English Language and Literature | Open Access Articles

“Chains And Whips Excite Me”: The Awakening Of Female Sexuality Through The Fifty Shades Of Grey Phenomenon, Francesca Weeks

Honors Senior Capstone Projects

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An Exploration Of Female Sexuality, Class Status, And Art In Hardy’S Short Stories, Erin M. Lanza

Student Publications

In this paper, I examine Hardy’s treatment of female sexuality as mediated by art in two short stories: “The Fiddler of the Reels” and “An Imaginative Woman.” Given Hardy’s role as an artist, his noted compassion for women, and his interest in Victorian attitudes toward sexuality, my analysis of these topics in his short stories is particularly relevant. Hardy’s investment in class issues is also pertinent, as I consider how Hardy uses his heroines’ relationships with art to underline the distinct disadvantages of lower-class women. While Ella, the middle-class heroine of “An Imaginative Woman,” uses poetry to channel stagnant sensual …

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Loving The Unlovable Body In Lois Ann Yamanaka’S Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre, Christa Baiada

Publications and Research

Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s award-winning yet remarkably neglected Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) explores female adolescence and coming of age in a rich, polyphonic collection of verse novellas. “Loving the Unlovable Body” focuses on Yamanaka’s treatment of this transition as a fully embodied, fraught, and often painful experience by explicating the uses of several tropes used to express girls’ experiences of their bodies: eating, voice, eyes, fragmentation, and marking/naming. These metaphors contribute to the development of a complex range of possibilities from devastating to hopeful, presented in juxtaposition and interplay, for girls’ relationships to their culturally denigrated bodies and the …