Creative Writing Commons^™

Three Poems From "The Elder Project," Vernon School District 22, Brian Antoine, Yetko Brooke Bearshirt-Robins, John (Wilke) Louis, Lindsy Oppenheimer, Vicky Raphael, Lenaya Sampson

The Goose

Poetry by Vernon School District secondary students and their elders, in collaboration with The Elder Project organized by Wendy Morton and Sandra Lynxleg.

Wild Life, Jordan Abel

The Goose

Poetry by Jordan Abel. This poem is composed from 91 public domain Western novels that are freely available on Project Gutenberg. In total, the source text is over 10,000 pages long and is authored by 20 different writers. When all of the novels were searched simultaneously, there were 41 instances of the phrase "wild life." The resulting poem provides a contextual space where the language of a single word or phrase can be read.

Indians Once Roamed This Land…, Mwalim (Morgan James Peters)

Trotter Review

The sun sat high in the cloudless, early summer sky. Jerry held his breath as Ryan punched the gas, jumping onto Route 3 a few feet ahead of an incoming tractor-trailer. Ryan laughed as the angry truck driver blasted his air horn at them as the ’79 Aspen rocketed up the highway. The ramp onto Route 3 didn’t leave much room for traffic to merge; leaving the brave to shoot out onto the highway and the timid to sit and wait for an opening, often to the angry blaring of horns behind them, pushing them to jump onto the highway. …

X: Poems & Anti-Poems By Shane Rhodes, Tom Miller

The Goose

A review of Shane Rhodes' X: Poems & Anti-Poems. This review focuses on the link between language and landscape, and considers the ways in which that link, reflected in Rhodes' work, comments upon the use of language as an oppressive tool in the treatment of Native Americans and Canadians.

La « Langue Fantôme » : Une Présence Familière Dans L’Écriture – Présentation Du Poète Malek Alloula Suivie D’Un Entretien, Yamna Abdelkader-Chaldi.

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The evolution of Malek Alloula’s works, an important poet of Algerian literature whose first works date back to the sixties, is analyzed by Yamna Abdelkader. Afterwards, she interviews him on his poetic work and its relationship to language. The poet thus explains his writing ; how he composes his poetry in relation to the creative process ; his technique ; the influence of its cultural origins, and its relationship to language. In using the term “phantom language”, the poet refers to the haunting presence of the Arabic language spoken in Algeria, which, while unseen, has a major influence on his …

Gender And Self-Representation In Maya Angelou's Autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings 2014, Jay-Nel Steitz

Master's Theses

A voice that has been silenced for so long has much to say. Whether still confined or set free, the statement applies equally to both. The silenced voice wants not only to tell his or her story, but to share the life experiences which in turn reveal the identities of these individuals. These silenced voices then are not those of the oppressors, but the oppressed; and when an oppressor wants to share his or her story, the oppressed wants to tell their side of it as well. How can those labeled the marginalized outcasts of society express their feelings and …

Benjamin Banneker's Original Handwritten Document: Observations And Study Of The Cicada, Janet E. Barber, Asamoah Nkwanta

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Benjamin Banneker, farmer, mathematician, astronomer, and scientist, is known for his mathematical puzzles, ephemeris calculations, almanacs, his wooden clock, land surveying work, and famous letter on human rights. However, as a naturalist, his scientific and systematic observations of the cicadas are less known. In this paper we publicize Banneker’s naturalistic study of the seventeen-year periodic cycle of the cicada and make available the original handwritten document of his observations. We also introduce the audience of this journal to an intriguing natural problem involving prime numbers.

Science-Fictional North Korea: A Defective History, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity; an ominous mystique – that many writers and artists have exploited to generate striking science-fictional effects in texts with little or no connection to North Korean reality. (The 2002 Bond film Die another Day, for example, draws from North Korea’s science-fictional aura to animate North Korean super-villains who …

Le Miel De L’Alphabet. L’Autobiographie Archipélique De Patrick Chamoiseau, Renifleur D’Existence, Éric Hoppenot

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Our study focuses on one of the autobiographical works of Chamoiseau Chemin d’école (1994). This particularly singular literary work breaks away from traditional autobiography: it is no more a question of telling the past in a narcissistic and nostalgic way, but it is about building a writing style open to dialogue. We shall show that the profound originality of this work lies mainly in a subversion of temporal process, in an enunciative duality and in an asserted exhibition of a poetic relationship with the world and languages. We shall pay particular attention to the way the narrator reveals his discovery …

Patrick Chamoiseau Et La Poétique Du «Nomadismecirculaire», Samia Kassab-Charfi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

By advocating a fluid and metamorphic type of creolity, Patrick Chamoiseau has managed to distance himself from any claim to a particular identity. His latest poetics refute more than ever the elegy of origin and the celebration of race. In Glissant’s footsteps, he experiments with the notion of “circular nomadism”, which becomes a major rite of initiation for many of his characters. That same notion, at the heart of the amorous gravitation by which he unveils the treasures of his sentimenthèque, finally leads to an ethic of transformation, a kind of “eco-philosophy” where every exodus becomes an exordium, a new …

Généalogies De L'Errance, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The city narrative is Chamoiseau’s most original contribution to the west Indian worldview. Such writing is based on the poetics of creolity and on the memory of housing, visible in the ancestral hatred of dogs by municipal workers. It also builds up intertextual links which question both Cesairian Negritude and Glissant’s poetics. The historical memory of Chamoiseau’s characters and the intertextual links in his works transform his writings on townlife into a form of consolidation of a literary tradition which renews the genealogy of wandering life.

Latin-America, Mauricio E. Novoa

Student Publications

A poem describing the Prince George's County and Montgomery County Latin American communities in Maryland.

Violence, Altérité De L’Intérieur Et Citoyenneté De Seconde Zone, Hervé Tchumkam

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article proposes an examination of violence in the French banlieues where riots erupted in the fall of 2005. Building on the observation that violence seems to have become the main determiner for banlieues inhabitants in the media and political discourses, the author scrutinizes Mohamed Razane’s Dit Violent (2006) in order to understand the status of young banlieue dwellers as outsiders within who are caught between second-class citizenship and exclusion from the French public political sphere. It is the contention of the author that the public construction of an enemy within imply shadows a socio-political reality, which is the invisibility …

« Banlieue Noire » : La Question Noire Dans La Littérature Urbaine Contemporaine, Stève Puig

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Just as the “beur” movement started to flourish in France in the 80’s and the 90’s, a new question has emerged in French society in the last decade: the “black question”, which deals with the place of Africans and Antilleans in French society today. At the same time, a new literary genre has emerged: urban literature, which largely tackles themes related to the presence of Afro-caribbean people in metropolitan France. This article seeks to analyze three urban novels which take place in France, and more specifically how characters situate themselves regarding their Frenchness as the French government attempted to redefine …

The Apartment, Jeesun Choi

English Honors Projects

Lenn never considered herself one of the foreigners in Bangkok. She believed that she was different from her privileged peers at international schools, the posse of multinational corporation workers and the unwitting tourists with a colonial mindset. But when she meets Jon Hayes Wichasak, a wandering luk khrueng, her conviction starts to crumble. She begins to question her motives behind returning to Bangkok and her desire for intimacy. Set on the road that stretches from the Thai-Cambodian border to the Chao Praya River, the novella explores expatriation in the twenty-first century.

End Of The Universe 12/21/12 For My Father, Stephanie A. Sellers

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

This poem and its accompanying introduction address the 2012 EuroAmerican-settler hysteria over their misreading of the Mayan nation’s 13^th Ba’k’tun (cosmic calendar) expiring. At the core of indigenous cultures is the ethic of continuance, life, and wholeness—not devastation.

The Making Of Jose Garcia Villa's Footnote To Youth, Jonathan O. Chua

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

This article recounts the story behind the publication of Villa’s stories and his book Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others (1933) in the United States. First, the conditions of the American literary marketplace are briefly described. Second, documents pertaining to the realization in print of Villa’s stories and his book are analyzed as sites of negotiations between colonial subject (Villa) and the colonial master (his American editors and publishers). Finally, an account of how Villa was made to circulate in the Philippines after the publication of his stories and his book in the United States is given. …

Aurora Bertrana: Una Trayectoria Literaria Marcada Por La Perspectiva De Género, Sílvia Roig

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

My dissertation explores the narrative of Aurora Bertrana (1892-1974), an unknown writer today, but a successful and recognized female author in Catalonia and Spain during the mid 20^th century. The written work of Aurora Bertrana is almost never mentioned in manuals of literature. Relegated almost to absolute oblivion, her rich, intellectual writting has not received the attention it deserves. I have studied seventeen of Bertrana’s novels –practically her entire oeuvre– written in Catalan and Spanish, including the following excellent books that have escaped critical attention: Ariatea (1960), “El pomell de les violes” (mn.), L’inefable Philip (mn.), La aldea sin …

Langue Et Identité Chez Leïla Sebbar. Vers Une Filiation Renégociée, Cécilia W. Francis

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père (2003), L’arabe comme un chant secret (2010a), as well as in other components of her intimate prose, Leïla Sebbar reflects on her sense of dispossessed identity due to linguistic exile and an unknown heritage, resulting from ruptures in her paternal filiation. Drawing from the works of Jacques Derrida, Régine Robin and Simon Harel, which form the basis of our argumentation, we examine various dimensions of the severed parental bond. The article proposes to examine how Sebbar’s autobiographical writings, which incorporate scenarios dealing with legacy transmission expressed in terms of auditory …

Assunta And A Bag Of Food, Michael C. Vocino

Technical Services Faculty Publications

Life in the Mezzogiorno of Italy in the town of San Nicandro Garganico. The author briefly ponders his aging.

The Sacred Role Of Animal Beings In Iroquois Lore, Melissa J. Martinelli

English Theses

The act of storytelling provides a connection between the spiritual and physical spheres, and the Haudenosaunee people (more commonly recognized as Iroquois) utilize the oral narrative to convey the most sacred truths of their culture. In focusing primarily upon animals and animal beings, one can recognize the deep reverence traditional tribal members feel toward animals as certain legends seek to unite individuals with the spirits, personalities, and bodies of such creatures in narrative form. Too often animals are overlooked as “lesser” beings, yet in legends of the Iroquois they possess potent orenda (great power) that can help one achieve success …

Six Crosses, Michael C. Vocino

Technical Services Faculty Publications

Brief short story or observation about life in a small southern Italian town.

Ua32/4/4 The Coalition Zine!, Issue 1, Wku Coalition For Gender & Racial Equality

Student Organizations

Newsletter created by the WKU Coalition for Gender & Racial Equality a student organization sponsored by WKU Gender & Women Studies. This issue has articles regarding sexual orientation, right to life and racism.

Hédi Bouraoui Et Les Limites De La Théorie Postcoloniale : Approche Transpoétique Et Nomadique, Éric Touya De Marenne

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

A priori, Hedi Bouraoui’s thought lies within the scope of a postcolonial perspective. However, the concept of “transpoétique” to which he alludes is based on the notion of “nomaditude” which asserts the blurring of cultural and identity borders. That is why beyond the “infernal binary” thought that he rejects (ruler / dominated, colonizer / colonized), the Tunisian and Canadian author puts in question the postcolonial approach. In this context, the aim of this study is to understand better how trans-poetics can allow us to conceive differently the theoretical foundations of francophone literary criticism.

Aimé Césaire, Jacques Roumain Et L’Équivoque Du « Retour », Fritz Calixte

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article adresses the issue of return in Aimé Césaire and Jacques Roumain’s works. These writers, like many other Caribbean writers, have the particularity to update the old dream of return to homeland of the slaves transplanted to the New World. They reproduce by fiction the uncomfortable legacy of colonial societies. But the authors depicting this theme, usually do so in the form of an obsessive search for an ideal life to realize somewhere else than here. Jacques Roumain is in this tradition with a few additions. Aimé Césaire for his part, proposes in his notebook of a return to …

Parades Banlieusardes. El Hadj De Mamadou Mahmoud N’Dongo Et Les Identités Criminelles, Hervé Tchumkam

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article aims at understanding the relation between crime and identity formations in the French banlieues, especially in the wake of the 2005 urban riots. The essay performs a reading Mamadou N’Dongo’s novel El Hadj at the intersection of aesthetics and politics in order to scrutinize identity formations and related debates at stake in the prisons of poverty and oppression that constitute the banlieues whose inhabitants are the third or fourth generation of the heirs to African immigration in France. Ultimately, the paper contention is that what I call “banlieue parade” stands out as the new model of identity that …

Aimé Césaire : Un Être De Papier Dans Le Roman Antillais Contemporain, Édouard Mokwe

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper aims to scrutinize various aspects in which Aimé Césaire is represented in the Caribbean novel as a personage, on the basis of Théorie et fiction by Milagros Ezquerro. We discover that, because of the great halo and notoriety of the eminent cultural and political figure that he was, Aimé Césaire has been put on stage by several Caribbean novelists. So Césaire has become a literary material, as well as a theme with various patterns.

La Poésie Hors-Normes De Mohamed Hmoudane Ou L’Art De La Provocation, Yamna Abdelkader

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Poetry is often understood as a series of deviations from linguistic norms, but Mohamed Hmoudane’s collections appear to be a systematic subversive strategy against both aesthetic conventions and prevailing assumptions about Eastern and Western identitarian categories. Published between 2003 and 2005, the works entitled Attentat, incandescence and Blanche mécanique avert poetic clichés as they invert cultural stereotypes, taking a most satirical stance toward the state of the world at the dawn of a new millenium. The pervasive sense of detachment resulting from Hmoudane’s satirical tendencies is associated with a poetics of excess, and this paradoxical union serves as a powerful …

Ua1b1/3 University Lecture Series, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by the University Lecture Series committee which invites distinguished and prominent individuals to lecture at the university. The records include correspondence with potential speakers and programs, posters and recordings of lectures.

Postures Féminines Dans L’Oeuvre De Calixthe Beyala, Carmen Husti-Laboye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The aim of this paper is to analyze, through the example of the feminist positions proposed by Calixthe Beyala in the novels she wrote between 1987 and 2007, the change of the novelist’s ideological and artistic perspective. It emphasizes the progressive loss of critical voice to the advantage of a new voice wishing to understand itself as individuality in its world. This study reveals the novelist’s contribution to the construction of a new position of the individual in the context of French social and cultural life.