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American Literature

2019

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Articles 1 - 30 of 52

Full-Text Articles in American Studies

The Personal Is Historical: Slavery, Black Power And Resistance In Octavia Butler’S Kindred, Megan Behrent Oct 2019

The Personal Is Historical: Slavery, Black Power And Resistance In Octavia Butler’S Kindred, Megan Behrent

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.


Contemporary Stories Of Female Development And The Outer Limits Of Maternal Sexuality In Susan Choi’S My Education And Amy Sohn’S Prospect Park West, Christa Baiada Sep 2019

Contemporary Stories Of Female Development And The Outer Limits Of Maternal Sexuality In Susan Choi’S My Education And Amy Sohn’S Prospect Park West, Christa Baiada

Publications and Research

While liberal sexuality has been integrated into contemporary discursive understandings of female possibilities, barriers remain to representing mothers as sexual beings. This essay explores maternal representations in Choi’s My Education (2013) and Sohn’s Prospect Park West (2009) that challenge cultural ideals of good motherhood and invite scrutiny of normative paths and goals of female development. These 21st-century American novels confront and even embrace active maternal sexuality but retreat at the boundary of the maternal/sexual breast to allow protagonists in contemporary alterations of female stories of development to achieve maturity through acceptance of the ideal of good motherhood .Each …


Strangers In The Village: James Baldwin, Teju Cole, And Glenn Ligon, Monika Gehlawat Sep 2019

Strangers In The Village: James Baldwin, Teju Cole, And Glenn Ligon, Monika Gehlawat

Faculty Publications

This essay uses Edward Said’s theory of affiliation to consider the relationship between James Baldwin and contemporary artists Teju Cole and Glenn Ligon, both of whom explicitly engage with their predecessor’s writing in their own work. Specifically, Baldwin’s essay “Stranger in the Village” (1953) serves a through-line for this discussion, as it is invoked in Cole’s essay “Black Body” and Ligon’s visual series, also titled Stranger in the Village. In juxtaposing these three artists, I argue that they express the dialectical energy of affiliation by articulating ongoing concerns of race relations in America while distinguishing themselves from Baldwin in terms …


John Cotton: “Gods Promise To His Plantation” (1630), Jonathan Beecher Field Aug 2019

John Cotton: “Gods Promise To His Plantation” (1630), Jonathan Beecher Field

Publications

No abstract provided.


Sex And Death On The Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology Of Three American Tragedies, Debra E. L. Martin Aug 2019

Sex And Death On The Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology Of Three American Tragedies, Debra E. L. Martin

Anthropology Faculty Research

This book offers a different look at how to think about the starvation and death that hounded emigrants attempting to get to California and Oregon in the early years of nineteenth-century US expansion. Specifically, the Donner party and two lesser-known Mormon handcart groups are scrutinized for what the patterns of age at death by sex can reveal. In the subtitle The Biology of Three American Tragedies, “biology” here means solely demographic data on sex and age at death. These are really the only biological variables examined, so the title Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail is more accurate …


Outline: John Cotton, Gods Promise To His Plantations (1630/P. 1634), Jonathan Beecher Field Aug 2019

Outline: John Cotton, Gods Promise To His Plantations (1630/P. 1634), Jonathan Beecher Field

Publications

No abstract provided.


Re-Visioning Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man For A Class Of Urban Immigrant Youth, Camille Goodison Jul 2019

Re-Visioning Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man For A Class Of Urban Immigrant Youth, Camille Goodison

Publications and Research

In this essay, I will explore Ralph Ellison’s 1952 classic novel, Invisible Man, as a text that has contemporary and relatable themes for a modern-day classroom of mostly urban youth. This essay is also a personal journey into how Ellison’s inventive approaches to form helped create a work that lends itself to contemporary reimagining. It asks the question, can Ellison’s interest in creating a living Afro-American literary tradition rooted in the lore of the ‘peasant’ or common folk have contemporary applications? How does Ellison’s belief that everyday folk expression has value hold up for today’s readers? I try to …


The Sad Kitchen And Song Of Neon: Two Novellas, John Paul King Jul 2019

The Sad Kitchen And Song Of Neon: Two Novellas, John Paul King

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Sad Kitchen, a work of magical realism, tells the story of a saintly woman named Helen. She opens an underground kitchen where people who feel guilty can come to be comforted and nurtured in the middle of the night. The story is, at its heart, a reflection on forgiveness. Song of Neon, also of the magical realist genre, is an existential work about a nurse named Avery and her husband, an owl house maker, named Saul. Their town, Milliard, is under a trance. Avery and Saul struggle with their respective identities in the quiet, vacuum the town has become.


'Tomboy' Is Anachronistic. But The Concept Still Has Something To Teach Us, Lynne Stahl Jun 2019

'Tomboy' Is Anachronistic. But The Concept Still Has Something To Teach Us, Lynne Stahl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article explores the tomboy trope in film and literature and the "taming" that characterizes it, framing both in relation to contemporary debates about gender and sexual identity as well as cultural anxieties around queer, trans, and nonbinary identity. Examining texts from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women to the 1980 film Little Darlings, the article argues that even while the term tomboy may be obsolete, tomboy narratives document processes of rebellion that hold continuing value.


Carleton, William Mckendree, 1845-1912 (Sc 3432), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Carleton, William Mckendree, 1845-1912 (Sc 3432), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3432. Typescripted excerpt from Will Carleton’s narrative poem, “First Settler’s Story,” first published in 1881, as recited in March 1895 by Berta M. Morton.


Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1881-1941 - Relating To (Sc 3425), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1881-1941 - Relating To (Sc 3425), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3425. Notes by an unidentified individual of an interview of author Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Apparently sent to WKU student Paul Wharton from Roberts’ home city of Springfield, Kentucky, the notes recount her comments on her novels The Time of Man and He Sent Forth a Raven, and on the title of her most recent book, Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.


Beeler, Andrew J., Jr., 1912-1998 (Sc 3418), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Beeler, Andrew J., Jr., 1912-1998 (Sc 3418), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3418. Letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from A. J. Beeler, curriculum director for the Louisville, Kentucky public schools. A letter of 1 May 1946 encloses his list of recent Kentucky literature, and a letter of 3 January 1958 reports on his family and Christmas holiday. Includes his reviews of three books by Janice Holt Giles.


Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Matthew Guzman May 2019

Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Non/human: (Re)seeing the “Animal” in Nineteenth-Century American Literature uses canonical literary texts as specific anchor points for charting the unstable relations between human and nonhuman animals throughout the century. I argue that throughout the nineteenth century, there are distinct shifts in the way(s) humans think about, discuss, and represent nonhuman animals, and understanding these shifts can change the way we interpret the literature and the culture(s). Moreover, I supplement and integrate those literary anchors, when appropriate, with texts from contemporaneous science, law, art, and other primary and secondary source materials. For example, the first chapter, “Cooper’s Animal Movements: Across Land, …


Cox, Hal Z., 1883-1952 (Sc 3414), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Cox, Hal Z., 1883-1952 (Sc 3414), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3414. Poem, “Old Kentucky,” written by Hodgenville, Kentucky native Hal Z. Cox in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Kentucky statehood. Includes a 2011 newspaper article about Cox.


Stewart, Robert Lee, 1873-1963 (Sc 3415), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Stewart, Robert Lee, 1873-1963 (Sc 3415), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3415. Letters, 30 May 1956 and 15 May 1957, to Mary Ellen Richards, Franklin, Kentucky, from Lee Stewart, Morehead, Kentucky. He encloses poems and song lyrics relating to Kentucky history, and comments on the Rowan County, Kentucky centennial celebrations. He also encloses his newspaper article about a Fayette County, Kentucky judge, legislator and poet.


Kentucky Poetry Day (Sc 3408), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Kentucky Poetry Day (Sc 3408), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3408. Information for school administrators regarding programming for Kentucky Poetry Day. Includes proclamations by the Governor, suggested activities, and historical, biographical and bibliographical data on Kentucky poets.


Kentucky Council Of Teachers Of English (Sc 3409), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Kentucky Council Of Teachers Of English (Sc 3409), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3409. “Literary Landmarks of Kentucky,” a guidebook prepared by the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English. Organized alphabetically by county and thereafter by place name, the guide provides short entries about the literary personalities or literary works associated with that location.


Guthrie, Alfred Bertram, Jr., 1901-1991 (Sc 3395), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Guthrie, Alfred Bertram, Jr., 1901-1991 (Sc 3395), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3395. Three autobiographical sketches by author A. B. Guthrie, Jr., written in response to requests. Also includes Guthrie’s article on the historical novel, written for the Montana Magazine of History, and a review of his book of collected stories The Big It, with his comments, published in the Saturday Review.


Guthrie, Alfred Bertram, Jr., 1901-1991 (Sc 3395), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Guthrie, Alfred Bertram, Jr., 1901-1991 (Sc 3395), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3395. Three autobiographical sketches by author A. B. Guthrie, Jr., written in response to requests. Also includes Guthrie’s article on the historical novel, written for the Montana Magazine of History, and a review of his book of collected stories The Big It, with his comments, published in the Saturday Review.


Boyd, John Allen, 1938?-2017 (Sc 3394), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Boyd, John Allen, 1938?-2017 (Sc 3394), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3394. Poems written by John Allen Boyd, a WKU graduate, teacher, and resident of Louisville, Kentucky. One collection is bound in pamphlet form and inscribed to WKU faculty member Frances Richards; others are included, with commentary, in a graduate project entitled “Experiments in Verse and Poetry” and written for an advanced composition class at WKU.


Spottswood, Henry Mercer, Iii,B. 1940 (Mss 665), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Spottswood, Henry Mercer, Iii,B. 1940 (Mss 665), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 665. Correspondence with poet and author Jim Wayne Miller, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Chiefly letters to Spottswood which contain numerous attachments about Miller’s writing and speaking engagements. Also includes a small amount of correspondence from Miller’s wife, Mary Ellen Miller, and an unpublished book of poems by WKU students.


Noe, James Thomas Cotton, 1864-1953 (Sc 3379), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Noe, James Thomas Cotton, 1864-1953 (Sc 3379), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3379. Christmas cards and letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from Cotton Noe, first Poet Laureate of Kentucky. Each includes a poem by Noe, but in his 1950 letter he advises Richards that he will be discontinuing this forty-year-long custom. He describes his activities with a poetry guild in Los Angeles, California, and recalls their friendship. Includes Noe’s obituary from the Louisville Courier-Journal and a 1969 clipping from the same paper about Noe.


Walton, Laura S. (Sc 3378), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Walton, Laura S. (Sc 3378), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3378. “The Prentice Poets,” an English paper by WKU student Laura Walton with sketches of the careers of four female poets who contributed to Kentucky’s Louisville Journal under the editorship of George D. Prentice.


Summers, Hollis Spurgeon, 1916-1987 (Sc 3376), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Apr 2019

Summers, Hollis Spurgeon, 1916-1987 (Sc 3376), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3376. Vita documenting education, teaching experience, family and publications of Hollis Summers, current to 1957; biographical narrative, written shortly after Summers joined the faculty of the English department at the University of Kentucky in 1949.


No Man's Land: Critical Disability And Exile In Modernist Literature, Danny Fernandez Mar 2019

No Man's Land: Critical Disability And Exile In Modernist Literature, Danny Fernandez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis works to synthesize literary theory into an examination of socio- cultural and political factors of post-World War I Europe, as they appear in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood, that led to nationalist movements in the 1930s and the current day. These concepts are divided into three sections with the first being an introduction to the formation of signifiers among the modernist writers. The second involves a differentiation of disability from gender in the expatriate community. The third an investigation of disability among the veteran expatriates. The modernist novel, whilst assisting in the creation …


Crabb, Alfred Leland, 1884-1979 (Sc 3366), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Mar 2019

Crabb, Alfred Leland, 1884-1979 (Sc 3366), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3366. Correspondence, consisting mainly of publication announcements for books by Alfred Leland Crabb, a faculty member at WKU and George Peabody College and an author of essays and historical fiction. Includes miscellaneous writing of Crabb’s as well as reviews, clippings and obituaries.


Leaving A Little Heaven Behind With Coltrane, Or: The Performance Is The Archive, Ismael Santos Mar 2019

Leaving A Little Heaven Behind With Coltrane, Or: The Performance Is The Archive, Ismael Santos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines what an Audience-Centered Archive could look like, and the advantages of opening up the spaces of archival scholarship in connection with studies focused on Jazz. This thesis will explore how inherently self-limiting are traditional structures of the Archive, with the contradictory nature of Jazz Archives brought to the forefront: to archive a music like Jazz necessarily entails losing what makes it so special, losing the improvisational facet of Jazz. This thesis draws from sound studies and performance studies, along with a focus on the recording technologies that entail differences in interpretation and American history. This focus of …


Litsey, Edwin Carlile, 1874-1970 (Sc 3362), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Mar 2019

Litsey, Edwin Carlile, 1874-1970 (Sc 3362), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3362. Letter, 19 July 1950, to “Mary Virginia” from Edwin Carlile Litsey, Lebanon, Kentucky. He thanks her for a recent request for biographical data and relates information about his daughter Sarah and her family. He also reports that both of them are working on books. Includes a typescript of Sarah’s poem “The Roads,” published in Scribner’s Magazine, December 1935, and a typescript of Litsey’s poem “King Solomon of Kentucky.”


Giles, Janice Meredith (Holt), 1905-1979 (Sc 3363), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Mar 2019

Giles, Janice Meredith (Holt), 1905-1979 (Sc 3363), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3363. Letters, 1951 and 1955, from author Janice Holt Giles, Knifley, Kentucky, containing biographical information about her and husband Henry Giles. Includes a 1956 letter declining WKU faculty member Frances Richards’ invitation to speak at WKU’s Leiper English Club due to her dental problems, and a few clippings about the Giles and their work.


Clarke, Mary (Washington), 1913-1999 (Sc 3358), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Mar 2019

Clarke, Mary (Washington), 1913-1999 (Sc 3358), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3358. Letters and cards to retired WKU faculty member Frances Richards from Mary (Washington) Clarke, also a WKU faculty member. She writes of publishing her book Jesse Stuart’s Kentucky, of her work with husband Kenneth Clarke as editor of the Kentucky Folklore Record, and of other scholarly projects. Christmas letters provide details of the Clarkes’ farm near Bowling Green, Kentucky, including a sketch map of its location.