Fiction Commons^™

Review Of I Heart Oklahoma, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Kentuckiana, And A Dash Of Cambodia: A Collection Of Short Stories, Brodie Lee Gress

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The following is a collection of five short stories set in regions familiar to me: “Dewberry Park,” “YouLead,” and “The Color Violet” in Indiana; “Mens Rea” in Kentucky; and “Tory Ride” in Cambodia. Gay identity plays a role in many of these stories, and other themes explored include family, region, socioeconomics, gender, mentality, and change. These stories are concerned with people on the brink, failing and surviving all the same. Some of them are intended to weigh, and some to satirize. I hope they all nick their readers.

Looking At Shadows: Four French Texts In English Translation, Kalena M. Hermes

World Languages and Cultures

This project present four French texts in English translation that share the theme of loss. This theme is perhaps one of the most poignant and relevant; loss is an experience that every human will encounter, and as people we continue across time to grapple with what it means for us and how to deal with it. These four texts will bring the perspectives of four authors to light in English. When we study how other countries and cultures deal with common human issues, we are able to gain new views on these issues. This project will make these texts accessible …

Review Of Song For The Unraveling Of The World, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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

LSU 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 …

Review Of The History Of Living Forever, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Altruists, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

A book review of the debut novel by Andrew Ridker.

The American Dream As A Cultural Movement, Thomas W. Raskay

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This piece investigates the relationship between the American Dream and automobility through a generational lens, assessing cultural change in each renewal of the American Dream. Comparing generations of Americans exploring and reforming cultural space reveals evidence of the American Dream as a tendency for generations to expand to new frontiers balanced by a duty to reform current social space. Automobility multiplies Americans’ options for exploration and explodes the rate at which modern generations engage with different spaces. Now that automobility is routine, Millenials have expanded to the new social space frontier in cyberspace, but a limitless frontier may disrupt the …

Rebellion And Change On The Road, Natalie Rude

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article talks about rebellion, which has always been a prominent piece of American history, but it has always been associated with world changing events. Rebellion is an action that is anything, regardless of size, that is out of the ordinary that results in personal change while on the road. Unfortunately, Rebellion on the road is gendered, meaning that while men can rebel and change wherever they wish, women can only rebel on the road, and all the personal changes women make disappear as soon as they leave the road. This is largely due to the social spaces constructed by …

A Genealogy Of Self-Development In Modern America, Kelsey M. Binder

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article offers a hypothetical conversation between various authors and creators who have embarked on progressive self-development journeys under the influence of a shared society that intermittently embraces and rejects the structures of the American Dream. While examining the instinctive human motives that cause the radical decision to actualize one’s life, this paper attempts to bridge the psychology of the desire for personal growth to our influential cultural landscape. It explores and analyzes the self-development journeys of individuals such as William Least Heat-Moon and Chris McCandless, as well as the recent message of self-development found in a cinematic pop culture …

Society's Perpetuation Of Oppression, Julianne Hewitt

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

Culture Of Modern American Theology, Evan Colon

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This paper examines literature to determine how travel reshapes the culture of spiritual seeking in the United States from the early 1800s to the modern era. As travel evolved, the experience of travel has changed over time and the reshaping of American culture reflects the impact travel can have in a region. This paper also analyzes the roles of Christian missionaries and Evangelists in reshaping the culture of spiritual seeking in America and it analyzes the spiritual experience that is recognized by both atheistic and theistic travelers.

Mislabeled Muses, Deborah L. Dougherty

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

The women of the Beat generation are important artistic contributors to consider when analyzing the Beat movement. Through lives of Carolyn Cassady, Diane Di Prima, and Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs a different experience to the Beat scene is revealed. Providing a brief but introspective analysis of three women essential to the Beat movement, this article presents a new perspective to consider when analyzing the artistic contributions and lives of the Beatnik women throughout the Beat era.

The Perspective Of Place And Landscape, Dylan Langschwager

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

The topic of Subjective vs. Objective has a broad connotation across a multitude of different works that can be viewed as abstract due to it's broad, but rooted nature within this work.

Society's Perpetuation Of Oppression, Julianne Hewitt

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

The American dream was idealistically envisioned for all members of a society until some members decided to make it unachievable for select groups. It became unachievable through means of oppressing to maintain control and have no competition in regards to achievement. Oppression of various groups of individuals begins internally on a psychological level. It becomes external when the masses of society all hold a racial or gender discriminatory view and make decisions based upon that. Groups that were deemed restricted have to deal with barriers within social mobility and formal legalities such as laws specifically geared towards them. Major groups …

A Genealogy Of Self-Development In Modern America: Influences Of The American Dream, Kelsey M. Binder

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article offers a hypothetical conversation between various authors and creators who have embarked on progressive self-development journeys under the influence of a shared society that intermittently embraces and rejects the structures of the American Dream. While examining the instinctive human motives that cause the radical decision to actualize one’s life, this paper attempts to bridge the psychology of the desire for personal growth to our influential cultural landscape. It explores and analyzes the self-development journeys of individuals such as William Least Heat-Moon and Chris McCandless, as well as the recent message of self-development found in a cinematic pop culture …

Tourism And Nationalism In America, Derick J. Knox

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

Travel has been regarded as not only a vacation but also a learning experience and for many Americans a process of familiarizing oneself with the history of their country. Technological advancements introduced means of mobility that allowed people to indulge in America’s culture and history. The 20th Century was a turbulent era accompanied by industrialization and an increase in nationalism. Tourist marketing had strategically mapped routes to showcase the highest points in American culture while ignoring some controversial narratives. Once travel became mediated by tourism in the 20th century it lost some elements of freedom and adventure, instead becoming the …

If He Can Do It, Why Can’T I?: Women’S Struggles Into Early Automobility, Emily Schlegel

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

The New Hearth: The Creation Of A Mobile Space, James C. Mangum

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

The New Hearth: The creation of a Mobile Space

Mangum, James. Kutztown University, (4 December 2018).

This analysis offers an insightful look into an aspect of travel and modernity that has gone seemingly unnoticed in the culture of American Mobility. As a social product space is created to serve the function of something integral in society. Working individuals need offices for example, students need schools, and citizens need residences. These are created spaces of society that intersect the realities of life, and an automobile is how we get to and from these spaces. Modernity has allowed us to stretch the …

Building Eden, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Ralph Deigh is the most famous vernacular American architect you've never heard of. After a military career spanning two wars and struggles with homelessness and PTSD, he is invited to design an entirely new rural community for the 21st century. Twin disasters (fire and flood) in Dare County, West Virginia, set up the circumstances for him to join with Rosemary Mueller and the wealthy Ohio-based Mueller Foundation and a mysterious group of local Dare County residents led by Adam Sennett, County Clerk of Dare County. Together, they design and build the new town of Eden, West Virginia.

The whole story …

Review Of Lost And Wanted, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Intolerancia En Tiempos De Crisis: Hacia Una Literatura Transgresora En El Sitio De Los Sitios De Juan Goytisolo, Oscar Ivan Useche

Modern Languages Faculty Publications

Este artículo propone entender la novela de Goytisolo como una respuesta cultural a la crisis de los modelos de racionalidad occidental. Se estudian las dinámicas de descomposición social de la globalización y la aparición dentro de este contexto de figuras marginales que buscan recuperar su capacidad transgresora mediante la reconquista del cuerpo y la apropiación del espacio urbano. Al trasladar al plano textual el memoricidio y la limpieza étnica como expresiones negativas de la modernidad, Goytisolo problematiza el papel del lector, del autor y de la novela como elementos esenciales en la representación literaria de la realidad.

This paper proposes …

The Manner Of Your Scramble, Henry D. Goldkamp

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

N/A

“Marie” And “An Unusual Recourse”: English Translations Of German Early Romantic Stories, Meghan Leadabrand

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This project consists of English translations of two German early Romantic stories, “Marie” (1798) by Sophie Mereau and “Seltner Ausweg” (1823) by Luise Brachmann, as well as an introductory discussion of the authors, their significance in the Jena Circle of Romantic writers, and the translation process. The introduction incorporates research on both Mereau and Brachmann and German early Romanticism, as well as some research on translation theory. Overall, the project aims to make “Marie” and “Seltner Ausweg,” which have not previously been translated, available to an English-speaking audience and to highlight the work of two little known Romantic women writers. …

Fading Landscapes: The Culture Of Exile And The Open Road, Marc T. Rentschler

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article seeks to analyze the complex relationship between material culture and hegemonic constructions of ideology along with their tendency to make their way into larger institutional apparatuses of society. For this study this interaction is explored through the symbolic construction of the american roadways and a selective. Drawing on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Baudrillard’s America, and William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways, this work attempts to combine critical perspectives on the formation of public space with the events of these works in order to formulate how the ideological values which are subsumed by the representational space of ‘The …

Review Of Such Good Work, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mermaid Song: The Notebooks Of The Writing Woman, Gianna T. Ward-Vetrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is built on the model of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, that is, it is a feminist project of holistic integration that does not reject fracturing, ambiguity, or contradiction, but aims to attain a more complex and thus truer portrait of the woman writing. Lessing’s notebooks examine conflicts between communism and capitalism, racial conflict in Africa, conflict between men and women, and the conflict between the protagonist Anna Wulf’s identity as a woman and her identity as a writer, each of which she then attempts to integrate into the singular golden notebook of the title. I propose …

Forsaken Trust, Meredith Doench

English Faculty Publications

Book 2 in the Luce Hansen Thriller series. Third book forthcoming.

Description from the publisher:

Wallace Lake, Ohio, takes care of their own. Unwelcoming of outsiders, the community closes ranks when four women are found murdered along the water’s edge. Agent Luce Hansen of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation must find a way in before another woman loses her life to the ruthless serial killer.

With the help of her new team—a hot rookie and a smart, beautiful medical examiner—Luce uncovers a ring of devotion surrounding the prime suspect. As Luce works to unearth the dark secrets of this …

"In The Land Of Tomorrow": Representations Of The New Woman In The Pre-Suffrage Era, Natalie B. O'Neal

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This digital anthology explores feminism in selected short fiction by women writers from the 1911 run of the popular women’s magazines Woman’s Home Companion, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The Farmer’s Wife. This fiction furthered the women’s rights movement by allowing women to imagine a world similar to their own with a heroine who voiced their desires and enacted change. Rather than the more experimental, inaccessible literature of avant garde high modernist writers consumed by the upper class, popular fiction reached a wider, middle class audience and was more effective at producing a progressive zeitgeist following the stilted Victorian …

Daughters Of The Sun: "The Birth" (An Excerpt), Megan Lynn

Scholarly and Creative Works Conference (2015 - 2021)

“You have never heard of me before. You have never heard of me, but my name has come out of your mouth thousands of times.”

So begins my novel, Daughters of the Sun, the story of Jesus’s twin sister, Alleluia. Using the narrative framework seen in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Alleluia tells her story over one night—Saturday into Sunday morning—in an appropriated apartment facing a church. She weaves into her story another tale of women who have lived in shadows cast by the men around them, women whom history chose to vilify—Lilith, Adam’s first wife who was written out of …