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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn Jun 2012

The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn

Melanie E Osborn

Resembling the mercurial, black beauty mark used as an ornamental concealment of syphilitic sores, Jane Austen’s comedy of manners likewise acted as a superficial cosmetic device that concealed the ubiquity of venereal disease and prostitution hidden within. Through her characters, Austen used veiled narrative to highlight the reality of venereal disease and prostitution in eighteenth-century England. This thesis uncovers the hidden narrative in Jane Austen’s novels, as a means of better understanding the impact venereal disease and prostitution had on sexual issues with women and the female body during the eighteenth century. Beginning with an almost comic reference to venereal …


Aliens And Others, Maureen Reddy Apr 2012

Aliens And Others, Maureen Reddy

Maureen T. Reddy

In the space of one week in the fall of 1994, Susan Smith went from small-town obscurity to national media icon, first as a suffering madonna pleading for the safe return of her two young children and then as a mad Medea who had admitted to their murders. At about the same time, a Rhode Island man, Richard Timothy Dunphy, was indicted for the murder of his two-year-old son, Eric. Dunphy-who allegedly beat Eric to death and then left the child's body in a closet for several days-did not make the national news.


The Tripled Plot And Center Of Sula, Maureen Reddy Apr 2012

The Tripled Plot And Center Of Sula, Maureen Reddy

Maureen T. Reddy

Critics of Sula frequently comment on the pervasive presence of death, the uses of a particular cultural and historical background, the split or doubled protagonist (Sula/Nel), and the attention to chronology in the novel. However, as far as I am aware, no one has presented a reading of Sula that explores the interrelatedness of these elements; yet it is the connections among them that most usefully reveal the novel's overall thematic patterns. Sula can be, and has been, read as, among other things, a fable, a lesbian novel, a black female bildungsroman, a novel of heroic questing, and an historical …


Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames Jan 2011

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Melissa A. Ames

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.


Melba Boyd, Karen Gevirtz Dec 2000

Melba Boyd, Karen Gevirtz

Karen Bloom Gevirtz

This article has been reprinted in a revised edition of the Oxford Companion to African American Literature (Oxford University Press, 1997). It describes the life and career of Melba Boyd.