Arts and Humanities Commons^™

When Wuxia Met Romance: The Pleasures And Politics Of Transculturalism In Sherry Thomas’S My Beautiful Enemy, Jayashree Kamble

Publications and Research

A case study of Sherry Thomas’s Qing-era My Beautiful Enemy (and its prequel, The Hidden Blade) allows for a fruitful discussion of changing representations of diversity in romance fiction and its appeal to readers. MBE’s heroine is Anglo-Chinese, and the novel’s plot draws on wuxia, a literary and cinematic genre that has a long history in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. It is also associated with immigration and exile, perhaps resonating with Thomas’s own move from China to the U.S. Readers might find its infusion in romance appealing for two reasons: one, it features a warrior heroine (a …

Enclosure And Escape, Or Escape Into Enclosure?: Heterotopias And Jane Eyre

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

Gramsci In The Digital Age: Youtubers As New Organic Intellectuals

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

“Directed Into A Bed Of Trenches”: The Shift In The Language Of Elegy Demonstrated By The War Poetry Of Wilfred Owen

The Graduate Review

No abstract provided.

After The Golem: Teaching Golems, Kabbalah, Exile, Imagination, And Technological Takeover., Temma F. Berg

English Faculty Publications

The golem is an elusive creature. From a religious perspective it enacts spirit entering matter, a creation story of potential salvation crossed with reprehensible arrogance. As a historical narrative, the golem story becomes a tale of Jewish powerlessness and oppression, of pogroms and ghettoization, of assimilation and exile, and sometimes, of renewal. As the subject of a course in women, gender and sexuality studies, the golem narrative can be seen as a relentless questioning of otherness and identity and as a revelation of the complex intersectionalities of gender, class, sexuality, race, disability, and ethnicity. As a philosophical motif, the ambiguous …

Latinx Characters In Young Adult Literature: Perpetuating And Countering Stereotypes, Dallas Gomez

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

The Latinx community is rapidly growing in the United States, and it is important for young readers to find books with characters who are members of this community . However, there are many stereotypes that exist about this group in society, some negative and some positive . To determine how the Latinx community is depicted to readers of young adult (YA) fiction, I selected a set of novels featuring Latinx people as main characters based on their publication date and targeted audience age . By reading and analyzing different books written at different times, not only was it found that …

A Transnational Look At The Modern Women, Isabella Hardesty

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Spanning forty years apart, the short story “Miss Sophia’s Diary” (1926) by Ding Ling and The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath can speak to one another in revealing the position of women in a revolutionary new era. The two stories may be generationally and geographically distant, yet both hold a collective female consciousness in the context of the emerging modernist epoch. By examining these two pieces of literature in relation to one another, similar attitudes and stylistic trends emerge regarding the treatment of women. The common archetypes, for each respective time and country, imprinted onto women are at some …

This Woman's Work: Corrosive Power Structures, Gendered Labor And Weariness In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale And Oryx And Crake, Taylor J. Pryor

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In her 2007 essay “Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency),” Lauren Berlant asserts that “in the scene of slow death, a condition of being worn out by the activity of reproducing life, agency can be an activity of maintenance” (759). This concept emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining one’s agency while experiencing chronic exhaustion, or what can be referred to as the “wearied state.” Utilizing Berlant’s theoretical framework, this thesis investigates the concept of weariness in two dystopic texts: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Oryx and Crake (2003). The respective protagonists of The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake …

Filming Reconciliation: Indigenous Screen Cultures In An Age Of Redress, Kyle L. Killebrew

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines Indigenous cinematic cultures in the United States and Canada since 1998 in the context of international reconciliation movements between settler and Indigenous states. This project examines the contested intersections of twenty-first century Indigenism and multiculturalism, exploring the ways in which Native voices in media navigate international cultural marketplaces. I focus on Georgina Lightning’s Older than America, Igloolik Isuma’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Sherman Alexie and Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals, and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ A Red Girl’s Reasoning. Specifically, I am concerned with Indigenous cinemas and media that envision and enact models of reconciliation, healing, and social justice using …

Book Reviews- Joanna Wharton, Material Enlightenment: Women Writers And The Science Of Mind, 1770–1830, Stephen C. Behrendt

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Joanna Wharton’s Material Enlightenment: Women Writers and the Science of Mind, 1770–1830 is a recent addition to the interdisciplinary series Studies in the Eighteenth Century that Boydell Press (Boydell & Brewer Publishers) is publishing in association with the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. It is a welcome addition to the growing body of work that addresses the contributions of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British women writers to areas of scientific, philosophical, and otherwise “learned” discourse that have historically been associated primarily—and in many cases exclusively—with male thinkers and writers. Wharton’s study therefore helps to flesh out the picture …

Elizabeth Bishop's Perspectives On Marriage, Jeffrey Westover

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Marriage can never be renewed except by that which is always the source of true marriage: that two human beings reveal the You to one another.
- Martin Buber

In a number of texts, both published and unpublished, Elizabeth Bishop addresses the themes of marriage, love, and courtship. Such issues were vexed ones for her. As a young woman, she rejected Robert Seaver’s marriage proposal (Millier, Elizabeth Bishop 112). Later, her friend Pauline Hemingway wondered in a letter whether she and Tom Wanning were engaged (Millier, Elizabeth Bishop 201), and Robert Lowell famously confessed to her that she was the …

Blanche Matthias: Part I, Huntington Library Papers; Part Ii, A Portrait In Friendships, James Karman

Jeffers Studies

Blanche Matthias’s papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, include two documents of interest to Jeffers scholars: a memoir by Blanche that recounts experiences involving Robinson and Una, and a letter to Blanche from Charles Roberts Aldrich that mentions Jeffers, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and other mutual friends. The memoir and letters are published here for the first time, along with a portrait of Matthias that describes her relationship with seven noteworthy friends: Una Jeffers, Georgia O’Keeffe, Margery Latimer, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Rosalind Rajagopal, Mima Porter, and Charles Roberts Aldrich.

This, My Breath, Suzette Louise Mack

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This, My Breath, is a creative collection of memories gathered along the seasons in my life-mostly from my formative years. The stories highlight the patient, unconditional love my parents shared, and the way it has influenced me throughout my life. The stories are about life, love, loss, a yearning to belong, and a longing to be both interdependent and independent.

In my family of origin, it was the simple rhythms established through daily life and the honoring of traditions that inspired the deepest meaning, purpose, and hope. The seasons of the year brought my family alive with a flow of …

Modern World Literature: Contemporary Anglophone Writers, Michele Chinitz

Open Educational Resources

This document explains how to annotate a PDF online using hypothes.is. The instructions give guidelines for producing analytical annotations that relate to the course Contemporary Anglophone Writers (Fall 2020).

The Effects Of A Project-Based Blended Learning With Communication Strategy Instruction On English Oral Communication Ability And Learner Autonomy Of Undergraduate Engineering Students, Pichai Pinphet

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Thai undergraduate engineering students seem to have difficulty mastering English oral communication ability and learner autonomy. This study investigated the effects of a project-based blended learning with communication strategy instruction model to develop English oral communication ability and learner autonomy of undergraduate engineering students. Four communication strategies, namely asking for clarification, asking for confirmation, circumlocution, and use of fillers and hesitation devices, and the ways to conduct the independent project, were taught to 20 undergraduate Engineering students in a face-to-face environment. The students carried out their online tasks and an independent project via social platforms (e.g., Facebook, Skype, etc.). Quantitative …

The Development Of A Learning-Oriented Reading Assessment Model To Improve English Reading Ability And Promote Learning Engagement On Efl Undergraduate Students, Raveewan Viengsang

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The study was conducted 1) to examine the effects of the learning-oriented reading assessment model on EFL undergraduate students' reading ability, 2) to investigate the effects of the learning-oriented reading assessment model on EFL undergraduate students' reading processes, and 3) to explore the effects of the learning-oriented reading assessment model on EFL undergraduate students' learning engagement. A mixed-method research design was employed. The study participants were 25 first-year undergraduate students at a public university who were enrolled in a foundation English course. The period of the study was 16 weeks. There were five data collection instruments including the CU-TEP, the …

‘Framed And Clothed With Variety’: Print Culture, Multimodality, And Visual Design In John Derricke’S Image Of Irelande, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

This chapter argues that the twelve illustrative plates in John Derricke's Image of Ireland (1581) were the author's primary focus, aimed at readers who practiced the kinds of ‘laudable exercises’ demanded of committed Protestants: a kind of reading that was recursive, studious, and dynamic. This essay contextualises Derricke’s Image in relation to printer John Day’s output in the late sixteenth century as well as to contemporary illustrated texts from which Derricke may have drawn inspiration as a reader and woodcarver. I focus on the seven plates containing small alphabetical keys and their impact on how and in what order we …

Finding Truth In Memoir, John Abernethy

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis represents four chapters of a memoir. The first chapter is a work of fiction and the remaining three chapters are written in the genre of creative nonfiction.

The completed work will continue this structure and present personal narratives of memoir interspersed with works of fiction. Fiction serves to support and complement the variability and deficits of memory, to fill in the gaps, in the process of revealing the personal truth of memoir. The two genres will be linked in terms of theme, metaphor, and lyric voice..

Fundamental to this thesis is the assumption that a memoir can reveal …

Aesthetics And Poetics Of The Novel In Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer And Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son, Frederick Feldman

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer and Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son are both Pulitzer Prize-winning novels from the first half of the 2010s. Nguyen’s novel of a Vietnamese spy in America during the Vietnam war has been critically acclaimed and has attracted significant scholarly attention, a special issue of PMLA being dedicated to the work. Johnson’s novel about North Korea, while also a recipient of praise, has been comparatively less noticed and attracted little scholarly work. This thesis seeks to contribute to the scholarly literature on American literature and to literature on the poetics of the novel by reading …

William W. French. Maryat Lee's Ecotheater: A Theater For The Twenty-First Century (Book Review), Carole K. Harris

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review Of 'The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey To Change Elder Care, Valerie Barnes Lipscomb

English Sarasota Manatee Campus Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Where Virtue Goes: Stories, Radhika Vu Thanh Vy

Honors Theses

This story is a parallel narrative featuring the life in a fictional remote village in Vietnam some time during the 1800s, as well as the present-day life of a Vietnamese immigrant family in the US. The first narrative explores the efforts of a feminist duo, a matchmaker and a midwife, to help a young pregnant woman get out of an unhappy marriage. In doing so, the duo attempt to unravel traditional gender roles and oppressive social customs, and reweave the village social fabric. The other narrative explores a present-day marriage, one that is as much a disintegrating relationship as one …

"They Shall Be A Kosmos:" Alexander Von Humboldt And The Ecopoetics Of Walt Whitman, Benjamin Theyerl

Honors Theses

Places the naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt's proto-ecological ideas in conversation with Walt Whitman's poetry to show how the poet developed an ecopoetics in conversation with the natural sciences of his time, with specific attention to Von Humboldt's theory of the "kosmos" - by which Whitman's poetic persona self-identified. These recognitions are combined with how Whitman's idealized version of the American poet as a “kosmos” creates a political ecology in Whitman’s work, placing his ecopoetics into environmental discourses that resonate from their origin in the nineteenth century to our present ecological moment today.

Drawing Power: Analyzing Writing Center As Homeplace Through Gesture Drawings, Hannah Telling

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

The Golden Gates Of Childhood: Romantic Influences On Childhood Perspective In George Eliot's The Mill On The Floss And Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, Tara Rosenzweig

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study explores George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, specifically in terms of how these Victorian authors portray childhood. I focus on the Romantic influences of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Wordsworth to analyze this portrayal. I examine how Eliot and Dickens use Wordsworth’s Romantic images of nature, gates, and windows to portray Victorian adults as corruptors of childhood innocence. Further, I analyze how these authors use Rousseau’s teaching philosophies to criticize Victorian educational policies. By comparing Dickens’s Oliver Twist to Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, I trace how both authors depend on Romanticism …

Disrupting An(Other): Sexuality As Political Resistance, Emma C. Downey

Master’s Theses

If sexual knowledge can threaten social and political institutions and their control, how do the contents and subjects of literature and publications in the interwar period make that legible? Moreover, if female sexuality–represented or real–was seen as something disruptive to the normal functioning of society, did sexuality offer a useful entry point for social, political, or ideological critiques of the interwar period? My project responds to these questions by analyzing the lives and writings of two female authors of the interwar period: Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) and Katharine Burdekin (1896-1963). In my analysis, I focus on two major points of connection. …

Terrible Am I, Child?, Camille Arnett

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The modern period of intergenerational strife between the aging-out Baby Boomers and the Millennials who have come forth to replace them in an infrastructure that cannot support them is a struggle that carries with it unique psychological implications ripe for literary exploration. Understanding these conflicts in a profound way is an important challenge to take on, and one which can, in my belief, be best achieved through literature. My work, a draft of a novel entitled Terrible Am I, Child?, is a family drama which takes the symbolic generational divide and uses it as a framework for exploring issues of …

A New Happiness?: Reading Literature With Deleuze And Guattari In 2020, Fiona Connolly

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Gilles Deleuze is one of the most influential French philosophers of the twentieth century. He collaborated with political activist and radical psychoanalyst, Felix Guattari to create Anti-Oedipus (1972), A Thousand Plateaus (1980), and What is Philosophy ? (1991), among other works. At the center of Deleuze and Guattari’s thought was the belief that philosophy is the production of concepts, such as territorialization/deterritorialization, lines of flight, and rhizomes. In this thesis, I will use Deleuze and Guattari to examine three seemingly unrelated literary texts: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Nights, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and John Green’s Paper Towns. By …

Fantasy, Joseph Murphy

Bryant Literary Review

When I hear the mountain’s voice, words rise from a burnt page and a door in my heart swings open.

The Music Box, Cliff Saunders

Bryant Literary Review

Sing the gap between food and electricity

into a spirit unlike any other.