English Language and Literature Commons^™

Gower As Data: Exploring The Application Of Machine Learning To Gower’S Middle English Corpus, Kara L. Mcshane, Alvin Grissom Ii

Accessus

Distant reading, a digital humanities method in wide use, involves processing and analyzing a large amount of text through computer programs. In treating texts as data, these methods can highlight trends in diction, themes, and linguistic patterns that individual readers may miss or critical traditions may obscure. Though several scholars have undertaken projects using topic models and text mining on Middle English texts, the nonstandard orthography of Middle English makes this process more challenging than for our counterparts in later literature.

This collaborative project uses Gower’s Confessio Amantis as a small, fixed corpus for analysis. We employ natural language processing …

Standing In The Dark: Sloth And Stability, Paralysis And Perseverance In Book Iv Of The Confessio Amantis, Andrea Schutz

Accessus

In Book IV of the Confessio, things happen in the dark – the dark of night, of dreams, of despair, of secrecy, of treachery, of death. The medieval sin of accidia sets the pace for this beautifully constructed book, whose tales link and cross, as in a dance. Dido, Phyllis, the bad, the forgetful, and the obsessive lovers swing like slowing pendulums back to their starting points, and stop still. On the whole, their dance with Amans is a slow and stately pavane of the dead and desperate. This is Gower’s darkest book, though not the most bloody: Sloth is …

Narcissus In Queer Time, Lacey M. Wolfer

Accessus

Queer temporality has been studied in relation to the Middle Ages as a means of questioning the prevailing historiography for other modes of connection to the past, such as embodied or affective. Conversely, the other branch of queer temporality has been primarily interested in how queer lifestyles today disrupt the heteronormative plan laid out by society. Joining these modes, Gower’s revision of Narcissus questions our notions of historiography through showing us an example of a queer, transgender character and his struggles with heteronormative expectations—demonstrating that the medieval is not so disconnected from the modern.

One Voice, Ancient And Resigned, Will Rogers

Accessus

While we know, or at least can imagine, what Gower looked like in his old age, it is hard to imagine or hear his voice. And yet, given what we know about his old age and visual impairments, his voice necessarily was important to his old age and continuing revisions of his texts. In this article, I attempt to reconstruct from some of his later poetry what that voice might have sounded like, at least in-text, and piece together how later authors heard that voice of old age.

Dark Money: Gower, Echo, And 'Blinde Avarice', Craig E. Bertolet

Accessus

Gower’s poetic works show a consistent concern with the darkness and deceit associated with Avarice, the sin mostly associated with commercial transactions. In the Confessio, he calls Avarice blind. This blindness seems to work both ways. Avarice blinds humans to their humanity because it causes them to cheat and steal from others. Avarice also blinds the victims of the greedy since the greedy resort to deception in order to gain what they want. In the Confessio, Genius tells the tale of Echo as an example of the practices that he calls usury but who works as an amalgam …

The Friendly Monster And The Complacent Queer: Assimilationist Approaches To Modern Adaptations Of Frankenstein's Creature, Cassandra Karn

Women's and Gender Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Monsters have been representations of othered communities since before the creation of the novel, so the Creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein should be no exception. The Creature defies binaries and rages against social injustice, making him a queer figure of resistance. However, modern adaptations of the Creature attempt to assimilate the Creature into the larger culture, removing both its queerness and its resistance. This unqueering brings into question how othered populations become accepted, and the cost paid for such acceptance.

Metafiction As Anti-Genre Across Narrative Mediums, Jesse Matlock

Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the various functions of self-conscious and self-reflexive narrative such as authorial control over meaning, mutability of history, and ontological exploration/experimentation such as the relationship between fiction and reality. It examines texts from multiple narrative genres and media (novels, comic books/graphic novels, film, and theater) as well as established critical work on metafiction, such as Patricia Waugh’s Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, Robert Alter’s Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre, and Linda Hutcheon’s “Historiographic Metafiction” to establish the prototypical characteristics of metafiction. It also discusses the specific ways in which these metafictional practices …

The Ethics And Politics Of Breastfeeding: Power, Pleasure, Poetics By Robyn Lee And Wild Child: Intensive Parenting And Posthumanist Ethics By Naomi Morgenstern, Gina M. Granter

The Goose

Book Review of:

The Ethics and Politics of Breastfeeding: Power, Pleasure, Poeticsby ROBYN LEE

and

Wild Child: Intensive Parenting and Posthumanist Ethicsby NAOMI MORGENSTERN

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article offers a Valentinian interpretation of the Hollywood film The Others (2001). A particular attention is paid to the ways in which cinematic motifs and narrative elements of the film draw on myths, ideas and symbolic imagery present in Valentinian works, especially in the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3). In the course of the heuristic analysis, the paper argues that although the film employs Valentinian ideas, it depicts different understanding of the world. This issue is addressed in the last part of the article by situating the film within broader …

(Haunted) Talk Show: Performance Pedagogy For Large Lecture Courses, Ann Garascia

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This document outlines a culminating activity for ENG 1120 Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy that weds out-of-class preparation, as well as in-class participation and literary role-playing: “Haunted Talk Show.”It is a talk show-style assignment featuring major characters from the various texts that we have read throughout the semester. This document sketches out: A brief outline of my potential ENG 1120 theme, units, and sample texts; and, more detailed discussion of the specific assignment including a general overview, more detailed steps for execution (for students and instructor), and an explanation of the activity potentially aligns with pedagogical best practices for …

Letters From The “Gentlemen Of The Press,” 1810-1845, David E. Latane

English Publications

A collection of letters by men and women associated with the periodical press in England in the first half of the nineteenth century, transcribed, annotated, and presented with scans of the original letters. Notable contributors include Times editors Thomas Barnes and John Delane, Fraser's Magazine writers William Maginn and John Heraud, Charles Molloy Westmacott editor of The Age, Stanley Lees Giffard of The Standard , and Mary Russell Mitford.

Nosthetics: Instagram Poetry And The Convergence Of Digital Media And Literature, Tanja Grubnic

Department of English Publications

This article considers the proliferation of nostalgic aesthetics in Instagram poetry (‘instapoetry’). Though often overlooked, the relationship between the platform and the poetry itself is a vibrant entry point into debates about the handwritten, analogue and vintage styles of instapoetry. Connecting modernist and postmodernist arguments about nostalgia, this article aims to form a critical and conceptual lens with which to analyze the visual aspects of nostalgic aesthetics—referred to as ‘nosthetics’—characteristic of Instapoetry, investigating how and why the genre impersonates the pre-digital, analogue past. By examining scholarship on platforms, nostalgia and instapoetry, this article shows how the concept of nosthetics can …

Table Of Contents Vol. 22, 2020

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Permeable Viewpoints And Parasitic Influence In Bbc And Netflix's Dracula, Laure Blanchemain Faucon

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Title Pages, Vol. 22, 2020

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Vampires In Japan: From Yokai To Anime, Adam L. Miller

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

A Monstrous Outbreak: Epidemics And Biology In The Creative Porcess Of Fuillermo Del Toro's Symbolic Vampires, Maria Teresa Depaoli

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Simply The Best: Louis Jourdon As Count Dracula, Victoria Amador

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Filming Reconciliation: Indigenous Screen Cultures In An Age Of Redress, Kyle L. Killebrew

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines Indigenous cinematic cultures in the United States and Canada since 1998 in the context of international reconciliation movements between settler and Indigenous states. This project examines the contested intersections of twenty-first century Indigenism and multiculturalism, exploring the ways in which Native voices in media navigate international cultural marketplaces. I focus on Georgina Lightning’s Older than America, Igloolik Isuma’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Sherman Alexie and Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals, and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ A Red Girl’s Reasoning. Specifically, I am concerned with Indigenous cinemas and media that envision and enact models of reconciliation, healing, and social justice using …

Dracula As Inter-American Film Icon: Universal Pictures And Cinematográfica Absa, Antonio Barrenechea

English & Linguistics Articles

My essay explores the vampire cinema of Hollywood and Mexico. In particular, I trace the relationship between Universal Pictures as the progenitor of horror during the Great Depression and Cinematográfica ABSA's "mexploitation" practices. The latter resulted in the first vampire film in Latin America--"El vampiro" (1957). Rather than strengthening separatist national cinemas, the unintended consequences of genre film production make this a case of inter-American scope.

Gendered Discourses In The American Tv Sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Ee Wern Chin

Student Works (2020-2029)

The current research concentrates on analysing the gendered discourse in the television (TV) series of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, investigating how gender is portrayed as it depicts a representable degree of society today. The proposed findings are information as to how this sitcom reflects the gendered discourses that were common in that time and are still relevant today. This paper considers how sitcom creators want their audiences to be able to relate to what is shown on their programme, making it relatable to the audience, creating the problem of possible bias from the creators supporting stereotypes that only encourages the same mindset amongst …

‘Not Shap’D For Sportive Tricks:’ Representations Of Disability In Film And Digital Broadcast Cinema Adaptations Of Early Modern Drama, Grace Mccarthy

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In films that feature disability, we see the recursive and discussion-limiting impulse to say “this representation is negative. Therefore, the representation should not be seen,” based on critical theories and methodologies outside the purview of film studies. Unfortunately, the overlay of an English, narratological, sociological, or medical methodology and terminology onto a film representation of disability is ultimately recursive and self-limiting; critical and advocate calls for accuracy to the lived experience of people with disabilities in on-screen representations decline to engage with the visual construction of cinematic representations of disability and the often fascinating cinematographic and thematic patterns that emerge …

"Don't Look At Her, She's Mad": Mama And Frankenstein Reveal Modern-Day Preoccupations, Caitlin Gamble

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Viewing the film Mama (2013) through the lens of a certain Gothic text, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, reveals similar fears of the feminine alongside the focus of the nature of the in-between. These commonalities between the texts reveal an emerging trend in modern monster-horror films—the narrative-driven analysis of the role of the other and multiculturalism in the social consciousness. In this paper, I examine how Mama as an Imperial Gothic film builds on the tradition of indigenous stories, like La Llorona, and the Gothic. By referencing and combining these histories in the genre markers, it uses motherhood and the other to …

Get Out (2017), Us (2019), And Jordan Peele's New Black Body Horror, Brady Simenson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis provides an analysis of Jordan Peele’s films, Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). The thesis contextualizes Get Out and Us as part of a protracted cultural conversation regarding monstrous images of the cinematic black body that began with Hollywood’s early monster films and continued into the culturally subversive era of blaxploitation horror films. While blaxploitation cinema reclaimed images of the racial Other that had been represented in the early creature feature subgenre, no such notable movement has subverted the more recent body horror subgenre. Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us shift this subgenre toward racially inverted body horror. …

Undiagnosing Iphis: How The Lack Of Trauma In John Gower’S “Iphis And Iante” Reinforces A Subversive Trans Narrative, C Janecek

Accessus

Trauma has long played a role in queer narratives, including Ovid’s “Iphis and Ianthe”, which many scholars have interpreted as reinforcing heteronormativity through Iphis’s transformation into a man in order to marry Ianthe. However, I argue that John Gower’s rendition of this tale reframes Iphis as a trans man and allows us to understand the poem as a subversive trans narrative that revolts against cisnormative conceptions of gender. Utilizing Judith Butler’s writing on the medicalization of gender, I explore the relationship between trauma, performance, and gender within the Ovidian and Gowerian versions of Iphis.

Foreword, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

This is the Foreword to Accessus 5.1

Mythology In Children's Animation, David L. Emerson

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

In recent years, there have been several animated films, ostensibly for children yet appreciable by adults as well, which have made attempts to incorporate various mythologies of the world into their settings and plots. There is considerable variation in the amounts of mythology included, from offhand mentions to integral components of the story. There is also a wide range of the degree of faithfulness to the mythologies being depicted. This note gives an overview of some of the most well-known and readily available animations from 1992 to 2017, and show how the mythologies of many different cultures are represented. Some …

Marvelous Geometry: Narrative And Metafiction In Modern Fairy Tale By Jessica Tiffin, Felicia Jean Steele

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Book review of Marvelous Geometry: Narrative and Metafiction in Modern Fairy Tale by Jessica Tiffin.

Statement Of Creative Practice: Creative Making And Vr Literature, Mez Breeze

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Editor's Note
Mez Breeze authored her artist’s statement in virtual reality. You can view Mez’s artist’s statement even without a VR headset. Just click this link: https://bit.ly/2Kov372
You’ll need this password to access it: XR_PlayG

Abstract
Constructing creative writing in XR (aka Extended Reality: an umbrella term that covers Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and a fourth category called Synthetic Reality), and VR in particular, is an exciting and recent phenomenon in the Electronic Literature field. This proposed Statement of Creative Practice will examine the scope and reach of XR artforms while focusing in particular on the subset of …