American Literature Commons^™

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. …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

Queer Hope And Asexual Desire In Nella Larsen's Passing And Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Jeremy Buckner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This project examines Nella Larsen’s Passing and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse together as queer artifacts in hopes of shedding new light on how race and sexuality can be reexamined across national modes of thinking. Although these writers’ backgrounds provide them with different bodies of knowledge, Larsen’s Irene and Woolf’s Lily have much more in common than might first appear. For one, even if racialization is more explicit—and presents more of an obstacle—for Irene, race is an important factor for both characters. Additionally, Irene and Lily both express profound discontent with marriage, Irene in her marriage to Brian and Lily …

The Mother Of It All (Fiction), Ardis Berghoff

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Editorial: Vol 10(1), May 2025

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

American Letters: Albert H. Hochbaum

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

Excerpt from: Travels and Traditions of Waterfowl (1955)

Transatlantic Literary Networks, 1949-1972, Cristina Iuli, Stefano Morello

Publications and Research

Il racconto di Donald Barthelme “Critique de la Vie Quotidienne”, pubblicato sul New Yorker il 9 luglio 1971, si apre su una famiglia newyorkese di classe media sull’orlo di una crisi matrimoniale. Wanda, la moglie, sfoglia Elle, costringendo il marito a prestare attenzione alle foto dell’elegante ristrutturazione di un vecchio mulino in Bretagna da cui spiccano arredi di Arne Jacobsen e “cose di plastica arancione e rosso brillante che arrivano da Milano” (Barthelme 1971, p. 26). Barthelme, che aveva trascorso tutta l’infanzia e buona parte della gioventù a Houston, in Texas, dove il padre era direttore del museo di …

Scene Transatlantiche: Eco Italiane Nella Beat Generation, Stefano Morello

Publications and Research

Nella maldestra intervista con Fernanda Pivano trasmessa dalla RAI nel settembre del 1966, Jack Kerouac, interpellato riguardo le infuenze letterarie che avevano ispirato la sua produzione, rispose negando con forza l’impatto di autori italiani sulla sua poetica. Il rifuto di Kerouac – uno dei pochi esponenti della Beat Generation a poter vantare un radicamento nel territorio nordamericano da più di dieci generazioni (FamilySearch) – può essere letto come il tentativo di un autore aggrappatosi, nella parte fnale della sua vita, a un’ideologia conservatrice e nazionalista, di inscrivere la propria poetica all’interno di una tradizione letteraria puramente americana. Nella frase successiva …

Representations Of Violence Against Native American Women, Christine York

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

It is the aim of this study to provide detailed attention to the representation of violence against Native American women throughout American films and literature. Native American women have been persecuted against since the times of colonization; however, there has been a recent uptake in this crime. This crime has been seen throughout many forms of art, but has not often been a focal point to these artforms. In order to argue that the violence these women experience needs to be central to the texts they are seen in, a comparison between three different texts is imperative. These texts are …

Mixed Feelings: The Emotional Appeals Of Zitkala-Ša’S American Indian Stories, Kayla Joan Baur

Publications and Research

Zitkala-Ša (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird) was among the first to write about the experiences of Native American children in the U.S. Indian boarding school program to an English-speaking audience. As a writer and political activist, Zitkala-Ša uses emotional appeals and cultural ideas she learned through her white education to expose the very boarding school institutions that taught her. In American Indian Studies (1921), Zitkala-Ša critiques the violence that the Indian boarding school system inflicts on young Native Americans. She presents these critiques through emotional appeals that take two forms: one, a more traditional sentimental appeal associated with middle-class white …

“Pristine Truth” Ecopsychology: The Natureness Remedy

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

As was best seller predicted by ecological science experts in 1949, (2a) most educated people today recognize that in personal, social and environmentally hurtful ways our senselessly abused lives increasingly are breaking our world. Although no core cause or remedy for this catastrophe is known, this “Natureness” article makes both available. Sadly, by continually omitting its special “Pristine Truth,” all the knowledge in the world can’t stop modern humanity’s suicidal mismanagement of Nature’s life as it flows around and through us. (2) Instead, our present-day conquer-Nature worldview teaches us to excessively disconnect from, exploit and illegally war against Nature’s flow …

New Coyote (Qomu'tsau) Stories: "About Time"

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

~The River~ (Poem By Raymond Carver)

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

"[...] Felt the hair rise as something touched my boot. Grew afraid at what I couldn’t see. Then of everything that filled my eyes— that other shore hung with heavy branches, the dark mountain range behind. [...]"

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.

Disrupted Ambitions And Unmasked Identities: An Analysis Of Doubleness In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar And Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man In Cold War America, Laura Anderson

English Language and Literature ETDs

This thesis conducts a literary analysis on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) with a primary investigation on the protagonists and their convergence of identity in Cold War America. One of the critical discourses evaluated throughout the project’s literary analysis includes the protagonists’ complications of doubleness. This essay argues that since these two texts sit between W.E.B DuBois’s “Double Consciousness” and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1988 theory on intersectionality, these protagonists are forced to contend with an identity crossroads. Secondary to the context of this analysis is the use of “post-war” and “Cold War,”; neither are …

Reverberations Of Boarding School Trauma In Upstate New York, Grace A. Miller

Comparative Woman

The legacy of boarding schools in Upstate New York is one that non-Natives seem to have forgotten. This historical amnesia compounds other acts of genocide, including cultural genocide, of the Haudenosaunee people throughout US history. Established in 1855 at the Cattaraugus Reservation (Seneca), the Thomas Indian School would serve as an institution of forced assimilation and displacement, much like the other Native American boarding schools. While the larger US population has grown to forget these schools' existence, the shadowed legacy of institutions, like the Thomas Indian School, Haskell, and Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the rippling effects of these schools’ practices …

Naruto And Naruto: Shippuden Through The Lens Of Campbell’S Monomyth, Victor Ayon

Literary and Intercultural Studies | Senior Theses

“Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden through the lens of Campbell’s Monomyth” is a comparative analysis of the anime television series Naruto (2002-2007 Japan, 2005-2009 USA) and its sequel Naruto: Shippuden (2007-2017 Japan, 2009-2019 USA) with Joseph Campbell’s monomyth as delineated in his The Hero with the Thousand Faces. These Japanese anime television series that are considered one of the most popular worldwide, and yet the hero’s quest in each series is often overlooked. This study both compares and contrasts how the Campbellian stages of monomyth intersect with Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden animation narratives.

Nice Girls, Wild Women: The Call Of The American Wilderness And Feminine Rejection Of The American Dream, Alice Paige Dillard

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Reflecting the inherently patriarchal nature of the colonization that birthed America as a nation, the American landscape English settlers sought to subjugate became connotated with the female gender through English colonial writing. American westward expansion gained greater allure than the overt appeal of conquest and agrarian industry when her untamed western landscape was likened to images of an unspent virginal bride or the breast of a nurturing mother. Thomas Morton likens the colonies of Maryland and Virginia to the Biblical figures of Leah and Rachel in his poem “New English Canaan” to demonstrate their equal worth as English colonies, though …

Memoirs Of The Foreign Legion, Maurice Magnus, D.H. Lawrence

Zea E-Books Collection

Maurice Magnus was 39 years old when he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion to join the fight against Germany in World War I. Magnus was an American expatriot living in Rome—a theatrical agent, tutor, newspaper correspondent, writer, editor, and literary entrepreneur. He soon discovered his error—the Legion he found consisted largely of German exiles, prison-avoiding felons, and contemptuous French officers. Magnus spent about six weeks training in North Africa before a transfer to southern France provided the opportunity to desert and flee back to Italy. The Memoirs recounts his brief disenchanted tenure as a Legionnaire. After his military service …

The Experience Of White Captives Among The Natives Of The Old Northwest Territory Between 1770 And 1850, Analucia Lugo

The Purdue Historian

In the late 18^th to mid-19^th centuries, hundreds of white settlers were taken captive by Native American groups across the Old Northwest Territory. Reasons for their capture varied from revenge to adoption, however, the treatment they received greatly depended on the captive’s gender. While females were more likely to be kept alive and better-taken care of, males faced a greater probability of facing violence or even death, though torture was common among both groups. Many captives undertook participatory roles within their respective captive communities, with some deciding to assimilate completely into a new way of life. Captivity narratives …

Tituba, “Dark Eve” In The Origins Of The American Myth: The Subject Of History And Writing About Salem, Junghyun Hwang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Recasting the Salem witchcraft trials in light of Walter Benjamin’s theses on historiography, this paper revisits the question of history by examining ways in which Tituba is dis/con-figured as the subject of American history in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Both stories of persecution revolve around the figure of Tituba, a slave from the Caribbean to whom the beginning of the witch trials is attributed, as the nodal point of different modes of representing the Salem history. The telos in Miller’s drama coincides with the subject-formation of Proctor as the legitimate …

Colonial Prehistories Of Indigenous North America, Mark A. Mattes

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

One of the most common inquiries received by Filson Historical Society librarians concerns the myth of Prince Madoc and the Welsh Indians. Of the myth’s many versions, the one most familiar to Ohio Valley History readers goes like this: Madoc, a Welsh prince escaping an internecine conflict over political rule at home, supposedly sailed to North America in the twelfth century. His force either landed at the Falls of the Ohio or made it there after landing further south and being driven north by hostile locals, possibly Cherokee people. Madoc and his contingent intermixed with Indigenous populations, whose fair-haired, blue-eyed, …

See You In The Funny Pages: Forms And Aesthetics Of Newspaper Comic Strips In Bill Watterson's Calvin And Hobbes, Jack Mallard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project looks at how Bill Watterson’s aesthetics and his employment of the comics apparatus, as well as his advocacy for learning the history of the formal development (and decline) of the newspaper comic strip, influence Calvin and Hobbes’ approach to art, family, education, and other cultural topics. By adapting Thierry Groensteen’s theory of spatio-topia, a term describing comics’ ability to provoke meaning from how graphic, verbal, and structural elements inhabit space and relate to one another within space, I demonstrate how Bill Watterson’s quality as a comics artist comes as much from his ability to activate spatio-topic potentials …

The Legacy Book In America, 1664–1792, Roxanne Harde, Lindsay Yakimyshyn

Zea E-Books Collection

Legacy books in colonial America were instruments for the transmission of cultural values between generations: the dying mother (usually) instructing and advising children on the path to salvation and heavenly reunions. They were a popular and influential form of women’s discourse that distilled the ideologies of the religious establishment into practical and emotional lessons for lay persons, especially the young.

This collection draws together legacy texts written by colonial American women and girls: five mother’s legacy books and two legacies by children, organized here chronologically. These legacies were writ­ten in anticipation of dying, making awareness of death central to the …

Conditional Recognition And The Popularization Of The Contemporary Wellness Industry, Janina Misiewicz

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

During the second half of the twentieth century, liberalism gave way to neoliberalism, and as a result, the cultural role of wellness also expanded, leading to the creation of what Carl Cederström and André Spicer call “the wellness syndrome.” Now, in a society inundated by yoga studios, corporate mindfulness programs, and data tracking apps, wellness has expanded into a multibillion dollar industry. Yet the allure of wellness is not immediately understandable. What is it about wellness that has created an almost religious fervor among its adherents? This thesis offers a solution to this question in the form of what I …

Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography With Pseudonyms And Some Tall Tales, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

In a city torn apart by racial tension, Damien Cavalieri is an adolescent without a tribe. His mother -who pines for the 1950s Brooklyn Italian community she grew up in- fears he lacks commitment to his heritage. Damien’s fellow Staten Islanders agree, dubbing him a “fake Italian” and bullying him for being artistic. Complicating matters, his efforts to make friends and date girls outside of the Italian community are thwarted time and again by circumstances beyond his control. When a tragic accident shakes Damien to his core, he begins a journey of self-discovery that will lead him to Italy, where …

From The Trenches To The Writer’S Desk: Establishing A Collection Of Children’S Books Authored By Military Veterans In An Academic Library, Casey D. Hoeve

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Kansas State University possesses a collection of juvenile literature to aid Education and English Department programs. KState is also the university with the largest military population in the state. It was discovered that several famous children’s authors were military veterans. Building upon this research, over 160 children’s authors who served in the military were identified. K-State Libraries NEH Endowment Committee funded the curation of a military veteran children’s literature collection, the only known academic library to possess such a collection. The collection enabled the libraries to provide outreach through access to the materials, internet resources, and special collections exhibits.

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …