American Literature Commons^™

Opening Remarks To Outing Lorraine At The Schomburg Center, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This article is an edit of the opening remarks for the event held on May 22nd, 2014 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of the In The Life Series supplying Black LGBT programming coordinated by Steven Fullwood. Outing Lorraine included panelists: Alexis DeVeaux, Joi Gresham, and Steven Fullwood and was moderated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz. Opening remarks provide a biographical description of Lorraine Hansberry's life, prepare the audience for a conversation on the implications for "outing" a black iconic figure, details the purpose for use of primary and secondary sources when, and provides a bibliography for …

Redefining Blackness In The Age Of Whiteness: Mimicry, Ancestry, Gender Performance, And Self-Identity In Afro-Caribbean And Afro-American Literature, Brandon Marcell Erby

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The elements associated with mimicry and colonialism are found in Elizabeth Nunez’s Prospero’s Daughter (2006), as the novel reveals how colonized subjects use mimicry to survive their colonized spaces. Keeping in mind the ideologies of Homi Bhabha and Wumi Raji, the novel also suggests how a subject’s pre-existing condition before being colonized develops agency. Comparably, while Elizabeth Nunez’s novel illustrates how imitation is used by black and native Caribbeans, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1958) contextualize and exhibit W.E.B. Du Bois’s double-consciousness theory and the struggles that black Americans experience while mimicking …

Gender And Self-Representation In Maya Angelou's Autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings 2014, Jay-Nel Steitz

Master's Theses

A voice that has been silenced for so long has much to say. Whether still confined or set free, the statement applies equally to both. The silenced voice wants not only to tell his or her story, but to share the life experiences which in turn reveal the identities of these individuals. These silenced voices then are not those of the oppressors, but the oppressed; and when an oppressor wants to share his or her story, the oppressed wants to tell their side of it as well. How can those labeled the marginalized outcasts of society express their feelings and …

‘My Freedom Is A Privilege Which Nothing Else Can Equal’: The Life And Writings Of Venture Smith And Phillis Wheatley, American Slaves, Donald Holmes Ii

Honors Theses

Slavery in the United States was an evolving institution that lasted nearly 400 years. To understand the colonial era of slavery within the United States, I examine the life and times of Venture Smith, as documented in his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa (1798), and that of Phillis Wheatley using The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley (1988). Both Smith and Wheatley were African-born slaves brought to America during the eighteenth century. In Smith’s narrative, he concludes by proclaiming “my freedom is a privilege which nothing else can equal” (31). This statement …

Queer Tastes: An Exploration Of Food And Sexuality In Southern Lesbian Literature, Jacqueline Kristine Lawrence

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Southern identities are undoubtedly influenced by the region's foodways. However, the South tends to neglect and even to negate certain peoples and their identities. Women, especially lesbians, are often silenced within southern literature. Where Tennessee Williams used literature to bridge gaps between gay men and the South, southern lesbian literature severely lacks a traceable history of such connections. The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the ways in which southern lesbians manipulate food metaphors to describe their sexual desires and identities. This thesis only begins to lay out a history of southern lesbian literature as many lesbian writers …

Best Integrated Writing 2014 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

Minor Characters With Major Impacts : Examining Giovanelli’S Role In Henry James’ Daisy Miller 2014, Zachary Lang

Master's Theses

Henry James’s first journey into the world of the American girl came in the form of one of his most read novellas, Daisy Miller. Through the eyes of Frederick Winterbourne, the reader begins a study of Daisy Miller, a character whom James uses to showcase many of the issues that were prevalent at the time including the role of women, societal standards, and class mobility. Winterbourne and Daisy are the principal characters, and as such they are given the most attention from readers and critics alike. The minor character Giovanelli, however, has received little critical attention. Despite being a minor …

Multiple Generations In Today’S Workplace, Nicole Ritter

Best Integrated Writing

Nicole Ritter explores how to manage differences between Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X’ers, and Millennials in the workplace in this essay written for MGT 3110: Business Ethics & Leadership Development, taught by Mrs. Donna Back at Wright State University.

A Review Of Anatomical Presentation And Treatment In True Hermaphroditism, Jodie Heier

Best Integrated Writing

Jodie Heier studies genetic and hormonal contributors to gender identity in hermaphroditism in this essay written for PSY 4950: Sexuality and Endocrinology Capstone, taught by Dr. Patricia Schiml at Wright State University.

The Global Market And The Status Of Women, Khadija Kirksey

Best Integrated Writing

Khadija Kirksey examines the exploitation of women working in textile factories in India in this essay written for SOC 4090-03/WMS 4000: Gender and Sexuality: Global Issues, taught by Dr. Julianne Weinzimmer at Wright State University.

Health Program Planning/Evaluation 2012-2013 Grant Application, Tyler Begley

Best Integrated Writing

Tyler Begley proposes a plan to get junior high and high school students to eat more fruits and vegetables in this essay written for HED 4430: Health Program Planning and Evaluation, taught by Dr. Mary Chace at Wright State University.

Successful Strategies: Marketing For Tomorrow, Benjamin Banning, John Breyer, Candice Turner

Best Integrated Writing

Benjamin Banning, John Breyer, and Candice Turner generate a marketing campaign for a tricycle using three different aspects of psychology in this essay written for PSY 4100: Applied Psychology Capstone, taught by Dr. Gina F. Thomas at Wright State University.

End Of Life Ethical Dilemma, Gregory Heiser

Best Integrated Writing

Gregory Heiser explores the options and dilemmas involved in deciding on care for a 93-year-old female patient with Alzheimer’s disease in this essay written for NUR 4800: Transition to the Role of the Professional Nurse, taught by Dr. Ann M. Stalter at Wright State University.

Classicism And Humanist Ideology In Donatello’S Gattamelata And David, Shayla Wheat

Best Integrated Writing

Shayla Wheat traces Classical and Humanist influences on Donatello and his works Gattamelata and David in this essay written for ART 3130: Early Italian Renaissance, taught by Dr. Caroline Hillard at Wright State University.

Chandara’S Power, Amy Kasten

Best Integrated Writing

Amy Kasten analyzes the struggles of women against oppression in Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment” in this essay written for ENG 2040: Great Books: Literature, taught by Ms. Carolyn Stoermer at Wright State University.

Reflection On Pema Chödrön’S When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times, Carol Jones

Best Integrated Writing

Carol Jones reflects on suffering, self-knowledge, and enlightenment as presented in Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times in this essay written for CST 2320: Non-Western Religions, taught by Dr. Sharon A. Showman at Wright State University’s Lake campus.

Reflection On Michael Coogan’S God And Sex, Sierra Garwood

Best Integrated Writing

Sierra Garwood reflects on themes of love, sex, and the bible in Michael Coogan’s God and Sex in this essay written for REL 2040: Great Books: Bible and Western Culture, taught by Dr. Sharon A. Showman at Wright State University’s Lake campus.

The Conflict Of Time: Tradition Vs. Modernity In Love In The Time Of Cholera, Rachel Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Rachel Smith analyzes themes of time, tradition, and modernity in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course CST 2310: Non-Western Cultures, taught by Dr. Alpana Sharma at Wright State University.

Trends Of The Portrayal Of Yahweh In The Hebrew Bible, Kenneth Price

Best Integrated Writing

Kenneth Price explores trends of the portrayal of Yahweh in the Hebrew bible in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course ENG 2040: Great Books, Bible and Western Culture, taught by Dr. Heidi Wendt at Wright State University.

Contents And Acknowledgements

Best Integrated Writing

Table of Contents and acknowledgements for Best Integrated Writing: Journal of Excellence in Integrated Writing Courses at Wright State. Fall 2014. 1st Edition. Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

Tammy Rae Carland's Queer Riot Grrrl Zine"I ( Heart ) Amy Carter": A World Of Public Intimacy, Annah-Marie Rostowsky

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Tammy Rae Carland's queer Riot Grrrl zine I (heart) Amy Carter as a counterpublic sphere engendered by acts of public intimacy that make visible the intersectional complexities of gender, sexuality, class, and race that insidious traumas continually work to conceal. It looks to Ann Cvetkovich's inquiries into the positive aspects of public cultures in the book An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (2006) as well as Mimi Thi Nguyen's investigation of the Riot Grrrl race crisis in the article "Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival" (2012) as frameworks to critique Carland's visual and textual …

About Paternal Voices In Adoption Narratives, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "About Paternal Voices in Adoption Narratives" Fu-jen Chen examines the emerging voices of fathers in adoption discourse. Breaking the reticence and challenging the stereotypical profile of birth fathers and the father overall, birth fathers in narratives resort to essentialism or victimhood, a cultural imagination in adoption discourse. Further, Chen examines adoption narratives by adoptive fathers arguing that their reluctance to call for a father-to-father relationship — either rivalry or alliance — indicates a sign of disavowal of both subjective splitness and the structural deadlock. Chen argues that in paternal adoption narratives writing does not emerge as a …

“It Made The Ladies Into Ghosts”: The Male Hero's Journey And The Destruction Of The Feminine In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Catherine Ruth Schetina

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a consideration of the intertextual relationship between William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. It considers the objectification and destruction of women and female-coded men in the service of the male protagonist's journey to selfhood, with particular focus on the construction of race, gender, and class performances.

Queer Bodies And Queer Materials In Post-Wwii American Texts, William Joseph Whalen

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Although the primary subject of this dissertation is contemporary American literature and popular culture--individual chapters are devoted to careful studies of Octavia Butler's short story "Bloodchild," Cormack McCarthy's gothic novel Child of God, Chuck Palahniuk's epistolary novel Pygmy, and the track "It's Good" by hip-hop artist Lil Wayne featuring Drake and Jadakiss--I develop a reading of these contemporary texts that places them within much older and richer intellectual, spiritual, psychological, and even biological traditions. My primary focus is the human body, both literal and figurative, as the site of dynamic exchanges, movements, blockages, and productive potentialities. I argue that at …

The Power Of Multiplying: Reproductive Control In American Culture, 1850-1930, Virginia B. Engholm

Theses and Dissertations--English

Prior to the advent of modern birth control beginning in the nineteenth century, the biological reproductive cycle of pregnancy, post-partum recovery, and nursing dominated women’s adult years. The average birth rate per woman in 1800 was just over seven, but by 1900, that rate had fallen to just under than three and a half. The question that this dissertation explores is what cultural narratives about reproduction and reproductive control emerge in the wake of this demographic shift. What’s at stake in a woman’s decision to reproduce, for herself, her family, her nation? How do women, and society, control birth?

In …

Can Women Have It All?: Hesitant Feminism In American Women's Popular Writing, Anne Aramand

Graduate Masters Theses

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although Twilight and The Hunger Games are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue.

First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are …

Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …

Between Literature And Science: Inscribing Zora Neale Hurston’S Mules And Men In The Post-Human Condition, Jung-Hsien Lin

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Intrigued by the influence of technology on or in literature as well as the ways of which the posthuman body subverts the existing social constructs of race, gender, and culture, this paper appropriates the Foucauldian concept of “technologies of the self” to investigate the narrating “I/eye” in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. I flesh out how Hurston’s new “cyborg” identity, along with the idea of performativity—particularly in relation to her manipulation of the genre of autoethnography—resists the dominant constructs of race, gender and culture. Through a re-examination of these major moments of transformations of knowledge/power in Hurston’s Mules …

"I Have Thought Proper To Inform The World": Reading Unconventional Testaments Of 18th-Century New England Women, Elyssa Tardif

Open Access Dissertations

Early New England women chose to pass down what they owned and valued: clothing, cupboards, pewter dishes, commonplace books, etc. But some women passed down something more: a written testament, which sought to shape public opinion in colonial New England. A "testament" usefully suggests a text that both serves as a witness to lived experience as well as the means by which the individual herself can frame the narrative for those who come after. This project aims to examine not only written records but also their audience: who were the heirs to these testaments and how were the records preserved …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …