English Language and Literature Commons^™

Multiculturalisms Past, Present, And Future, Marilyn Edelstein

English

Once upon a time, most classes, in both schools and universities, focused on historical events shaped by white men, scientific discoveries made by white men, philosophies constructed by white men, and literary and artistic works created by white men. This time was not so long ago-and during some of our lifetimes. Since at least the late 1960s, this normative maleness and whiteness-which always claimed to be universal-has been challenged by the development of ethnic studies, women's and gender studies, and multiculturalism. Especially in literary studies-and nowhere more than in the field of American literature-the canon has exploded, as more works …

In Pursuit Of Feminist Postfeminism And The Blessings Of Buttercup, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

Introduction:

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking that the term “postfeminism” is often and perhaps most frequently used—by the mainstream media generally and by actual people—as a kind of casual dismissal of feminism that comes implicitly coupled with the suggestion that the cutting-edge place to be these days, with regard to women, is the one where the old victim mentality has been sloughed off and a new flying-free-of-those-chains approach to gender in all its diversity and in all its equal opportunity has been boldly embraced. Given the terms of this unstated argument, any criticism of this postfeminism automatically …

Textual Possession: Manipulating Narratives In Wilkie Collins's Sensation Fiction, Kieran Ayton

Honors Projects

Examines the mechanisms through which Collins updated the gothic novel to create the sensation novel, with particular emphasis on The Woman in White, The Law and the Lady, and The Haunted Hotel. Highlights Collins's use of transgressive gender characterization, whereby his main characters use documents to gain social power over other characters. Describes the influence of Ann Radcliffe's gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, on The Woman in White.

The High Cost Of Dancing: When The Indian Women's Movement Went After The Devadasis, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

Introduction:

On the other side of patriarchal histories are women who are irrecoverably elusive, whose convictions and the examples their lives might have left to us--their everyday resistances as well as their capitulations to authority--are at some fundamental level lost. These are the vast majority of women who never wrote the history books that shape the manner in which we, at any particular historical juncture, are trained to remember; they did not give speeches that were recorded and carefully collected for posterity; their ideals, sayings, beliefs, and approaches to issues were not painstakingly preserved and then quoted century after century. …

Woman At War: How I Won My Battle With Domestic Violence, But Continue To Fight The War, Krista R. Holcomb

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Woman at War: How I Won My Battle Against Domestic Violence But Continue to Fight the War, is a depiction of my experience in an abusive relationship. The project presents the initial experiences that draw the victim to her future abuser, the forming of a bond between the couple, the feelings of fear and desperation that overwhelm and often paralyze the victim in the midst of abuse, and the final escape and eventual advocacy for other victims. While most of the project is presented as personal narrative, letters, journal entries, and lists appear in order to show the mindset of …

Maine Stream: A Bibliographical Reception Study Of Sarah Orne Jewett, Kathrine Cole Aydelott

Sarah Orne Jewett: Bibliography

The critical reception of Sarah Orne Jewett has oscillated dramatically over the last century. Contemporary reviews praised her as a writer whose appreciation for and deep understanding of New England and its people transcended local concerns and brought sympathetic, realistic depictions of Maine to the far coasts of the United States and Europe. Literary critics from the 1930s and 1940s, however, stereotyped Jewett as "an old-fashioned local colorist" whose writing was too simplistic to warrant critical attention. Since the 1970s, however, and particularly thanks to feminist literary critics, Jewett has been rediscovered and is now well reestablished in the canon …

A Skeptical Feminist Exploration Of Binary Dystopias In Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists Of Avalon, Alexandra Elizabeth Anita Lindstrom

Theses Digitization Project

In Marion Zimmer Bradley's retelling of the Arthurian legends, The Mists of Avalon, she creates two dystopic cultures: Avalon and Camelot. Contrasting Bradley's account of the legends with the traditional version, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, reveals that Bradley's sweeping revisions of the tradition do little to create a feminist ideal. A skeptical questioning of the text's plot and characters with the Women's Movement in mind opens an interpretation of the text as a critique of feminism itself.

"Betwixt Sunset And Sunrise": Liminality In Dracula, Mark M. Hennelly Jr.

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Hybrid Identity And Arab/American Feminism In Diana Abu-Jaber's Arabian Jazz, Nicole Michelle Khoury

Theses Digitization Project

In her novel Arabian Jazz, Diana Abu-Jaber attempts to explore the Arab American identity as something new; as an identity that exists related to, but ultimately separate from, the Arab and American identities from which it was originally created. This thesis discusses the emergence of the depiction of the Arab American female identity in the novel, examining how the characters explore issues of race, class, imperialism, and sex within both the Arab and the American cultures as those issues shape female identity. The thesis also presents a rhetorical analysis of the speeches that allow the characters a voice with respect …

The Representation Of Rape In Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadias, Angela Denise Bullard

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines the complex and conflicting arguments surrounding the crime of rape in early modern England and how the important literary texts, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadias, explore the issue of rape. The thesis explores Sidney's attitude toward a system that sanctioned systematic sexual violence towards women as expressed in the text; as part of this it explores the way that the text differentiates rape from seduction.

Beyond The Pale: Women, Cultural Contagion, And Narrative Hysteria In Kipling, Orwell, And Forster, Alan Blackstock

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Cultural-Historical Origins Of The Literary Vampire In Germany, Heidi Crawford

Journal of Dracula Studies

Before British authors began writing vampire literature, culminating in 1897 with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, eighteenth-century German poets, most significantly Heinrich August Ossenfelder, Gottfried August Bürger, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had begun to adapt the curious phenomenon of vampirism from Central Europe for the creative literature they were producing in the enlightened West. Possibly the most striking observation about the origins of the vampire figure in German poetry is that the German poets seem to have drawn more on Central European than German folklore. The reason for this is that the literary vampire was introduced into eighteenth-century German ballad poetry …

Echoes Of Dracula: Racial Politics And The Failure Of Segregated Spaces In Richard Matheson's I Am Legend., Kathy Davis Patterson

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Dracula And The Afterlife: A Psychological Explanation, Jack D. Maser

Journal of Dracula Studies

Until relatively recently, the primary psychological approach to understanding Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the folklore of vampires has been psychoanalysis. Maurice Richardson asserted in 1956 that Dracula must be seen from a Freudian standpoint, since “from no other does the story really make any sense” (427). However, the psychoanalytic approach shares little with modern, scientifically based psychology. Fascinating though it may be, psychoanalytic theory has almost no measurable attributes and may itself be as mythical as vampires and an afterlife. Rather, psychoanalysis is a creative theory of human cognition and behavior that can be neither proven false, objectively replicated, nor …

The People Of Bram Stoker's Transylvania, Duncan Light

Journal of Dracula Studies

One of the defining features of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the “specific and detailed geographical context that sets this novel apart from other gothic novels” (Florescu & McNally 5). Indeed, although Stoker had not visited Transylvania, he is known to have read widely in preparing Dracula.1 While his historical research has come under particular scrutiny, little attention has been paid to his representation and understanding of the region’s geography.2 As a human geographer with research interests in Romania, I find that there is something not “quite right” about Stoker’s Transylvania. In particular, where are the Romanians? And why are there …

History Of Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Now You're A Man [Book Review], Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Feminist Public Sphere? Virginia Woolf's Revisions Of The Eighteenth Century, Anne Fernald

Anne E Fernald

No abstract provided.

Life After Death: Widows And The English Novel, Defoe To Austen, Karen Gevirtz

Karen Bloom Gevirtz

This monograph argues that images of the widow in the early novel served to express, explore, and construct concepts of appropriate female activity in emerging capitalism during the eighteenth century in England. Drawing on novels published between 1719 and 1818, this study investigates how different classes of widows (affluent, working class, impoverished, and criminal) functioned to challenge and affirm emerging economic values. A concluding chapter on widows in Jane Austen's work shows how changing notions of appropriate female economic activity had settled by the establishment of both the capitalist economy and the novel in the early nineteenth century.

Travel Narrative, Jan Wellington

Jan Wellington

No abstract provided.

Frances Burney, Jan Wellington

Jan Wellington

No abstract provided.