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Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Written In Blood: The Cultural Work Of Family, Sexuality, And Race In Adaptations Of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, Ariana Alvarado
Written In Blood: The Cultural Work Of Family, Sexuality, And Race In Adaptations Of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, Ariana Alvarado
Undergraduate Theses
Anne Rice’s gothic novel “Interview with the Vampire” (1976) has not only stood the test of time as a cult classic, but has continued to be told and retold through a film adaptation (1994) and recent AMC television production (2022). Looking through the lens of adaptation theory and the ideas of Nina Auerbach in Our Vampires, Ourselves, this presentation highlights how both the original novel and subsequent adaptations use the figure of the vampire to represent the social changes of the era of its creation, particularly in regards to queerness and sexuality.
Woman, Queer, Jewish: The Sociopolitical Importance And Impact Of Identity Labels, Megan Polun
Woman, Queer, Jewish: The Sociopolitical Importance And Impact Of Identity Labels, Megan Polun
Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies
In this thesis, I trace and analyze the historical, social, and political uses of three identity labels: woman, queer, and Jewish. These three identity categories are personally important to me because I identify as a queer, Jewish woman. The questions motivating this analysis are as follows: How have these words been defined and who gets to define them? What has it meant historically to move through the world with one of these labels, and what does it look like today? What qualifies someone to identify with one of these labels, and what experiences or qualities do we share? What challenges …
Anti-Woman Invective On The Early Modern Stage: Abuse, Degradation, And Resistance, Savannah Xaver
Anti-Woman Invective On The Early Modern Stage: Abuse, Degradation, And Resistance, Savannah Xaver
Dissertations
On the early modern stage, gendered epithets like “strumpet,” “mermaid,” “minx,” “hobby horse,” “courtesan,” “drab,” and “whore” are not just markers of misogyny. Instead, these insults harm the male user as well as their female target. My cross-playwright and cross-genre connections show the complex, wide use and impact of anti-woman terms. A wide-ranging study of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries reveals that gendered insults signify masculine mental decline in tragedies as well as comedies and tragicomedies. In tragedy, the increasingly violent language of male slur users – like, for example, the frustrated Othello, who declares, of his wife, …
Fantasized Masculinity Performed In American War Narratives, Shea O'Scannlain
Fantasized Masculinity Performed In American War Narratives, Shea O'Scannlain
English Honors Theses
In this thesis I wanted to explore the ways that masculinity has been written in history through the genre of fiction. The first chapter discusses traumatized white masculinity in Kurt Vonnegut's novel SlaughterHouse Five and Oliver Stone's film Born On The Fourth of July. The second chapter deals with the female Black experience in response to the white patriarchy in Toni Morrison's novel Home and HBO's television series LoveCraft Country. And finally chapter 3 deals with mythologized masculinity redeemed through violence in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver and Frank Miller's comic book series The Dark Knight Returns. …
Nsfw: Not So Feminist Women - A Media And Cultural Studies Analysis Of Working Women In Popular Media, Josephine Schofield
Nsfw: Not So Feminist Women - A Media And Cultural Studies Analysis Of Working Women In Popular Media, Josephine Schofield
Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies
Even though gender diversity of characters has increased in television shows and films, this study hypothesized that female characters who are presented as feminist icons function as feminist backlash and perpetuate negative and harmful stereotypes. This was found to be especially true for career-focused women. Applying a cultural studies approach to reading television and film studies through a feminist lens identified the antifeminist factors that continue to cause the perpetual loop of independent women reverting to dated social roles. This research connects what audiences consume through popular media to how they perceive their female co-workers. The findings of this study …
“No Roses, White Nor Red, Glow Here”: The Motif Of The Garden In Two Proserpine Poems By A. Swinburne And D. Greenwell, Cristina Salcedo González
“No Roses, White Nor Red, Glow Here”: The Motif Of The Garden In Two Proserpine Poems By A. Swinburne And D. Greenwell, Cristina Salcedo González
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In this article, I discuss Algernon Swinburne’s and Dora Greenwell’s engagement with the myth of Proserpine through an analysis of the motif of the garden, which takes central stage in both accounts. The examination will illustrate how the authors’ outlined images of the garden challenge the dominant representation of the motif within Western literary tradition, offering a re-interpretation of the myth as social commentary.
The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira
The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects …
Trauma, Ethics, And The Body At War In Brittain, Borden And Bagnold, Carolina Sánchez-Palencia Carazo
Trauma, Ethics, And The Body At War In Brittain, Borden And Bagnold, Carolina Sánchez-Palencia Carazo
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article “Trauma, Ethics, and the Body at War in Brittain, Borden and Bagnold,” Carolina Sánchez-Palencia Carazo discusses how the autobiographical accounts of the conflict by Vera Brittain, Enid Bagnold and Mary Borden, inspired by their experiences as voluntary nurses in the front, deconstruct the meanings of femininity, masculinity and patriotism, contesting the official rhetoric of passivity that defined the role of women in World War I. Their extreme engagement with the precariousness and vulnerability of others elicits an empathic response that can be interpreted through Judith Butler (2004; 2009), Emmanuel Lévinas (1969) and Alan Badiou’s (1993) ethics of …
Subverting Transnormativity: Rage And Resilience In Kim Fu’S For Today I Am A Boy, Andrea Ruthven
Subverting Transnormativity: Rage And Resilience In Kim Fu’S For Today I Am A Boy, Andrea Ruthven
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This article analyzes the affective politics of rage and resilience in the novel For Today I Am a Boy (2014) by Kim Fu. The novel explores the dis-identification (Muñoz 1999) of gender identity through the protagonist, focusing on the rage, sadness, fear, and secrecy that function as the glue holding the body together, but that also work to constrain the process of self-identification. The novel is not the celebration of self-realization, nor is it the lamentation of a traumatized protagonist. Instead, the narrative pays attention to the various ways in which non-binary, or non-normative gender identities are marginalized, and to …
Trespassing Physical Boundaries: Transgression, Vulnerability And Resistance In Sarah Kane’S Blasted (1995), Paula Barba Guerrero, Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo
Trespassing Physical Boundaries: Transgression, Vulnerability And Resistance In Sarah Kane’S Blasted (1995), Paula Barba Guerrero, Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Sarah Kane’s Blasted has been analyzed from various perspectives that address the layers of destruction it exposes. From the questioning of its title and meaning, to the unravelling of the protagonists’ abusive relationship, the analyses have emphasized the depiction of vulnerability as the defining human trait that Jean Ganteau observes in contemporary British literature. However, a key aspect has been overlooked in the critical response to the play: for Kane vulnerability does not equal helplessness, but rather stands in opposition to it. Hence, this article concentrates on how Blasted formulates a new understanding of vulnerability that fits Judith Butler’s later …
Resilience As Regeneration In Kate Atkinson’S Life After Life, Beatriz Domínguez García
Resilience As Regeneration In Kate Atkinson’S Life After Life, Beatriz Domínguez García
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In Life After Life (2013), British writer Kate Atkinson returns to the rewriting of History as her-story that characterized her early fiction. The protagonist’s lifespan overlaps with the major historical events of the twentieth century, allowing the writer to explore how those affected the individual lives of women and, at the same time, problematizing history, memory, and the past. Above all, Life After Life highlights the deep vulnerability of women to systemic gender violence, although it also emphasizes women’s resilience. The purpose of this paper is to examine Atkinson’s peculiar rendering of resilience, which interestingly she locates in the body, …
The Unruly Womb In Early Modern English Drama: Plotting Women's Biology On The Stage, Ursula Potter
The Unruly Womb In Early Modern English Drama: Plotting Women's Biology On The Stage, Ursula Potter
Late Tudor and Stuart Drama
This study provides an accessible, informative and entertaining introduction to women’s sexual health as presented on the early modern stage, and how dramatists coded for it. Beginning with the rise of green sickness (the disease of virgins) from its earliest reference in drama in the 1560s, Ursula Potter traces a continuing fascination with the womb by dramatists through to the oxymoron of the chaste sex debate in the 1640s. She illuminates how playwrights both satirized and perpetuated the notion of the womb’s insatiable appetite.
Decolonizing Adoption Narratives For Transnational Reproductive Justice, Sung Hee Yook, Hosu Kim
Decolonizing Adoption Narratives For Transnational Reproductive Justice, Sung Hee Yook, Hosu Kim
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In their article “Decolonizing Adoption Narratives for Transnational Reproductive Justice,” Sung Hee Yook and Hosu Kim examine narratives emerging from transnational adoption practices, focusing on how birth mothers’ narratives—in which a victim-mother makes choices to give a child for adoption in hopes of a better life for the child, and awaits that child’s return—develop alongside and deviate from the normative orders of motherhood. While birth mothers’ self-transformative narrative illuminates their subjectivities—apart from victimhood, simmering in the latent form of agency—Yook and Kim argue that a compelling narrative of self-mastery produces another discursive trap which renders the numerous less-masterful birth mothers …
“Compassion And Benignytee”: A Reassessment Of The Relationship Between Canacee And The Falcon In Chaucer’S “Squire’S Tale”, Melissa Ridley Elmes
“Compassion And Benignytee”: A Reassessment Of The Relationship Between Canacee And The Falcon In Chaucer’S “Squire’S Tale”, Melissa Ridley Elmes
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
Among its many elements, Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale” includes an emotionally-charged dialogue between two aristocratic female figures: the human daughter of a king, Canacee, and the wounded falcon she meets in the wood. Scholars have debated the nature of this relationship in interspecial, gendered, and specifically feminist and ecofeminist terms. This essay provides a brief retrospective on some of the most recent scholarship examining their relationship—van Dyke (2005); Kordecki (2011); Crane (2012); and Schotland (2012 and 2015)—leading into a reassessment in two parts: first, that the affinity- and experience-driven bond these female figures develop supports a reading of this scene that …
Wishing For The Watch Face In Jonathan Swift’S “The Progress Of Beauty”, Jantina Ellens
Wishing For The Watch Face In Jonathan Swift’S “The Progress Of Beauty”, Jantina Ellens
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This article illuminates the technological underpinnings of Jonathan Swift’s satire, “The Progress of Beauty” (1719), by exploring how eighteenth-century poetics of beauty and scientific progress pit human against automaton. This article ranges from the ego of masculine technological display to women’s self-identification with the automaton to suggest that Swift’s speaker blazons the aging prostitute’s body with the hope that it might resurrect a lost ideal, the beautiful watch face. Instead, readers are confronted with the vision of Celia who, with her chipped paint, greasy joints, and faulty mechanisms, reminds them that humanity continues to break through its enamel. When readers …
The Sin Of Pride In Dressing Bodies In Spanish And Anglo-American Ballads, Ana Belén Martínez García
The Sin Of Pride In Dressing Bodies In Spanish And Anglo-American Ballads, Ana Belén Martínez García
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "The Sin of Pride in Dressing Bodies in Spanish and Anglo-American Ballads" Ana Belén Martínez García argues that trying to decipher the reasons for characters to dress in a certain way may help discover the underlying sociocultural mechanisms that prevail. The author aims to reveal the gender divide associated to clothing through a comparative approach towards popular literature in Spanish and English. She uses Judith Butler's theory of performative acts in order to conduct the text analysis. Clothes-related acts feature prominently in the case of popular balladry. Spanish "romances" and Anglo-American ballads are poems that were and …
Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided for the introduction.
Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Reexamining Virtue In Arthur Mervyn, Clarissa Mcintire
Reexamining Virtue In Arthur Mervyn, Clarissa Mcintire
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
Though Arthur Mervyn focuses primarily on the deadly 1793 invasion of the yellow fever into Philadelphia and humanitarian responses to it, the novel’s juxtaposition of contemporary societal attitudes towards fever victims with those towards unchaste or fallen women underlines striking similarities between the two. In this article I claim that, when applied to unchaste women, the novel’s argument for improved treatment of diseased and infected persons also establishes the unreliability of sexual purity as a standard of respectability due to the potential for a woman’s virtue to be taken from her. Therefore, because Arthur’s society judges the respectability of individuals …
Shakespeare And The Cultural Olympiad: Contesting Gender And The British Nation In The Bbc’S Hollow Crown, L Monique Pittman
Shakespeare And The Cultural Olympiad: Contesting Gender And The British Nation In The Bbc’S Hollow Crown, L Monique Pittman
Faculty Publications
As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad celebrating both the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, the BBC launched a season of programs, entitled Shakespeare Unlocked, most notably presenting the plays of the second tetralogy in four feature-length adaptations released under the unifying title The Hollow Crown. These plays so obviously engaged with the question of English nationalism suited a year in which the United Kingdom wrestled with British identity in a post-colonial and post-Great Recession world. Through its adaptative and filmic vocabularies, however, The Hollow Crown advances a British nationalism unresponsive to the casualties — often women and …
Men, Women And War: An Examination Of Gender Conflicts Within Othello, Hao You
Men, Women And War: An Examination Of Gender Conflicts Within Othello, Hao You
Undergraduate Craft of Research Prize Papers
No abstract provided.
‘My Freedom Is A Privilege Which Nothing Else Can Equal’: The Life And Writings Of Venture Smith And Phillis Wheatley, American Slaves, Donald Holmes Ii
‘My Freedom Is A Privilege Which Nothing Else Can Equal’: The Life And Writings Of Venture Smith And Phillis Wheatley, American Slaves, Donald Holmes Ii
Honors Theses
Slavery in the United States was an evolving institution that lasted nearly 400 years. To understand the colonial era of slavery within the United States, I examine the life and times of Venture Smith, as documented in his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa (1798), and that of Phillis Wheatley using The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley (1988). Both Smith and Wheatley were African-born slaves brought to America during the eighteenth century. In Smith’s narrative, he concludes by proclaiming “my freedom is a privilege which nothing else can equal” (31). This statement …
Gender And Ideology In Disney's Beast Fables, Stephanie Mastrostefano
Gender And Ideology In Disney's Beast Fables, Stephanie Mastrostefano
Honors Projects
The Walt Disney Corporation is one of the dominant ideological state apparatuses of the last eighty years. One of the ways in which the Walt Disney Corporation naturalizes a particular ideological value system is in the animated feature film’s representation of gender. Using Judith Butler’s work on gender representation as the critical framework, along with Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology, and Michel Foucault’s definition of cultural discourse, I analyze and interpret key representations of gender in anthropomorphized animal protagonists within the Disney “Beast Fable” films, Bambi (1942), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and The Lion King (1994). My analysis of …
A Survey Of Slovenian Women Fairy Tale Writers, Milena Mileva Blazić
A Survey Of Slovenian Women Fairy Tale Writers, Milena Mileva Blazić
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "A Survey of Slovenian Women Fairy Tale Writers" Milena Mileva Blažić begins with an introduction to the Slovenian fairy tale writing tradition dating back nearly 150 years. While male authors published collections of tales, women writers published only individual fairy tales and owing to their biographies giving birth to children and caring for their families gained less, if any, recognition in literary history. Blažić's overview of Slovenian women writers of fairy tales and scholarship about the genre includes the related genre of youth literature. Blažić's survey is placed in the context of West European fairy tale writing …
The Rebellious Angel, Pamela Gannon Mazzuchelli
The Rebellious Angel, Pamela Gannon Mazzuchelli
Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview
Examines Virginia Woolf's writing and her anger in historical contexts, revealing that circumstances dictated that she deflect this volatile emotion. Focuses on the ways in which this deflection of anger illuminates the fictional dynamics of Woolf's autobiographical novel, To the Lighthouse and analyzes the concept of the Angel in the House, posited to be at the root of Woolf's anger. Argues that anger exists on three levels in the novel and that the main character, Mrs. Ramsay, is a victim of the Angel in the House ideology.
Beyond Boundaries: Embodiment And Selfhood In Hilary Mantel's Novels, Tara Koger
Beyond Boundaries: Embodiment And Selfhood In Hilary Mantel's Novels, Tara Koger
Masters Theses & Specialist Projects
No abstract provided.
Dying Gods And Sacred Prostitutes, Katherine Elizabeth Williamson
Dying Gods And Sacred Prostitutes, Katherine Elizabeth Williamson
Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview
Explores the ways in which D.H. Lawrence revises and complicates archetypal characters and stories in his fiction. Lawrence's mythic revisions are frequently along gender lines, thus having significant implications for femininst or gendered readings of his works. Focuses mainly on The Rainbow and The Plumed Serpent but also treats some of Lawrence's shorter fiction.
Fantasies Of Gender And The Witch In Feminist Theory And Literature, Justyna Sempruch
Fantasies Of Gender And The Witch In Feminist Theory And Literature, Justyna Sempruch
Comparative Cultural Studies
In Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, Justyna Sempruch analyzes contemporary representations of the “witch” as a locus for the cultural negotiation of genders. Sempruch revisits some of the most prominent traits in past and current perceptions in feminist scholarship of exclusion and difference. She examines a selection of twentieth-century US American, Canadian, and European narratives to reveal the continued political relevance of metaphors sustained in the archetype of the “witch” widely thought to belong to pop-cultural or folkloristic formulations of the past. Through a critical rereading of the feminist texts engaging with these …
Textual Possession: Manipulating Narratives In Wilkie Collins's Sensation Fiction, Kieran Ayton
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.