American Literature Commons^™

Postmodern Fantasy & Its Twin Traditions, Skyler J. Alexander

Honors Thesis

Fantasy literature is diverse and difficult to categorize; nevertheless, throughout the twentieth century two main subgenres emerged: sword-and-sorcery and high fantasy. This thesis examines the differences and similarities between these two traditions, how contemporary examples of the genre fit into or diverge away from the traditions that influenced them, and proves in the negative what and how much of contemporary fantasy fiction is original to itself, with no prominent antecedent. The analysis was performed by comparatively reading two contemporary fantasy novels, The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, with …

The Ache Of Modernism: Death, Affect, And Intersubjectivity In Twentieth-Century American Literature, Alex Gergely

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation suggests that we can locate, describe, and experience death as an aesthetic mood called the ache of modernism. The ache is an atmosphere found in twentieth-century literature that goes beyond simply “positive” or “negative” feeling and encourages audiences to come to an affective and existential relationship with their mortality. As an intersubjective mood deriving from an attunement on death, it illuminates the historical and philosophical moment of many twentieth-century authors while clarifying their texts’ continued resonance today. This project therefore draws on the thought of major philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, …

Heart Of Stone: Geomorphization Through Stone-Oriented Affects, Grace F. Foster

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis draws from the work of geologist Marcia Bjornerud to bring a scientific (specifically geologic) understanding of humanity’s relationship to our home planet to bear in a literary context. I employ Bjornerud’s term “geomorphization” to expand from inter-species kinship to inter-substance kinship and to establish stone as an active, lively subject without relying on anthropomorphization. Geomorphization as I define it refers to recognizing similarity between ourselves and stone/Earth on the basis of our stoniness rather than stone’s human-ness. Geomorphizing ourselves entails what Bjornerud calls “timefulness,” a geologic perspective on temporality that sees the past as continually acting in the …

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.

Living The Humanities: Ghosts, Literature, & Social Justice, Emily A. Phillips

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

How do we bridge the perceived divide between the study of humanities in our Jesuit universities and the real-world problems that surround our campuses? Jacques Derrida’s “hauntology" offers us a compelling way to move between the classroom and life, to guide our students through the Universal Apostolic Preferences of “To walk with the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice” and “To accompany young people in the creation of a hope-filled future.” This article offers a framework for combining literary analysis, historical inquiry, and creative writing in an …

"The Way It Comes—Through Nature:" Christian Realism, Rural Landscapes, And Divine Confrontations In Flannery O'Connor's Farm Fiction, Ashton Bailey Thomas

Master's Theses

Flannery O’Connor, though often labeled a Southern Gothic writer, preferred to place herself in the genre of “Christian Realism.” For her, the grotesque nature of her stories’ endings reflects not grace itself but the culmination of repeated rejections of grace. In her essays and letters, O’Connor argues that grace should be depicted “the way it comes—through nature,” equating the spiritual with the natural world. In her stories’ farm landscapes, O’Connor presents an ever-present grace through nature that, though often ignored or rejected, serves as a catalyst for spiritual confrontations. When this grace is continually denied, violence becomes the only force …

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 …

“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 …

"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 …

Hans Holbein's Portrait Of Henry Viii: England's Own Personal Jesus, Amy Pitsor

Best Integrated Writing

Pitsor explores the possibility that Holbein’s late-stage change in the composition of the portrait from a three-quarter view of Henry to a frontal view held a motive to present Henry as the head of the newly established Church of England and as equal to the pope, and possibly to Christ himself.

La Falta De Los Supermercados En El Oeste De Dayton: Cómo Obtienen Los Estudiantes Comida Fresca En Los Desiertos Alimentarios (Un Ensayo Expositivo-Argumentativo, Catherine Iacobacci

Best Integrated Writing

After having learned about how poverty can affect children’s educational outcomes in one of her classes, Iacobacci wanted to learn more about how the issue affected the area where she lived and went to school. What she found out was incredibly shocking, and only furthered the idea that students are struggling with opportunity gaps, not achievement ones. Unfortunately, due to discriminatory loan practices from long ago, children from the 21st century are suffering physically, emotionally, and academically.

The Journey Within: My Travel Journel, Devonique Jones

Best Integrated Writing

This project is a multigenre research exploration that delves into Jones's personal journey of self discovery and growth during her first solo trip.

Investigation Of Ndv In Southern African Waterfowl Reveal Insightful Geographic And Biodiversity Trends To Help Contain The Virus, Lauren Goodwill

Best Integrated Writing

This study assesses the infection rates and trends of Newcastle disease in southern African waterfowl, a project carried out by Emily Murphy in Dr. Jeffrey Peters’ laboratory

Analysis Of The Integration Of Race And Cultural Concordant Doulas Into The Birth Experience Of African American Women, Cherissa Garcia

Best Integrated Writing

Garcia's study looks at how integrating race and cultural-concordant doulas into the birth experience of African American women would impact outcomes. She found similar studies that provided strong evidence to support doula integration. However, most did not select study populations that appropriately reflected the African American women at increased risk of poor outcomes. As a result, Garcia designed a study that looked at race and cultural concordance between doulas and patients from a wide range of SES backgrounds and varying degrees of pregnancy risk.

The Foreigner In Our Midst: Jewish Rights Debates In Revolutionary France, William Evans

Best Integrated Writing

The debates surrounding Jewish rights during the French Revolution concerned many of the same subjects that divide the Western world today. The fear of the other, immigration as a political tool, and the disagreements over assimilation are all subjects which feature prominently today. In this essay Evans sets out to explore these debates while fairly assessing the historical informants.

Junebug In January: A Novel Excerpt, Hannah Carson

Best Integrated Writing

This section of Junebug in January is the beginning of a much longer story that follows eighteen-year-old June and her small family as she attempts to survive the harsh reality of living in the era of the Great Depression and her attempts to survive her Papa’s tasks for her. This story challenges the boundaries of family loyalty, investigates the concept of “saving yourself,” and explores the limits of redemption.

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

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

The Wizard Of Mecosta: Russell Kirk, Gothic Fiction, And The Moral Imagination, By Camilo Peralta, G. Connor Salter

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

Camilo Peralta’s The Wizard of Mecosta gives the first detailed look at Russell Kirk’s fiction, from his ghost stories to his three gothic novels. While the work particularly emphasizes Kirk’s gothic influences, Peralta also explores references to T.S. Eliot and Charles Williams in his fiction, as well as comments in his nonfiction about Lewis and Williams writing “tales of the preternatural.” The discussion provides important material for seeing Kirk as an Inklings-influenced author.

The Language Of Suffering: A Review Of Ghost Words And Invisible Giants By Lheisa Dustin, Jill Darling

Criticism

Ghost Words and Invisible Giants by Lheisa Dustin. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021. Pp. 308. $133.00 hardback.

Iguza N Wurfan Tasuqilt N The Grapes Of Wrath, Arezki Boudif

Journal of Amazigh Studies

N/A

Marvelous Ordinariness: Re-Engaging With Realism’S Social Function, Miranda Ochoa Natera

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Against Romanticism, European literary realism of the 19th century aimed to provide an objective representation of reality through mimesis that could capture the truth in an objective way. Yet, its positivist approach severely narrowed down the complexity of truth, reality, and the mundane by wrongfully drawing the universal from the particular. A new way of engaging with realist literature from any time period, called Marvelous Ordinariness, rearranges this triad in ways that expand our understanding of our own and other realities portrayed. Using Alejo Carpentier’s description of “lo real maravilloso,” Marvelous Ordinariness unfolds in three layers that resemble Carl Jung’s …

“Everyone’S Favorite Dead Girl”: Historical Crime Fiction And Postwar Policing In James Ellroy’S The Black Dahlia, Mauricio Ortiz Zaragoza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis argues for the importance of crime fiction as a major literary genre with global reach. Taken as a whole, crime fiction acts as a vehicle for exploring macro-level questions of social structures, political-economic processes and power relations. Within that genre, I claim that James Ellroy is a key figure who writes at the intersection of the historical novel and literary noir. As the first work in his L.A. Quartet (1987-1992), The Black Dahlia fictionalizes the investigation of the city’s most famous unsolved homicide—the gruesome murder and mutilation of Elizabeth Short. The novel, however, uses the investigation as a …

The Impact Of The Gut-Brain Axis On Alzheimer’S Disease, Elissa Wakim

Best Integrated Writing

Elissa’s review for the Graduate Biomedical Review focuses on the links between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain; the gut-brain axis and the development of Alzheimer’s disease. As a student in the Microbiology and Immunology Masters Program Elissa was particularly interested in the gut microbiota and their connection to neurodegenerative disease. She tidily reviewed the literature and wrote a fascinating and compelling piece of work.

Best Integrated Writing Spring 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. This is the first issue after a 5 year hiatus.

When Language Fails: A Critical Analysis Essay Of Kathryn Stockett’S The Help:, Evan Mccreary

Black Album Mixtape

A critical analysis essay of Kathryn Stockett's New York Times Bestselling book, The Help, and it's subsequent film adaptation, and how in recent years, particularly following the murder of George Floyd, the story has been used as a classroom tool for teaching students about racism and its effects. Written by a Black student in a primarily white school community, this essay was written as an antithesis to the ideology that the book and movie exceed their intended intentions of being a beneficial teaching tool to youth.

‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury’, Rage Should Not Be A Privilege: The Potential Power Of The ‘Racial Imaginary’, Georgia Mcgovern

CMC Senior Theses

Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.

I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines …

“I Know What Nothing Means”: Nostalgia, Hope, And The Postmodern Search For The Sublime, Kathryn L. Donati

Theses and Dissertations

Amid simultaneous crises of self, nation, digital citizenship, global health, climate change, and socio-political polarization, to name but a few of the catastrophes that seem to define life in the global West in the twenty-first century, where do we find hope? Do we find it at all? Is there any hope to be found? These are the questions that serve as the genesis for this undertaking in which I locate the origin of these crises far before the events of the 2016 and 2020 elections, far before even the panic of Y2K. I begin my examination of hope in contemporary …

Negative Estrangement: Fantasy And Race In The Drow And Drizzt Do’Urden, Steven Holmes

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

This essay introduces the concept of negative estrangement to help understand current cultural interventions into the norms of depicting fantasy races. First, this essay builds on Shklovsky’s concept of estrangement to describe the literary practice of negative estrangement, wherein artists craft “more evil” foes based on hybridized amalgamations of stereotypes to create antipathy toward a subject, be it monster or fantasy race. This practice is sometimes used in service of confronting the issue of race and racism, despite seeming to reify or rearticulate racist stereotypes.

This essay builds on Tolkien’s argument in favor of creating “more evil” foes to exemplify …

Nella Larsen’S Passing: Ambiguous Symbology & Weather, Sara Casten

Anthós

Nella Larsen wrote Passing in 1929, a novella that explored the relationship between two women of mixed race: Irene and Clare. This article highlights the complimentary weather elements with the emotional turbulence experienced by Irene as she tells the story; Clare’s warmth and beauty to Irene’s cold and lack thereof. This article also explores the skills of Larsen to write these ambiguous complimentary weather elements in Passing by highlighting her other novella Quicksand, published the year before.