American Literature Commons^™

The Dreamer Deepe: A Two-Act Play In The Lovecraft Horror Mythos, Nicholas Mazzuca

All Theses

One full-length, two-act play comprises this creative thesis, which has been submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts in English literature. This manuscript showcases a creative work that fuses two separate genres: literary horror and dramatic theory. I take my vocabulary from a preexisting body of work so that I may generate something vital and new. May the words I write honor those who have gone before me and inspire as I have been inspired.

Victims And Aggressors: Black And Jewish Interethnic Relationships In Contemporary American Literature, Jessica Martin

All Theses

Though blacks and Jews are often portrayed together in African-American and Jewish-American writing, the reasons for the juxtapositions are curious. Contemporary authors have created a close relationship between blacks and Jews that, perhaps with the exception of their cooperation during the Civil Rights movement, historically did not exist. But, the relationship between these two groups in literature offers a unique perspective on American racial and ethnic social structures because both blacks and Jews are considered minority groups, yet they also maintain a hierarchical relationship with one another. By employing black and Jewish characters, American writers, especially Jewish-American writers, create a …

Confronting Environmental And Social Crises: Octavia E. Butler’S Critique Of The Spiritual Roots Of Environmental Injustice In Her Parable Novels, Melissa Vargas

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

We are living in the midst of environmental and social crises. This fact was not lost on late African-American science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, whose 1993 Parable of the Sower and 1998 Nebula Award-winning Parable of the Talents depict and critique the current environmental and social crises in the United States. Speaking of Sower in an interview with Essence magazine, Butler says that all she “did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters” (“Brave New Worlds” 164). In another interview with Randall Kenan, Butler describes environmental …

The Sociology Of Scenes, The Sacramento Poetry Scene, Dana Nell Maher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

For this ethnography, I use my feminist perspective, grounded theory, participant observation, and autoethnographic techniques to explore an urban poetry scene. I suggest that scene studies are a viable alternative to community studies and that we move our articulation of social experience to reflect it as it occurs, on a multitude of continuums. My goal with this project is to develop, use, and discuss the utility of a definition of scene that is intended to be useful to scene studies researchers. To this end, I both evaluate an outdated definition of scene (Irwin 1973 & 1977), and define the three …

From Villain To Superhero: Evolution Of The Novel’S Lawyer Stereotype From The Nineteenth Through The Twenty-First Century, Carolyn A. Morway

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis analyzes the evolution of the lawyer character from the novels of the early 19th century through those of the modern day. The representation of the lawyer character illustrates the contemporary view of lawyers in society and also provides a framework of the relationship between the lawyer and the common man.

"Divine William" And The Master: The Influence Of Shakespeare On The Novels Of Henry James, Amy M. Green

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Henry James's most sustained commentary on Shakespeare comes in the form of an introduction to an edition of The Tempest that was published in 1907. In it, he remarks that the play is a reflection of Shakespeare "consciously tasting of the first and rarest of his gifts, that of imaged creative Expression...to show him as unresistingly aware" (1207). This praise ties unerringly back to James's praise of the artist as one who views the world through open eyes and can capture the nuance of experience. James himself worked at the craft of fiction, and writes extensively in his notebooks and …

Girl Empowerment And Unspoken Discourses On Girl Sexuality In Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga, Caitlin Gulliford

Honors College Theses

In this paper, I explore how Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga employs a form of girl sexual citizenship that recognizes girls as sexualized, but maintains unspoken structures of compulsory heterosexuality, regressive gender norms, and hyperconsumerism in order to police girls as a protection of patriarchy.

Hancock, Elizabeth Ann (Moore), 1924-2019 (Sc 1900), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1900. Letters and portions of letters written by author Janice Holt Giles, Knifley, Adair County, Kentucky to her daughter Elizabeth, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Includes references to her family and friends, her daily life, and her writing habits.

Havighurst, Clark Canfield, B. 1933 (Sc 1897), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Senior thesis: "The South and Robert Penn Warren" completed at Princeton University, 1955. Also includes typed comments by Princeton faculty and handwritten comments from Warren scholar Victor H. Strandberg.

Walt Whitman: A Man Of Compassion, Kaitlyn Cyr

Excellence in Research Awards

Although Walt Whitman was such a complex man, I focused on his time in the Civil War which showed what a caring, compassionate man he was and proved that he was more than a poet

Mr. Chipping And Mr. Hundert: Manliness, Media, And The Classical Education, Emily A. Mcdermott

Classics & Religious Studies Faculty Publication Series

James Hilton’s genial portrayal of a Latin master in a turn-of-the-century British public school, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, was published as a magazine story in England in 1933, in book form in America a year later; it has inspired two film versions, one in 1939, one in 1969, and a full-length Masterpiece Theatre production for television in 2002. In 1994, Ethan Canin published his short story, “The Palace Thief,” presenting the unique tribulations of an ancient history teacher at an elite Virginia prep school; it was made into the 2002 film, The Emperor’s Club. Both stories are predicated on …

Bewilderment And Illumination: Catch-22 And The Dark Humor Of The 1960s, Kirsten Staaby

Masters Theses

It is often hard to deal with certain subjects in a way that would not be offensive or painful. Dark humor is a popular and powerful way to deal with serious issues in a manner that is both edifying and enjoyable. In his novel Catch-22, Joseph Heller deals with the atrocities of war, and the subsequent effects it has on people and society as a whole. Heller's novel incorporates the dark humor that became popular in the 1960s, and that was used by this generation to deal with the tensions they faced in the political and cultural realms. There is …

Persephone In The River Phlegethon; Or, The Women At Gettysburg, Brenda A. Ayres

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper identifies the heroic women who participated in the Battle of Gettysburg, both on the homefront and on the battlefield.

Artistic Liberty And Slave Imagery: "Mark Twain's Illustrator," E. W. Kemble, Turns To Harriet Beecher Stowe, Adam Sonstegard

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hamilton, Weston A. - Collector (Sc 118), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 118. Militia drill meeting notice scheduled in Russellville, Kentucky, 1818; slave bill of sale, Logan County, Kentucky, 1860; a young woman’s letter to a friend, 1875; letter written by Kate Bosher, 1910; and letter written by Cale Young Rice, 1926, regarding biographical data, with a postscript by Alice Hegan Rice.

Ellis, James Tandy, 1868-1942 (Sc 110), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 110. Letters, 1897-1939 (16 items), written to James Tandy Ellis, poet, humorist, columnist, and lecturer of Ghent, Kentucky. Also includes Ellis' poems and writings, 1891 (5); printed items; clippings; commissions as Assistant Adjutant and Adjutant General of Kentucky; and miscellaneous items.

Spence, Ruth Potts, 1894-1988 (Sc 1840), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1840. Letters from Alice Hegan Rice (4), Cale Young Rice (13) and Laban Lacy Rice (1) to Ruth Potts Spence, who met the Rices at Camp Nakanawa in Mayland, Tennessee and maintained a friendship with the couple. The letters discuss writing, current events, family matters, and grief.

Marcilliat, Gene (Fa 354), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of collection (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 354. "Books by Lucy Furman: [Folk Elements in Furman's Writings]" collected by Gene Marcilliat for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

Cobb, Irvin Shrewsbury, 1876-1944 (Sc 82), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 82. Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb's original manuscript of an editorial, "A Leaf From a Memory Book," which appeared in "Kentucky Progress Magazine" (Spring 1933), and two letters concerning the manuscript.

Allison, Young Ewing, Jr., 1890-1965 (Sc 80), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 80. Letter written by Young Ewing Allison, Jr., Louisville, Kentucky, to Miss Julia Neal, Auburn, Kentucky, in reply to an inquiry concerning Lucy Furman.

Heaven Overland, Jim Murphy

KSU Press Legacy Project

These poems record, from our own language—spoken on the street in Atlanta or Dayton or Chicago, in the graveyard in Charleston, on the rivers of Ohio or Missouri or Illinois, on the road in Mississippi, or on the radio anywhere in America—momentary beauties, to show us that song, however rare, proceeds from the common tongue. So these poems promise that any speech, that any mouth, might be an occasion for beauty or blessing.

Everywhere in this collection, ears, eyes, minds open to discover new abundance in landscapes thought familiar. These poems discover in America and its history boundless vistas, to …

Location And Landscape In Literary Americanisms: H. L. Davis And F. Scott Fitzgerald, David T. Sumner

Faculty Publications

Well into the twentieth century, western American literature was still dismissed as regional or was boxed in by the genre expectations of pulp Westerns. This chapter focuses less on the causes of an eastern dismissal of western literature and more on what is unique about western literature, including how it reflects the larger western experience. Sumner looks at the particular Americanisms evident in the letters of the American West, using two short stories to make his argument: H. L. Davis’s Open Winter and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited.

The Genesis Of The Chicago Renaissance: Theodore Dreiser, Langston, Cara E. Erdheim

English Faculty Publications

Book review by Cara Erdheim.

Hricko, Mary. The Genesis of the Chicago Renaissance: Theodore Dreiser, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James T. Farrell. London & New York: Routledge, 2009.

Table Of Contents

The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard & Pulp Studies

Articles:

From the Editor’s Desk (The Dark Man V4n1), by Mark Hall

Reviews of “Braddock: The Rise of the Cinderella Man” by Jim Hague and “Cinderella Man: James Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History” by Jeremy Schaap, by Chris Gruber

Review of “Jack London and the Klondike: The Genesis of an American Writer” by Franklin Walker, by Steve Trout

A Comparison of the Ideology of Robert E. Howard’s Conan Tales and J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, by Ian Nichols

Reviews:

The Lord of Samarcand and Other Adventure Stories of the Old Orient …

Review Of Kate Field: The Many Lives Of A Nineteenth-Century American Journalist And Maria Mitchell And The Sexing Of Science: An Astronomer Among The American Romantics, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Literary historians writing biographies have increasingly shifted from critical biography (the author’s life as a means to interpret his or her literary works) to cultural biography (an author’s life and works in various cultural contexts). As literary historians whose biographical subjects (both nineteenth-century American women) are not primarily literary figures, Bergland and Scharnhorst represent a further step away from critical biography.

As a journalist (and popular lecturer, advocate of reform, playwright, and actress), Kate Field is a more literary figure than astronomer Maria Mitchell, but Scharnhorst has produced neither a critical nor a cultural biography. Instead, he presents a chronological …

Review Of Axes: Willa Cather And William Faulkner And Violence, The Arts, And Willa Cather, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Willa Cather and William Faulkner represent an intriguing and potentially productive pairing for comparative study. Their works and careers are located at the rich intersection between regional ism and modernism, and both early 20th-century writers often looked back to the 19th century in their fiction. Even in the absence of influence or intertextual reference, these commonalities would give a literary historian much to say. However, in her study of these two authors, Merrill Maguire Skaggs exhaustively catalogs similarities and differences as proof of a decades-long competition between the authors at the expense of depth and subtlety in her analysis of …

The Priestly Imagination: Thomas Merton And The Poetics Of Critique, Michael W. Higgins

Mission & Culture Publications

The article looks at the representation of ideals of the poet-priest in the works of Thomas Merton. It provides an analysis of Merton's poetics of critique. For Merton, John the Baptist represents the model anchorite as well as the first Cisterician and the greatest Trappist. The indivisible and comprehensive dimensions of Merton as a whole man are represented by John the Baptist, John of the Cross and John the Beloved. The two types of Merton's poetics of critique are ecclesial/monastic and societal.

Ellen Glasgow: The “'Feminine' Façade” And The “'Masculine' Mind", Ashley Quaye Andrews Lear

Humanities & Communication - Daytona Beach

No abstract provided.

"Ain't You Heard"?: The Jazz Poetry Of Langston Hughes, Kristin Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

It all began with a piano bench. At the age of four, I sat next to my first piano teacher, as she told me the names of the keys. 'This is C, D, E . . . ," she said, her finger touching each key. moving through the entirety of a C-major scale. Afterward she asked, "Now. which one is F?" Though I touched the incorrect key, A instead of F, I remember being fascinated by the realization that I could create music by depressing those keys, making little wooden hammers strike strings in the piano's hidden belly. That fascination …

A Natural History Of The Mind : Edwards, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Michael Edmund Jonik

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This project examines how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American writers drew on European natural science and philosophy - specifically in terms of concepts of form, perception, and experience - to open new possibilities for thinking the relationship between the mind and the physical world. In each of the moments of American intellectual history here considered - the natural theology of Calvinism, the idealistic natural history of Transcendentalism, and the movement towards an evolutionary process-philosophy of Pragmatism - "place" becomes not only geographical location, but a dynamic field of interactions of natural historical, literary, theological, and philosophical knowledge. I trace this through …