Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Icarus’S Fall: Villainization In Wicked, Star Wars, And The Untamed, Laura Renfroe

Honors Theses

When looking back on the most beloved, yet infamous, villains of popular culture, one can note an abundant rise of prequels and backstory-driven media exploring the paths that villain characters take that lead them to their tragic fall. Some of those stories include John M. Chu’s Wicked, George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and Chen Jialin and Zheng Weiwin’s The Untamed, each of which explores protagonists who are labeled as “wicked” and depicted as fallen to the “dark side.” While these characters are often studied in existing literary research, there have yet to be explicit ties …

Queer Okayness & The Modernist Influence: A New Form Of Queer Poetics In Ocean Vuong’S Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Sophia Behnke

Audre Lorde Prize

This paper analyzes poems from Ocean Vuong's 2016 debut collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, as a contemporary evolution of queer modernist poetics from the early twentieth century. Using conceptual frameworks from Sara Ahmed and Audre Lorde, the author argues for the cultural power of poetics as an inherently queer art form which artists are constantly redefining. By studying how prominent lesbian and queer modernists disrupted heteronormative ideals through non-conformist poetic strategies, the author develops a comparison to Vuong's work as a contemporary queer poet who both draws from past forms and develops a more nuanced understanding of queerness …

2026 Greenleaf Review-- Better Days (No. 39), Sigma Tau Delta

The Greenleaf Review

No abstract provided.

Separate But Found: An Ontological Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Byron Haynes

Posters - 2026

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, separation becomes the ideal solution for African American women to recover their humanity and build a future. These women understandably harbor for their oppressor and would be unable to foster a coexistence with them, given their suffering after being the victims of sexual assault, lynchings, hard labor, substandard living circumstances, and death regularly. By illustrating the methodical methods in which women are dehumanized under Whiteness, this essay examines how each woman reclaims their humanity through the separation of Whiteness in their lives through Baby Suggs’s preaching, Sethe’s choice to kill her daughter, Denver’s exploration of reality …

Ruby's, Clarissa Sigale

English Honors Projects

Ruby's is a realistic fiction novel that follows the complex lives and relationships between a group of small town Nevada sex workers.

The first five chapters follow a unique cast of characters. Digo, who has given up on his dreams of being an artist and is terrified of honest emotional conversation, falls into a messy relationship with Samir, a disabled drag queen who wears his heart on his sleeve. Meanwhile, Faun grapples with the news of her abusive mother's death as well as her relationship with her still-alive father.

Yarrow is the perfect place for messy people in a messy …

Literary Colonization And Locating Avenues Of Subversion In Bobby Flores-Villasis' Suite Bergamasque, Michael Aaron C. Gomez

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This paper examines four short stories included in the collection titled Suite Bergamasque, written by multi-awarded Negrense playwright and fictionist Bobby Flores-Villasis. A materialist reading situates Villasis within the canon of Philippine literature in English and analyzes the way his stories formally render the class antagonisms of history through the interconnected narratives of Dumaguete City’s sugar elite. Finally, this paper also contends that the political imagination of Villasis’ work exhorts contemporary Dumaguete writers to critically examine inherited hagiographies in order to describe fully the conditions that have shaped the city into its contemporary formation, particularly the phenomena of gentrification …

"Staged” Discussion (Activity), Lytton Smith Ph.D.

School of Arts & Sciences

This activity was developed by SUNY Geneseo Professor Lytton Smith during the spring 2026 semester.

Learning Objectives

• To help students identify their own ‘default’ or habitual behaviors in teamwork settings
• To help students name and value alternative behaviors they will try out in future teamwork settings.
• To disrupt establish power dynamics within the classroom in order to allow different voices and learning styles to emerge as contributors in the second half of a semester (when patterns can have become ingrained: the same voices start the conversation each discussion, etc.)

Historic Shrouds: A New Voice For Shakespearean Women, Ashleigh E. Weinstock

Global Tides

This article presents, and seeks to remedy, the argument that Shakespeare’s female characters are deprived of equal representation as complex humans through narrative gaps, action relegated to offstage scenes, and reduced opportunities for direct-to-audience speech, mirroring the social hierarchies of early modern gender, which continue to be reflected in modern society.

While this critique is not new, this essay argues that the criticism of these theatrical inequalities is insufficient to remedy their harms. Instead, this author proposes a performance-based, generative model of restorative justice termed the Historic Shroud, which seeks to give voice to sidelined female characters by placing …

Acknowledgments And Author Biographies

Emerging Writers

An editorial note of acknowledgement along with author biographies.

Iraqi Students' Engagement With English In Indonesia: Language, Identity, And Adaptation, Nirwana Nirwana, Yanty Wirza, Mutakhirani Mustafa, Muhlis Muhlis

The Qualitative Report

English as a lingua franca in higher education enables international students to participate in the global academic community. However, for Iraqi students in Indonesia, the use of English is not just a means of communication, but also part of identity negotiation, social adaptation, and cultural integration. This study explores how Iraqi students experience acceptance, resistance, and adaptation in using English in academic and social environments in Indonesia. The three-dimensional narrative inquiry framework (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) is used as the primary analytical lens to explore how participants' experiences unfold over time, across relational contexts, and within specific physical and institutional …

“Where All Is Playtime And Pleasure”: Feeling The Otherworldly In Late Medieval Literature, Anna K. Mcgill

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present intra-, inter-, and extra-textual felt responses to encounters with the otherworldly as described in Late Medieval texts as a lens through which to consider personal, social, and national imaginative potential surrounding contemporary issues across genres and disciplines. I argue that the use of otherworlds and otherworldly agents as both personally and rhetorically compelling analogues through which contemporary issues can be explored. I start my discussion of the felt impacts of encounters with the Arthurian otherworldly, with a particular focus on Glastonbury and Arthur’s alleged grave there, and how they transmit affects of sovereign authority. Next, …

Rooted In Silence: Listening To Landscapes That Remember, Jaylen A. Wyatt

FUSION

For this American Literature assignment, the author responded to the question: “How do natural landscapes preserve memory?” To do so, he wrote a non-fiction personal essay featuring several course selections read during the semester. The author argues that ultimately we must take care of these natural landscapes, and the environment at large, so that their memory can live on.

Where Did Her Torch Glow Go?, Josephine Smith

FUSION

This project is a short video presentation with accompanying written reflection connecting the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, a poem about immigration to the United States, to modern events regarding immigration in the country.

An Adaptation Of The Yellow Wallpaper, Carla M. Sanz

FUSION

This project includes a 3-dimensional adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," highlighting struggles with mental health and women’s empowerment amid patriarchal oppression. The use of a 3-D model of the story gives the viewer a visual representation of the narrator’s mental and physical decline. Representative elements of this decline include the use of a chest and a string stretched across the “ceiling” of the room, which visually convey the narrator’s feeling of being trapped. In addition, the room's tainted appearance and the visual of a woman in the walls allow the viewer to imagine the narrator's mental, emotional, …

The Human, Kaamilah Kabala

FUSION

“The Caterpillar” is a short story by American author Lydia Davis published in “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis” in 2009. In the story, the narrator wakes up to find a caterpillar in her bed, and decides to take it outside instead of killing it. However, she loses it somewhere in a dark staircase along the way. At first she looks for it and spends her time thinking about it, but eventually she forgets about the caterpillar and moves on with her life.

This article a re-writing of the short story. The author took the story and wrote it from …

The Chaotic Silence Of Youth, Stephen A. Gobourne

FUSION

The inspiration for "The Chaotic Silence of Youth" comes from the song "How Does It Feel?" by the band Citizen, off of their 2013 album titled "Youth." This project is the result of the author's personal interpretation of youth itself, transitional periods, and experiencing life, with all of its ups and downs, using musical rhetoric as the core.

To Be Buoyant, Jess T. Forte

FUSION

This is a poem of resistance and transformation, contradicting forces that work together to shape development. Inspired by “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, "To Be Buoyant" is an exploration of human identity from a place of stuckness.

Waiting Rivers, Samuel B. Darden

FUSION

This piece was inspired by the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” by Langston Hughes. Assigned in my African American Literature (ENGL 2300) class, Hughes’s poem stuck with me, prompting me to create my own unique version, one encompassing all marginalized groups. This poem personifies the struggle for rights for African Americans (and others within the diaspora), and the long, arduous, and selective process of becoming recognized as equal, a fight ongoing to this day. The separation of each group (not only by race, but also by gender) is explored throughout the piece, touching on important historical movements, such …

Editorial Note And Author Biographies

FUSION

A note from the Editors on the current issue, along with author biographies.

The 'Thing Itself': Virginia Woolf's Materialism, Kathryn Andronowitz

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Cover And Front Matter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Faith Crisis As Death: Grief In Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Terrible Sonnets", Kaden Nelson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The "Family Of Things": Mary Oliver, Anthropomorphism, And Conflicting Approaches To Spirituality In Nature, Sophie West

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Bower Of Bliss As An Allegory For Ireland, Katherine Ries

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Metamodern Aesthetic As Reconciliatory Theology In Gilead, Henry Purser

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Tolkien's Joyful Sorrow, The "Gift Of Tears" Of Medieval Mysticism, And John Donne's Sermon "Jesus Wept", Giovanni Carmine Costabile

Journal of Tolkien Research

At the field of Cormallen, the emotion of joy felt by the victorious Hobbits is so great that Sam wonders whether everything sad will come untrue. At the same time, their joy is so great that it is described as "poignant as grief". Dimitra Fimi in 2017 pointed out Tolkien's probable indebtedness to Christian Orthodox tradition of "charmolype", or joyful sorrow. Another relevant parallel of the intermingling of joy and sorrow is the eleventh century Norman monk and abbot John of Fécamp's notion of the "Gift of Tears" (Gratia lacrymarum) from God, which brings true happiness. …

An Appalachian Expression Of Rootedness: Exploring Rootedness In The Writings Of Simone Weil And Wendell Berry, Luke Bratton

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Hot Ears, Anna Thomas

Landshark Literary Review

A short creative non-fiction piece about the daily battle of living with depression. This work explores the diagnosis of depression through a singular moment in time, taking a scene and expanding it into it's higher meaning. This piece also develops part of the support system an individual with depression relies on, as well as an intimate relationship between college students.

Landshark Literary Review, Hanny Zermeno

Landshark Literary Review

The poems of this selection delve into the complexities of familial relationships as well as the internal battles of insecurities brought on by the complications of a lack of harmony and love primarily displayed in families. Other poems in this selection describe the love between two people and the physical and emotional effects of yearning and their human connections.