Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Challenging White Fragility Through Black Feminist Political Poetry, Langley Leverett

Honors Theses

Due to overwhelming patriarchal hegemonies that women – white women, rich women, young women, and cis women – continue to uphold, feminism struggles to serve all women justly. To combat this negligence in feminism’s fourth-wave movement, I will use this thesis to highlight ways that Black feminist poets have not only shaped feminist theory through their own contributions, but also have prolonged and saved the livelihood of both gender and racial equality. With a strong emphasis on Intersectional Feminism, I will explore the ways in which women can be united against tokenistic power, beginning with the inspiration from three voices: …

Every Good And Perfect Gift: How Jonathan Edwards Uses The Motif Of The Gift To Communicate The Gospel, Lauren Bridgeman

English Class Publications

When a person brings a gift to a party or holiday gathering, they often do so out of fear of people viewing them as impolite if they forget. This societal norm creates the impression that the receivers deserve the gift. However, objects of value that are deserved are called wages, not gifts; gifts are products that are undeserved and unearned. Though the motif of a gift is uncommon in literature and is not as common as motifs of nature or childhood, it is important to understand the components of a Gift. Involved in an exchange are a Giver and a …

Frederick Douglass And The Patriotic Imperative, Kaitlyn Stoddard

English Class Publications

In today's post-Civil Rights era, I believe that America has lost sight of what patriotism is and where it belongs. Patriotism, as it is understood today, has become mistakenly merged with nationalism. In the minds of the public and media, patriots are supposed to exhibit undying loyalty and dedication to their country. This sentiment is better aligned with nationalism, a concept that I would argue should ideally be distinct from patriotism. While the execution of the two concepts may ultimately seem similar from the outside, the foundation of each concept is different, leading to varied execution thereof. To regrasp true …

Bigger And Abnormal Psychology: How Antisocial Personality Disorder And A Lack Of Identity Helped Shape Bigger's Behavior, Trayton N. Armstrong

English Class Publications

One of the most discussed murders in modern American literature is Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940). The novel centers on the last days of Bigger’s life, as he commits two homicides, extortion, and rape. These crimes led to a death sentence of the electric chair after a flimsy trial. While it might appear at first that Bigger’s situation is simply a result of the racism of the late 1930s, with the segregated South Side noticing and hating the disparity they see compared to the more affluent white residents in neighboring burgs, I would argue that …

Lions, And Dragons, And Wolves (Oh My): A Study Of The Series "Game Of Thrones" And Political Theory, Emily Manus

Honors Theses

Game of Thrones has a reputation for being unpredictable. Fans watch in anticipation as their beloved characters face dangerous situations, not knowing if they will make it our alive or not. No character is safe. While this reputation, may lead one to think that there is no way to know what characters will do and how they will react to certain circumstances, if one looks at them through the sphere of political theory and ethics, one can possibly piece together what actions characters will take and what outcome these actions could possibly have. Looking at the characters through these lenses …

Shame: Its Place In Life And American Drama, Lauren Elisabeth Terry

Honors Theses

I spent my twenty-second birthday driving six hours by myself through the back roads of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. I was traveling to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to interview at the University of Southern Mississippi for their MFA Theatre Directing program. As someone who loves birthdays, spending this time by myself with only my nerves to accompany me was difficult. However, it was during this trip that I stumbled across something that would change my life.

Leading up to that trip to Hattiesburg were years of theatre involvement. On a whim, in eighth grade, I auditioned for a production of White Christmas …

We The People, Melody Pruitt

English Class Publications

On July 20, 2012, twenty-four year old James Holmes entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado where a new Batman movie was being shown and began shooting, killing twelve people and injuring fifty-eight (“Deadliest Mass Shootings”). Throughout his career as a doctor who treated mainly gymnasts, Larry Nassar molested hundreds of women and girls for decades. On Valentine’s Day of this year, Nikolas Cruz walked into his former high school in Parkland, Florida, and shot and killed seventeen faculty and students, injuring many more (“Deadliest Mass Shootings”). In the United States today, it almost seems commonplace to hear these stories …

The Dark Side Of Happily Ever After, Morgan Howard

English Class Publications

I recently had an argument with my mother, which rarely happens. We didn’t argue about my spending habits, or my post-graduation plans, or my grades, or any other typical area where a college kid might butt heads with her parents. Instead, we argued about books.

After finishing Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman over spring break, I couldn’t help talking about it with the rest of my family. As we drank coffee together one afternoon, my mom asked me what made that play so special. I explained the plot to her. She looked at me for a few seconds …

The Field: A Senior Thesis In Progress, Kacy Spears

Scholars Day

For this Scholars Day presentation, I shared my progress toward completing my Honors Thesis: a picture book based on a story told by J.V. McKinney.

Gardening And Reading, Morgan Howard

English Class Publications

Just as I grew up with gardens, I also grew up with books. I have loved reading for as long as I can remember. My dad once told me that as soon as I could walk, I would bring books (particularly Pajama Time and Puppy Peek-a-Boo) to him and coerce him into reading to me.

I consider myself lucky: I had parents who made it their mission to grow and nurture a love for books in their oldest daughter. They did so by filling our bookshelves.

Twice Upon A Time: The Retellings Of Fairy Tales For Contemporary Audiences, Morgan Howard

Honors Theses

If anyone had seen me binge-watching ABC's Once Upon a Time (a television adaptation of Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and more) during my freshman year of college, they undoubtedly would have said I was wasting my time. In fact, I probably would have agreed with them--there were far better things for a busy English and mass communications double major to do in her free time. I didn't realize then that I was actually in the process of developing what would become my research passion for the next four years.

For my final research essay in Composition 1, …

Jerry-Rigged Salvation, John Sivils

English Class Publications

This paper examines the anagogical meaning of certain objects in three of Flannery O'Connor's stories, and then proposes how those meanings nuance narrative themes.

Flannery's "Daunting Grace": O'Connor's Nuanced Portrayals Of Disability, Joanna Horton

English Class Publications

Throughout O'Connor's fiction, we see characters who are marked by suffering or disability. It is tempting to analyze those disabled characters purely as symbols. However, if we understand O'Connors conception of suffering as an experience which prepares us for grace, we may discern which characters receive grace through suffering and which refuse to recognize their need.

Truer Than Fiction: Flannery O'Connor's Fictional Fathers, Addison Crow

English Class Publications

Flannery O’Connor grew up with a loving and supportive father, so it is perplexing that she fills her stories with fathers who portray the opposite. O’Connor’s fictional fathers, when they are included in the story, are controlling, harsh, and malicious—the complete opposite of her father, Edward O’Connor. Why would O’Connor create fathers whose image so intensely contrast that of her own supportive, gentle, and loving father? My purpose in this paper is to examine O’Connor’s fictional fathers in her short stories, “The Artificial N” and “The Comforts of Home,” and her novel, The Violent Bear It Away, and attempt …

"Unsex Me Here": A Queer Reading Of Faith In O'Connor, Shelby Spears

English Class Publications

In this essay, the author examines the O'Connor stories "The Life You Save may be Your Own," "The Comports of Home," and "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" from a queer perspective using psycho-biographical evidence.

Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus?: O'Connor's Critique Of Protestantism In Wise Blood, Jessica Saunders

English Class Publications

Published in 1949, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood, satirizes not Christianity itself, but rather man’s twisted practice of the faith that O’Connor held so dear. O’Connor, a devout Roman Catholic living in the Bible Belt, writes to critique the heresy, hypocrisy, and apathy that pervaded the lives of Protestants in the South—a region that O’Connor describes as “hardly Christ-centered” but “most certainly Christ-haunted” (Mystery and Manners 44). O’Connor portrays the characters in Wise Blood as Protestants, non-Christians, or the nihilistic protagonist and hero himself, Hazel Motes, who in his rejection of the gospel, founds the Church of Christ …

Get Woke: The Themes And Receptions Of The Works Of Kate Chopin, Haydn Jeffers

English Class Publications

Kate Chopin was a prolific writer in the late nineteenth century, popular for her copious number of short stories focusing on the circumstances and lives of married women, that is, the relationship between women and the institution of marriage itself. She published these short stories primarily in magazines such as Vogue, Atlantic Monthly, and Century (Clark), and they were well received by the public, especially women, during that time. Her most popular stories were compiled into two collections: Bayou Folk, published in 1894, and A Night in Acadie, published in 1897. Both collections were highly praised …

The Mote In Hazel's Eye: The Blurred Vision Of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood", Kimberly Wong

English Class Publications

While some authors start writing their novels with a full outline in mind, Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood, began with a short story written for the Writers’ Workshop at Iowa State in December 1946. This short story, titled “The Train,” was inspired when O’Connor was on a train going home for Christmas. She recalls, “‘There was a Tennessee boy on it in uniform who was much taken up worrying the porter about how the berths were made up” (qtd in Gooch 134). Then, O’Connor wrote Wise Blood’s larger story as a part of her masters’ thesis, but upon hearing …

All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner

English Class Publications

From her mother’s farm, Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O’Connor found her writing inspiration by observing the ways of the South. Naturally, a pervasive motif in her works is racism. For instance, in “Revelation” Ruby Turpin spends a good portion of the short story thanking God that she is neither white trash nor black. In her essay “Aligning the Psychological with the Theological: Doubling and Race in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction,” Doreen Fowler points out that “[Ruby’s] insistence on setting racial boundaries has been an attempt to distinguish a white, superior identity” (81), equality with African Americans being Ruby Turpin’s ultimate …

Money Buys Happiness: A Psychoanalytic Reading Of O'Connor, Hannah Wright

English Class Publications

In the year 1946 when Flannery O’Connor was about twenty-one years old, she and her mother Regina signed a document emancipating Flannery from her mother’s care so that she could attend the creative writing program at the University of Iowa (Release of Guardianship). In this determined show of independence, Flannery chose to move away from her mother and take responsibility for herself. However, this responsibility became too much for O’Connor to handle when she was diagnosed with lupus shortly after her twenty-sixth birthday. She was forced to move back in with her mother in Milledgeville and relinquish a great deal …

Accounting In Fiction, S. Ray Granade

Articles

A bibliography of fiction in which accountants are characters, or in which accountancy plays a part in the plot.

Washington Irving And The Not-So-American Myth, Haydn Jeffers

English Class Publications

Washington Irving has often been revered as the father of American literature, and, more specifically, the father of the American myth. He was one of the first American writers to make a real living off his writing, and as such was considered to be America’s personal declarer of independence within the literary world. Having been viewed as so undoubtedly American in his writings, one might find interest in the fact that Irving drew very heavily on European sources in his inexplicable creation of this nation’s fiction, as it appears “he was not all that at ‘home’ with American life” (“Background: …

A Place For Poe: The Foreign In Two Tales Of The Gothic, Shelby Spears

English Class Publications

There are certain words we use so often in life that they begin to lose their meaning—buzzwords, or broad categorical ones, like millennial. These words, too, crop up in literature: Here I would like to explore one of these in particular, Gothic. We talk often of Gothic literature, Gothic writers, Gothic horror, Gothic post-core triphop—but our definition is so often fuzzy. We know that to be Gothic means to be scary, to be full of the strange and terrifying, but where exactly do we draw the line between Gothic and other forms of horror fiction? Is Stephen King Gothic? Is …

Flannery O'Monsters, Shelby Spears

English Class Publications

The most startling definition of monsterI have encountered belongs to Mandy-Suzanne Wong: “It’s what people say when they can’t think of any way to describe [something] that stands a chance of being accurate” (6). Yet there are many other qualities of monsters, such as duality—a monster is never whole, but discrete pieces that have been lurched together haphazardly; the most iconic example of this is Frankenstein’s monster, assembled out of bits of corpses and animated with a sacrosanct, unmentionable power. No less worthy as examples, however, are the strange characters of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories—contradictory beasts whose struggles seem …

Atticus The Man, Jessica Saunders

English Class Publications

What makes a man, a man? One could argue biology and physical appearance. One could say a certain age determines manhood, or his independence, success in the world, power or achievements. However, masculinity is not fixed, but rather fluid; it is a social construct and what it entails to achieve manhood differs according to culture (Motl). Lee comments on the roles of race and gender dynamics in the early 20th century South throughout her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. American stereotypes of masculinity include, but are not limited to: competition, power, aggression, and stoicism. Furthermore, manhood is often considered merely …

The American Dream: Fantasy Or Reality?, Ellie Quick

English Class Publications

“Rags to Riches”; “Home of the Free”; “Land of Opportunity.” For centuries, the idea of the American Dream has been ingrained into the ideology of many Americans in the United States and a faraway dream for those wishing to be a part of it. The idea of anyone, rich or poor, being able to freely achieve his or her dreams and pursue happiness became enticing to not only colonists coming to the New World and immigrants wishing to leave their home countries, but as the country developed, also to individuals living in the United States. The concept of the American …

The Making Of A Southern Man, Morgan Howard

English Class Publications

What exactly makes a man? Could it have anything to do with appearance, strength, or interests? Does it occur at a specific age, or does it happen differently for every boy? Each culture decides these ideas for itself, and the American south is no different. Southern ideals shape a boy’s upbringing and guide his transition to adulthood. The father-son relationship plays an especially crucial role in the development of a white southern man.1 A male’s development has to do with his father’s example—the ideals with which his father raised him. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Harper Lee’s To …

The Accessibility Of The American Dream To Racial Minorities In America, Kimberly Wong

English Class Publications

For centuries, people have had the American Dream. It has permeated the media in various forms: Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby,” and even the movie “An American Tail,” where animated Russian mice sing, “There are no cats in America and the streets are full of cheese!” The term “the American Dream” was first made popular in 1931 by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America. Adams believed the American Dream was a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller …

From Scout To Jean Louise, John Sivils

English Class Publications

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and its controversial sequel Go Set a Watchman, seem to revolve around similar events in the lives of the Finch family and the community of Maycomb. However, despite both being set in the same town and both being narrated by Jean Louise Finch, Lee uses different structures for the novels to serve different literary goals. Through Mockingbird, Lee uses Jem’s coming of age to criticize the social and political climate of the 1950s, though she does so through the ostensible 1930s setting of the novel. Through Watchman, Lee uses Scout’s …

Purely American: How Art From Harlem And Broadway Shaped American Culture, Emily Knocke

English Class Publications

The United States of America is a relatively young country, if you consider its foundations established in the late eighteenth century. For this reason, the art forms of visual art, theatre, and literature were already well-developed by the time America had established a unique voice. Although their beginnings were segregated by race, socioeconomic status, popularity, and a couple of streets in New York City (see Figure 1), two musical styles stick out as entirely American art forms: the Broadway musical and jazz. While Harlem Renaissance writers and artists argued for a separate but valued black culture, the unique American art …