American Literature Commons^™

Word~River Literary Review (2012), Beth Mcdonald, John Hill, Micheline Mayor, Heather Duerre Humann, Ryan Leack, Anne Stark, John Baker, Lily I. Mackenzie, Judith Nichols, Meredith Devney, Marylouise Markle, Bill Bozzone, Tara Taylor, Tina Cabrera, Justin E. Kidd, Richard Foss, Kevin P. Keating, Justin P. Burnside, Matthew Swetnam, Sierra Jones-Yu, Kristen Conard, Star Goode, Andrew Madigan, K. W. Taylor, Allison S. Walker, Gary Pullman, Michael Zinkowski, Susan Nyikos

word~river Literary Journal

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction of adjunct, part-time and fulltime instructors teaching under a semester or yearly contract in our universities, colleges, and community colleges worldwide. Graduate student teachers who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program are also eligible.

We’re looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.

Book Review - Kindred, Dindi Rashida Robinson

Georgia Library Quarterly

Kindred is a timeless novel authored by Ocatvia E. Butler. Kindred embodies many genres including: Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Psychological Fiction, as well as American Literature. This story chronicles the journey of a young African American writer who has to save an ancestor, in order to assure her own existence. Many topics are covered in this novel including, but not limited to:history, xenophobia, mysticism, forgiveness, understanding, love, and most importantly, family. Butler presents a riveting tale that will keep the reader in suspense.

Redefining The Gothic: How The Works Of Carson Mccullers, Tennessee Williams & Flannery O'Connor Retained Gothic Roots And Shaped The Southern Gothic, Sarah N. Koehler

All Student Theses and Dissertations

My aim in this thesis is to explore the commonalities between Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams and Flannery O’Connor, particularly in terms of three main themes: isolation, the pervasion of American normalcy and gender roles. While each of these authors clearly inserts some autobiographical information into his or her characters, the real commonalities between the fictional characters can be found in their inability to fit into a traditional society; the characters in all three authors’ works are outcasts, pushed to the fringes of their communities or their families because of who they are. Sometimes these characters’ desire to be different is …

Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this focuses on the autobiographical rhetoric and public identity of Annie Smith Peck, a scholar, mountain climber and woman rhetor from the turn of the century. My qualitative case study of Peck examines how she worked as a woman rhetor to create a popular identity for herself in both mountain climbing and scholarship. I also focus on how Peck worked to identify herself with her audience; here, I use Burke's concept of "identification," as a way of adding to (rather than substituting for) traditional rhetoric. My project brings new findings in that I examine data on Peck …

Failed Heroes: Hypermasculinity In The Contemporary American Novel, Josef D. Benson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My study highlights a link of U.S. American hypermasculinity running through Cormac McCarthy's two novels Blood Meridian (1985) and All the Pretty Horses (1992), Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977), and James Baldwin's Another Country (1960). My literary interpretations of these texts suggest that U.S. American hypermasculine man originated in the American frontier and transformed into a definition of hegemonic masculinity embraced by many southern rural American men. These southern rural American men then concocted the myth of the black rapist in order to justify the mass murder of African American men after Reconstruction, inadvertently creating a figure more hypermasculine …

Pilgrim’S Progress Progress: How A Novel Can Affect An Entire Culture’S Communication, Bruce Kuiper

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

In this discussion of The Pilgrim’s Progress, three main areas will be explored as ways to show why this book is so worthy of communication study and why it has endured for so long. The first area will be a deeper exploration of the book’s historical background and contemporary role at the end of the 17th century. For the second point, the cultural, social, literary, and communication effects will be examined, reinforcing the concept that the book’s impact was especially substantial in American history. Finally is an argument listing the reasons why a communication scholar should study The Pilgrim’s …

Obenchain, Lida (Calvert), 1856-1935 (Sc 261), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 261. Handwritten, pencil manuscript of “The Reformation of Sam Amos” by Lida Calvert Obenchain (Eliza Calvert Hall). This was one of nine stores published by Little Brown & Co. in The Land of Long Ago, 1909.

Postcolonial Religion And Motherhood In The Novels By Louise Erdrich And Alice Walker, Kateryna Chornokur

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the works of the Native American author Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, Tracks) and the African American writer Alice Walker (The Color Purple). Originating from different cultural traditions, Native American and African American women writers address common themes in their novels because of their common colonial background. One of the main themes in their writings is that of religion. Despite becoming victims of Christianity used as a means of cultural colonization, both African American and Native American communities reinterpret it in terms of their traditional religious beliefs and create a new, unique hybridized form …

Ladies Literary Club - Bowling Green, Kentucky (Mss 393), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 393. Minutes, correspondence, programs, historical sketches, and miscellaneous material of the Ladies Literary Club of Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Baker, J. M. (Mrs.) (Sc 363), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 363. Biographical sketch of Cale Young Rice, writer originally from Webster County, Kentucky, written by Mrs. Baker for the Gen Samuel Hopkins Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. Included are photographs of historical marker and Rice’s birthplace.

Vance, Marion, 1922-1979 (Sc 361), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 361. A short story titled “Little Noah” written by Marion Vance, a lawyer of Glasgow, Kentucky.

Trimble, Anne Ridings, 1909-1971 (Mss 391), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 391. Correspondence and published stories of Logan County, Kentucky, romance story writer Anne Ridings Trimble. The correspondence is between Trimble and Kentucky Library librarians Mary Leiper Moore and Elizabeth Coombs. Click on "Additional Files" below for a list of Trimble stories mentioned in the collection.

Philips, Emanie Louise (Nahm) Sachs Arling, 1893-1981 (Sc 251), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 251. Correspondence of Mrs. Sachs, writer, and native of Bowling Green, Kentucky, chiefly with Mary T. Moore, librarian, Kentucky Library, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, related to a book on the history of Kentucky that Sachs was researching.

Campbell, Marie, 1907-2003 (Sc 252), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 252. Correspondence of Marie Campbell, author and teacher, with Elizabeth Coombs, librarian, Kentucky Library, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, concerning Miss Campbell’s writing and publishing efforts.

Evans, Mollie F. (Sc 244), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 244. Letters written by Evan, 5 January 1870 and 17 May 1870, from Russellville and Adairville, Logan County, Kentucky, to Mr. J. P. Morton, Louisville, related to the possible publication of her manuscript.

Hays Family Papers (Sc 343), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 343. Photocopy of letter of Mrs. William Shakespeare Hays, 1928; pages from book of poetry of W. S. Hays with holographic notes by Mrs. Hays; Neel family genealogy; article and newspaper clippings about W. S., E. W., and Hugh Hays, 1927-1933 (6); and photos of various members of the Hays family (4).

Giles, Janice (Holt), 1905-1979 (Sc 342), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscritps Small Collection 342. Letters (25) written by Mrs. Giles, an author of Knifley, Adair County, Kentucky, to her friends, Joe Covington and Mitchell Leichhardt, Bowling Green, Kentucky, relating much about her writings.

Obenchain, Lida (Calvert), 1856-1935 (Sc 284), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 284. Typed manuscript of "A Wind Harp,' a compilation of published and unpublished poems by Eliza Calvert Hall [pseudonym of Lida Calvert Obenchain].

Gilbert, Mary C. (Sc 339), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 339. Letter written by Mary Gilbert, Binghamton, New York, to fellow poet, Lima Canon, Bowling Green, Kentucky, complimenting her writings and informing her of a new poetry group organization.

Mothers At Work: Reconstruction And Deconstruction Of Patriarchy In Gone With The Wind, Catherine Willa Staley

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In this thesis, I explore the performances of motherhood in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and how those performances conflict with culturally constructed expectations of that role. An analysis of Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes, and how each woman compares to the South’s model for motherhood, reveals implications that extend beyond the novel’s Civil War setting to reveal the ongoing negotiation of modern readers still living within patriarchal conceptions of mothering. In Chapter 1, I outline the novel’s spectrum of motherhood, which is composed of characters who nurture and manage others. Each individual on that spectrum contributes to or …

Literacy, Discourse, And Identity: The Working-Class Appalachian Woman Academic, Sarah Marie Mcconnell

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Drawing on conversations about the politics surrounding literacy acquisition, I take a deeper look into the effects of obtaining membership within an academic discourse community on Appalachian women from the working class. The tensions that develop between the two opposing discourses promotes a sense of loss as they create distance between these women and their home community, alter relationships, and disrupt identity. Working-class Appalachian women occupy the borderlands between discourses: one foot in their Appalachian community; the other in their academic community. They negotiate their fragmented identities in order to play the appropriate role within the appropriate context. Their status …

Rpw Birthplace: Where It All Began, Robert Penn Warren Studies

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.

Confessions Of A Footnoter, Paula Newman Miner, James A. Perkins

Robert Penn Warren Studies

In his “confessions,” the Footnoter, one of the three editors of the Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren, shares trade secrets, spins tales, and recounts anecdotes of success and failure in his attempts to bring understanding to metonymy, synecdoche, allusion, and suggestion as well as to identify individuals mentioned in the letters of Robert Penn Warren, particularly his attempt to discover the identity of the very skillful and amusing writer Paula Newman Miner and her attempt to remain an enigma wrapped in fog living quietly on Cape Cod with her husband and her Loenbergers.

Atticus Finch Looks At Fifty, Michael L. Boyer

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Dramatizing Oppenheimer And Reagan: Theatricality And American Historical Memory, Sarah J. Rogers

American Studies Senior Theses

Building on Anthony Kubiak’s analysis of the lack of a theatrical tradition in America, this thesis engages the question of what it means to see figures from American history represented theatrically onstage. Kubiak argues that the lack of a uniquely American theatrical tradition sets the precedent for modern Americans’ inability to identify the theatrical events of our lives and our histories. Can this inability to identify the theatrical be affect by representing historical figures on the modern American stage? Analyzing the text and production of The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Carson Kreitzer will prove that representing historical …

An Important Year: Competing Images Of Womanhood In The Ladies’ Home Journal, 1919, Eva Krupitsky

American Studies Senior Theses

This thesis explores the two main images of womanhood found in the editorial and advertising contents of the Ladies’ Home Journal, a popular mass-market magazine from the early 20th century. My specific focus is on the year 1919 because several important events that affected American women were prevalent during this time. I place my research about the two images of womanhood in the magazine within the context of WWI’s end and the proximity of women to reaching voting rights. This is a transitional year during which both historical happenings can be discerned by looking “in between the lines” of …

Fun, Fearless, Feminist?: Gender And Sexuality In Cosmopolitan, Gabriella Wilkins

American Studies Senior Theses

Magazines, like other forms of popular culture, impact our identities and perceptions of ourselves and of the society that we live in. In my thesis, I seek to draw a connection between a fashion and beauty magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Third Wave feminism. Criticism of the magazine has stemmed from the idea that Cosmo expresses contradicting ideologies and focuses too closely on women’s ability to please men. For my research, I look at the history and motives behind the Second and Third Wave movements and how they differentiate. Then, by considering and applying contemporary feminist theory, I deconstruct and analyze …

A Critical Look At Robert Penn Warren’S New (And Old) Criticism On Satire, Michael Sobiech

Robert Penn Warren Studies

Although a father of New Criticism, Warren did not always restrict his analysis of a text to the text itself. In his work with John Marston’s satires, Warren appears to go against what will become key attributes of New Critical theory. This essay explores Warren’s work with Marston’s satires, in particular examining his historicizing of the text, arguing for a more complicated view of Warren’s New Criticism.

About The Advisory Group To The Center (Volume 9), Robert Penn Warren Studies

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.

Storm Chaser, Samir Ali Abdel-Aziz

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Storm Chaser is a work of fiction that uses strange, almost supernatural occurrences to symbolically represent various meanings and truths for different characters. Works of fiction that influenced Storm Chaser include The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel. Reappearing themes include sacrifice, the desire to live a life of purpose, freewill, and the fear of becoming one’s parents.