Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

American Literature Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 811 - 840 of 3912

Full-Text Articles in American Literature

Crossing Boundaries, Drawing Anew : Exploring The Treatment Of American Indian Land With A Penobscot Lens Through The Life And Traditions Of The Red Man By Joseph Nicolar, Andrea Guerrero Aug 2019

Crossing Boundaries, Drawing Anew : Exploring The Treatment Of American Indian Land With A Penobscot Lens Through The Life And Traditions Of The Red Man By Joseph Nicolar, Andrea Guerrero

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The relationship between the Wabanaki and the land informs their creation myths, their cultural expertise, and individual and communal identity. The connection is so integral to their identity that when privatization of property usurps their connections to the land, an entire

Go to article

Sex And Death On The Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology Of Three American Tragedies, Debra E. L. Martin Aug 2019

Sex And Death On The Western Emigrant Trail: The Biology Of Three American Tragedies, Debra E. L. Martin

Anthropology Faculty Research

This book offers a different look at how to think about the starvation and death that hounded emigrants attempting to get to California and Oregon in the early years of nineteenth-century US expansion. Specifically, the Donner party and two lesser-known Mormon handcart groups are scrutinized for what the patterns of age at death by sex can reveal. In the subtitle The Biology of Three American Tragedies, “biology” here means solely demographic data on sex and age at death. These are really the only biological variables examined, so the title Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail is more accurate …

Go to article

A Sense Of Unending: Apocalypse And Post-Apocalypse In Novels Of Late Capitalism, Brent Linsley Aug 2019

A Sense Of Unending: Apocalypse And Post-Apocalypse In Novels Of Late Capitalism, Brent Linsley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From Frank Kermode to Norman Cohn to John Hall, scholars agree that apocalypse historically has represented times of radical change to social and political systems as older orders are wiped away and replaced by a realignment of respective norms. This paradigm is predicated upon an understanding of apocalypse that emphasizes the rebuilding of communities after catastrophe has occurred. However, in the last half-century, narratives that emphasize the destruction of human civilization without this restorative component have begun to overshadow the more historically popular post-apocalyptic models that were particularly abundant during the early days of the Cold War. In light of …

Go to article

Guest Editor's Introduction, Angela Jill Cooley Jul 2019

Guest Editor's Introduction, Angela Jill Cooley

The Southern Quarterly

Guest Editor's Introduction to the special issue on Foodways in the South.

Go to article

Table Of Contents Jul 2019

Table Of Contents

The Southern Quarterly

Table of Contents for the special issue on Foodways in the South

Go to article

The Sad Kitchen And Song Of Neon: Two Novellas, John Paul King Jul 2019

The Sad Kitchen And Song Of Neon: Two Novellas, John Paul King

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Sad Kitchen, a work of magical realism, tells the story of a saintly woman named Helen. She opens an underground kitchen where people who feel guilty can come to be comforted and nurtured in the middle of the night. The story is, at its heart, a reflection on forgiveness. Song of Neon, also of the magical realist genre, is an existential work about a nurse named Avery and her husband, an owl house maker, named Saul. Their town, Milliard, is under a trance. Avery and Saul struggle with their respective identities in the quiet, vacuum the town has become.

Go to article

Re-Visioning Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man For A Class Of Urban Immigrant Youth, Camille Goodison Jul 2019

Re-Visioning Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man For A Class Of Urban Immigrant Youth, Camille Goodison

Publications and Research

In this essay, I will explore Ralph Ellison’s 1952 classic novel, Invisible Man, as a text that has contemporary and relatable themes for a modern-day classroom of mostly urban youth. This essay is also a personal journey into how Ellison’s inventive approaches to form helped create a work that lends itself to contemporary reimagining. It asks the question, can Ellison’s interest in creating a living Afro-American literary tradition rooted in the lore of the ‘peasant’ or common folk have contemporary applications? How does Ellison’s belief that everyday folk expression has value hold up for today’s readers? I try to …

Go to article

'Tomboy' Is Anachronistic. But The Concept Still Has Something To Teach Us, Lynne Stahl Jun 2019

'Tomboy' Is Anachronistic. But The Concept Still Has Something To Teach Us, Lynne Stahl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article explores the tomboy trope in film and literature and the "taming" that characterizes it, framing both in relation to contemporary debates about gender and sexual identity as well as cultural anxieties around queer, trans, and nonbinary identity. Examining texts from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women to the 1980 film Little Darlings, the article argues that even while the term tomboy may be obsolete, tomboy narratives document processes of rebellion that hold continuing value.

Go to article

Book Review: Palaces For The People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, And The Decline Of Civic Life, Eric Klinenberg, Georgia Westbrook Jun 2019

Book Review: Palaces For The People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, And The Decline Of Civic Life, Eric Klinenberg, Georgia Westbrook

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Go to article

The Grand Illusion: The Adventurs Of Hucklebarry Finn And Samuel Clemen' Masterful Ruse, Molly Dunne May 2019

The Grand Illusion: The Adventurs Of Hucklebarry Finn And Samuel Clemen' Masterful Ruse, Molly Dunne

Augsburg Honors Review

Among the many, great works of American literature, it is indisputably The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that most widely and firmly secures its place within the American canon. Fathers buy the adventure novel for their sons, schoolteachers read it to their students, undergraduates write term papers about it, and adults continually return to it, if only for the nostalgia of their youth. And yet, for the astute reader, a number of problems appear within this "greatest of children's books" (Harper & Brother's 8), namely the anticlimactic and entirely unsatisfactory d6- nouement, that seem to challenge the very meaning of Mark …

Go to article

Dramatizing The Void: Crime Fiction's Journey To Forgetting, Kylene N. Cave May 2019

Dramatizing The Void: Crime Fiction's Journey To Forgetting, Kylene N. Cave

Andrews Research Conference

Scholars often cite the transition from the golden age to the hardboiled tradition in the 1920s and 1930s as the most radical shift in crime fiction. By 1945, crime stories regularly exhibited destabilized language, increased interest in psychology of the mind, and a blatant rejection of conclusive endings as a means of exploring the unreliable nature of memory and eye-witness testimony. Whereas the crime fiction narratives preceding 1945 embodied a clear sense of logic and order, and established hermeneutics and signifying practices as the keys to unlocking the mysteries behind human behavior; post-45 crime fiction not only rejects these notions, …

Go to article

The Color Of Invisibility, Bryan A. Vanmeter May 2019

The Color Of Invisibility, Bryan A. Vanmeter

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an analysis of Ralph Ellison’s use of color terminology in his novel, Invisible Man. By taking an in depth look at the circumstances in which Ellison uses specific color terms, the reader can ascertain the author’s thoughts on various historical events, as well as the differences between characters in the novel such as Ras, Dr. Bledsoe, and Rinehart.

Go to article

“An’ No Place To Lead ‘Em”: The Grapes Of Wrath And The Breakdown Of Myth, Nicholas F. Comeaux May 2019

“An’ No Place To Lead ‘Em”: The Grapes Of Wrath And The Breakdown Of Myth, Nicholas F. Comeaux

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In spite of its common designation as an outmoded classic of sentimental middlebrow literature, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath remains relevant as a milestone in an extended liminal stage between the failing cultural myths of the past and the founding of newly relevant shared stories. This stage begins with the Enlightenment and continues to present-day conflicts over identity, labor, migrants, notions of truth itself, the function and responsibilities of government, and our shared ecological destiny. Arriving near the end of the Depression and its concurrent economic and environmental disasters, The Grapes of Wrath reflects a particularly chaotic stage in …

Go to article

John Gardner’S Grendel: The Importance Of Community In Making Moral Art, Catherine C. Cooper May 2019

John Gardner’S Grendel: The Importance Of Community In Making Moral Art, Catherine C. Cooper

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

John Gardner’s Grendel examines the ways in which humans make meaning out of their lives. By changing the original Beowulf monster into a creature who constantly questions the conflicting narratives set before him, Gardner encourages us to confront these tensions also. However, his emphasis on Grendel’s alienation helps us realize that community is essential to creating meaning. Most obviously, community creates relationships that foster a sense of moral obligation between its members, even in the face of the type of uncertainty felt by Grendel. Moreover, community cannot exist without dialogue, which perpetually stimulates the imagination to respond to the tensions …

Go to article

“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Michelle A. Nicholson May 2019

“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Michelle A. Nicholson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Kazimierz Dabrowski’s psychological theory of positive disintegration is a lesser known theory of personality development that offers an alternative critical perspective of literature. It provides a framework for the characterization of postmodern protagonists who move beyond heroic indoctrination to construct their own self-organized, autonomous identities. Ezra Pound’s The Cantos captures the speaker-poet’s extensive process of inner conflict, providing a unique opportunity to track the progress of the hero’s transformation into a personality, or a man. American Gods is a more fully realized portrayal of a character who undergoes the complete paradigmatic collapse of positive disintegration and deliberate self-derived self-revision …

Go to article

Secret Selves: Surveillance And Twentieth-Century African American Literature, Kelsey Kiser May 2019

Secret Selves: Surveillance And Twentieth-Century African American Literature, Kelsey Kiser

English Theses and Dissertations

Black writers, thinkers, and artists found themselves on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s watch list for radicalism and sedition as early as 1919. Secret Selves explores how twentieth-century African American writers, namely Claude McKay, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Ishmael Reed, and Gloria Naylor responded to a surveillance state that monitored their lives and works for radicalism and sedition. By recrafting the African American künstlerroman—a genre that birthed the African American literary tradition—these writers embedded codes into their works that concealed personal details from Bureau agents and simultaneously articulated a new narrative: that to be black and to …

Go to article

“Of Nobler Song Than Mine”: Social Justice In The Life, Times, And Writings Of Fitz-James O'Brien, John P. Irish May 2019

“Of Nobler Song Than Mine”: Social Justice In The Life, Times, And Writings Of Fitz-James O'Brien, John P. Irish

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will be a detailed study of the life, times, and writings of a mid-nineteenth century Irish-American writer, Fitz-James O’Brien. This will be the first full length study of O’Brien’s thought and writings. O’Brien was known, during his day, for two different types of writing: fiction of the supernatural and his writings on social justice, written in the emerging style of literary realism. It is his writings on social justice which this dissertation will explore. O’Brien’s writings on social justice covered three main topics: children, women, and animals. I look at how the historical context, O’Brien’s life, and his …

Go to article

Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us, Allie Harrison Vernon May 2019

Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us, Allie Harrison Vernon

English (MA) Theses

Looking primarily at two critically acclaimed texts that concern themselves with American citizenship—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Stephanie Powell Watts’ No One is Coming to Save Us—I analyze the claims made about citizenship identities, rights, and consequential access to said rights. I ask, how do these narratives about citizenship sustain, create, or re-envision American myth? Similarly, how do the narratives interact with the dominant culture at large? Do any of these texts achieve oppositional value, and/or modify the complex hegemonic structure? I use Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Forms of Capital” to investigate the ways in which economic, cultural, …

Go to article

Carleton, William Mckendree, 1845-1912 (Sc 3432), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Carleton, William Mckendree, 1845-1912 (Sc 3432), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3432. Typescripted excerpt from Will Carleton’s narrative poem, “First Settler’s Story,” first published in 1881, as recited in March 1895 by Berta M. Morton.

Go to article

Stepping Beyond The Veil And Breaking The Pittsburgh Cycle: The American Dream, Otherness, And Generational Trauma In August Wilson's Cycle Plays, Kaitlin Stellingwerf May 2019

Stepping Beyond The Veil And Breaking The Pittsburgh Cycle: The American Dream, Otherness, And Generational Trauma In August Wilson's Cycle Plays, Kaitlin Stellingwerf

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle is a series of ten plays that aims to “amend, to explore, and to add to our African consciousness and our African aesthetic” (Wilson qtd. in Gantt 5). Each play is set in a different decade but all share incredibly similar protagonists; all of them are African American men in their mid to late adulthood. The stories are separated by years but all articulate the generational trauma embedded in the African American consciousness in the twentieth century. Wilson’s plays span between the generations of African Americans living in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation to a …

Go to article

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1881-1941 - Relating To (Sc 3425), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1881-1941 - Relating To (Sc 3425), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3425. Notes by an unidentified individual of an interview of author Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Apparently sent to WKU student Paul Wharton from Roberts’ home city of Springfield, Kentucky, the notes recount her comments on her novels The Time of Man and He Sent Forth a Raven, and on the title of her most recent book, Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.

Go to article

Beeler, Andrew J., Jr., 1912-1998 (Sc 3418), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Beeler, Andrew J., Jr., 1912-1998 (Sc 3418), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3418. Letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from A. J. Beeler, curriculum director for the Louisville, Kentucky public schools. A letter of 1 May 1946 encloses his list of recent Kentucky literature, and a letter of 3 January 1958 reports on his family and Christmas holiday. Includes his reviews of three books by Janice Holt Giles.

Go to article

Refuse: Excess And Resistance In Gilded Age Print And Literature, Leah Michelle Powell May 2019

Refuse: Excess And Resistance In Gilded Age Print And Literature, Leah Michelle Powell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the late-nineteenth century, mechanization led to fears about the possible consequences of overproduction while immigration led to fears about the possible consequences of overpopulation. This dissertation examines Gilded Age texts that represent regionalized spaces in efforts to process interlinked anxieties about a surplus of people and a surplus of things. I argue that images of excess and cheapness were rhetorically powerful in efforts to both control and advocate for unassimilated and nonstandard people and places in a nation increasingly dominated by an urban commodity economy. This focus on excess often takes the form of verbal or visual imagery, but …

Go to article

The Narrative Of Revolution: Socialism And The Masses 1911-1917, Stephen K. Walkiewicz May 2019

The Narrative Of Revolution: Socialism And The Masses 1911-1917, Stephen K. Walkiewicz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to situate The Masses magazine (1911-1917) within a specific discursive tradition of revolution, revealing a narrative pattern that is linked with discourse that began to emerge during and after the French Revolution. As the term “socialism” begins to resonate again within popular American political discourse (and as a potentially viable course of action rather than a curse for damnable offense), it is worthwhile to trace its significance within American history to better understand its aesthetic dimensions, its radical difference, and its way of devising problems and answers. In short, this thesis poses the question: what ideological structures …

Go to article

“Flowing Along The Wall”: Anarcha-Feminist Bioethics And Resistance In Octavia E. Butler’S Dawn 2019., Theresa Mendez May 2019

“Flowing Along The Wall”: Anarcha-Feminist Bioethics And Resistance In Octavia E. Butler’S Dawn 2019., Theresa Mendez

Master's Theses

Science fiction (sf) texts conversant with the temporal play between past, present, and future push readers to imagine the extremes of human and environmental existence, interaction, and potential. Simultaneously, despite the sf genre’s tendency to traffic in extremes, these texts provoke readers to consider the ways in which these imagined worlds are grounded in history as well as in the contemporary social moment. As Donna Haraway has argued, “the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion” (306). This illusory boundary must continue to be traversed in order to consider how sf literatures, particularly those which imagine …

Go to article

Posthuman And Alien Breeding: The Implications Of Cybersex In Octavia Butler’S Dawn 2019., Elizabeth Rutkowski May 2019

Posthuman And Alien Breeding: The Implications Of Cybersex In Octavia Butler’S Dawn 2019., Elizabeth Rutkowski

Master's Theses

Speculative science fiction affords new ways for authors to represent social problems of the modern day in an apocalyptic manner. Authors such as Octavia Butler use science fiction to analyze social injustices revolving around race, gender, and sexuality. Throughout her novel Dawn, Butler uses the posthuman to represent minority groups in the late twentieth century. The posthuman represents those who have moved from humanity towards a new opportunity that is mixed with the potential for struggle. 1 As demonstrated through Butler’s work posthumanism blurs the lines between binaries such as male / female, straight / gay, and consensual / nonconsensual …

Go to article

Stewart, Robert Lee, 1873-1963 (Sc 3415), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Stewart, Robert Lee, 1873-1963 (Sc 3415), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3415. Letters, 30 May 1956 and 15 May 1957, to Mary Ellen Richards, Franklin, Kentucky, from Lee Stewart, Morehead, Kentucky. He encloses poems and song lyrics relating to Kentucky history, and comments on the Rowan County, Kentucky centennial celebrations. He also encloses his newspaper article about a Fayette County, Kentucky judge, legislator and poet.

Go to article

Cox, Hal Z., 1883-1952 (Sc 3414), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2019

Cox, Hal Z., 1883-1952 (Sc 3414), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3414. Poem, “Old Kentucky,” written by Hodgenville, Kentucky native Hal Z. Cox in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Kentucky statehood. Includes a 2011 newspaper article about Cox.

Go to article

“This Unique Empire” : Sylvia Plath And Anne Sexton’S Embodied Poetry As L’Ecriture Feminine, Theresa Kircher May 2019

“This Unique Empire” : Sylvia Plath And Anne Sexton’S Embodied Poetry As L’Ecriture Feminine, Theresa Kircher

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis seeks to place the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton within a larger discussion of contemporary feminist thought regarding corporeality and Hélène Cixous’ idea of l’ecriture feminine from her 1976 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Beginning with the basic premise of the mind/body dichotomy that was the basis for western philosophy, this thesis argues that contemporary feminist discourse shies away from viewing women’s bodies as a source of empowerment, hoping to avoid exposure to bioessentialist critiques, and instead focusing on women’s access to areas of intellectual power. This thesis posits that rather than uphold the power …

Go to article

“A Present Tense People, Modern, Relevant, Alive” : Writing Against Erasure In Tommy Orange’S There There, Greg Riggio May 2019

“A Present Tense People, Modern, Relevant, Alive” : Writing Against Erasure In Tommy Orange’S There There, Greg Riggio

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This essay argues that Tommy Orange’s 2018 novel There There works to craft new spaces for a revised historicity capable of defining living and present tense Indigenous peoples, while also deconstructing the past-tense archetype embedded in the framework of “America.” In arguing this point, I examine There There’s place in the postmodern Native American canon as it relates to the emergence of what is considered a new wave Native Renaissance. In each of the three subsections that follow, I examine There There in relation to three contexts: (1.1) other Native American works from the contemporary field in what is being …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last