American Literature Commons^™

Can Women Have It All?: Hesitant Feminism In American Women's Popular Writing, Anne Aramand

Graduate Masters Theses

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although Twilight and The Hunger Games are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue.

First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are …

Updike, Morrison, And Roth: The Politics Of American Identity, Christopher Steven Love

Dissertations

My dissertation analyzes American identity in the works of John Updike, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth. Specifically, I examine American identity in Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy (1960-1990); Morrison’s trilogy of novels Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and Paradise (1998); and Roth’s trilogy comprising the novels American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000). The studied texts of these three novelists, I argue, attack national myths and undermine exclusive narratives that are incongruent with the nation’s ideal identity as a pluralistic and democratic nation.

Explorations: Five Science Fiction Stories, Daniel Joseph Pinney

Dissertations

These stories explore a universe populated by the stuff of space opera—enormous space stations, mysterious alien artifacts, starships and terraforming and emission nebulae, a human civilization that over millennia has spread across the galaxy. These explorations are not conducted by the usual swashbuckling heroes of space opera, however, but rather by the sorts of people who would have to live and make a living in such a future.

The perspectives from which this future is explored include those of an asteroid miner who loses his ship even as he is discovering the wonders of art, a man whose misuse of …

"Hunger Is The Best Sauce": Frontier Food Ways In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books, Erin E. Pedigo

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House book series for the frontier food ways described in it. Studying the series for its food ways edifies a 19th century American frontier of subsistence/companionate families practicing both old and new ways of obtaining food. The character Laura in Wilder's books is an engaging narrator who moves through childhood and adolescence, assuming the role of housewife. An overview of the century's norms about food in America, the strength of domesticity as an ideal, food and race relations, and the frontier as a physical place round out this unexplored area of Little House …

Mcsweeney's And The Challenges Of The Marketplace For Independent Publishing, Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, Pieter Vermeulen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "McSweeney's and the Challenges of the Marketplace for Independent Publishing" Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen argue that the artistic projects of the US-American author, activist, and editor Dave Eggers are marked by a tension between the desire for independence and the demands of brand-building. The article offers a close analysis of the materiality and paratexts of one particular issue of McSweeney's, the literary magazine of which Eggers is the founding editor. Both the content and the apologetically aggressive tone of Eggers's editorial statements betray a deep unease with the inability to inhabit a …

Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …

Between Literature And Science: Inscribing Zora Neale Hurston’S Mules And Men In The Post-Human Condition, Jung-Hsien Lin

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Intrigued by the influence of technology on or in literature as well as the ways of which the posthuman body subverts the existing social constructs of race, gender, and culture, this paper appropriates the Foucauldian concept of “technologies of the self” to investigate the narrating “I/eye” in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. I flesh out how Hurston’s new “cyborg” identity, along with the idea of performativity—particularly in relation to her manipulation of the genre of autoethnography—resists the dominant constructs of race, gender and culture. Through a re-examination of these major moments of transformations of knowledge/power in Hurston’s Mules …

Stuart, Jesse Hilton, 1907-1984 (Sc 1221), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1221. Letter, 25 January 1959, from Jesse H. Stuart to Mrs. Higgason explaining that his poem "Kentucky is My Land" is out of print and regretting that he cannot provide a copy.

Zuzu's Petals, Jeffrey James Jarot

Theses and Dissertations

Zuzu's Petals relates the travails of Jules and Julie, a couple whose marriage is in the process of breaking apart. Jules has a "fanboyish" obsession with the 1946 Frank Capra film "It's a Wonderful Life." Furthermore, he is fixated on his own past, and his eccentric behavior has caused his disenchanted wife to seek romantic and emotional solace in David, an old flame from high school. Their child, Zuzu, who was named at Jules' insistence after a key character in the Capra film, has herself sensed that something is amiss in her parents' dealings with each other. The story's narrative …

Beware Of Mad John: Political Theology, Psychedelics And Literature, Roger K. Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the discourse of Political Theology as a mode of enquiry we can overcome a longstanding tension between aesthetics and history that characterized much of twentieth century thought. Focusing on literary and occasionally musical works from the mid twentieth century, my aim is to show how works displaying psychedelic aesthetics are important venues for political deliberation with regard to citizenship. Through affective means, psychedelic aesthetics reimagine the boundaries of liberal subjectivity through a consciousness expansion and return from that expansion. The subject who returns from a psychedelic “experience” – which can be attained in various ways – comes to ethically …

Giles, Janice Meredith (Holt), 1905-1979 - Relating To (Sc 1172), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1172. Photographs taken at the Giles House, Spout Springs, Adair County, Kentucky, on the occasion of the first autographing event by Dianne W. Stuart for Janice Holt Giles: A Writer’s Life.

Bland, Katherine "Kittie" (Sublett), 1860-1941 (Mss 485), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 485. Scrapbook of Katherine “Kittie” (Sublett) Bland, a resident of Simpson, Logan and Warren counties in Kentucky, containing mostly clippings of poems (a few composed by her), articles and obituaries.

Mark Twain And Critical Thinking In The Secondary Classroom, Daniel Zehr

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study will explore and evaluate the school literacy practices of high school-aged participants at the freshmen level (grade 9). It will interpret their analysis, comprehension, and critical thinking skills through an examination of confidence, abilities, and fluency through discussion and student-led dialogue. Building on previous research regarding critical thinking skills, the researcher hopes to articulate the ways in which students with varied levels of ability (grades 9-12) may be able to use their literacy learning to demonstrate critical thinking skills that will enhance their reading fluency, comprehension, and analytical skills and to foster an appreciation of literature and …

Progressive Foote? Gender Politics In An 1887 Letter From Mary Hallock Foote, Tara Penry

Western Writers Online

Mary Hallock Foote is not known for progressive gender politics. Quite the opposite. As her biographer Darlis Miller observes, Foote and her longtime friend Helena DeKay Gilder agreed that woman’s most important work lay in the home, and suffrage would distract her from her primary duties. But Foote did not always practice her belief in the separate spheres of men and women perfectly. Not only did necessity compel her for a time to support her family, but an 1887 letter also shows that in her professional life, Foote did not always think of her work as feminine or separate from …

Unruly Catholics From Dante To Madonna: Faith, Heresy, And Politics In Cultural Studies, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

"During the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church went through a period of liberal reform under the stewardship of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. Successive popes sharply reversed course, enforcing conservative ideological values and silencing progressive voices in the Church. Consequently, those Catholics who had embraced the spirit of Vatican II were left feeling adrift and betrayed. In Unruly Catholics from Dante to Madonna, scholars of literature, film, religion, history, and sociology delve into this conflict–and historically similar ones–through the examination of narratives by and about rebellious Catholics.

Essays in Unruly Catholics explore how renowned Catholic literary figures …

Indigenizing King Lear, Michael K. Johnson

Western Writers Online

Staged with an all‑aboriginal cast, the 2012 production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear at Canada’s National Arts Centre creatively reimagined the play in a frontier New World setting. Directed by Peter Hinton, and starring August Schellenberg (Mohawk) as Lear, the production placed Shakespeare’s drama in seventeenth‑century Canada, amongst a group of Algonquin people on the outer edge of European colonialism and cultural contact. The idea for this resetting of the play originated with August Schellenberg—some 45 years ago—who thought that Lear would be particularly adaptable to an indigenous / First Nations setting. That it took nearly half a century to …

From The Dust Bowl To Frederick Manfred’S The Golden Bowl—A Journeyman’S Masterpiece, Randi Eldevik

Western Writers Online

The time and place of Frederick Manfred’s birth—1912, on a farm in a corner of northwestern Iowa close to the South Dakota and Minnesota borders—gave him several perspectives on American life, resulting in the creation of several kinds of fiction. Manfred’s most celebrated novels, the five Buckskin Man tales, take place in the nineteenth century and have a wild west (mostly South Dakota) setting: they arose out of Manfred’s awareness of the dramatic and tumultuous events that had occurred near his home during the hundred years before his birth. But Manfred’s own childhood and youth in a settled agricultural community …

"I Have Thought Proper To Inform The World": Reading Unconventional Testaments Of 18th-Century New England Women, Elyssa Tardif

Open Access Dissertations

Early New England women chose to pass down what they owned and valued: clothing, cupboards, pewter dishes, commonplace books, etc. But some women passed down something more: a written testament, which sought to shape public opinion in colonial New England. A "testament" usefully suggests a text that both serves as a witness to lived experience as well as the means by which the individual herself can frame the narrative for those who come after. This project aims to examine not only written records but also their audience: who were the heirs to these testaments and how were the records preserved …

Montell, William Lynwood, 1931-2023 - Collector (Sc 2765), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2765. Program of The Sixth Annual Gathering of Authors, presented by the Paul Sawyier Public Library and held in Frankfort, Kentucky, on 24 August 2013. The program is autographed by the attending authors, some of whom include inscriptions to Dr. Lynwood Montell.

Azzan, Edward Anthony Belly Iii

Student Theses and Dissertations

In an endeavor to improve my writing skills, I chose to write a full-length fantasy novel. The editing of which, as well as the critical feedback from my committee, would allow me to more fully understand the writing process and more accurately evaluate my abilities as a writer. The piece is meant as an entertaining work, though it also exhibits multiple themes that lend themselves toward a deeper meaning. The story explores oppression, parental abandonment, religious persecution, and the dangers of blind devotion to creed. The writing of this work was both fulfilling and affirming for me. I received valuable …

Brown, Phil (Mrs.) - Letter To (Sc 2759), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2759. Letter, 24 September 1927, to Mrs. Phil Brown, Kansas City, Missouri, describing a trip to Pewee Valley, Kentucky. The unnamed writer describes visiting sites associated with Annie Fellows Johnston’s Little Colonel series and conversing with residents familiar with its characters. Includes photographs of the approach road to “The Locust,” home of the “Little Colonel,” and the Pewee Valley railroad station.

Vampirism In Hawthorne’S “The Birthmark,” The Scarlet Letter, And “The Minister’S Black Veil”, Amanda D. Baudot

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Erik Butler’s predicates for vampirism apply in some degree to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s male protagonists who skulk in the margins of “The Birthmark,” The Scarlet Letter, and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” As metaphoric vampires who seek weak prey in order to manipulate power structures, these monomaniacal parasites assume paternalistic positions in order to control and manipulate their victims, and they disguise their exploitive and egotistic sides with idealistic and altruistic passions for science and religion. This thesis explores how Hawthorne’s protagonists’ corrupt and consuming spirits echo traditional vampiristic characteristics.

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

Dams, Roads, And Bridges: (Re)Defining Work And Masculinity In American Indian Literature Of The Great Plains, 1968-Present, Joshua Tyler Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the study of contemporary American Indian literature, the definition of work and the characterization of Native and non-native laborers—farmers, ranchers, lawmen, smugglers, Indian Affairs agents, academics, activists, "traditionalists," tour guides, artists, among others—are rarely the lenses that scholars use to interpret the texts. Instead, issues of class and labor often take a backseat to those of cultural survivance and traditional and/or "mix-blood" identity, resistance to historical and ongoing acts of colonialism, reassertion of treaty rights and cultural practices, and reclamation of land and cultural artifacts. However, although the canon of contemporary Native literatures warrants close attention to these issues, …

A Slow Reading In Matthew Dickman's Elegiac And Nostalgic Poetry, Sumood Almaowashi

All Theses

This thesis argues the necessity of post modern elegy to adapt to new forms in writing in response to the indifference to death in modern societies, and the recklessness towards such an event. The cotemporary style of writing depends on series of elegies, which express an extended form of mourning as opposed to the circumscribed grief of an individual elegy. Postmodern analytical writings that discuss grief and mourning provide an ethical insight towards the continuous commemorations of the dead. It invites us to rethink the concept of mourning outside the clinical analysis of Freud. Emerging from the theories that study …

Fire-Lookout Literature, Austin Schilling

2013 Projects

The Keck Summer Collaborative Research Program provides opportunities for Linfield College students and faculty to conduct research on issues related to the Pacific Northwest, and to bring the research findings back into the classroom within the subsequent academic year. Students partner with faculty to conduct research and present their work to other students, Linfield staff and faculty, and community members during a series of brown bag lunches. Austin Schilling conducted research with David Sumner and gave this presentation during the summer of 2013.

Meers, Nora Florence, 1888-1951 (Sc 1040), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1040. Two poems in Southern dialect by Nora Meers, former Western Kentucky State Normal School student, titled “Southern Lullaby,” and “Li’l Lizy Jane.” In 1912 Miss Meers was a member of the junior class.

Stuart, Jesse Hilton, 1907-1984 (Sc 1043), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1043. Letter, 30 October 1974, from Jesse Stuart, Greenup, Kentucky, to English professor O.J. Wilson, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, regarding Stuart’s recent talk at WKU; Christmas card, 1975, from Stuart to WKU Library Director, Sara Tyler; and poetry magazine Seven, containing one of Stuart’s poems, 1968. The magazine is autographed by Stuart.

Setting As Character, Tracy A. Townsend

The Short Story

This lesson uses Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown” to explore tone and characterization in short fiction. It requires students to demonstrate an understanding of the role character plays in fiction and to use specific textual evidence to support a claim. The lesson can be completed in a single class period of fifty to seventy minutes and is suitable for grades 9-12.

Explaining The Unexplainable: A New Cultural Outlook On H. P. Lovecraft’S Cthulhu Mythos, Erika L. Mutter

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Although the majority of the scholarship on H. P. Lovecraft focuses on the idea of nihilism as the purpose of the Cthulhu mythos, the exploration of three stories The Nameless City, The Whisperer in Darkness, and The Shadow over Innsmouth disproves this overly basic and irrelevant reasoning. Through a cultural studies lens, there is a parallel between the curiosity and fear surrounding the other within the text and those same emotions felt towards the immigrants coming into America during the 1920s. This argument analyzes the transformation of the relationship between the narrator and the aliens, showcasing how this otherness can …