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Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in American Literature
Centuries Of A Heavy Conscience: American Ecogothic In Cormac Mccarthy’S The Orchard Keeper And Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians, Michaela Smith
Centuries Of A Heavy Conscience: American Ecogothic In Cormac Mccarthy’S The Orchard Keeper And Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians, Michaela Smith
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
With the rising concern about negative human treatment of the Earth, studies in the Gothic—a genre which always invites conversation about concerns and anxieties—have recently expanded to include the ecogothic. This critical framework at its core combines the Gothic with ecocriticism and invites conversation about the human impact on the natural landscape and its creatures. The American Gothic is already a genre that discusses guilt and remorse regarding the nation’s colonization of Indigenous people and role in slavery; however, the conversation about American emotions can be expanded to include ecogothic guilt. This sentiment is especially true when considering the ecogothic …
Roadmaps And Blueprints: Ecofeminism In The American Novel, Maegan Bishop
Roadmaps And Blueprints: Ecofeminism In The American Novel, Maegan Bishop
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
The theory of ecofeminism in literature combines ecocriticism and feminism to articulate the overlap of environmental concerns and the subjugation of women and other vulnerable populations. In American Literature, the application of ecofeminist theory is a tool used to expose cultural anxieties throughout time by emphasizing the roles of women and the importance of their connection to the environment during moments of national progression. Current scholarship surrounding ecofeminism in American literature addresses this trend as it applies specifically to texts written by women writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, but does not extend further to legitimize ecofeminism as it …
The Controlled Narrative Of “Jane Roe:” Norma Mccorvey’S Life Beyond The 1973 Trial, Eleanor G. Strickland
The Controlled Narrative Of “Jane Roe:” Norma Mccorvey’S Life Beyond The 1973 Trial, Eleanor G. Strickland
Honors College Theses
Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, 1973, wrote two memoirs twenty years after the Supreme Court trial that surrounded her third pregnancy. These memoirs (I Am Roe, 1994, and Won by Love, 1997), along with the recent documentary AKA Jane Roe (2020), provide an insight into McCorvey’s life and how she was used by politicians and civilians during and after the influential trial. McCorvey lived a complicated life and was constantly being pulled in different directions spiritually, politically, and personally. This thesis shows how McCorvey attempted to re-write the narrative of her life using …
So Much Courage: Hemingway, War, And Rape, Tracie Nicolai
So Much Courage: Hemingway, War, And Rape, Tracie Nicolai
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Weaving together Ernest Hemingway’s biography and literature with her own life, Tracie Nicolai analyzes the impact of Hemingway’s life and literature in the classroom and outside of it. War trauma is analyzed in relation to rape and its lasting effects, paralleling the impacts and the traumas that shape our philosophies and our lives. Nicolai explores how Hemingway wrote of war and his own injuries, and she discusses the distance evident between his own life experiences and his subsequent fiction writings. In separate vignettes in each chapter, Nicolai writes of her experience as a rape survivor and the lasting impact on …
Nice Girls, Wild Women: The Call Of The American Wilderness And Feminine Rejection Of The American Dream, Alice Paige Dillard
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 …
The Portrayal Of Disability In 19th And 20th Century American Novels, Taylor Whittington
The Portrayal Of Disability In 19th And 20th Century American Novels, Taylor Whittington
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
This thesis explores the treatment of disabled characters by their family and communities in 19th and 20th - century American literature. The three works being evaluated are, The Monster (1898) by Stephen Crane, The Sound and The Fury (1928) by William Faulkner, and Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck. Although The Sound and The Fury and Of Mice and Men contain a white disabled character, The Monster details the disfiguration of an African American man. In The Monster, race exacerbates the community’s response to the disfigured Henry Johnson, compared to Lennie in Of Mice and Men, …
American Performance: Artistic Experience And The American Dream, Savannah M. Barrow
American Performance: Artistic Experience And The American Dream, Savannah M. Barrow
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
The American Dream was first epitomized by Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography (1791), in which he instructs his fellow citizens on how to procure the American promises of social mobility and economic prosperity. However, the moral and social performances reinforced by Franklin’s recipe-for-success promote an ideological system that prevents marginalized communities such as women, immigrants, and people of color, from procuring the Dream’s most foundational features. Inequitable access to the Dream is a theme revisited throughout American literature, wherein disenfranchised characters consume the aspirational narrative of American social mobility through art, media, and propaganda. This essay tracks the representation of …
Teaching Trauma In Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Kat Shuman
Teaching Trauma In Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Kat Shuman
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Using Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, this thesis outlines how to ethically and effectively teach literature that deals with trauma. My personal teaching philosophy as well as the current pedagogy surrounding trauma literature preface a detailed syllabus, lesson plans, assessments, and activities that would be useful in teaching a course centered around literature that deals with trauma. This thesis highlights the merits of teaching trauma fiction in the literature classroom.
The Significance Of The Automobile In 20th C. American Short Fiction, Megan M. Flanery
The Significance Of The Automobile In 20th C. American Short Fiction, Megan M. Flanery
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Midcentury American life featured a post-war economy that established a middle class in which disposable income and time for leisure were commonplace. In this socio-economic environment, consumerism flourished, ushering in the Golden Age of the automobile: from 1950 to 1960, Americans spent more time in their automobiles than ever before, and, by the end of the decade, the number of cars on the road had more than doubled. While much critical attention has been given to the role of the automobile in American novels, less has been given to its role in American short stories. The automobile has been featured …
Nine Stories And The Society Of The Spectacle: An Exploration Into The Alienation Of The Individual In The Post-War Era, Margaret E. Geddy
Nine Stories And The Society Of The Spectacle: An Exploration Into The Alienation Of The Individual In The Post-War Era, Margaret E. Geddy
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
This thesis analyzes the thematic links between three of J. D. Salinger’s short stories published in Nine Stories (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Down at the Dinghy,” and “Teddy”), ultimately arguing that it is a short-story cycle rooted in the quandary posed by the suicide of Seymour Glass. This conclusion is reached by assessing the influence of T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” on these stories, something that is understood through the Marxist frame of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
Whitewashing Who We Worship: Amelioration And Cultural Imperatives In Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Samantha Bauer
Whitewashing Who We Worship: Amelioration And Cultural Imperatives In Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Samantha Bauer
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods creates a penetrating and sharp commentary on the state of essentially, every aspect of contemporary American society by populating it with myths that arrives on American shores over countless generations. From the characters to the settings, Gaiman utilizes the often-overlooked fact that myths can be found in every aspect of life. In many ways, Gaiman is building, or perhaps evolving, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies to discuss the unique nature of contemporary myths and how ancient myths still play a role in our society. I contend that in …
A Pilgrim’S Progress For The Digital, Post-Human(Ist) Age?: Social And Religious Allegory In Russell Banks’S Lost Memory Of Skin, David J. Buehrer Dr.
A Pilgrim’S Progress For The Digital, Post-Human(Ist) Age?: Social And Religious Allegory In Russell Banks’S Lost Memory Of Skin, David J. Buehrer Dr.
South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)
In Lost Memory of Skin (2011), his twelfth novel, Russell Banks continues his exploration of the dark underbelly of American society—in this instance, the moral wilderness of a group of convicted sex offenders exiled to living beneath a concrete causeway in the south Florida city of Calusa, a fictionalized Miami. Banks, who has long been “our premier chronicler of the doomed and forgotten American male” (Schulman 8), focuses in Lost on a twenty-two-year-old parolee referred to throughout only as “The Kid.” While guilty and duly convicted of propositioning an underage girl online for sex, The Kid is still presented in …
A Once And Future Queen: Jackie Kennedy And Her Kingdom, Alyssa J. Windsor
A Once And Future Queen: Jackie Kennedy And Her Kingdom, Alyssa J. Windsor
Honors College Theses
The Kennedy Camelot was important to the American people and how we now come to view families in the White House. Jacqueline Kennedy was perhaps one of the most important characters in this story that was tragically interrupted. A historical figure not fully developed, Jackie single handedly created the beloved Camelot era and changed the way we view twentieth century America. Taking a deeper look into the private life of the most popular First Lady in American history in relation to the political rollercoaster that was the 1960s, new conclusions can be drawn about the Kennedy’s Camelot and who truly …
"A Dark, Abiding, Signing Africanist Presence" In Walker Percy’S Dr. Tom More Novels, David Withun
"A Dark, Abiding, Signing Africanist Presence" In Walker Percy’S Dr. Tom More Novels, David Withun
The Coastal Review
Many of the tropes, commonplaces, symbols, and values used and reflected by American literary works written by white authors, as Toni Morrison writes, are “in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence.” The black/white racial binary and racial différance that mark this presence inform the use of racialized characters as signifiers in the novels of Walker Percy. In the Dr. Tom More novels Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome, Percy adopts racial symbolism as a means toward his critique of the American notion of “the pursuit of happiness.” In Love in the Ruins, Percy …
From Beyond The Grave: Dead Narrators In Young Adult Literature, Jessica L. Branton
From Beyond The Grave: Dead Narrators In Young Adult Literature, Jessica L. Branton
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
While scholars and critics have explored various aspects of young adult literature, few have focused on the popular, but odd, use of dead narrators. When examining the dead narrators of Veronica Roth’s Allegiant, Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why, Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall, and Jess Rothenberg’s The Catastrophic History of You and Me, it becomes clear that the dead narrators are used as a foil for adolescent growth and maturation, and they also allow young readers to empathize with and accept death through the protagonists. These protagonists experience a proto-adulthood as they die too soon to …
The Classical Versus The Grotesque Body In Edith Wharton's Fiction, Joshua T. Temples
The Classical Versus The Grotesque Body In Edith Wharton's Fiction, Joshua T. Temples
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In her landmark works The House of Mirth (1905), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920), Edith Wharton responds to earlier depictions of the classical, pure Victorian and Edwardian woman. Wharton's "inconvenient" women overturn popular stereotypes. Subsequently, they are barred from their social groups, but they are independent, unlike the complicit and obedient women of the classical body, most of whom ascribe to the trope of the "Angel in the House." The grotesque seeks to undercut the unrealistic expectations enforced by the classical through its embodiment of progression and humanity, and Wharton is drawn to …
The Significance Of The Game Of Pool In Ernest Hemingway’S “Soldier’S Home”, Molly J. Donehoo
The Significance Of The Game Of Pool In Ernest Hemingway’S “Soldier’S Home”, Molly J. Donehoo
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In his 1929 A Farewell to Arms, American Author Ernest Hemingway provides the thesis for all of American Modernism when he writes, “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places” (216). If the world breaks everyone Hemingway’s focus becomes not in the breaking but in the solutions for becoming strong at the broken places. Throughout his canon Hemingway presents the healing rituals and therapeutic patterns that govern sports and game as a solution to becoming strong at the broken places. While critics have closely analyzed and scrutinized some of his most recognized short-stories, stories …
“There Was That In Her Face And Form Which Made Him Loathe The Sight Of Her”: Disfiguration And Deformity Of Female Characters In 19th Century American Women’S Literature, Kelsi E. Cunningham Miss
“There Was That In Her Face And Form Which Made Him Loathe The Sight Of Her”: Disfiguration And Deformity Of Female Characters In 19th Century American Women’S Literature, Kelsi E. Cunningham Miss
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Rebecca Harding Davis, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins Freeman challenge the way that society treats and views the disabled and deformed. Through different representations of the disabled characters, the three short stories by these authors reveal the realities that women faced in the 19th century in response to rigid beauty standards and expectations. The authors in this study address the marginalized position of the disabled characters and show how society’s attempts to “normalize” the women confine them to a fixed identity. Analyzing the texts in relation to disability studies and the authors’ perceived effectiveness of social charity will …
Female Art And Artisans In Edith Wharton’S The House Of Mirth, The Custom Of The Country, And “Roman Fever”, Julia B. Welch
Female Art And Artisans In Edith Wharton’S The House Of Mirth, The Custom Of The Country, And “Roman Fever”, Julia B. Welch
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In early twentieth century old and new New York social circles, the marriage market’s commodification of women acted as the controlling factor for relationships, female power, and personal identity. When considering Wharton’s works for the first-hand viewpoint that she provided of the marriage market, it becomes clear that her interest in art plays heavily into the way women comport themselves within her novels. In order to discuss this relationship in Edith Wharton’s works, I’ve created terms that delineate the various ways female characters respond to the pressures of the marriage market. The best way to analyze Wharton’s women is by …
"Goo-Prone And Generally Pathetic": Empathy And Irony In David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Benjamin L. Peyton
"Goo-Prone And Generally Pathetic": Empathy And Irony In David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Benjamin L. Peyton
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Critical considerations of David Foster Wallace’s work have tended, on the whole, to use the framework that the author himself established in his essay “E Unibus Pluram” and in his interview with Larry McCaffery. Following his own lead, the critical consensus is that Wallace succeeds in overcoming the limits of postmodern irony. If we examine the formal trappings of his writing, however, we find that the critical assertion that Wallace manages to transcend the paralytic irony of his postmodern predecessors is made in the face of his frequent employment of postmodern techniques and devices. Thus, there arises a contradiction between …
The American Pastoral Tradition And The Stories Of Breece D'J Pancake, Christopher Blackburn
The American Pastoral Tradition And The Stories Of Breece D'J Pancake, Christopher Blackburn
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In the late twentieth century, Breece Pancake carried on the American pastoral tradition by both featuring and modifying characteristics of early American pastoral literature. Breece Pancake does not directly imitate his predecessors, but instead brings the spirit of the nearly 200-year-old tradition in which he participates to a twentieth-century audience. Part of the enduring relevance of the literature in the American pastoral tradition, including The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, is that at the heart of these stories is a theme that has defined and continues to shape the American experience: the struggle with living in liminal spaces.
From This Dark Place To The Other: Violence And Connection In The Poetry Of Brian Turner, Alan R. Swirsky
From This Dark Place To The Other: Violence And Connection In The Poetry Of Brian Turner, Alan R. Swirsky
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Brian Turner is a poet and American soldier who served in Iraq at the start of the 21st century. His poetry is about his experiences as a soldier interacting with the Iraqi people, his time in America following the war, PTSD, and the endless violence in the war zone. As a comparatively recent entry into the genre of War Poetry, his work pays homage to the writers who preceded him, like Wilfred Owen and Bruce Weigl, while also referencing Middle Eastern poets typically outside the scope of American literature. Through Turner’s recurring themes and motifs, connections are established between …
Folklore For A New Generation: Charles Chesnutt's Updated Trickster Figure, Peter Mccollum
Folklore For A New Generation: Charles Chesnutt's Updated Trickster Figure, Peter Mccollum
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Amidst a surge of plantation fiction writing during the era of American Realism, Charles Chesnutt was arguably one of the most controversial yet prolific authors to address the recent advent of slavery. The Conjure Woman was a publication of seven frame narratives that employed the traditional style of a former slave telling tales of “the old days,” and though Chesnutt's work may have mirrored such authors as Thomas Nelson Page, the tales broke from tradition with surprisingly stark accounts that are clearly based on Chesnutt's own conversations with former slaves. Much like another contemporary, Joel Chandler Harris, Chesnutt looks backward …
“For He Contained Within Him A Largenesss Of Spirit:” The Duality Of Billy’S Spirit, The Hope For Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy’S Border Trilogy, Jessica Y. Spearman
“For He Contained Within Him A Largenesss Of Spirit:” The Duality Of Billy’S Spirit, The Hope For Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy’S Border Trilogy, Jessica Y. Spearman
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
This paper focuses on the contradictory merging of the differentiating forces that drive the natural world and the people in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, with the most prominent being Billy’s persistent naïve view of the world as he grows from a boy to a man on his journey. The Border Trilogy chronicles the coming of age journey of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. The second installment, The Crossing, focuses on the various dichotomies that construct the natural world—all of which are mirrored in Billy’s relationships with the mystical she-wolf, his brother, Boyd, the various people that he meets on his …
The New Man: Evolving Masculinity In F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side Of Paradise, "Winter Dreams," And "The Swimmers", Adrian Nicole Coursey
The New Man: Evolving Masculinity In F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side Of Paradise, "Winter Dreams," And "The Swimmers", Adrian Nicole Coursey
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
The evolving culture and ethos of American capitalist modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was marked by a nervousness, or neurasthenia. Strongly gendered, it was characterized among men by effeminacy and an anxiety about masculinity. Confronted by the eroding ideals of Victorian American self-reliance and independence, a stout-hearted willingness to labor to establish one's masculinity seemed an increasingly doubtful prospect for men in the new modern age. Under the twin influences of industrial capitalism and a market economy and a fledgling women's movement, affecting, especially, the work place, the American male felt nervous, anxious, and emasculated. In …
Narrating Literary Transnationalism In Zake Smith And Dave Eggers, Nelson Shake
Narrating Literary Transnationalism In Zake Smith And Dave Eggers, Nelson Shake
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
This work argues for a greater reception of transnationalism in literary studies. Though the steady rise of transnationalism has already been studied in many areas of academia, literary studies has only begun to pay attention to it, and scholars appear to remain largely rooted in postcolonial or nationalistic thought. Refusing to read current texts through the lens of transnationalism hinders the literary academy's relevancy since creative writers today are addressing changes to the national structure in their fictive works. This study suggests why a new theoretical construct is needed to understand those texts, and it uses two representative examples: Zadie …
On The Verge Of Change: Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, Mallary Taylor
On The Verge Of Change: Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, Mallary Taylor
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
This thesis discusses the effects of war on the southern plantation lifestyle depicted in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding. This thesis focuses on the female characters who adapt to the absence of the husbands during wartime. Wars are the catalyst for societal change in the novel, and the women must adapt to the new social changes that are encroaching upon the plantation. The chapters explore each individual reaction of female characters in the novel. The female characters in Delta Wedding represent varying wars of reacting to shifting social norms brought about by war.
Monster Quest: Background Myth And Contemporary Context Of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Conqueror Worm", Farrah Senn
Monster Quest: Background Myth And Contemporary Context Of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Conqueror Worm", Farrah Senn
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Poe's short story "Ligeia" and its companion poem "The Conqueror Worm" have garnered little critical attention, though he believed them to be his best works. Considering the archetypal image of the worm, contemporary references, and Poe's other uses of the symbol, an analysis of the poem and its context within the short story reveals the identity of the "hero" described in the final verse. This paper explores the archetypal nature of the worm by looking at snake myths from across the globe and applying Platonic/Jungian ideas to the image and its function in the poem. This work also discusses the …
Writing The Female Body In Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies, Darren K. Broome
Writing The Female Body In Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies, Darren K. Broome
The Coastal Review
Julia Alvarez in In the Time of the Butterflies utilizes the female body and sexuality to combat male dominated rhetoric. The use of the female body retrieves women’s forgotten role as subjects instead of objects as seen in male-oriented novel. Expressing sexuality in a way that is determined by women, she discovers new means of verbal or written expression. The female body emerges as a form of expression in Butterflies which at times is connected to one of the characters’ revolutionary participation.