Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“My Wonderful And Less Than”: The Inadequacy And Necessity Of Metaphor In Szybist’S Incarnadine, Katherine Nelson

BYU English Symposium

Mary Szybist’s 2013 National Book Award–winning poetry collection, Incarnadine, re-envisions the encounter between Mary and the angel Gabriel, entering the same thematic space that early Annunciation artwork traditionally has in order to portray the human encountering the alien. In these poems, symbol systems—particularly metaphor and sometimes language itself—allow the speaker to approach understanding without full comprehension. In reexamining, rupturing, and recombining traditional elements of Annunciation representations and the respective tenets of Marian theology they signified, the poems in Incarnadine point to the persistent inadequacy but inescapable necessity of metaphor in the process of meaning-making. After briefly describing the history of …

Levinas’S “Face” And “Other” In The Idiot: Embodiment And Betrayal, Hannah Vinchur

BYU English Symposium

If we accept Vinokurov’s claim of the “series of face-to-face encounters,” then The Idiot should display Levinas’s principles, as well. In fact, of Dostoevsky’s works, The Idiot may be the best representative of Levinas’s theory of the face. By reading The Idiot through Levinas’s theory of the face and the responsibility it entails, we see that not only does Prince Myshkin perfectly embody the execution of Levinas’s theory, but the continued violation of this theory drives the plot of the novel. Additionally, Myshkin becomes a victim of others violating the face, as he is placed in a position in which, …

The Folks Of The Postapocalypse: The Road, Religion, And Folklore Studies, Megan M. Toone

BYU English Symposium

The postapocalyptic genre provides opportunity for examination of the most basic aspects of society considering this alone remains of humanity and culture after apocalyptic events. In a genre where much of societal structures and ideologies are lost, the destroyed concepts cannot adequately analyze postapoclayptic texts. Folklore—the study of human behavior and interaction including the communication and binding together of a individuals and groups—becomes necessary. When applying the revelatory aspect of the postapocalypse with the folkloric framework of analysis to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, religion comes to the forefront—not religion as expressed and understood by structured and mass religion, but …

Of Embers And Glass: A Cinderella Retelling, Jenna Cooper

BYU English Symposium

People are often familiar with the Cinderella tales and retellings of a nearly-perfect, beautiful young woman, and yet think little of the fact that she subjected herself to being a servant for her family. For my master’s thesis, I wrote a Cinderella retelling featuring, Amelia, who is emotionally abused by her family, providing an explanation for her servitude with her low self-esteem. Cinderella is an ideal tale to retell in relation to finding one’s self-worth because of its rags-to-riches theme. While Amelia has a rags-to-riches tale of her own, the real wealth she acquires in the novel is realizing her …

The Treachery Of The Persistence Of Memory: An Analysis Of The Manipulative Narrator Of Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia", Chelsea Lee

BYU English Symposium

By taking a narrator-centric approach to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia,” I analyze the story through the motif of memory and highlight the ways the narrator manipulates his memories to serve his dark desires. Concluding that the resuscitated Ligeia at the end of the narrative is merely a projection, and the Ligeia we are presented with throughout the narrative does not exist outside of the narrator’s memory. I argue that the narrator uses his manipulations of memory to set himself up as the god of his narrative, which reconciles the events of the story with the Glanvill epigraph that …

Wild Tongues In Education: Anzaldúa, Linguistic Oppression, And Power Culture, Alexandra Harker

BYU English Symposium

The issue of educating immigrants who do not speak English as their first language has been an extremely heated topic for decades. The American education system has chosen to deal with this issue in various ways, including the controversial English Only movement that has been implemented for some time in Arizona as well as other states. This research paper explores how linguistic oppression has occurred and continues to occur in the American education system using Gloria Anzaldúa's piece "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" as a primary resource. Anzaldúa's firsthand experiences with the American education system as well as the …

The Power Of Speech: Speech-Recognition Software In The Writing Process, Lauren Fine

BYU English Symposium

The relationship between speaking and writing, specifically how speech can help us improve writing, has been discussed extensively by composition scholars (Leander and Prior 2004; Elbow 2012). However, little empirical research has been done to support these theories of how speech affects writing. In this paper, I report on a preliminary study I performed to discover this connection, specifically looking at how speech-recognition software could be used to help inexperienced writers overcome problems like writer’s block or unnatural phrasing. By having students compose aloud for 15 minutes and then interviewing them about the process, I learned that speech recognition software …

Timshel: The Monomyth In East Of Eden, Nikkita Walker

BYU English Symposium

Steinbeck’s East of Eden utilizes mythical and Biblical stories to create an allegorical bridge to understanding what he considered the fundamental story of mankind - man's conscious mastery of himself. Joseph Campbell, a literary theorist and contemporary with Steinbeck elaborated on this same concept in 1949 in his work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, wherein he posited that, universally, the story at the heart of mythology is an awareness of the human ability to consciously act. Steinbeck’s East of Eden acts as a contemporary myth through which Steinbeck communicates the eternal myth he considered the “one story in …

Redefining Atonement In The Eco-Dystopian World Of Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake, Rachel Gilman

BYU English Symposium

What if there was no God? Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake infiltrates a faithful reader’s mind to consider her eco-dystopian world with this question in mind. From a perspective of faith in God and in atonement, considering this dystopian world becomes an exercise in placing human identity in the context of self-creation and self-destruction rather than in divine origin. Without a spiritual genesis of animals and the natural environment, their purpose becomes more dictated by the progress of human need and their end becomes less intertwined with the fate of humanity. Characters that act as creators and destroyers who are …

Community Engagement In Second Life, John O'Connor

Conference Papers

This paper records my contribution to a panel presentation titled 'Virtual Ability: Support, Collaboration, Research, Community' at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference 2015. I provide a brief outline of the class I teach, 'Virtual Environments: Is once life enough?' and a field trip we made to Virtual Ability Island, a community established specifically to enable people with a wide range of disabilities by providing a supporting environment for them to enter and thrive in online virtual worlds like Second Life.

Ernie Gomez, Csusb

South Colton Oral History Project Collection

No abstract provided.

Better All The Time, Carre (Armstrong) Gardner

Alumni Book Gallery

Sephy Darling knows how to take care of everyone but herself. As "the fat Darling sister," she's learned to be comfortable in the background. When a friend's happiness causes her to take a hard look at her own life, Sephy decides it's time for a big change. But transforming the outside turns out to involve more inward metamorphosis--and courage--than she ever bargained for.

There's no doubt that when it comes to launching Copper Cove's new community arts program, Amy Darling is the woman for the job. She may be young, but she has the creativity, drive, and vision to get …

2014-2015 Ppc Recital - Shuyu Yao (French Horn), Shuyu Yao, Olga Kim

PPC/PSDP Recitals

No abstract provided.

Artifacts As Ambassadors: Sharing Special Collections Through Collaboration With Student Curators, Carolyn Sautter

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Special Collections and College Archives at Musselman Library, Gettysburg College, regularly collaborates with various academic departments to conduct class visits utilizing the primary sources in Special Collections Reading Room. In the last two years, some of these opportunity have grown into semester long student curation experiences both inside Special Collections and in collaboration with Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College.

The exhibits discussed included:

Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era

Slow to Heal: The Evolution of Medicine from the Civil War Era to WWI

Owl & Nightingale Players, 1914-2014: One Hundred Years of Drama

Art …

Alive And Human: Situating Wallace, Lethem, And Russell In Contemporary Fiction, Carissa Kampmeier

Theses and Dissertations

This project will attempt to provide an outline of some of the most salient constructions of present-day literary fiction, where those constructions might overlap or conflict, and how various contemporary authors and their works might usefully fit within those constructions. This project will argue that fiction-writers following postmodernism are presented with a unique problem of how to write fiction in a way that acknowledges the problems of using language as a primary meaning-making structure without falling down a linguistic rabbit hole where a text ceases to be about anything other than itself. Beginning with David Foster Wallace, this project will …

Eleanor Roosevelt: A Voice For The Oppressed, Molly E. Craig

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

In this thesis, I discuss Eleanor Roosevelt as a political and social activist through the media. ER was the first First Lady to advocate for her own social and political agenda and a way in which she accomplished this was with her extensive relationship with the media. In my thesis, I first give a brief history of other sources regarding aspects of Eleanor Roosevelt’s life that touch my own project. Then, I examine the reasons Eleanor Roosevelt felt compelled toward activism. In the next section I analyze several different media outlets, beginning with her book It’s Up to the Women …

Are You Mad(Ness)?, Ross Douma

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"The lure and fascination of athletics in our culture stems largely from the unpredictable outcome and untamed responses of the participants. As we tune in over the course of the next several weeks and stare intently at our television sets rooting for the Davids of the college basketball world, we might be better served to have a mirror nearby to ensure we are reflecting the glory of the Lord."

Posting about March Madness, players, and fans from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for …

Lent: They Put The Cross On Him, Teresa Terhaar

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Perhaps Lent is a season of opportunity. A season in which we could, like Simon, be 'pulled' from the crowd and reminded of the sacrifice of the cross."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus' cross from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/lent-they-put-the-cross-on-him/

Merchant Guilds, Local Autonomy, And Municipal Governance In A South China Treaty Port: Shantou, 1858- 1939, Fusheng Luo

Theses and Dissertations

Between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1930s, Shantou, a treaty port located at the southeast coast of China, evolved from a mere fishing village into an international port and a thriving commercial city. Shantou presents an unusual case study among the treaty ports of China on account of its location at the periphery of the empire and its connection to a South China Southeast Asia trading zone. The absence of Chinese imperial as well as foreign influence, combined with the centrality of trade to the city, allowed the local merchants to play dominant roles, settling trade disputes and taking over …

Why Is Boko Haram Succeeding?, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

A Natural Case For Realism: Processes, Structures, And Laws, Andrew Michael Winters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent literature concerning laws of nature highlight the close relationship between general metaphysics and philosophy of science. In particular, a person's theoretical commitments in either have direct implications for her stance on laws. In this dissertation, I argue that an ontic structural realist should be a realist about laws, but only within a non-Whiteheadean process framework. Without the adoption of a process framework, any account of laws the ontic structural realist offers will require metaphysical commitments that are at odds with ontic structural realism. In arguing towards this aim, I adopt an attenuated methodological naturalistic stance to show that traditional …

By Sea And Air: Winston Churchill's Views On The Navy And Air Force During The Second World War, Michael Toth

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

For the majority of the Second World War Churchill served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position that he used to influence imperial military strategy. In this he had to engage with a number of new methods and means of making war, such as the airplane, which had their origin in the First World War, but which now had reached maturity. Thus Churchill’s views on the various military branches were important, as he was engaging with a new system of warfare. This thesis examines Winston Churchill’s views of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during the …

A Gramscian Analysis Of Roman Bathing In The Provinces, Diana Danielle Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues the institution of Roman bathing was an instrument of cultural hegemony, which allowed the Roman Empire to maintain hegemony over the Roman provinces. Numerous frameworks have been suggested in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between Rome and the provinces. Roman imperialism has been a topic of debate for over one hundred years and the vicissitudes of scholarly thought are highlighted by the changes in the characterization of the theory of Romanization. In the recent past, scholars have sought a framework that could progress beyond the problematic concept of Romanization in order to better …

Politics And Theology Of Flannery O’Connor: How They Coincide In “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, Baylee Vasquez

BYU English Symposium

Michael L. Schroeder fastidiously argues that because O’Connor’s “Everything that Rises Must Converge” focuses on the dynamics of a relationship between a self-righteous white liberal and his “racist but not malicious” mother, it is a political parable reflecting O’Connor’s beliefs about the shared racial responsibility of the civil rights movement (Schroeder 45). However, he neglects the story’s important religious underpinnings, therefore failing to grasp O’Connor’s underlying attitude about the issues of desegregation and civil rights, and also the necessary juxtaposition between Christian values with racial tolerance. Through characterization and imagery, O’Connor shows that the ideals of racial equality and individual …

Memory—Midnight’S Children’S Locus Of Truth, Brittany Strobelt

BYU English Symposium

This paper explores truth as it applies to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, particularly how memory--a fallible human reconstruction of experience--conveys truth. I do so by drawing a parallel between memory and philosophy; whereas the French philosopher Alain Badiou sees philosophy as a locus for truth, I see memory as a locus for truth. Both philosophy and memory as locii of truth create spaces in which truth can expand, can go beyond fact, and can be deeper. I further strengthen the importance of imperfect memory's usage as a locus for truth by relating it to Rushdie's use of magical realism.

The Blind Can See: Revisiting Disability In Jane Eyre, Gina Schneck

BYU English Symposium

Scholars have often criticized Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre for its antiquated approach to disability. However, these scholars tend to focus on physical or biological disability without delving into the possibility of metaphorical disability (such as Jane's naiveté). By looking at disability as both literal and figurative, we can see how both Jane and Edward are blind, and that their story is one of learning to see through breaking down the binaries associated with blindness and disability.

The “Wonderment” Of Oz: Theosophy And Religious Leadership In Oz, Heather M. White

BYU English Symposium

Too often when analyzing L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Baum’s spiritual beliefs are not applied to perceiving the meaning behind the novel. I argue that Baum’s belief in the spiritual movement of Theosophy is imbued throughout the novel to show how one cannot rely on corrupt religious leaders and must have a personal connection with spiritualism. Through these aspects of Theosophy in the novel, Baum exhibits how to attain one’s potential through personal spirituality. I continue on to explain how the novel and Theosophy have a symbiotic relationship: the novel outlines Theosophy in a more easily understood …

“I Could Do With Less Caressing”: Sexual Abuse In The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Andrew S. Doub

BYU English Symposium

Anne Brontë’s 1848 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has long been called a seminal text in the feminist literary canon. Although a fair amount of recent scholarship has been written on the element of domestic violence found within its pages, most critics concede that Brontë stops short of depicting actual physical abuse between Helen Huntingdon and her husband Arthur. However, this paper suggests that scholars have overlooked Helen’s explicit reports of being sexually assaulted by her husband and their significance. By including the element in her story, Brontë entered her description of marital sexual abuse into the public discourse …

Evil Deity: How White Racist Christians Made God Bad, William Guajardo

BYU English Symposium

Zora Neille Hurston, Stephan Haynes, and Langston Hughes address African-American literature’s relation to traditional, Christian, white-American beliefs. Black literature consistently shows a deep distrust of Christian teachings due to the historic attempts to force blacks into an oppressive ideology of willing servitude. The pressure to conform to an antagonistic religion produced various reactions from African-Americans, including: assimilation, subversion, and even rejection of white Christian beliefs. These black authors struggle to come to terms with a seemingly empty religion thrust upon them by a hostile and oppressive racial force driven by a biased, white-master-favoring god (lower-case). They are unable to find …

A Man Of This Time: Memory And Sheriff Bell’S First-Person Narratives In Cormac Mccarthy’S No Country For Old Men, Marie-Reine Pugh

BYU English Symposium

Critics often focus on the violence in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. But the function of memory in Sheriff Bell’s first-person narratives has yet to be examined. Bell may claim to be defeated by the events of the story and the changing times, but the structure of the novel bespeaks a greater importance: his voice marks the beginning and ending of the novel, of each new chapter. His narratives reveal the struggle between his collective and personal memories. In the end, Bell is able to settle in a less conflicted place mediated by his closest relations—his family—where he …