxon Literature, Benjamin C. Benson

English MA Theses

Many scholars focus on J.R.R. Tolkien's personal history and attempt to locate his own trauma in the texts of his works. However, this focus often overlooks the role that trauma plays in the reshaping of individual and cultural identity within the works of Tolkien. Tolkien uses a number of methods to communicate trauma throughout his works, but these methods often have roots in Anglo-Saxon Literature. This study analyzes the various ways that Tolkien adapts Anglo-Saxon works to communicate trauma while simultaneously using the traumatic events to help communicate healing through the interaction of the traumatized with their community.

More Than Fiction: Representations Of Youth In Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy Fiction And Its Importance, Daman Mcconnell

University Honors Theses

This article takes on a comparative analysis between Young Adult Dystopian literature like Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, focusing on how adolescents are represented in the discussion of Dystopian Fiction. Though mainly focusing on Six of Crows, these novels can be considered places where society and the world these characters live in are unforgiving and restrictive, forcing the growth of these adolescents to accelerate toward adulthood. Within Six of Crows lies the representations of antagonists going against the youth as adults with twisted senses of morality. In addition, this article also discusses …

Creatività Diasporiche Dialoghi Transnazionali Tra Teoria E Arti, Simone Brioni Dr., Loredana Polezzi Dr., Franca Sinopoli

Department of English Faculty Publications

Creatività diasporiche è un volume bilingue costituito da tredici conversazioni tra studiosi/studiose di materie umanistiche e artisti/artiste il cui lavoro si concentra sul tema della migrazione e dell’identità. I contributi nella raccolta abbracciano forme di produzione che vanno dalla letteratura alle arti visive, dal cinema alla performance teatrale, dai podcast alla musica rap, mentre tra le tematiche ricorrenti emergono dibattiti su identità, lingua, migrazione, memoria e cittadinanza. Questo volume è anche un invito a ripensare il lavoro creativo e quello accademico, in area umanistica, come intrinsecamente legati al dialogo e alla collaborazione. Ciascuna conversazione si concentra sull’Italia intesa come un …

Consuming The World: Poetic Appetite, Memory, And Identity In Li-Young Lee’S Food Poems, Claire Liszka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food is a universal human necessity, yet food often serves more than a biological purpose as it informs individual and communal identities, and even facilitates memory. This thesis explores personal memory, the development of identity, and an almost reverential connection to nature in several food poems by Li-Young Lee in Rose (1986) and Behind My Eyes (2008). Born in 1957, Lee has been writing poetry since he was young, studying under Gerald Stern in the late 1970s, and he is known for writing sublime, transcendent yet incredibly accessible and expressive poetry. This thesis gives an overview of food studies and …

The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter

Honors Theses

Assuming the near impossible task of sorting through and delineating various conceptions of the self in and throughout literary and civil history, literary critic Irving Howe adopts a highly perceptive and profoundly analytical approach to the enigmatic individual. In the article quoted above, "The Self in Literature," Howe consolidates what he believes to be the most promising attempts at coding and decoding abstractions of the self across numerous literary, philosophical, and sociological texts. The success of Howe’s analysis lies in his ability to simultaneously embrace and scrutinize seemingly incompatible notions of bodily and spiritual discourse. With the knowledge that such …

Too Good To Be White: A Journey To Lose Identity In Tony Morrison’S The Bluest Eye, Rasha Maqableh, Aya Akkawi

Association of Arab Universities Journal for Arts مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للآداب

The history of African-American is a record of struggle for the right of existence and acknowledgement. An integral part of that struggle is the enforcement of the values and standards of the dominant ideals of white culture that made it impossible for African-Americans to hold on their identity. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison focuses on the difficulties, facing women, in obtaining identity and self esteem in a society dominated by white ethnocentrism. This paper aims at displaying the hardships and challenges of Black female characters in a world dominated by a complicated system of race, class and sex oppression …

Bodies Of Silence And Space: Victimhood, Complicity, And Resistance In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Sana H. Mufti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the complexity of resistance and the conditions of power for women in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Using feminist theory, theories of neoliberalism, and Dominionism, this thesis works to understand the ways in which victimhood and complicity influence resistance in totalitarian regimes. I argue that neoliberal ideologies skew understandings of freedom, agency, and power in a way that ensures individuals, specifically women, remain trapped in the system. Focusing on reproduction, I examine how Gilead controls women’s bodies and reproductive abilities to ensure a future for itself. The Eve-Complex is one way that the state integrates itself …

Rhetorical Vulnerability, Sophia Brauner

WWU Graduate School Collection

Rhetorical vulnerability is a necessary, underlying condition for rhetoric. That is, in order for rhetoric to be meaningful or even possible, we must already be vulnerable to each other. This paper frames vulnerability as a rhetorical concept different from vulnerability as a way of being, a personality trait, and a modifier of actions and behaviors. I examine how vulnerability has shown up in rhetorical scholarship as approaches to rhetoric, in relation to desire, and as embodied and affective. I close by proposing a practice of embracing vulnerability which creates capacities to differently engage identification categories and to understand spaces not …

Samozvanets (The Pretender), Matthew Garrell, Alikzandr Malakov

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

he Russian word Samozvanets most directly translates to Imposter in English. However, for this thesis, I have selected the alternative interpretation of Pretender. Imposter implies the taking or assuming of another’s position. Pretender, more personally, carries the meaning of presenting self as something one is not. It is through the lens of the Pretender that I examine the idea of what it means to be a member of a particular ethnicity, and to engage with one’s cultural heritage. I do this through a collection of fictional stories, investigating various lives within the Russian diaspora following the dissolution of the Soviet …

Moments Of Excess: Type 1 Diabetes And The Myth Of Control In Adolescent Fiction For Girls, Michelle E. Legault

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis is the first academic work to analyze the stories of the Type 1 diabetic teen girls of adolescent fiction. In novels for adolescent readers, these girls are often White, female, heterosexual, and middle class—resulting in a collective disability narrative that portrays an “every girl” and lacks cultural or political dimensions. This thesis explores the narratives of five fictional teen protagonists with Type 1 diabetes. They are: Stacey McGill from the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin, Rachel Deering in Lurlene McDaniel’s Will I Ever Dance Again? (1982), Mackenzie “Zie” Clark in Sarah White’s Let Me List the …

Defining Heroinism: Heartthrobs Refining Heroines In 18th And 19th Century Women's Literature, Grace M. Gibson

Honors College Theses

This project will explore the emergence of “heroinism,” a uniquely feminine way in which early female authors approached the heroine’s journey. Barred by male expectations of female conduct both in society and literature, eighteenth and nineteenth century women daring to “attempt the pen” forged stories of heroines with conventions and tropes distinctly, though not entirely, separate from those told of centuries of heroes. I intend to track the ways in which these early tales of heroines told by women strayed from the traditional heroic plot, with unique motivations, mentors, trials, and rewards, but also how they were shaped and confined …

Identifying Loss, Animating Melancholy: Asian-American Narratives In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Spirited Away, And Bao, Jered Connery Mabaquiao

English Theses

Animated film provides a complex illustration of the creativity behind constructing narratives. This thesis aims to explore the way that racial and cultural identity are displayed within animated film. The purpose of this thesis will be paying close attention to the intersections of psychoanalytic theories of loss that are placed on a spectrum with terms such as trauma, mourning and melancholia all within the scope of racial identification. These terms will be worked through from texts from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan as well as works that expand on these notions. These psychoanalytic texts will be applied to Nickelodeon's “Avatar: …

"Meatheads" Redefined: An Analysis Of The Union College Football Team, Michaela Wood

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the experiences and representations of the male football player. It provides an anthropological study of Union College football players and a film analysis of the sports film genre, revealing critical insights about relationships among bodies, diet preferences, and gendered stereotypes. These insights move beyond the “meathead” stereotypes that society constructs for the male football player. This thesis combines Anthropology and English to reveal that questions about hegemonic masculinity arise in the minds of the very athletes who embody the stereotypes of ‘the man.’ Moreover, sports films’ popularity lies in themes that entice men to acknowledge their emotions. …

He Had Two Women To Die For, Ireland And The Missus”: Mothers As Abject And Sons As Scapegoats In Edna O’Brien’S House Of Splendid Isolation And In The Forest, Emily Nix

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis examines the protagonists in Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest and House of Splendid Isolation and applies Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Rene Girard’s theory of the scapegoat. In doing so, I attempt to give a richer understanding of O’Brien’s masculine and feminine characters and how their constructed identities are based on their cultural circumstances and positions in their societies. I use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze the single women in these novels, Eily and Josie, who become metaphorical single mothers by the invasions of young men into their homes. Then, I apply Girard’s theory of the …

Reclamation: The Crown Of African American Identity, Lindsey Kellogg

English MA Theses

African American voices have been the main sources of influence on society and culture. For this reason, it is important that African Americans speak up and reclaim their voices. Not only are their voices important, but the stories that lie behind the voices are what need to be amplified. With the application of postcolonial theory, this thesis takes modern stories located in North America depicting racist behavior towards African Americans from the year 1970 to present-day New York City in order to fully amplify the process of social struggle. As these narratives are passed down through generations serving as a …

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 …