Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"A Stranger In America": Queer Diasporic Writers And The American Politics Of Exclusion, Caitlin Stanfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While the academic concept of queer diasporic studies is relatively new, the epistemic future of this interdisciplinary, intersectional, and inclusive field is already imperiled. Throughout recent years, bills seeking to expunge critical race and queer theory from not only the public education sector, but from the legally-defined “general public” as well, have been proposed by legislators throughout the United States. To combat this assault upon marginalized educators, scholars, and authors, one must first understand what is at stake; the rich site of contemporary, queer diasporic poetry provides one such example. By situating these poems within their complex cultural, political, and …

Beagle Music: The Liberating Power Of Poetic Constraint, Rachel Ouellette

Honors College

This creative project, an original poetry manuscript and disquisition, aims to explore and demonstrate the power of poetic constraint — self-imposed rules in poetry. I wrote the poems within the tradition of lyric poetry, and therefore they reflect my personal experiences and feelings. Many of the poems reflect an experience that is best described as limerence, the psychological term for an intense, lasting “crush.” As I distilled my feelings into poetry, I used both traditional methods of constraint, such as the sonnet and the ghazal, and innovative ones, such as selecture, my own variation on erasure. I found that constraint …

Critical Discourse Analysis: Sexual Violence In Maine Department Of Public Safety (Dps) "Crime In Maine" Reports, Emma V. Grous

Honors College

Sexual violence is incredibly prevalent in the state of Maine. These crimes, which disproportionately affect at-risk communities – women, children, people of color, and impoverished persons – are not accurately represented in legal discourses within Maine. Changes to how victims and survivors of sexual violence are represented and discussed in law enforcement reports and other materials are necessary in order to promote social change and justice for the survivors in our communities.

Critical Discourse Analysis has been used broadly since its conception and has even previously been used in understanding political and social implications of discourse in the United States. …

Otherworldly Ethics: Trouthe And The Fairy Mistress In The Lays Of Lanval, Graelent, Guingamor And Sir Launfal, Abigail Roberts

Honors College

While the nature of fictional fairies in medieval romance has been widely discussed and it has been acknowledged by many scholars that fairies typically offer some critique of the human courts in which they intervene, they have yet to be examined in relation to their ethical impact and conceptions of justice. In order to address this, this thesis performs a close reading of four Breton lays, Lanval, Graelent, Guingamor and Sir Launfal using a framework of medieval folklaw. The four fairies of these lays introduce to their respective poems a unique feminine ethic that critiques the enactment of trouthe practiced …

The Illustrations Of Jay Jackson: A Visual Analysis Of The Chicago Defender In The 20th Century, Ruth Lewandowski

Honors College

In 1905, Robert S. Abbott invested twenty-five cents in starting a weekly newspaper covering stories about and for Black Americans. It would end up being called The Chicago Defender and became one of the most prolific Black newspapers of the 20th century. The staff, throughout the years, would write papers that aided and defended the community's well-being. In the earlier days, it fueled the Great Migration and helped people escape their violent homes in the South. The Defender also exposed lynchings and attempts of it throughout the decades. By exposing the hate crimes of white supremacists, the Defender was communicating …