American Literature Commons^™

Piercing The Veil In Sinners: Theological Insights From The Juke Joint, Antonio D. Sison Cpps

Journal of Religion & Film

Celebrated as a critical and commercial success, Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying opus Sinners has also been considered as one of the most culturally significant films of 2025. It also promises to be one of the most theologically resonant films of the year. This is evinced not only in its thematic and literary bases but, importantly, in its very audiovisual language and grammar, its stylistic strategies qua film. As reasoned in this essay, Coogler’s film is a rich locus theologicus, a nexus for theological discovery and insight.Sinners kindles the hermeneutical impulse to dialogue with African American/Pan-Africa theologies exemplified by the …

On Black Speculative Feminisms: Memory And Liberated Futures In Black Women’S Fiction, Aisha Matthews

Criticism

Black Speculative Feminisms: Memory and Liberated Futures in Black Women’s Fiction by Cassandra L. Jones. Ohio State University Press, 2024. $29.95 paperback

On Monstrous Work & Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation, Courtney Thorsson

Criticism

Review of Monstrous Work & Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation by Eve Dunbar.

Performance Of Illustrations And Images As Language In Sarnath Banerjee’S All Quiet In Vikaspuri, Akanksha Barthwal Ms

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri, fictionalizes but at the same time addresses water wars and political ideologies in the city of Delhi. By the means of eco-critical approach in the name of Vi-kas (development) Banerjee discuss the acts of slow violence subverted on nature in the name of progress (vikas). Through text/ images the author depicts chaos and challenges for the readers in more direct and obscene ways. The current paper attempts to look at Banerjee’s illustrations and images as new form of language emerged in modern Indian literature with the possibly that illustrations have more effect on …

Art In An Apocalypse: Aids, Activism, And Abolition In Work Of Essex Hemphill And Alternative Video Production, Sydney E. Guntharp

Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of Black, POC, feminist, and queer art in the late twentieth century, examining both the AIDS crisis and the increasing privatization of the prison industrial complex as key factors in the development of Essex Hemphill’s poetic, expressive works and the filmmaking activism of various videotape collectives. Through employing the lens of critical prison studies, this work seeks to understand how Black and POC art emerged as a site of political resistance to a carceral state as well as the broader social punishment doctrine that influenced the public health response to AIDS in the United States. …

‘“We Was Girls Together”’: Black Girlhood And Homoeroticism In Toni Morrison’S Sula, Summer A. Still

Caroliniana Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper examines Toni Morrison’s Sula through the intertwined frameworks of Black girlhood and homoeroticism, with a focus on the friendship between Sula Peace and Nel Wright. By analyzing moments of intimacy, dreams, and kinship terminology, I argue that Morrison portrays their bond as both a survival mechanism against oppressive social structures and as a site where homoerotic desire emerges. Concepts such as “fictive kin,” “chosen kin,” and “quare” are used to show how Morrison complicates traditional categories of friendship and queerness in American literature. Ultimately, the novel positions Sula and Nel’s relationship as one of enduring love that exceeds …

Harriet Hosmer: Femininity And Stone, Savannah V. Parrish

Undergraduate Theses

Harriet Hosmer was an American woman sculptor who studied in Rome, Italy, from 1853 to 1900. Hosmer led her own cohort of women artists and inspired other artists in Rome. Hosmer’s sculptures and the controversies surrounding them exemplify her experiences as a career woman of her time. Hosmer made sculptures of women who defied the will of men, both mythical and historical. Hosmer’s sculptures show how she felt restricted in the world, particularly in the field of sculpture as a woman and how like the figures of her sculptures she found freedom in stone, where she could tell the stories …

Crowdsourcing Literary Recovery Using Iterative Search Techniques, Jean Lee Cole

Feminist Pedagogy

The Literary Recovery assignment teaches students how to develop keyword search search techniques to locate literary works and authors in online databases and text repositories. Using the assignment in a collaborative course project provides the benefit of crowdsourcing recovery efforts for prolific authors or groups of authors.

"Black History Is Black Horror": Hauntology And Cultural Trauma In 20th And 21st Century Black Women's Gothic Horror, Destini S. Beckwith

Theses

Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturistic, gothic horror, neo-slave narrative Kindred (1979) vividly illustrates the story of a woman, Dana, involuntarily time-traveling from her home in 1976 Los Angeles, California, to a plantation in 19th-century Maryland. The interactions that she has with her ancestors, such as Alice, a free Black woman, and Rufus, a white man who enslaves Alice, leave Dana mentally and physically scarred. The 20th-century novel is meant to graphically reflect on the horrors of enslavement and the mental and physical effects that Black people endured/still endure because of it (i.e., grief, racial violence, and post-traumatic stress disorder). Furthermore, the novel’s …

How Questions Of Editing Shape Our Learning: Introducing Students To Digital Manuscripts, Marlowe Daly-Galeano

Feminist Pedagogy

This article presents a pedagogical approach for introducing literature students to digital manuscripts and editorial processes through hands-on engagement with archival materials. The teaching activity centers on May Alcott Nieriker's essay "London Bridges," using four different versions of the text—two handwritten manuscripts, one nineteenth-century periodical publication, and one contemporary republication—to illuminate how editorial decisions shape literary canons and student learning. The four-part assignment integrates literary analysis, manuscript transcription, variant identification, and editorial decision-making to help students understand the material conditions that determine which texts survive and become part of academic curricula. Through this assignment, students gain critical insights into the …

(Introduction To The Special Issue) Restoring Women’S Literary Past: Exploring Digital Recovery Pedagogy Through An Intersectional Feminist Lens, Alice Martin, Tracy A. Fernandez Rysavy

Feminist Pedagogy

In Roopika Risam (New Digital Worlds, 2018) and Lauren Klein and Catherine D’Ignazio’s (Data Feminisms, 2020) recent work, they call for more attention to the intersecting relationships between feminist practice, content, and technical specifications through an awareness of the ways the design and implementation of technology can exclude and objectify people. In response to this, we introduce a special issue on teaching digital recovery in the classroom, with a focus on recovering women writers of America through digital projects.

Teaching Phillis Wheatley (Peters) As A Working Artist, Lenora Warren

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In recent years, the challenge of teaching the poetry of Phillis Wheatley (Peters) has been managing my students’ expectations of what constitutes “representative” African American literature and coming to a more comprehensive idea of constitutes both “political” and black art. In managing some initial confusion around Wheatley’s muted response to her enslavement I have landed on presenting Wheatley’s insistence of her work as a poet as “labour” to be the most interesting tact to take with students. For Wheatley it is the imperative of becoming a poet that allows her access to what might be seen as a more vital …

Introduction: Concise Collection On Teaching The Works Of Phillis Wheatley Peters, Part Ii, Mona Narain, Sarah Ruffing Robbins

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This short essay introduces part two of a two-part Concise Collections special issue on teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters. It discusses how the life and works of the poet can be taught in various educational settings.

Imagined Afterlives: Anti-Black Medical Violences In Contemporary Black Arts, Katie Schadler

Honors Theses

“Imagined Afterlives: Anti-Black Medical Violences in Contemporary Black Arts” is a multi-genre exploration that studies the following works: Venus (1996) by Suzan Lori Parks, Get Out (2017) by Jordan Peele, and Dawn (1987) by Octavia Butler. I respectively study an experimental play, a psychological horror film, and a speculative novel to understand how Black creatives are depicting and responding to anti-Black violences, particularly medical violences. This work brings together Black art spanning from the late 1980s to 2017 as well as historical events and figures from the eighteenth century all the way to a not-so-distant future. While these works defamiliarize …

Living The American Dystopia: Parallels Between Louise Erdrich's Future Home Of The Living God, Leni Zumas's Red Clocks, And Us Abortion Legislation, Erin R. Walden

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis highlights the parallels between contemporary U.S. culture and legislation (particularly after the overturning of Roe v. Wade) and two pieces of feminist speculative fiction: Louise Erdrich’s novel Future Home of the Living God and Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks. Through a rhetorical analysis of political and cultural discourse, legislation, and the two novels, utilizing the frameworks of theorists such as Catharine MacKinnon, Michel Foucault, and Stacy Alaimo, I investigate the similarities in legislation, culture, rhetoric, and atmospheres of reproductive dystopian fiction and our current political environment after the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health …

The Right To Read: Opposing The Censorship Of Young Adult Literature On Grounds Of Sexually Explicit Content, Kate Fortner

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I use intersections between sexuality studies, feminism, queer theory, and theories of children’s and young adult literature to examine and historicize the prevalence of book bans and challenges between 2020 and 2025 that target young adult literature on the basis of sexually explicit content. To understand the opposition to portrayals of underage heterosexuality, I analyze John Green’s Looking for Alaska, considering its history of censorship as well as the author’s response to those bans. To understand the challenges to depictions of LGBTQ+ identities aimed at young people, I look at Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer and Juno …

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2025 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Tracy Smith, Kristie Mckiernan

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

Midlife, Michael Sevcik

Poetry MFA Theses

Abstract

Midlife by Michael James Sevcik is a collection of poetry that explores issues of age, gender, sexuality, identity, desire, family, and loss within a predominantly domestic space while addressing broader social, cultural, and philosophical issues using a phenomenological poetics grounded in everyday experience. The collection is organized into three distinct yet interrelated “movements:” the first movement, “Anchored,” establishes an existential yearning amidst professional and amorous stasis and familial pressures. The second movement, “Liminal,” explores temporality and its relationship to place and memory. The third movement, “Renewal,” incorporates travel, family history, and art, transforming them into critical modes of aesthetic …

Elizabeth Female Academy: A Historical Case Study Revealing Antebellum Mississippi's Role In Shaping The Southern Belle, Summer Cutrer Tierno

Dissertations

Historians and educational scholars have extensively examined the subject of women's education, resulting in a rich body of literature that traces its evolution over the centuries. Moreover, this body of work encompasses significant movements advocating for women's rights to education and the establishment of colleges specifically for women. Scholars have also analyzed the challenges women encounter in accessing educational opportunities, including societal norms, economic barriers, and institutional discrimination. Notable works highlight the contributions of key figures, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated for women's education in both historical and contemporary contexts. Overall, this comprehensive scholarship not only documents the advancement …