Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Death Of The Virtuous Heroine As Social Criticism In Clarissa And Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Carmel Rosanna Nunan

Honors Theses

While Samuel Richardson meticulously documents the slow decline of his heroine in the novel Clarissa, other characters in the novel struggle to understand a death that for them has no rational explanation. The novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos, also epistolary and published thirty-five years after Clarissa, allows for a similar interpretation. Contemporary French reactions to Madame de Tourvel’s death cannot compare to the English response elicited by Clarissa’s, but, like Richardson, Laclos also introduces certain social forces that seal his heroine’s fate from without while her own psychological experience of virtue works to destroy her …

Stranger In A Strange Land: The Struggle For Cultural And Personal Identity In Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World, Laura E. Smith

Honors Theses

In order to explicate Murakami's version of the official culture, I have analyzed the novel with the works of several different theorists. Primarily, I drew my own understanding of the official culture from Raymond Williams's examination of culture in Marxism and Literature. His terminology became helpful in writing about the operation of the System and the Town, though it did not define that operation precisely. Williams's work also introduced me to the theory behind the official culture's manipulation and exclusion of historical aspects in order to create their "official" version of history, from which the official culture draws its identity. …

Moments Of Strength: Iranian Women's Rights And The 1979 Revolution, Caroline M. Brooks

Honors Theses

An Iranian women’s movement failed to materialize in the twentieth century. While women in Iran played important and essential roles in political and social movements, they never united with a single voice calling for women’s rights. Thus the activities of activist women were scattered through the decades of Iranian history, while their roles shifted and their goals evolved but they were involved. Women’s rights occupied moments. One of the most important moments for women in Iranian history came with their participation in the 1979 Revolution against the Shah. Mohammad Reza Shah was a complex ruler, embracing modernity and Westernization while …

"System Of Silence": Philadelphia Orphanages And The Limits Of Benevolence, 1780s-1830s, Brian Sweeney

Honors Theses

In 1831, Mathew Carey, a well-known Philadelphia economist, wrote a city official describing the situation of black children in the city. He called for the creation of an orphanage to aid these children and described the motives for this action as not only the “humanity and benevolence” of Philadelphians, but also “personal interest”, as this class could otherwise turn “lawless”. Unknown to Carey, the Association for the Care of Coloured Orphans had been established in 1822 by a group of benevolent Quaker women dedicated to aiding this destitute class in an effort to promote compensatory justice for generations of oppression …

Nasser And Qutb: The Lives And Legacies Of Two Controversial Egyptians, Rachel Leonard

Honors Theses

The problems of the Middle East are complex, in-depth issues that cannot be solved easily. The matters of oil, Islam and very limited participation of the people In government mix to create problems that defy solutions from those within or outside the region. Historians and political scientists have come to examine these issues more closely, especially because of the serious political, religious and military conflicts centered in the area. There has been an upsurge in political Islamist movements, radical, fundamental and otherwise, that tend to frighten policy makers in the West. These movements arose alongside and often in opposition to …

Representations Of Grief In Akhmatova’S Requiem And Pushkin’S The Bronze Horseman, Hillary R. Smith

Honors Theses

Anna Akhmatova composed Requiem largely before 1940, but it was not published until the mid 1960s – after her death. It is now known to be one of her best works. Requiem is a cycle comprised of fifteen poems, the entireties of which are introduced by a personal reflection written in prose. Alexander Pushkin wrote his lyric ballad The Bronze Horseman in 1833 about the tremendous flood of 1824 in St. Petersburg and the involvement of the bronze equestrian statue of Peter the Great. Everything that the protagonist, Evgeny, cares for is destroyed, and he blames the Tsar for his …

The Acquisition Of Spanish Possessive Adjectives By Beginning Adult Learners Of Spanish, Ryan J. Minier

Honors Theses

Spanish possessive adjectives (e.g., mi, tu, su, nuestro, vuestro) are commonly introduced to students of Spanish in the later part of their first semester of study. What features characterize this grammatical category in the language? Morphologically, the Spanish possessive adjectives consist of a lexical base that is either free (e.g., mi, tu, su) or bound (e.g., nuestr-, vuestr-). The two bound bases require one of two inflectional morphemes designating grammatical gender: the suffix -o marks the masculine and -a the feminine, according to the gender of the noun modified. Both the free and bound lexical bases …

Behind The Plexi-Glass Partitions: An Intern's View Of American Museums, Brittany L. Miller

Honors Theses

Describes the author's experiences as an intern in museums. She notes the lack of cohesion between the roles of museums as organizations and as interpreters of history.

Individual Autonomy And The Work Of Resistance: How Authors Of The 1950s Reject State Absorption Through Imagination And Reaffirmation Of The Body, Benjamin L. Boroughf

Honors Theses

The purpose of comparing two works of literature is to highlight similarities and differences that might provide a greater understanding of the works. When comparing the two works, one can emphasize various elements of the texts, including national or international conventions, periods, genres, themes, influences, culture, movements, or aesthetic choices. At the same time, however, this process may actually distort the way in which one views the works. A reader can easily seize upon surface similarities and identify some "deep" relationship between the works that may not in fact actually exist. Moreover, a reader can easily focus on surface similarities …

Hearing Arnold In A New Space : Building A Transformational-Theory Patrimony, Whitney Simmonds

Honors Theses

The old song goes "you always hurt the one you love", Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence takes that idea a step further: for Bloom, artistic creation is born from an anxiety that compels artists to rebel against the influences of their predecessors, their artistic fathers: one has to metaphorically kill the thing one loves in order to escape its shadow. I realize that in order to do an honors thesis, I have to do a bit of good natured killing of my own - or at least do some sharp elbow jabbing - if only for a moment, to …

Word Oper Findan : Seamus Heaney And The Translation Of Beowulf, Jack Harding Bell

Honors Theses

In 2000, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney published a new translation of the early medieval epic, Beowulf The work was subsequently lauded as a masterpiece. Despite this ensuing surge of interest in Heaney's translation, very few scholars have undertaken the task of a critical analysis of the translation and none have assumed the task of a comparative analysis between the original text and Heaney's version. Most, it seems, have assumed that Heaney's translation is a faithful rendition of the original, and with good reason. Heaney maintains fidelity to the structure, stylistics, and meter of the original, as well as to its …

The Dwarfing Of Men In Victorian Fairy-Tale Literature, Heather Victoria Vermeulen

Honors Theses

As Jack Zipes explains in his preface to Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and the Elves, "The Victorian fairy-tale writers always had two ideal audiences in mind when they composed their tales -young middle-class readers whose minds and morals they wanted to influence, and adult middle-class readers whose ideas they wanted to challenge and reform" (xiv). "It was through the fairy tale," he continues, "that a social discourse about conditions in Victorian England took form, and this discourse is not without interest for readers today" (xi). My project begins with a critical analysis of the Grimm Brothers' …

Marginalized Literature In The English Classroom Working With Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed, Noelle Carpenter

Honors Theses

Literature in the English classroom should give students the opportunity to explore the voices of a diverse range of people, especially in a school system that is becoming increasingly diverse itself. By exposing students to literature that engages them in important social issues, students become aware of a world beyond their own. Marginalized literature shows students different perspectives that exist in the world in which they live. Ehrenreich's autoethnography Nickel and Dimed is a window into the lives of the working poor based on her own personal experiences and research during a time when the views surrounding those in poverty …

Rawls And Health Care, Elizabeth H. Coogan

Honors Theses

John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971), his first major work articulating his theory of justice as fairness, was immediately recognized as a fundamental contribution to political philosophy in the twentieth century. Working within the tradition established by previous philosophers such as Kant and Locke, Rawls employed the contract theory approach. Taking it to a higher order of abstraction, he sought to determine not what the structure of social organization would be, but what the principles which governed social institutions would be under a hypothetical contracting situation. Rawls uses this contract theory approach to construct a society in which the …

Agent Of Change: Trickster In Ojibwa Oral Narratives And In The Works Of Louise Erdrich, Patrick B. Benton

Honors Theses

Change is not only a theme of Louise Erdrich’s work, but the paramount theme. Critic John Purdy concurs, writing that “the characters who people her pages are immensely recognizable to an audience comprised of many cultures: they exhibit all the frailties and strengths, the failures and triumphs one would expect for humans who face what we all – as individuals, as cultures, and as species – must face: change” (Purdy, 8). What is this change, though? And, who is the agent of this change? Casual readers of Louise Erdrich’s works may not be aware that her characters are informed by …

Apple And The Tree: Shakespeare’S Use Of Father-Child Relationships In Character Construction, Elizabeth Finn

Honors Theses

Before he stood the test of time, William Shakespeare had to survive the fire of the early modern marketplace. The surviving records indicate that Shakespeare was quite successful, not only artistically but also financially. In his home of Stratford-upon-Avon, he owned an impressive house, New Place, as well as significant amounts of arable land (Greenblatt 330). Meanwhile, he also became a part-owner in the Globe and Blackfriars theaters (Greenblatt 368). To accumulate such funds, Shakespeare had to write plays that would sell tickets; plays that would intrigue audiences and keep them coming back for more. Thus, he must have had …

Collective Moral Responsibility, Allyson Rudolph

Honors Theses

What is collective moral responsibility? And why should you care? The answer to the former, like any good philosophical question, is largely unresolved. Although writing on collective responsibility has flourished, particularly in the wake of the Holocaust, and despite the existence of an increasingly consistent bibliography of essential writings in the field, there is no definitive authority on the subject. Unlike individual moral responsibility, however, there is little consensus among the ranks. Many theories disclaim the existence or the possibility of collective moral responsibility—a group is just not the sort of thing that can ever be considered a morally responsible …

Demon Rum, Devious Politics: The Lessons Of Neal Dow’S Crusade For The Maine Prohibition Law, Andrew J. Herrmann

Honors Theses

One of the fundamental conflicts in American political history is the one that pits the need to guarantee personal liberty against the desire for the government to pass legislation that will benefit the overall good. Dating back to the very founding of our nation and the deliberations over the ratification of the Constitution, this debate has played itself out over and over again through the course of American history as politicians decide how to balance each of these important considerations. One such manifestation of this debate was the campaign for alcohol prohibition1 in the mid-nineteenth century, a battle which raged …

Dialectics Of Diaspora Space: A Study Of Contemporary, Diasporic, South Asian Fiction, Christopher A. Zajchowski

Honors Theses

In light of these continuing debates concerning immigration, national identity and belonging, re-examinations of immigrant and ethnic communities, often referred to as ‘diaspora,’ have become increasingly popular and prudent. Khachig Tololian, editor of Diaspora magazine, calls diaspora “exemplary communities of the transnational moment.”5 In an increasingly globalized world, where labor, capital, and resources are passed fluidly from continent to continent, diaspora are created by relocation or displacement of immigrant workers and their descendents.6 For these unskilled, immigrant laborers, middle class immigrants, and the children of both groups, adaptation to the culture, society, and life in a new ‘host’ country can …

Gendered Struggle For The Freedom From Violence Using Frantz Fanon’S Theory In Three Postcolonial Novels: Albert Wendt’S Pouliuli, Tsitsi Dangarembga’S Nervous Conditions, And Edwidge Danticat’S Breath, Eyes, Memory, Robin M. Respaut

Honors Theses

While studying abroad in New Zealand last year, I became intrigued by Albert Wendt’s novel Pouliuli, because it was my first literary view into Pacific Island culture. My interest in the novel was part of my awakening to the particular damage done by the west in Oceania. By attending classes on the anthropology and sociology of postcolonial Pacific societies, I discovered how the west had acted in the region to encourage progressive technology in ways that handled native traditional culture with unconscious disrespect. I was stunned to learn that Oceania is the most aided region in the world today, surpassing …

In Any Weather : A Collection Of Short Stories, Stephen J. Plocher

Honors Theses

Short Stories

Messy Love: Collection Of Short Stories, Mindy Favreau

Honors Theses

Messy Love: Collection of Short Stories

“Nothing That Is So, Is So”: Indeterminate Language In Shakespeare, Matthew K. Crane

Honors Theses

The Shakespearean canon is characterized by indeterminacy. His world is one where nothing is as it seems; men pose as women, nobles as commoners, and sisters as brothers. The resulting confusion challenges conventional norms, questioning gender, cultural, and other social boundaries. The surface uncertainty extends beneath the costumes and performers to the very foundation of theatre—language—as spaces emerge between words and meaning, and what is said and what is meant. Shakespeare’s use of ambiguous language opens his plays to multiple interpretations, creating a constant but fluctuating separation between the reader and text, the literal and figurative, and the expressed and …

Women Making Progress?: A Study Of Wide Sargasso Sea As A Response To Jane Eyre, Kaitlin M. Gangl

Honors Theses

I have always had a love for Victorian literature. Growing up I read Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Gaskell, and many more Victorian female writers I could get my mother to recommend. Reading and writing has been a passion of mine since I was young, and female writers (Victorian in particular) were always a particular favorite of mine. Despite my interest in this genre, I found myself reading Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) for the first time just two years ago while studying in London. I was taking a Nineteenth-Century British Literature course, and while I appreciated the works …

Obstacles And Stepping Stones To The Hero’S Pedestal: Reunified Germany’S Selective Commemoration Of Resisters To National Socialism, Suzanne J. Swartz

Honors Theses

Bombs, propaganda, graffiti, espionage, murder. Normally these words carry a negative connotation, unless used with regard to German resistance to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The resistance, which included groups and individuals from all areas of German society but failed to produce a single mass anti-Hitler movement, has gained little recognition outside of Germany but much within, particularly during the past thirty years. Germany has taken the one positive light from that dark time period and used it as a tool of legitimization for the government and other institutions, and as a source for heroic figures of whom Germans can …

Short History Of Waterville, Maine, Stephen Plocher

Honors Theses

If we were to simplify the story of Waterville to the lightest exploration possible, a good strategy might be to look at the city’s names. True, a good number of important events might be overlooked, but examining the names and name changes in the city’s history offers a unique view into the essence of its identity. Waterville has a rich history when it comes to names. The city itself went through a number of them in its early days, and these changes reflect the city’s continual reinvention of itself. The first people we know about who lived here, the Canibas …

Religion And Renunciation In Wordsworth: The Progression Of Natural Individualism To Christian Stoicism, Geoffrey L. Meldahl

Honors Theses

William Wordsworth was twenty-three when the French National Convention condemned the deposed Louis XVI to death, and France, under Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, dissolved into abject violence. The disappointing results of the Revolution and the subsequent events in European politics began to work a change in Wordsworth’s personal political and ethical views that would greatly affect not only his own poetry but the entire Romantic Movement. Even still, his eventual apostasy from the radical republicanism of his youth affects the way in which people read Wordsworth’s work, igniting both sympathy and resentment. The Ode to Duty is …

The Effects Of Stereotype Activation On Women's Reactions To Leadership Situations, Or, How Reading Cosmo Might Prevent You From Becoming Ceo, Stefanie L. Simon

Honors Theses

The present experimental study investigated the effect of stereotype activation on women's responses to a leadership situation. Participants were exposed to either gender-stereotypic or gender-counterstereotypic magazine advertisements picturing women and then performed a leadership task involving two confederate s. Results supported the prediction that participants exposed to stereotypic advertisements would exhibit more negative reactions to the leadership situation than those exposed to counterstereotypic advertisements such that they reported lower perceived performance, self-esteem, and well-being. Sex-role orientation moderated this effect such that' advertisements had a stronger effect on feminine-oriented participants' domain identification, intent to lead in the future, and experienced cognitive …

Refiguring History : The Works Of Faith Ringgold And Kara Walker, Amy Bradshaw

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I seek to investigate various elements that the works of Faith

Ringgo ld (b 1930) and Kara Walker (b 1969) have in common as well as explore the

differences. My method is to begin with an examination of the work of Ringgold on its

own and follow with an analy sis of the work of Walker. While dealing with Walker, I

continue an examination of Ringgold so that the work of both artist s and the connections

and differences between the two become clearer.

Constructing Muammar Al-Gaddafi, Kristin Kushlan

Honors Theses

Rhetoricians such as Robert Ivie and George Lakoffhave examined the use of language of opposition to create and control various enemies during the War on Terror, but they have also ignored or overlooked numerous cases. This paper will examine one such case, that of Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose reciprocal violence eventually succumbed to the oppressor's global economic power. This case study will explore how the U.S. government rhetorically constructed Gaddafi in order to control both his identity within American society (as either an enemy or an ally), as well as the counter-violence that Gaddafi supposedly enacted against Western systems of power. …