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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Narrative Side-Stepping: Disability Beyond The Narratology Of Normalcy, Christian Lewis
Narrative Side-Stepping: Disability Beyond The Narratology Of Normalcy, Christian Lewis
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation theorizes a new mode of reading, narrative side-stepping, that reveals how disabled characters provide a unique opportunity for non-normative narratives. In insisting on the narratological innovations that disability affords, I revise both Lennard Davis’s notion that the novel form valorizes normalcy and David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder’s theory of narrative prosthesis, which claims that disability is a crutch, and that disabled characters are merely metaphors and/or plot devices. I move beyond these theories to focus instead on the more complicated ways that authors represented disability and used disabled characters to critique societal and narrative norms. I think about …
Claiming Ownership Of One’S Body Through Language: The Disability Memoir, Sarah Elizabeth Kaufman
Claiming Ownership Of One’S Body Through Language: The Disability Memoir, Sarah Elizabeth Kaufman
Theses and Dissertations
This paper examines the ways in which the disability memoir creates pathways that generate new ways of thinking. Focusing primarily on the disability memoirs of Simi Linton, Ellen Forney, and Kenny Fries, this analysis will personalize the disability experience as these authors live it and redefine its social stereotypes.
'As Vivid As Blood In A Sink': (Re)Reading Queerness And Repression In Teju Cole's Open City, Jack Hoda
'As Vivid As Blood In A Sink': (Re)Reading Queerness And Repression In Teju Cole's Open City, Jack Hoda
Master's Theses
Teju Cole’s Open City (2011) is an exemplar work of contemporary fiction. For its complex representation of subjectivity, hypnotic narrative tone, and global political scope, the novel has been praised by readers and critics alike. Julius, the text’s first-person narrator, guides us along seemingly innocent wanderings throughout New York City, ruminating on history, art, and politics while presenting himself as the enlightened, cosmopolitan ideal. However, the shocking penultimate revelation that Julius raped a young woman from his past alters our encounter with the text and its narrator. We come to realize that this meandering novel is, in reality, a carefully …
Queer Outings In Imaginary Spaces, Nicole Cosentino
Queer Outings In Imaginary Spaces, Nicole Cosentino
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
Picture this: Marcel Proust, Roland Barthes, and Djuna Barnes walk into a book. And stay there.
Queering Job: Inverted Liberation In Boy Erased And Other Conversion Trauma Narratives, Harrison Beau Palen
Queering Job: Inverted Liberation In Boy Erased And Other Conversion Trauma Narratives, Harrison Beau Palen
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis explores conversion trauma narratives with the goal of transforming—inverting The Book of Job’s holy resolution to instead entail queer liberation apart from Evangelicalism. Analyzing Conley’s bestselling memoir, Boy Erased, I discuss Conley’s suffering and how his liberation is not found by means of repressing or converting his attraction to the same gender. I also analyze Emily Danforth’s novel, The Miseducation of Cameron Post to highlight how fictional accounts of queer liberation from conversion therapy help to increase awareness of the harms of conversion therapy. Throughout my thesis, I incorporate my own story of queer suffering, survival, and …