English Language and Literature Commons^™

Digitizing The American West: Analyzing Rhetoric In Red Dead Redemption 2, Amalia Mcevoy

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

High-budget, long-form storytelling games offer dozens of hours of content for audiences to explore and learn from. Although far different from sitting and reading a book, there is a distinct connection to be made between how literature is experienced and how audiences can experience a narrative-heavy video game. Based on this connection, there are bridges to be built between video games and literature, understanding how one field can benefit from the other as well as how one field can be informed by the other. An analysis of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 using reader response theory can illustrate …

Du Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Caitlyn Aldersea, Justin Bravo, Sam Allen, Anna Block, Connor Block, Emma Buechler, Maria De Los Angeles Bustillos, Arianna Carlson, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Noah Craver, Kate Dillon, Muskan Fatima, Angel Fernandes, Emma Finch, Colleen Cassidy, Amy Fishman, Andrea Francis, Stacia Fritz, Simran Gill, Emma Gries, Rylie Hansen, Shannon Powers, Jacqueline Martinez, Zachary Harker, Ashley Hasty, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Kathleen Hopps, Adelaide Kerenick, Colin Kleckner, Ci Koehring, Elijah Kruger, Braden Krumholz, Maddie Leake, Lyneé Alves, Seraphina Loukas, Yatzari Lozano Vazquez, Haley Maki, Emily Martinez, Sierra Mckinney, Audrey Mitchell, Kipling Newman, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Andrew Nguyen, Stevie Ostman, Casandra Pearson, Alexandra Penney, Julia Gielczynski, Tyler Ball, Anna Rini, Christina Rorres, Simon Ruland, Helayna Schafer, Emma Sellers, Sarah Schuller, Claire Shaver, Kevin Summers, Isabella Shaw, Madison Sinar, Claudia Pena, Apshara Siwakoti, Carter Sorensen, Madi Sousa, Anna Sparling, Alexandra Revier, Brandon Thierry, Dylan Tyree, Maggie Williams, Lauren Wols

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

DU Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Works

The Lingua Anglica, Liliana Kotval

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The term Lingua Franca can be dated back to the Middle Ages, where the “Frankish language” was a French-and-Italian-based jargon spoken between crusaders and traders in the Eastern Mediterranean to optimize communication through a common tongue. Today, English is the Lingua Franca of Europe and, just like the Lingua Franca of the Middle Ages, optimizes communication between those in a culturally and linguistically rich continent.

English- due to several historical reasons, including the internationalization of Europe following World War II, competitive economic world powers, such as the United States, the expansion of the internet, among others- has proven to be …

Exploring Multiliteracies And Other Approaches To Second Language Teaching, Saralee Dunster

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This teaching portfolio offers a selection from the author’s graduate coursework, teaching experience, and research undertaken while enrolled in the Utah State University Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program. The documents included are a reflection of her pedagogical approach and teaching practice, developed through varying contexts of professional experiences, including teaching English and French as a second language. This portfolio includes: reflections on the author’s teaching environment, a teaching philosophy statement, a professional development peer observation, a reflection paper that demonstrates the author’s experiences teaching with stories within the context of the multiliteracies framework, specifically multimodal fairy tales with …

Bibliotherapy: A Literary And Linguistic Analysis Of Literature, Matthew Curry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bibliotherapy—the process of utilizing literature for its therapeutic properties—has been around for centuries; however, it wasn’t until a surge of research in the 1920s that the process became recognized as an adequate method of therapy. With the rising mental health crisis looming over the United States, the time to develop, establish, and advocate for a bibliotherapeutic curriculum in K-12 public education is now. Using literary works such as Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, Helena Fox’s How it Feels to Float, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, this thesis establishes the literary, therapeutic, and pedagogical reasoning for the implementation of such …

Narratives Of Existence And The Narrative Existence: Ontological Unity In The Border Trilogy And Quantum Theory, Rebecca Leigh Mcintosh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because the humanities and the sciences approach philosophical questions in contrasting ways, the study of literature and the study of physical science are often viewed as unrelated realms of scholarly inquiry. Science aims to provide a methodological approach for gathering knowledge about the world, while the humanities focus on criticism or analysis of cultural artifacts. However, even though the conceptual frameworks applied in scientific study and literary study are often incompatible or remarkably divergent, their methods for conceptualizing and transmitting ideas are the same, for humanity understands the world and experience of this world through narratives composed of referential metaphors. …

Final Master's Portfolio, Tooba Amin

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Tooba Amin covers the following topics in her Final Master's Portfolio: Capitalism, Medievalism, Women's Studies, and Indigenous Studies.

Understanding Authoritarianism, Fascism, Far-Right Politics, And Anti-Democratic Processes, Paul Viafranco

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Paul Viafranco seeks to understand the rise of Authoritarianism, Fascism, Far-Right Politics, and Anti-Democratic Processes, by delving into Executive Order 9066, Marine Le Pen’s use of medievalism, Donald Trump’s discourse, and the various factors that contribute to the need for seeking asylum or refugee status.

From Pedagogical To The Practical: A Study Linked By Japanese Themes, Kennedy Lomont

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio consists of three essays linked by Japanese themes and also includes a practical project. These papers delve into the subjects of Japenese incarceration, magical girl anime, and Noh theater. My practical portion contains the materials that I have created and refined for job search purposes.

In A State Of Nervous Conditions: Gender Relations In Tsitsi Dangarembga’S Groundbreaking Novel, Evan Garcia

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

This paper is analysis of Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel Nervous Conditions. It examines the oppressive system of colonial patriarchy in Southern Rhodesia and the suffocating conflicts faced by African women living under the legacy of colonial rule.

The De-Indigenisation Of The English Language: On Linguistic Idiosyncrasy, Fayssal Bensalah

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

This paper introduces and explains a fresh adaptation of linguistic hybridity. This creative strategy is common among postcolonial, transnational and transcultural writers, who would import linguistic features from their first languages to hybridise their prose and paint it with a distinctive identity. I aim, however, to demonstrate that my English text can be hybridised without looking outside the English language, but rather by looking within it. The English language, as I argue, is already a hybrid language, populated by thousands of words borrowed from various languages, including Arabic. The words of this latter, if used intelligently and selectively in my …

Zur Ästhetik Des Widerstands Im Afrodeutschen Theater: Am Beispiel Von Olumide Popoolas Also By Mail, Bertrand Collins Ngong M.A.

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This research is titled On the Aesthetics of Resistance in Afro-German Theater: A Case Study of Olumide Popoola's Also by mail. The main purpose of this research is to show how Afro-German theater resists through creative processes on a symbolic and aesthetic level to address crucial challenges faced by the black minority in Germany. The play Also by mail by Nigerian-German playwright Olumide Popoola is an interesting example of this, as it is situated at the intersection of gender, race, and identity. Popoola’s engagement with the aesthetics of resistance provides a way to understand how Afro-German activism today uses …

Desire In Bridgerton: Defining The Female Gaze, Hailey C. Coles

Honors College Theses

Feminist literature is rife with multiple, sometimes conflicting, sometimes partial, definitions of the female gaze. A definitive understanding of the female gaze incorporates the literature but includes other modes of thought and analysis appropriate for a number of different media. Bridgerton articulates this understanding as it privileges female sexuality not just through dialogue, but through its focus on multiple characters’ bodily awareness. Non-verbal elements like blocking, the physical articulation of bodies, changes in camera angles and foci that privilege subtle and nuanced movements, and even the pervasive use of music all contribute to the form and characterization of the female …

Humanity's Fate: An Analysis Of Speculative Human Evolution In Literary Fiction, Celeste T. Johnson

Senior Theses

Speculative human evolution is a literature subgenre of science fiction that explores the potential future of humanity and descendant species. Little academic research has been done to evaluate the scientific accuracy of works of this genre or assess the relationship between the themes presented in the works and our current world. Future human species and their evolutionary journeys were assessed for scientific possibility through comparison with current research in fields such as anthropology, evolutionary biology, and sociology. It was found that the species depicted in works of speculative human evolution were largely based in scientific accuracy and could possibly exist …

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …

Utopian Promises, Dystopic Realities: Teaching Bell Hooks “No Love In The Wild”, Naimah H. Ford

Feminist Pedagogy

This original teaching activity discusses bell hooks’ film review of Beasts of The Southern Wild and explains how it can be used to encourage students to recognize how popular culture reproduces and reinforces disturbing paradigms. This original teaching activity, based on hooks’ review “No Love in The Wild,” encourages students to be informed while navigating visual images in popular culture. This activity also explains how hooks’ film review and the film can be used to empower students with strategies to analyze film and other visual images that are seemingly progressive but support the strictures and structures that reinforce patriarchy, racism, …

Covid-19 As An Industry Accelerant, Betty Huang

Honors Theses

The coronavirus pandemic, declared as a national emergency on March 13th, 2020, has caused extreme social and economic disruption all over the world, forever leaving a distinct imprint on history. Although many companies struggled immensely, either barely pulling out of the pandemic alive or having to completely shut down, several other companies have found ways to flourish during this unprecedented time.

The beginning of the pandemic brought lowered advertising rates. Several companies made the marketing decision to run campaigns during this time to take advantage of these lowered rates while creating a company response to the pandemic itself. The world …

“Any Means Necessary To Refuse Erasure By Algorithm:” Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’S Travesty Generator, Zach Whalen

Communication & Digital Studies Articles

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's 2019 book of poetry is titled Travesty Generator in reference to Hugh Kenner and Joseph O'Rourke's Pascal program to “fabricate pseudo-text” by producing text such that each n-length string of characters in the output occurs at the same frequency as in the source text. Whereas for Kenner and O'Rourke, labeling their work a “travesty” is a hyperbolic tease or a literary burlesque, for Bertram, the travesty is the political reality of racism in America. For each of the works Travesty Generator, Bertram uses the generators of computer poetry to critique, resist, and replace narratives of oppression and to …

Fyw: College Writing Basics, Serhiy Metenko, Jeffrey Robin

Open Educational Resources

This book is a curated version of About Writing: A Guide by
Robin Jeffrey. Select chapters from the original book have been rearranged to
follow the class schedule for the Fall 2023 FIQWS Killer Stories
course at The City College of New York. Please reference the syllabus for reading due dates.

A digital version of this textbook can be found on: https://pressbooks.cuny.edu/yourenglishprofessor/

The full textbook by Jeffrey Robin can be found here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/aboutwriting/

From “A Room Of Your Own” To “A Room Of Her Own”: Women Rewriting Women And The Path To Feminist Practice, Vasiliki Misiou

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) was first translated in Greek by Mina Dalamanga (Odysseus Editions) in 1980. Almost forty years later, in 2019, Vasia Tzanakari was assigned the translation of Woolf’s seminal text by Metaichmio Publications. And in 2021, a new translation by Sparti Gerodimou saw the light of day, published by Erato Publications (2021). Three different women translators have thus rendered Woolf’s text in Greek with all three publications coming out at times marked by significant changes in Greek society. Exploring the context in which the agents were situated and drawing on feminist translation practices and …

Transformation And Embodiment: Posthumanism In Marie Darrieussecq's Pig Tales And Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl, Samantha Ludlow

All Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to analyze Marie Darrieussecq’s Pig Tales and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl, with a particular emphasis on how one’s age, gender, and racial identity each affect the reception an individual has towards their animality and connections with nonhuman animals. By using posthumanism as a framework, I argue that though it is initially difficult for Darrieussecq’s narrator to accept her changing body during her adulthood (where she already has a strong sense of identity), her transformation and choice to life as a sow by the end of the novel illustrates a rejection of her society’s anthropocentrism. Further, …

Engaging Students And Teaching Life Skills Through Community Collaboration, Kim Stein

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Collaboration with the Youth First Program of Saginaw increased students' engagement in eleventh-grade English. Students bonded with community partners, their teacher, and their peers in new ways which produced an environment of mutual respect and deeper learning. Students engaged in a debate project which garnered recognition from school administrators and community members, who were influenced to enact positive changes for the school community.

Visualizing The Permanent Lie: An Examination Of Dystopian Literature Using Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’S Model, Anthony Mitchell

Master’s Theses

This thesis argues for the formation of an evolving canon of literature critical to continued resistance to totalitarianism, focusing primarily on the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ji Xianlin. In crafting the theoretical basis of my study, I rely primarily on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s concept of the “permanent lie” and its related concepts, “survive at any price” and “only material results matter” as formulated in his magnum opus, The Gulag Archipelago. In Solzhenitsyn’s view, the “permanent lie” is rooted in the creation of a virtual reality among individuals trapped in a totalitarian society, in which they must hold …

The Dissonant History Of Tristan And Isolde, Amanda Persaud

Dissertations and Theses

This essay traces the historical evolution of the story of Tristan and Isolde through three distinct phases, highlighting the transformation of the story from a feudal version to a post-feudal rendition infused with courtly love doctrines and notions of Christian love. It examines the early versions of the story by Béroul and Gottfried von Strassburg and discusses the shift in the portrayal of the relationship between Tristan and Isolde from one that decries disloyalty to one that is more sympathetic to their love. The essay also analyzes Richard Wagner's opera version of the story, which celebrates individual desire over duty …

Ruptures In Indentures In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies And Unaccustomed Earth, Prabal D. Gupta

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Jhumpa Lahiri (1967) is one of the prominent American writers of Bengali descent, contributing mainly to diaspora literature to depict the nuanced aspects of Bengalis in their immigrant lives. Lahiri’s stories in Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and Unaccustomed Earth (2008) illustrate the challenges of the Bengali diaspora due to their indentured identity, which I have used to refer to the Bengali people’s culturally-rooted identity. This study investigates how the diaspora’s native cultural identity fluctuates in connection with the host culture. The research renders a reconfigured image of “home” because the concept of home changes for these people after migration in …

Conceptual Metaphor Usage In Glenn Youngkin’S 2021 Gubernatorial Campaign, Sara Rose Hotaling

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

In “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language,” Lakoff and Johnson suggest that conceptual metaphors pervade everyday language and produce the reality of our world. Conceptual metaphors act similarly within the occupational register of political campaigns in that they both support and construct a set of beliefs that become the reality of politicians, political parties, and constituents. In this language research, the conceptual metaphors employed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin during his 2021 gubernatorial campaign were identified, analyzed, and categorized. The corpus of this research consists of two gubernatorial debates, three campaign speeches, and one television interview. An example of conceptual metaphor …

Monstrous Oil: Theorizing Petromodernity's Monsters, Madalynn Lee Madigar

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Petroleum, a primary global energy resource, serves as a foundation of our contemporary society. However, the pervasive influence of oil as substance, commodity, and industry in our petromodern lives often goes unrecognized. In the present moment of biogeocultural crisis surrounding fossil fuels, recognizing and understanding our multifaceted engagements with petroleum is critical. This thesis contributes to the growing field of Petrocultural Studies by considering the conceptualization of petroleum through the associated tropes and figure of the monster. Through the petromonstrous, a term that encapsulates the massive scale, haunting effects, and human-other entanglements of petroleum, cultural attitudes and anxieties about oil …

Wayfinding, Kalani N. Padilla

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

A Black Prometheus Among The Gods: Illuminating African American Literary Tradition In Sam Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat By The Door, Kenneth L. Rainey Iii

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In his hard-hitting novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door Sam Greenlee aims to help his target African American audience to succeed and thrive as their true selves with the novel functioning as a guide to resisting the ever-present physical and spiritual threat faced daily. On the one hand the novel functions as a manual for civil uprising, but underneath that surface, Greenlee argues that true African American resistance comes through nurturing self-determination, self-love, and self-esteem. This project also argues that Spook ought to be located closer to the center of the African American literary canon and provides comparisons …

Payton's Final Master's Portfolio, Payton Boshears

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Here is my final Master's Portfolio. I did not have specialization for the English program, so for the portfolio I chose four different projects that represent the variety of courses I have taken during my time here at BGSU.