English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Black Artiste: Politization As Racialization, Matthew Dawkins

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The idea that the personal doubles as the political is a modern analysis of socio- political regimes, popularized by second-wave feminism in the 1960s. However, this understanding has become increasingly relevant for a number of ideologies due to the ways in which modern political frameworks (ie. campaigns, policies, legislation, etc.) continue to target marginalized groups while the global social consciousness demands that political leaders rectify social issues in political arenas.

In this research project, I challenge the relationship between the personal and the political for Black artists in order to examine the extent to which Black art is inherently political. …

“Madam” Elizabeth: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley’S Sisyphean Attempt To Join The “Cult Of True Womanhood”, Bella Biancone

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

Nineteenth century notions of femininity and etiquette were governed by strict societal standards. “True Womanhood” was defined by four fundamental virtues– piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. However, there was another pre-requisite for joining this revered cult¬: whiteness. No matter how pious or domestic a woman of color was, she could never hope to be considered a proper lady by Victorian standards. In discerning what it meant to be a member of that “cult of True Womanhood,” Black women were used to determine the boundaries of white womanhood; a “True Woman” was to be the antithesis of the stereotypical sexual and …

Rhetorical Resistance To Assimilation Among Cherokee Female Seminary Students, Kaelyn Ireland

Symposium of Student Scholars

Throughout the nineteenth century, Cherokees invited American missionaries into their territory to establish schools where children and youth could learn the ways of Euroamericans, particularly Christianity and spoken and written English. Although mission schools contributed to acculturation, they also provided means for Cherokees to resist assimilation. Cherokees cited school attendance as evidence they were becoming “civilized” in hopes they could demonstrate to Euroamericans that they were sufficiently like them, thus preventing Removal from their homelands, and students employed what they learned as leverage in dealing with the United States in political matters that affected their tribe. Only a small minority …

Charles Gibson And Indian Territory's Periodical Press, Tereza M. Szeghi

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

I argue that Charles Gibson (Creek writer and journalist) offers an important but woefully understudied voice of resistance to the changes imposed upon the tribes of Indian Territory around the turn of the 20th century (such as forced allotment of tribal lands, dissolution of tribal governments, and Oklahoma statehood). In his regular column, “Rifle Shots,” Gibson offered a dynamic space in which to process and comment upon these changes. More specifically, while Gibson was quite outspoken in his critiques of the ways in which U.S. policies threatened Creeks’ sovereignty, culture, and well-being, his column also frequently contained reworkings of traditional …

Entertainment Media Perceptions Of Minorities In Young Adult Adaptations, Kynnadie Bennett

Scholars Week

This is an exploration of stereotypical and racist portrayals of minorities, specifically African-American, Latinx, and Native American communities, in film and television in the past and how that has affected representation in film adaptations of young adult literature. Young adult literature is one of the highest-selling genres in literature, purchased by both young adults and actual adults. In recent years, young adult literature has been adapted into film and television series and while representation has improved since the early years of entertainment history, there are still problems in the industry: many of the stereotypes remain, some minorities lack representation, and …

Retelling The Classics: The Harlem Renaissance, Biblical Stories, And Black Peoplehood, Mina Magalhaes

Celebration of Learning

Applying social identity theory to the process of creating peoplehood can illustrate the positive power that literature has in uplifting marginalized communities by showing their worth. James Weldon Johnson’s “The Creation” and Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain, both composed during the Harlem Renaissance, offer one way to create Black peoplehood by creating depictions of God’s love for His Black people through the repurposing of biblical stories. Through the implementation of social identity theory to Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain and Johnson’s “The Creation,” I argue that these two authors addressed the need among African Americans to …

Exalted And Debased: Psychological/Sexual Conflict As Bildungsroman In Half Of A Yellow Sun, Anne Lance

Scholars Week

While many still view the Bildungsroman, novels of formation or coming of age stories, as the purview of stuffy formation novels like Dickens’ Great Expectations or Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, there is significant scholarship that suggests a recent revolution in the genre that centers women, people of color, and males in post-colonial or war-torn spaces.

My paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2006 novel Half of a Yellow Sun as an example of a Bildungsroman through the focalization of one of the main characters, Ugwu, as he endures two psychologically conflicting sexual experiences, one …

Deconstructing Native American Stereotypes Through The Reading Of Contemporary Multicultural Literature, Morgan Mcdougall

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

This project will look specifically at the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Some of the questions to be addressed throughout the project include: what does it mean to be the “Other,” how can minority multicultural literature be used to help students deconstruct racial stereotypes, and what are the systems in place that have formed the division between “us” and the “other?” I will begin with a historical account of interactions with Native Americans within the United States, beginning with initial encounters and moving up to modern times. Providing this historical information will help …

Slave Rebellion, Fugitive Literature, And The Force Of Law, Jeffrey Hole

First-Year Honors Program Research Seminars

From the Stono Rebellion in 1739 to the revolt aboard the ship Amistad in 1839, from Nat Turner’s uprising in 1831 to the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859—on land and on sea, in U.S. territory and international spaces—slaves and abolitionist allies resisted the legal doctrines and martial enforcement of the slave system. In this presentation, we will explore how nineteenth-century literature imagined and depicted slave rebellion, particularly in the decade before the Civil War and in the aftermath of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. A component of the Great Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act strengthened a set …

The Evolution Of Diversity: Revising Student Learning Outcomes, Lisa M. Tatonetti, Joe Sutliff Sanders, Tosha Sampson-Choma

Institute for Student Learning Assessment

Presentation and group discussion about the composition and revision of diversity-related student learning outcomes.

Keeping The Memories Alive: Fictionalized Narratives Of Japanese Internment In North America, Erin Anderson

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Reaching Reality: Realistic Portrayals Of Racism, Paige Evans

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

This paper argues that genre is essential to the accurate depiction of racism. By focusing on three landmark texts—Richard Wright’s Native Son, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Percival Everett’s Erasure—an overview of the most powerful genres in this discussion is given. The first, Realism, is defined by its determination to show physical reality. The next, Surrealism, is associated with cognitive reality. Poststructuralism, the last genre included, is described as using the cognitive effects of Surrealism to actively commentate and critique the physical realities of Realism. It is this interaction that marks Poststructuralism as the genre best suited …

English In The Amazon: Unhomeliness In Evelyn Waugh’S “The Man Who Liked Dickens”, Hannah E. Rau

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

In the short story “The Man Who Liked Dickens,” Evelyn Waugh describes a cultural collision deep in the jungles of Brazil. The story’s narrative centers around two men, one of whom is an Englishman taking what he believes to be a temporary exploratory expedition to Brazil. The other, Mr. McMaster, is a half-Brazilian, half-white landowner who loves the Dickens books he cannot read for himself. Henty, the Englishman, leaves home to escape his wife, who loves another man, and goes on an ill-fated mission to explore the unmapped regions of Brazil. Along the way, he loses his companions and ends …

Captivity Of The Mind: A Postcolonial Analysis Of “The Man Who Liked Dickens”, Juliann R. Phillips

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Ever since the age of Columbus, the ideas of travel, adventure, and exploration have pervaded Western consciousness. In 1933, Evelyn Waugh, a social critic and satirist (Longman 2818), published a short story entitled “The Man Who Liked Dickens” that The Longman Anthology of British Literature describes as “a cautionary tale of what might happen to an ordinary, if wealthy, Englishman venturing ‘beyond the pale’ of European civilization in a disastrous journey to the Amazon” (2818). This chilling story centers around the misfortune of Henty, a rich and uneducated Englishman, who gets swept along on an expedition to the jungles of …

Another Country: When Your Nation Doesn’T Consider You To Be A Citizen, William B. Daniels Ii

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

I plan to show how the characters in Another Country uncover the inherently racist and homophobic requirements for citizenship in a nation. The novel Another Country by African American author James Baldwin (1924-1987) exposes the fallible nature of hetero-normative and racial ideals that narrowly define a model citizen of a nation-state. The queer interracial relationships in the novel, particularly between the main character Rufus and his lover Eric, transgress the boundaries of nation, race, and sexuality, thus revealing the illusionary nature of categorizations that are defined and applied by nation-state apparatuses in order to discriminate and maintain uniformity. In addition …

Postcolonial Disability In Mohesen Makhmalbaf’S Kandahar, Sukshma Vedere

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

Kandahar (2001), an Iranian film directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, details the journey of the protagonist, Nafas, to Kandahar to save her sister from committing suicide on the day of the solar eclipse. The film has gained recent attention by disability studies scholars for the representation of disability in Afghanistan; scholars have discussed the significance of prosthetics and international aid for the disabled in post-war zones of the Third World, but little has been said about disability as a postcolonial embodiment. I argue that Kandahar represents the postcolonial state as a disabled space both literally and metaphorically. It projects the veil …

The Failure Of The Free World: Anarchy In Uncle Tom’S Cabin, Andy Cerrone

Interdisciplinary Perspectives: a Graduate Student Research Showcase

Harriett Beecher Stowe is often identified as an advocate for Christianity, woman's suffrage, autonomy, and the abolishment of slavery. However, inviting the reader to view her work through an anarchist lens, her magnum opus—Uncle Tom’s Cabin— offers the reader the opportunity to reconstruct her politics with immense implication. Critics regard Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a sermon devised with the intention to inflate the nation with the righteous spirit of God, offering to the reader the opportunity to partake in the message of her religious vision. While Stowe's absolute faith in her Christian profile of God is present, she invariably …