Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Dispatches From The Home Front: Violet Hunt As War Writer And Reluctant Modernist, Heather M. Robinson, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

The life and work of Violet Hunt showcases the tension between modernism’s challenges to Victorian and Edwardian literary and social traditions, and the conservatism, particularly with regard to gender norms, of many of the modernist canon’s key figures: institutions, writers and critics alike. Although her work was well regarded during her lifetime, and she was a central figure in London’s literary scene in the early-twentieth century, Hunt is now best known for her long, and ultimately disastrous, relationship with Ford Madox Ford. Her copious literary oeuvre, comprising seventeen novels, three collections of short stories, and several works of biography, translation …

Treatment Of The Differently Abled: Representations Of Disability From Victorian Periodicals To Contemporary Graphic Narratives, Rachelle Echevarria

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, a number of efforts have been made to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic institutions, the workplace, and to examine and analyze representations of marginalized populations in a variety of literary and cultural contexts. These efforts usually acknowledge past mistakes, emphasizing the idea that history shall not and should not repeat itself. While analyzing the representations of disability is important in its own right, it's also important to understand why these perceptions exist. This thesis suggests that when the representations of disabilities from different mediums and from different time periods are examined in relationship, readers may …

Political Bodies In The Ulster Cycle: Space, Conflict, And Comedy In Scéla Muicce Meicc Dathó, Glenn S. Ritchey Iii

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Scéla Muicce Meicc Da Thó (SMMD; The Tale of Mac Da Thó's Pig) is a humorous Old Irish myth that takes its cues from its Ulster Cycle cousins, notably, An Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). The connective tissue is its cast, plot structure, and the author's mastery of cultural and storytelling traditions. SMMD is brief and rapid, which aids its near-absurdist representation of masculinity, kingship, and honor in heroic saga culture. This thesis uses postcolonial and medieval literary scholarship to analyze medieval and modern depictions of the Ulster Cycle. Contemporarily, the Irish …

Bibliography, Alison Langdon

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Bibliography of publications by Alison (Ganze) Langdon.

An Analysis Of Unusual Case Assignment In Pronouns, Olivia Ziemelis

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Interpretation And Ovidian Myth In Alexander’S Bridge And O Pioneers!, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This essay describes interpretive strategies widely applied to Ovidian mythic materials during the period of Cather’s early career, especially those operative in Alexander’s Bridge and O Pioneers! The article assumes that widely held conventional interpretations of myths, in this case Ovidian myths, in a specific time and area are part of their semantic content, or iconology, and are tools Cather used in communicating with her audience. The essay then looks at a passage in the 1912 Alexander’s Bridge and two disputed passages in the 1913 O Pioneers! along with extended Bacchic themes in the latter novel that employ conventional Ovidian …

Reflections On The Victorian(Ist) Impulse To Totalize Africa, Adrian S. Wisnicki

Department of English: Faculty Publications

IN this essay, I offer some reflections on how Victorianists might understand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discursive practices for mapping Africa. In doing this, I respond to what Sukanya Banerjee, our panel organizer, asked us to do in determining the focus for our essays—namely, that we direct “attention to topics in Victorian studies that [we] feel might otherwise be overlooked or viewed differently.” In what follows I introduce and problematize a series of Victorian-era maps or, more specifically, problematize what such maps represent conceptually, then offer some alternate means by which Victorianists might critically engage with cultural and social reality …

The Politics Of Tools, Stephen Ramsay

Department of English: Faculty Publications

A consideration of the political meaning of software that tries to add greater philosophical precision to statements about the politics of tools and tool building in the humanities. Using Michael Oakeshott's formulations of the “politics of faith” and the “politics of skepticism,” [Oakeshott 1996] it suggests that while declaring our tools be morally or political neutral may be obvious fallacious, it is equally problematic to suppose that we can predict in advance the political formations that will arise from our tool building. For indeed (as Oakeshott suggests), the tools themselves give rise to what is politically possible.

Comparative Studies Of Cross-Cultural Poetics: Robin Coste Lewis And Timothy Yu, Lili Xu

Lawrence University Honors Projects

My use of the term cross-cultural refers to poetry that arises from cultures and ideologies other than the hegemonic ones, which in this paper means African American poet Robin Coste Lewis’s 79-page long narrative poem “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” and Asian American poet Timothy Yu’s collection of parody poems—100 Chinese Silences. Inspired by Jahan Ramazani’s book about transnational poetics, this paper aims to challenge a mononationalist way of reading cross-cultural poetry by suggesting new approaches to do so. A mononationalist way of reading cross-cultural poetry has been influenced by the residues of a literary paradigm that assumes the …

Forgotten Names And Unmarked Graves: A Collection Of Poems By A Nursing Major, Taylor Howse

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

These poetry pieces are a collection of works from my undergraduate experience as an English minor. "The Sheep in a Wolf's Skin" is a fairytale retelling with a twist. It is a dramatic monologue from the perspective of a villain, who hopefully will make you rethink your favorite childhood stories. "The Forgotten Cinderellas" is a free verse poem written as a twist from a favorite fairytale happily ever after. Finally, "Forgotten Names and Unmarked Graves" is a free verse poem written as a tribute for all the forgotten names that are not taught in history. For Samson Occom and William …

Entail, Elopement, And Marriage Law In Pride And Prejudice, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

"The famous first lines of Pride and Prejudice, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife' (3), alert the reader to a story about marriage. This 'universal' truth is presented ironically, of course, since it is the women without a good fortune who are in want of husbands. Remember that Emma Woodhouse indicates that she does not need to marry since she does not need “‘fortune’” or “‘consequence’” (E 84). But the Bennet sisters have neither, so '[t]he business of [Mrs. Bennet’s] life …

Teaching Grammar: One Day At A Time, Jenny Dunn

The Utah English Journal

When I first started teaching grammar to my high school students, I had to study up every class period to make sure I was teaching things correctly. It took me several years to feel comfortable and confident in my abilities.

However, even after seven years of teaching grammar to high schoolers (and five before that teaching junior high students), there are multiple times a year when my students ask me a question I do not know the answer to. Instead of panicking, making something up, or brushing it off as an unimportant principle, I simply say, "That's a good question. …

What Matters Most: Vision Boards For Unit Planning In The English Classroom, Johnny Allred, Corinne Downs

The Utah English Journal

In his first year as a high school teacher, Johnny sat down at the computer to plan a narrative writing unit centered on the text Chasing Lincoln's Killer. He stared at a blank unit plan template for a few minutes while crickets chirped loudly in his head-he had no idea where to begin! Sure, he was a first year teacher, but he had been well-trained in the art of lesson and unit-planning, and he was confident in his ability to teach. Why was this so difficult? What skills and knowledge really mattered for his students? What assessments could he develop …

Book Review: A Snake Falls To Earth, Heidi Stone

The Utah English Journal

Nina, a Lipan girl from Earth, and Oli, a Cottonmouth Snake from the Reflection World, are drawn together to save those who they love the most. Little Badger utilizes traditional Lipan Apache storytelling techniques to draw the reader into the stories of the animal people, monsters, and the importance of family.

Book Review: Kaleidoscope, Justin Scholes

The Utah English Journal

Characteristic of his award-winning style, Brian Selznick's newest book, Kaleidoscope (2021) blends text and beautiful pencil drawings that push readers to consider meaning in words and images. The book features twenty-four short stories, and as the title suggests, each story is a glimpse into a world, a life, a perspective.

Book Review: Ophelia After All, Madison Simpson

The Utah English Journal

Ophelia Rojas has always been the girl who is obsessed with boys. As a senior in high school, she can't remember a time when she wasn't crushing on a cute boy or dreaming of a perfect prom night. Ophelia is also curating her perfect garden as she dreams of studying botany at university, much to her English professor mother's chagrin. When Ophelia starts developing an unexpected crush, she begins to rethink everything she thought she knew about herself.

Book Review: The Girl From The Sea, Austin Andruski

The Utah English Journal

The Girl from the Sea, a graphic novel by Molly Knox Ostertag, is an emotionally rejuvenating tale of young love and self-identity. For Morgan, she wants nothing more than to fit in until she can graduate from high school and leave her island home, finally able to be herself away from people who might judge her.

Imagining Change: Metatheatre, Empathy, And Action On Stage And In The Classroom, Jayna Gearhart Fitzsimmons

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the intersection of metatheatre and theatre for social change with a focus on how works of metatheatre, when combined with subject matter that illuminates social issues, systemically non-dominant characters, or de-centered stories, create opportunities for audiences to practice participation and empathetic care that has the power to translate to social action. While existing scholarship on theatre for social change often relies on one-off, site-specific, or performance art events as key to understanding socially focused theater, this dissertation considers alternative approaches to thinking and learning about theatre for social change that expand definitions of theatre for social change …

Art, Propaganda, And Truth, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

This essay explores how British and American writers and theorists in the first half of the twentieth century thought about art, propaganda, and truth. Focusing largely on literature written during the First and the Second World Wars, this essay shows that very few authors defined their art as propaganda or truth and instead used words like “political,” “resistance,” “information,” and “anti-fascist” to describe their wartime writing. However, while authors might have eschewed the term propaganda, that does not mean that they avoided producing it. As this essay illustrates, what many authors wrote would now be considered “propaganda.” Moreover, even if …

Syntax, Newsletter Of The Suffolk University English Department, Issue 12, Fall 2023, English Department

Syntax Newsletter of the Suffolk University English Department

No abstract provided.

N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, And The American Imagination: Medieval Myth In 19th- And 20th- Century Children’S Literature, Alyssa Kowalick

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis attempts to elucidate how the illustrated images and text of the medieval myths of King Arthur and Robin Hood were translated from an English national epic to an American classic and used, I argue, to construct a new American identity. My analysis looks at both the written word and illustrated images in Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, as well as The Boy’s King Arthur written by Sidney Lanier and illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, and Robin Hood written by Paul Creswick and illustrated by N.C. Wyeth. …

“Any Means Necessary To Refuse Erasure By Algorithm:” Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’S Travesty Generator, Zach Whalen

Communication & Digital Studies Articles

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's 2019 book of poetry is titled Travesty Generator in reference to Hugh Kenner and Joseph O'Rourke's Pascal program to “fabricate pseudo-text” by producing text such that each n-length string of characters in the output occurs at the same frequency as in the source text. Whereas for Kenner and O'Rourke, labeling their work a “travesty” is a hyperbolic tease or a literary burlesque, for Bertram, the travesty is the political reality of racism in America. For each of the works Travesty Generator, Bertram uses the generators of computer poetry to critique, resist, and replace narratives of oppression and to …

A Close Analysis Into The Portrayal Of Female Protagonists Through The Lens Of Gendered Authorship: Specifically Looking Into The Works Of Jane Austen, Frances Burney, John Cleland, And Samuel Richardson, Isabella G. Beyloune

Honors Theses

I explore the difference in gendered authorship in 18th century English literature. Choosing to focus on authors such as Jane Austen, Frances Burney, John Cleland, and Samuel Richardson, I aim to see if gender of the author matters in giving a realistic portrayal of eighteenth century British female protagonists, and if there actually is a difference depending on that gender (male or female, specifically). To do this, I perform case study comparisons. All chapters include a close textual analysis of the authors’ use of dialogue and narrative style for depicting their characters. Chapter 1 focuses on the comparison between Austen’s …

Passerby To Sonder: How Black Literary Sources Use Dance To Carve Out Relational Possibility, Zion Martin-Hayes

English Honors Papers

This thesis outlines the raw phenomenon of humans to exist in relation to each other as “passersby,” unaware of their tendencies towards desire and lack, when they should pursue “sonder,” the awareness that someone else’s life is as equally complex as your own. Relationality looks like a performance of bodies when it should embody the essence of dance. The performance of bodies equates to the purpose of passersby to prioritize movement as a way to remain unattentive of personhood. Whereas in dance, an appreciation for stillness to the same degree of movement brings people to sonder as a way to …

Reverberations Of Boarding School Trauma In Upstate New York, Grace A. Miller

Comparative Woman

The legacy of boarding schools in Upstate New York is one that non-Natives seem to have forgotten. This historical amnesia compounds other acts of genocide, including cultural genocide, of the Haudenosaunee people throughout US history. Established in 1855 at the Cattaraugus Reservation (Seneca), the Thomas Indian School would serve as an institution of forced assimilation and displacement, much like the other Native American boarding schools. While the larger US population has grown to forget these schools' existence, the shadowed legacy of institutions, like the Thomas Indian School, Haskell, and Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the rippling effects of these schools’ practices …

“By That Daughter’S Most Devoted Affection”: Anxious And Avoidant Attachments In Opie’S Adeline Mowbray, Meghan E. Hodges

Comparative Woman

Attachment theory, or the theory that one’s personality and social development is informed greatly by the infant-parent bond, largely arises in the 1950s with the work of John Bowlby. Although the phenomenon was only then beginning to be scientifically evaluated, it has long been observed that the relationship one has with one’s parents is a determinant factor in one’s development. This work investigates the impact of the failure to heal the insecure attachment Amelie Opie’s Adeline Mowbray (1808). Adeline, having grown up in her distant mother’s intellectual shadow, develops a neurotic attachment to her mother which causes romantic maladjustment in …

Engl 6360 - Descriptive Linguistics For Teachers, Ramsés Ortín

Open Educational Resources - Books

No abstract provided.

Skin Deep: Racial Categorization In Herman Melville’S Moby-Dick, Devasha Solomon

Senior Honors and Award-Winning Theses

This thesis engages skin as a site of racialization and changeability in Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Throughout the novel, Ishmael close reads the skins of those around him to fit his vision of the narrative. Lots of skins are sewn together to create a single white skin. He classifies characters into neat categories in an attempt to destroy their ambiguity, but Ishmael himself contains and develops racial ambiguities that he fears. Melville’s narrator fails to force all of his characters into his story because of the counterstories fundamentally engrained in the skins he attempts to violate.

‘There Is No Gallery’: Race And The Politics Of Space At The Capitol Theatre, New York, Pardis Dabashi

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

This essay brings developments in Black film historiography and architecture studies to bear on the study of Northern picture palaces as the period of their prominence coincided with the Jim Crow era. Taking as my focus New York City’s Capitol Theatre – which opened in the immediate wake of the US race riots of 1919 and was the largest movie theater to date – I show how Northern middle-class film culture enforced racial segregation in the absence of legal protection. Southern movie theaters were able either to outlaw Black attendance or relegate their Black patronage to the gallery, a seating …

Sylvia Plath As A Confessionalist Writer : The Queen Bee, Alexandra Tangarife

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Sylvia Plath is a renowned Confessionalist poet from the early-mid 20th century in America. She frequently compares to her predecessor, Robert Lowell, and her friend and colleague, Ann Sexton. Confessionalism was an emotionally authentic form of poetry that split off from prior poetry, such as Modernism. Modernist founder T.S Eliot wrote in his “Tradition and The Individual Talent,” “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality” (1). Despite this mentality, Confessionalists addressed the elephant in the room: the fragmented and emotionally disturbed nation. …