American Literature Commons^™

Sickly Sentimentalism: Sympathy And Pathology In American Women's Literature, 1866-1900, Nicole Zeftel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sickly Sentimentalism: Pathology and Sympathy in American Women’s Literature, 1866-1900 examines the work of four American women novelists writing between 1866 and 1900 as responses to a dominant medical discourse that pathologized women’s emotions. The popular fiction of Metta Fuller Victor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, and E.D.E.N. Southworth mobilized sentimental style and sympathetic affect to challenge the medical trend of treating female sentiment as a sickness. At the level of narrative, this challenge took the form of deviating from the domestic and marriage plots prevalent in women’s popular fiction of their period. Through forms of sentimental writing my …

Nomads Of The Body, Exiles Of The Mind: Twentieth Century Transnational African American Mexican Art And Literature, Anahi A. Douglas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the migration of African Americans from the U.S. to Mexico; however, these paths extend well beyond the North American continent and intersect with a much larger migration: the African Diaspora. The journeys of Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Willard Motley, and Elizabeth Catlett to Mexico illustrate an intricate web of rhizomatic connections spanning the Black Atlantic, the Caribbean Ocean, the Mississippi River and the Rio Grande. This dissertation examines the history of African American migration to Mexico during the twentieth century a well-documented, yet understudied area of research. These migrations offer an opportunity to reevaluate canon formation, Border …

Tangible Things: The Matter Of Susan Howe, Thomas Lewek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Tangible Things: The Matter of Susan Howe” examines materiality in two books, That This (2010) and Debths (2017), by the contemporary American experimental poet Susan Howe. More specifically, this examination finds a double movement in both collections between foregrounding the materiality of writing and of the text and meditating on the vibrant nature of matter itself. To frame the first part of this double movement, the thesis draws on recent digital humanities scholarship from Matthew Kirschenbaum and Johanna Drucker that highlights the technologically and materially mediated nature of writing processes and the texts they produce. Then, to frame the second …

The French Revolution In Early American Literature, 1789–1815: Translations, Interpretations, Refractions, Courtney Chatellier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The French Revolution in Early American Literature, 1789-1815: Translations, Interpretations, Refractions, examines the meaning of the French and Haitian Revolutions in early U.S. literary culture by analyzing American novels, periodical fiction, and essays that engaged with French revolutionary politics (by writers including Judith Sargent Murray, Martha Meredith Read, Charles Brockden Brown, and Joseph Dennie); as well as translations and reprints of French texts by writers including Stéphanie de Genlis, Sophie Cottin, and Jean-Baptiste Piquenard that circulated among American readers during this period. Drawing on archival research, and the methodology of book history, this study establishes that translations—though often disregarded by …

The Communal "I": Exclusion And Belonging In American Autobiography, Melissa Coss Aquino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Communal “I” in American autobiography emerges as an aesthetic response to the pressure of using “the master’s tools” to write from a community on the margins to disclose identity in the conflicts of exclusion and belonging. In this case “the master’s tools” to refer to several distinct elements the communal “I” is tasked with navigating: the use of what we have come to identify as standard English, the form and function of European autobiography as a celebration of individual exceptionalism, and the contradictory pressures on these autobiographies to both elevate and protect the communities in question from further marginalization. …

An Intersectional Feminist Perspective Of Emmett Till In Young Adult Literature, Claire Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emmett Till’s murder inspired many novelists, poets, and artists. Recently, Till has inspired several feminist young adult novelists who are introducing his case in an intersectional way to a new generation of readers. The works that I have studied are A Wreath for Emmett Till (2003) by Marilyn Nelson, The Hunger Games Trilogy (2008-2010) by Suzanne Collins, and Midnight without a Moon (2017) by Linda Jackson. By examining how the authors employ a feminist perspective, readers can understand how they are striving for a more inclusive, intersectional feminist movement. This is significant because the publishing industry, specifically for Young Adult …

Presumed Innocent: The Child Figure In U.S. Southern Literature, 1945 – 2004, Yendountien Noellie Lare-Assogba

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the nineteenth century in the U.S. the concept of childhood has usually been equated with innocence. Fiction, popular culture, and theatrical productions have not only spread this idea of childhood innocence but also attributed innocence and vulnerability to white children while negating children of color those qualities. This project examines the role of childhood in constructing U.S. southern identity in texts from 1945 to 2004. Drawing on Kathryn Bond Stockton’s conceptualization of the innocent child, the child of color, and the working class child who lacks the “normative” protection of innocence, and the white middle-class child who is psychologically …

Historicizing Muslim American Literature: Studies On Literature By African American And South Asian American Muslim Writers, Wawan Eko Yulianto

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In response to the challenge of understanding Muslim Americans in a way that highlights their integral role in the United States through literature, this research starts with two questions: 1) how should we read Muslim American literature in relation to the lived experiences of Islam in America? and 2) how does Muslim American literature contribute to the more mainstream American literature.

To answer those questions, this research takes as its foundations the theories by Stuart Hall and Satya Mohanty on, firstly, the evolving nature of diaspora identity and on the epistemic status of identity. Following Hall’s argument that every expression …

Pynchon And Place: A Geocritical Reading Of Thomas Pynchon, John Stout

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A special emphasis on artificial or constructed spaces appears throughout Thomas Pynchon’s body of work. This thesis explores how Pynchon describes such spaces and their uses to address such weighty topics as social inequity and the struggle against authoritarianism. In examining the role of sheltering spaces in novels such as V. and Gravity’s Rainbow, I argue that Pynchon depicts various “outsider” characters as finding reification of their own forms of alterity within spaces either designed or co-opted with such purpose in mind. Through Pynchon’s depiction of spatial transformation in novels like Vineland and Inherent Vice, the author finds the opportunity …

The Transcendentalist’S Mind And Body: The Role Of Illness In Margaret Fuller’S Writing, Elizabeth Anne Slabaugh

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Margaret Fuller’s work is typically known for its influence on the American feminist movement between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century fostered a new way of looking at men and women as dual souls encompassing both male and female traits. While scholars recognize and draw attention to Margaret Fuller’s mental and physical illness, few scholars directly analyze her works through the lens of her illness. My thesis analyzes her writing by considering her illness (both physical and mental) in order to understand how it affected her writing. Scholars such as Jeffrey Steele, Cynthia Davis, …

“The Only Way Out Is In”: Negotiating Identity Through Narrative In The House On Mango Street And The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Brianna E. Taylor

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

While aimed at vastly different audiences, Sandra Cisneros’s beloved coming-of-age story The House on Mango Street and Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao both uniquely capture the complexities of navigating the hyphenated territory between their respective Mexican-American and Dominican-American identities. Cisneros engages readers with the simple yet profound narrative voice of Esperanza in a series of vignettes that subtly reveal a growing consciousness of her role as a young Mexican-American woman and her creative consciousness as an artist. Through the multifaceted narrative perspective of Yunior, Díaz skillfully weaves together “ghetto nerd” Oscar de …

A Blend Of Absurdism And Humanism: Defending Kurt Vonnegut’S Place In The Secondary Setting, Krisandra R. Johnson

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay argues that Kurt Vonnegut blends a unique humanist stance into his absurdist plots and characters, ultimately urging readers to confront the absurd with a kindness and human decency his protagonists often find rare. As a result of this absurd and humanist synthesis, I defend and promote Vonnegut’s place in the secondary English curriculum, despite his rank on many banned books lists, since his characters’ journeys correlate thematically with the growth and process of postmodern adolescents and encourage moral responsibility without sentimental manipulation.

Focusing on Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as primary sources, specifically …

Clarke, Kenneth Wendell, 1917-2012 (Mss 635), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 635. Manuscripts, notes, publisher’s correspondence, and photographs relating to the scholarly work of WKU English and folklore professor Kenneth W. Clarke, principally "Bud Long: The Birth of a Kentucky Folk Legend" and "The Harvest and the Reapers." Also includes reel-to-reel tape discussing home burial and casket - coffins, African American discussing race relations, singing in Barren County, Kentucky. See also digitized reel-to-reel tape T (T) -7-71-16 discussing cockfighting.

Development Of A Literary Dispositif: Convening Diasporan, Blues, And Cosmopolitan Lines Of Inquiry To Reveal The Cultural Dialogue Among Giuseppe Ungaretti, Langston Hughes, And Antonio D’Alfonso, Anna Ciamparella

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to create a literary dialogue among the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, the African American author Langston Hughes, and the Quebecois writer Antonio D’Alfonso. Giuseppe Ungaretti and Langston Hughes were more or less contemporaries. Ungaretti was born in 1888 and Hughes in 1902, and both were active in modernist movements that shaped the literary history of their own countries. D’Alfonso was born in Canada about half a center after Ungaretti and Hughes. Besides significant generational differences, these three authors also underwent personal and intellectual experiences that shaped their writing in seemingly incomparable ways. While a traditional comparative approach …

Racial Condition Of America Through ‘Uncle Tom’S Cabin’, Ellerie Ann Freisinger

2018 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Combating Chromophobia: The Importance Of Living Life In Full Color, Natasha G. Kerr

Student Publications

David Batchelor argues that Western culture has chromophobia, a fear of corruption by color, and therefore tends to marginalize color in favor of the achromatic and linear. In examination of cinematic examples of The Wizard of Oz and Pleasantville, as well as the novel The Giver, this paper explores the Chromophobia thesis in action, discussing the dangers of a chromophobic society compared to the benefits of a fall into color. Based on the equation of the fall into color with the fall into self-consciousness, the paper further illustrates the importance of color to life and its role in authenticity and …

The Fluid Pastoral: African American Spiritual Waterways In The Urban Landscapes Of Harlem Renaissance Poetry, Maren E. Loveland

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In 1921 Langston Hughes penned, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” in his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (Hughes 1254). Weaving the profound pain of the African American experience with the symbolism of the primordial river, Hughes recognized the inherent power of water as a means of spiritual communication and religious significance. Departing from the traditional interpretation of the American pastoral as typified by white poets such as Robert Frost and Walt Whitman, the African American poets emerging from the Harlem Renaissance established a more nuanced pastoral landscape embedded within urban cultures, utilizing water in particular as …

A Slowly Starving Race: Land And The Language Of Hunger In Zitkala-Ša’S "Blue-Star Woman", Adam R, Brantley

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper proposes that the motif of starvation in Zitkala-Ša’s 1921 short story, “The Widespread Enigma Concerning Blue-Star Woman,” is in fact a metaphor for the dispossession of Native American lands and its disastrous effects on Native American livelihood and culture. Though much scholarship has been done on sentimental rhetoric in Zitkala-Ša’s fiction, critics have not yet explored its connection to this the most immediate Zitkala-Ša’s concerns. This essay first unpacks letters from Zitkala-Ša’s personal archives to demonstrate her individual interest in dispossession, and then examines “Blue-Star Woman’s” ever-present language of hunger through this lens of land loss. In doing …

Prolepsis Through Poe's Narrators: The Prophetic Demise Of The Obsessive Protagonist, Bailey Jarnagin

Masters Theses

Edgar Allan Poe was a pioneer of psychological fiction. His stories center around characters whose reliability is questionable and who are mentally troubled in some way. Poe crafted stories that invoke terror because their subject is the horror of the mind. While readers of other types of horror fiction can finish a story and step away from the monsters with little to no fear of being followed by them, readers of Poe cannot forget the tales they read so readily because the horror of the mind is ever present. Poe crafted such horrific stories because of the haunted palace of …

Modern American Cover Art: The Great Gatsby Through Time, Jessica Harrell

Senior Theses

Book jackets and cover art are, more than anything, an advertising tool used to attract consumers, promote book sales, and establish company identity. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a staple in the canon of American literature whose cover art has drastically transformed in the ninety years since its original publication. This thesis traces these changes over time, focusing specifically on publishing history, art history, American culture, and thematic interpretations. In doing so, I found that the most substantial influences on these covers were publishing house identity, design trends, and available artistic techniques. Ultimately, The Great Gatsby’s cover …

Lewis In The Rye: An Approach To Controversial Literature, Abigail Griffiths

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis aims to coalesce literary criticism with Christian theology to provide a guideline for how Christians, who uphold a certain moral logic, should interact with literature that sparks controversy among readers. An analysis of J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye (1951) will be considered through the lens of C.S. Lewis’ commentary on good reading, good critique, and good art. Catcher in the Rye, an American novel, contains elements of derogatory language, promiscuous scenes, and insinuations of nihilism. How would C.S. Lewis, a British novelist and a prominent figure in Christian thought, read Salinger’s work: would he find …

“Sprinkled, Cleansed, And Comforted”: The Early American Jail, Jacob Johnson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Ethos Of Dissent: Epideictic Rhetoric And The Democratic Function Of American Protest And Countercultural Literature, Jeffrey Lorino Jr

Dissertations (1934 -)

My dissertation, “The Ethos of Dissent: Epideictic Rhetoric and the Democratic Function of American Protest and Countercultural Literature, 1940-1962,” establishes a theoretical frame-work, the literary epideictic, for reading the African American social protest literature of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, and the American countercultural literature of Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey. I argue that epideictic rhetoric affords insight into how these authors’ narratives embody a post-World War II “ethos of dissent,” a counterdiscourse that emerges out of a climate of dynamism deadlocked with controlling ideologies. Epideictic, the branch of rhetoric concerned with civic matters, commends or censures a particular individual, …

The Manner Of Your Scramble, Henry D. Goldkamp

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

N/A

Motherhood Makes A Matriarchy, Lily Mann

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

This analysis will discuss the topic of matriarchies, how they created, and how they are sustained. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Coven are used as examples of matriarchies, wherein Hawthorne’s matriarchy is at its start, whereas Murphy’s matriarchy is coming to a potential end. This will be examined through a comparative analysis between the characters in Hawthorne’s early American work with the characters in Murphy’s contemporary work. Ultimately, Hawthorne’s matriarchy is much more insidious and potentially damaging to a patriarchal norm than Murphy’s reclusive patriarchy. Hawthorne’s matriarchy has the option to disrupt a patriarchal …

"Tell Nobody But God": Reading Mothers, Sisters, And "The Father" In Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Cheryl Hopson

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

In my reading of The Color Purple, I make several interconnected arguments, the first being that “The Father,” that is any male, sanctioned by patriarchy, and in the context of a patriarchal, sexist male order, disrupts what would otherwise be a powerful and sustaining relationship, that of the mother-daughter relationship. I continue that sisterhood that is multifaceted and intergenerational serves as a corrective to the disrupted maternal and filial relationship. It is sisters in the novel and not mothers who step in to “mother,” that is nurture, protect, support, as well as challenge one another, even in the most harrowing …

Writings: Sandy Hill Sink, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Handwritten pages, Sandy Hill Sink and miscellaneous writings.

Writings: Project Notes, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Handwritten project notes.

For The Cobweb Club: Mottoes, Margaret J. M. Sweat

Annals of the Cobweb Club

Ribbon-bound booklet containing handwritten mottoes for the Cobweb Club.

The Way We Dream Now: History, Theory, And Lgbtq Memoir In America, Megan Paslawski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines American memoirs written after 2000 by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer authors with an eye to how the recent institutionalization of queer theory and the open production of LGBTQ histories affect these writers’ conceptions of their lives, aspirations, and cultures. I argue that these memoirs, sometimes consciously, find themselves struggling with what are also competing ideas within queer theory about the queerness of futurity even as they turn to the past of queer/trans literature and history to bolster their senses of possible identities and communities. This often has the effect of positioning contemporary LGBTQ writers as …