American Literature Commons^™

Inappropriate Attire: Fashion, Nationality, And Shame In Quicksand And Pachinko, Minyoung Park

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, Minyoung Park examines how fashion in Quicksand by Nella Larsen and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee functions not simply as a visual strategy for passing but as a site where the wearers’ conflicting feelings—shame, desire, and defiance—emerge and persist. Rather than evaluating the success or failure of passing, the article shifts focus to the process of dressing—selecting, maintaining, and reflecting on clothing—through which identity is negotiated and feelings are embodied. The protagonists, Helga and Sunja, often dismissed as failures, are reconsidered as figures whose attention to their inappropriate or excessive fashion reveals their emotional labor and strenuous …

The Islamic Orient In Antebellum America: The Influence Of Edgar Allan Poe In Contemporary Arabic Literature, Sohaib Alkamal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation posits a comprehensive overview of the debate about Orientalism, particularly early American depictions of the Islamic Orient. The study investigates the antebellum American portrayal of the Islamic Orient, focusing on Edgar Allan Poe’s Orientalist readings. While Said’s Orientalism concentrates heavily on aspects of power in West-East relations throughout history, this study expands on several aspects of Said’s book. This study provides a new approach to exploring the field of Orientalism by giving a voice to Arabic sources that are absent in Said’s Orientalism and rarely known to Western audiences. Such sources are medieval Islamic sources, which include phantasies …

Negotiating (Im)Migrant Identity In The (Un)Assimilated Nation: American Literature Of The Late Nineteenth Century, Haley M. Steffens

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation examines representations of immigration, assimilation, and multinational cultural identity in late nineteenth-century American literature, autobiography, and print culture. Through a comparative analysis of diverse authors and immigrant communities, the project explores how literary and popular culture narratives framed the expectations and limitations of assimilation for disparate populations. By contextualizing these works within historical immigration policies, labor economies, government instability, and burgeoning nationalism, this study reveals how fiction and media shaped public attitudes toward assimilation and influenced policy. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that late, long-nineteenth-century literature functioned as both a reflection of and response to national debates about immigration, …

Langston Hughes And The “Afro-American Narrative” Tradition, Paul Haynes

Theses and Dissertations

After introducing Langston Hughes and defining Robert B. Stepto’s “Afro-American narrative” tradition, Chapter One presents a biography of Hughes from his birth in 1902 until he came under the patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason in 1927. Chapter One also addresses the aesthetic expectations of the Harlem Renaissance and the extent to which Hughes either met or failed to meet those expectations. Chapter Two presents a reading of Not without Laughter as an integrated narrative, addressing how Hughes’s authenticating strategies and Mason’s authenticating devices evenly control the novel. Chapter Three presents a reading of Hughes’s short-story cycle, The Ways of White …

Transgressive Fiction And The Problem Of Negative Affect: A Case Study Of Samuel Delany’S Hogg, Brian Thornton

Master's Theses

Samuel Delany began drafting Hogg in March of 1969 and worked on it intermittently before completing the novel in October of 1973.1 Yet Hogg remained unpublished until 1995 before finally seeing the light of day “during the ‘transgressive turn’ in American literature” (Mitchell 1). As such, the novel is historically situated along what Jonathan Mitchell calls a “dual temporality,” which “allows the novel to be located as an intervention in two key moments in America’s LGBT+ history: first, the developments in identity politics coming out of the socio-political cultural shifts of the 1960s; and, second, the post-AIDS awareness 1990s”.

“More Than What [They] Made Us To Be”: From Passing To Perception In Victorian And Modern Vampire Media, Lauren Sieberg

English (MA) Theses

Throughout Victorian Gothic horror fiction, vampires function as deviant figures, maneuvering within social confines of passing until their status quo-threatening identity is exposed. Of the popular vampires from this period, most gradually fail to maintain status as social insiders—as demonstrated with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, who possess the temporary capacity to pass until their hidden monstrosity is revealed over time. Even if Gothic monsters are confined to a limited space and time far from society, this is still not enough; in accordance with the Victorian culture of morality policing by dominant groups, the vampiric Other …

Love Y Ganas; A Revolutionay Revelation, Thomas J. Salas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My thesis does not have an abstract.

Efecto De Soles, Natalia Soriano Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

En este texto quiero exponer cómo fue el proceso de creación de Efecto de soles, el cual se desarrolló entre los años 2022 y 2025. El libro presenta la cotidianidad de un barrio que un día se ve afectado por distintos cambios en la naturaleza cuando aparece un fenómeno particular: los soles de algunas casas se vuelven cuadrados y aumentan su nivel de alumbramiento. Esto hace que el entorno natural del barrio comience a cambiar: aparecen gusanos fosforescentes, las flores pierden su olor, la lluvia se vuelve negra, las mariposas se van y a los árboles les salen hojas de …

Is Love A “Pathological Condition Of The Soul”? Joyce Carol Oates's Beasts And Rape: A Love Story, Nicolas P. Boileau

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This paper seeks to address the question of Oates’s relation to feminist and gender theories by looking at two novellas published consecutively, Beasts and Rape: A Love Story in the beginning of the 2000s. The short texts share a common storyline based on rape, which is far from uncommon in Oates’s fiction. However, I argue that there is something very specific in these two novellas in the way Oates chooses to handle the testimony of the rape, both overtly and covertly, both in graphic details and in repressed forms of expression, giving way to a reflection on women’s vulnerable position …

Magic, Magicians And Detective Fiction: Essays On Intersecting Modes Of Mystery, Edited By Rebecca Josephy, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Magic, Magicians and Detective Fiction edited by Rebecca Josephy considers how magic appears in detective stories, from the seemingly miraculous exploits of Arsene Lupin to the moral dilemmas of occult detective Elvis Infante.

What Will We Do With The Christmas Pudding?: Joy Davidman, William Lindsay Gresham, And "Christmas In The Workhouse", Gabriel C. Salter, Clark Sheldon

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The poem "Christmas in the Workhouse" archived in William Lindsay Gresham's papers at first appears to be a random transcript in his files. Exploring the work's publication history and Gresham's contributions to War Poems of the United Nations, a book edited by his second wife Joy Davidman, suggests that in fact "Christmas in the Workhouse" is part of the larger story of how they informed each other's work in the 1940s.

How We Survive: A Poem Analyzing Life, Death And Necessity, Pierce H. Dornink

FUSION

This poem is an analysis of the short story "Living Like Weasels" by Annie Dillard. It focuses on life and death, as well as how life is fleeting, and draws on themes expressed in the source work.

This poem was created as part of a multimodal project for an American Literature class in the Fall of 2024 using the following prompt:

You are responding to literature using creative techniques in two phases. In the first phase, you will compose a 2-4 page piece of creative writing that includes a theme we’ve studied in the class that has significance to you. …

A Mirror Of Us, Amber J. Chrones

FUSION

This is a project of empowerment. "A Mirror of Us" embraces patriarchal liberation, while celebrating divine femininity. Inspired by “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this multimodal project aims to shatter conformist ideologies that are all too common.

This poem was created as part of a multimodal project for an American Literature class using the following prompt:

You are responding to literature using creative techniques in two phases. In the first phase, you will compose a 2-4 page piece of creative writing that includes a theme we’ve studied in the class that has significance to you. That creative writing …

Just A Memory, Shakila Arab

FUSION

This poem is a response to “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain” by Emily Dickinson. It was written for a World Literature class using the following prompt:

You will imitate at least five elements of an original text we read this semester. Following your imitation, you will write a paragraph describing the five elements you imitated and how your imitation exemplifies the literary movement of the piece you are imitating.

Controlling The Narrative: How The United Daughters Of The Confederacy Shaped Collective Memory Through Romance Novels, Karie L. Cobb

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While existing scholarship on the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) reveals the immense influence the organization wielded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I assert that their legacy has had a broader and more insidious reach than previously believed. Through close analysis of two foundational romance novelists’ works published during the rapid escalation of the genre’s popularity, I contend that the rhetoric of the UDC shaped generations of Southerners as demonstrated through repetitions and parallels of the Lost Cause ideology found in UDC publications and sponsored materials within romance novels written by white Southern women who came of age …

Queen's Pride: A Queer Reading Of Star Wars Character Padmé Amidala, Madeleine Loewen

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Ever since Luke Skywalker and Han Solo first appeared onscreen together in 1977, LGBTQ+ Star Wars fans have harnessed the power of queer reading to write themselves back into a galaxy far, far away, despite Lucasfilm’s long-term disapproval of such practices. Nonetheless, there exists little scholarly literature on queerness in the franchise, and even less on the potentially sapphic characters. Queen Padmé Amidala, first introduced onscreen in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, proves a surprising—but no less salient—queer figure in Star Wars. From her intimate relationships with her handmaidens, to her experimentation with gender performativity, to her quiet yet …

Cather, Silko, Hunt: Rethinking Prosperity Twentieth-Century Explorations Of Interiority, Materiality, And Transcendence, Aileen Montoya

Dissertations and Theses

• Interiority
• Materiality
• Transcendence
• Prosperity
• Modernism
• Subjectivity
• Narrative Identity
• Spiritual Landscapes

“Women Who Don’T Know How To Stay Married”: The Poetic Afterlives Of The 1927 Bristol Sessions, Aubrey R. Adkins

Honors Theses

This project begins from the understanding that song lyrics can have lasting impacts on the poetic work that proceeds from them, and can and should, therefore, be read as literature. In the cultural context of Southern Appalachia, a historically underserved and academically underrepresented region, this understanding is intertwined with Audre Lorde’s idea that “For women...[poetry] is a vital necessity of our existence.” The women of Southern Appalachia, denied access to particular modes of expression as a result of external circumstances such as poverty and sexism, need poetry, according to Lorde, to take “tangible action” in their lives. What came before …

No Hope?: Queer Negativity, Afropessimism, And The Limits Of Futurity, Colton Barton

Theses and Dissertations--English

Since their inceptions, black and queer studies have sought to articulate the positions of “black” and “queer” within American social life—often converging on the goal of liberation. This thesis examines the intersection of two “negative” theoretical frameworks—Afropessimism and anti-social queer theory (or “queer negativity”)—to interrogate both the limits and generative potential of radical negativity. Though emerging from distinct intellectual traditions, these frameworks conceptualize blackness and queerness as constitutive negations—gaps within the dominant social order that render those so marked inassimilable to normative notions of humanity. While the convergences of these theories can be illuminating, their shared pessimism risks obscuring alternative …

‘‘I Am Not This, Not Here, This Time’’: Claudia Emerson’S Infusion Suite As A Compelling Account Of The Lived Experience Of Cancer, Chris Foss

English & Linguistics Articles

Claudia Emerson’s Infusion Suite section within her poetry collection Impossible Bottle is a significant contemporary literary representation of cancer. In this twelve-poem sequence, Emerson dispenses with the typical martial metaphors so often used to represent this lived experience. Instead, she focuses on more mundane everyday moments in a way that acknowledges and respects the humanity of all those at the treatment center—especially that of the patients. Emerson refuses to airbrush out the daunting, debilitating aspects of cancer, but she also preserves space for light and life.

Inoffensively Alice: Gender Politics In The Alice Series, Eirian Gail Wells

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Contents

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

“Being Natural Is Simply A Pose”: The Concept Of Foucault’S Panopticon In The Picture Of Dorian Gray And Orlando, Mya Corcoran

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Comparing The Representations Of Order And Behavior In James Joyce’S “The Dead” And Samuel Beckett’S Endgame, Araav Thakker

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 27, 2025

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Submission Guidelines

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Great Wizarding Duel: Tolkien’S Possible Influence On Rowling, Anna Jarrell

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Voicing The Violence: Carmen Maria Machado's Contribution To A Queer Archive, Audrey C. Bryant

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This project analyzes In the Dream House (2019) alongside “The Husband Stitch” and “Eight Bites” from the collection Her Body and Other Parties (2017) by Carmen Maria Machado. The first, a memoir, details Machado’s personal experience with domestic abuse between partners who share a female gender identity; the latter is a collection of short stories outlining everyday violations made against women. Scholars have discussed these works with specifications including female domestic horror, Machado’s use of retellings, and domestic violence and abuse. This project fills a gap in the discourse by intersecting and connecting queer theory with archival studies to support …

Robert Frost And The Myth Of Adam And Eve, Theo Johnson

CMC Senior Theses

What exactly it is about the story of Adam and Eve that fascinated Robert Frost is hard to say. Of course, he is not the first to engage with it in writing – for much of recorded human history, the Genesis account of man’s creation has held a place of unparalleled importance in our understanding of what it is to be human, provoking innumerable exegetic responses. In popular literature, too, it has served as inspiration for some of the most celebrated English and American poems. From the “bloodless myth” of Geoffrey Hill’s “Genesis” to the great theodicy of John Milton’s …

"A Changed Understanding Of Our Present": Moby-Dick As Prophetic Ecological Activism, Katie Ann Schini

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale is a classic of American literature, spanning multiple genres and remaining culturally relevant nearly 175 years after its original publication. Though on the surface Moby-Dick reads as an adventure story of a man who experiences the whaling industry firsthand, Herman Melville’s text continues to invite new generations of readership through the framework of the twenty-first century climate crisis.

In this thesis, I position Moby-Dick as a text that can be used to understand our modern society’s current dispositions of ecological grief. My thesis operates at the intersection of three main literary critical theories: ecocriticism, affect, and …