English Language and Literature Commons^™

Self As Religion In Noviolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names, Lauren Randall

Best Integrated Writing

In this essay, Lauren shows how a breakdown in the belief in the Christian God in NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel We Need New Names leads to the protagonist’s renewal of faith in herself. As the world around her implodes and modern-day Zimbabwe collapses under the political regime of Robert Mugabe (who is never named in the novel but whose baleful influence is nevertheless assumed), “Bulawayo juxtaposes human endurance and the absence of a helpful god to achieve commentary on Darling’s fortitude and resilience.” The essay presents several original insights and offers a sensitive and highly nuanced picture of the divided colonial …

Self-Destructive Educationin Tsitsi Dangarembga’S Nervous Conditions, Sarah Miller

Best Integrated Writing

In this essay, Sarah examines Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1988 novel Nervous Conditions, set during the colonial period in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She argues that the novel portrays education in an ambivalent light: while it serves as a vehicle of liberation and progress for the black Rhodesian characters, it also reveals to them the injustices of colonial occupation. The essay uses excellent textual examples and good support from secondary sources to convincingly advance this thesis. I believe that Sarah makes us rethink the function of education in a critical light; when viewed in the African colonial context, education becomes a tool for …

Best Integrated Writing 2018 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

When Basketball Was Jewish, Jack Ryan

English Faculty Publications

Philosopher-novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, writing in Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame, describes Barney "Tiny" Sedran, born Bernard Sedransky on the Lower East Side of New York, as a quintessential Jewish basketball player: "manically energetic, compulsively alert, upending expectations, and compensating for short—really short—comings" (17). Sedransky was the "shortest player ever inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame," she writes, who excelled at a time "when Jews ruled basketball — and lest you think those last three words are a misprint, let me repeat: Jews ruled basketball" (17). Indeed, in the modern era it is easy to forget …

Thinking Continental: Writing The Planet One Place At A Time By Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, And O. Alan Weltzien, Cory Willard

The Goose

Review of Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time by Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, and O. Alan Weltzien, eds.

Jennifer Collins Bloomquist, Associate Provost For Faculty Development And Dean Of Social Sciences And Interdisciplinary Programs, Musselman Library, Jennifer Bloomquist

Next Page

In this first Next Page column of the new academic year, Jennifer Collins Bloomquist, Associate Provost for Faculty Development and Dean of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs, shares what she would ask Zora Neale Hurston if she had the chance, which food-related books she likes to give as gifts, why she can’t have anything fun to read at her house when she has a deadline looming, and her go-to campus sources for great recommendations on what to read next.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Lib 3065 (Research Methods And Resources For Writers), Christopher Tuthill

Open Educational Resources

This course explores the theoretical and practical impact of information research on writing. Students develop proficiency in evaluating, identifying, and using relevant print and web sources to locate business, government, biographic, political, social and statistical information necessary for in-depth journalistic reportage and other forms of research and writing.

Mumbai Macbeth: Gender And Identity In Bollywood Adaptations, Rashmila Maiti

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project analyzes adaptation in the Hindi film industry and how the concepts of gender and identity have changed from the original text to the contemporary adaptation. The original texts include religious epics, Shakespeare’s plays, Bengali novels which were written pre-independence, and Hollywood films. This venture uses adaptation theory as well as postmodernist and postcolonial theories to examine how women and men are represented in the adaptations as well as how contemporary audience expectations help to create the identity of the characters in the films. Ultimately, this project hopes to fulfil the gap in scholarship on adaptations in Bollywood.

Re-Reading The Map Of Middle-Earth: Fan Cartography's Engagement With Tolkien's Legendarium, Stentor Danielson

Journal of Tolkien Research

J.R.R. Tolkien provided an elaborate textual history for his writings about Middle-earth, but did not do so for his now-iconic maps. This paper examines how this difference, in concert with the general tendency of readers to treat maps as objective records of geography, has manifested in Tolkien's work and fan works based upon it. An examination of fan cartography shows a strong tendency to treat the published maps as records of geographical fact rather than historical documents from within Middle-earth.

Understanding The American Subaltern: An Exploration Of Complex Literary Characters Through Socio-Cultural Lenses, Sophie Gioffre

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

This project involves the analysis of three novels — Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Ann Petry’s The Street, and Toni Morrison’s Sula — featuring main characters who are forced to navigate realistic socio-economic environments rooted in racist, sexist, and classist systems of oppression in the United States of America. Through the process of completing close-readings of the novels, conducting extensive secondary research on historical contexts, and examining other scholarly criticisms and interpretations of these novels, I develop new insights into the main characters’ plights. To transfer this conceptual understanding into a more personal and empathetic …

A Reckless Verisimilitude: The Archive In James Ellroy’S Fiction, Bradley J. Wiles

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The archive as both plot element and narrative presentation factors significantly into the work of James Ellroy’s novels in the L.A. Quartet and USA Underworld Trilogy series. This article examines the important role of the archive as a source of information and evidence that Ellroy’s characters utilize in their attempts at either maintaining or attacking the status quo. Through these novels, Ellroy conveys the potential power archives wield over the trajectory of history and our understanding of it by demonstrating how the historical record is often shaped in favor of the powerful. Yet even if the archive is a manifestation …

Togetherness With The Past: Literary Pedagogy And The Digital Archive, Madeline B. Gangnes

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Archival materials are invaluable to an understanding of the historical, cultural, and material contexts in which literary texts were published. Materiality, paratextual elements, and other key characteristics of literature cannot be discerned from recent editions. Yet original and rare versions of literary texts are difficult or impossible for most scholars, let alone their students, to access. Digital facsimiles provide opportunities to examine archival texts over the Internet, alleviating logistical and financial barriers. In Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001), Carolyn Steedman writes: “The Archive is a place in which people can be alone with the past” (81); archives are …

A ;-) At The Past And Future Of English, Tiffany Li

Faculty Scholarship

It is always with a certain amount of wry, knowing amusement that we turn to the thoughts of people from the past remarking on the future (that is, our present). It is similar to how slightly older children view slightly younger children. They were so innocent then, those thinkers of the past! Look at what they thought computers could do, what language could be! How adorably naïve! Not like us, we who have put away our childish things.

Of course, the science fiction of our present may someday seem as pathetically misconceived as that of the past. So, too, will …

Complete Issue

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The complete issue 1 of volume 8, Landscapes Journal.

Treehouses: Civilizing The Wildness Of Men And Nature, Courtney Mckinney

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

In this paper, I explore how treehouses operate symbolically in tandem with culture. Through an analysis of British and American print culture, I argue that the treehouse building project became bound to boyhood at the turn of the twentieth century as the naturalist movement spread and youth organizations embraced treehouses as part of their vision for the development of boys. Parents and youth leaders intend for treehouse projects to build self-reliance, independence, imagination, and courage in their boys. Congruously, this activity associated with a child’s personal growth takes place in an actual growing organism. I analyze how treehouses juxtapose humans …

Mutual Vulnerability And Intergenerational Healing: Black Women Hbcu Students Writing Memoir, Zelda Lockhart

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study sought to gain insight into the unique experiences of Black women students who were writing memoir toward the goal of self-definition in a Black feminist learning environment at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Two teaching methods included personal plot (an extension of expressive writing that offers writing prompts for emotional closure), and biblio-fusion (a combination of expressive writing and bibliotherapy) (Lockhart, 2017a; 2017b). Interviews were conducted with six Black women participants and triangulated against their personal essays and online journal responses. Personal plot, a form of narrative analysis was used to construct paragraphs on what each …

Forgotten Fairies: Traditional English Folklore In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Alexandra Larkin

The Criterion

While the fairies shown in the play would have been known by Shakespeare’s audience, there was a clear difference between the fairies of traditional folklore and the fairies that Shakespeare describes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In traditional English folklore, fairies were “made” for, and by, the middle and lower classes; their stories were most believed and the most encounters were experienced by these people. Fairies in folklore were alternatingly deadly and wildly helpful, giving humans who stumbled upon them presents or death. In the play, Shakespeare departs from more traditional depictions of fairies and instead characterizes these magical creatures …

Review Of The Shelley-Godwin Archive, Stacey L. Kikendall

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Review of The Shelley-Godwin Archive

We Love Big Brother: An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Orwell’S Nineteen Eighty-Four And Modern Politics In The United States And Europe, Edward Pankowski

Honors Scholar Theses

In recent months since the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States in November 2016, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has seen a resurgence in sales, and terms invented by Orwell or brought about by his work, such as “Orwellian,” have re-entered the popular discourse. This is not a new phenomenon, however, as Nineteen Eighty-Four has had a unique impact on each of the generations that have read it, and the impact has stretched across racial, ethnic, political, and gender lines. This thesis project will examine the critical, popular, and scholarly reception of Nineteen Eighty-Four since its …

A Kingly Trichotomy: Spirituality, Lineage, And Deeds In Beowulf And The Lord Of The Rings, Lydia Anvar

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings both present complex narratives of an individual using spiritual favor, heroic deeds, and a notable heritage to affirm their right to rule as king. By doing a close reading of this ancient epic alongside J.R.R Tolkien’s modern fantasy, one can understand the various ways that the kings in these texts have drawn power from these distinct realms of authority. In Beowulf, the title character’s successful acts of warfare affirm his spiritual favor, and the poem demonstrates that one can construct a heritage using their self-made reputation. Unlike Beowulf, Aragorn’s solidified, sacred …

Lol!, Taylor Eddy

Undergraduate Research Celebration 2018

No abstract provided.

“The Childish, The Transformative, And The Queer”: Queer Interventions As Praxis In Children’S Cartoons, Heather Wright

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud considers “the simplified reality of the cartoon,” establishing a definition and theory for the medium (30). McCloud believes that cartoons possess “a special power” that is tied to their unique ability to “focus our attention on an idea” (31). Put simply, there is something about cartoons that allows for an easy exchange of concepts. Cartoons can teach. Using cartoons, a general term, to refer to both comics and animation, this thesis examines the transformative power of queer world building and intervention in recent children’s cartoons and how it functions, and can …

Dolls Who Speak: Sex Robots, Cyborgs And The Image Of Woman, Victoria E. Pihl Sorensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emerging phenomenon of sex robots from a feminist materialist perspective. I explore the current scholarly and popular debates on sex robots, and suggest a reading of sex robots in their machinic, literary and cinematic expressions to move beyond the moral-ethical impasse that seems to dominate sex robot discussions. Employing Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Myth” on a methodological and theoretical level, I argue for an interdisciplinary approach to studying sex robots, which proceeds carefully so as to avoid contributing to sex panic, and which thinks critically about what it might mean to assess sex robots from a feminist …

Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dory Agazarian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about how historical narratives developed in the context of a modern marketplace in nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it explores British historicism through urban space with a focus on Rome and London. Both cities were invested with complex political, religious and cultural meanings central to the British imagination. These were favorite tourist destinations and the subjects of popular and professional history writing. Both cities operated as palimpsests, offering a variety of histories to be “tried on” across the span of time. In Rome, British consumers struggled when traditional histories were problematized by emerging scholarship and archaeology. In London, …

There Is Water In The World For Us : The Environmental Theories Of Alice Walker., Janae Lewis Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of African-American Environmental thought responds to the ongoing erasure of Black experiences and their perspectives on nature. Mainstream environmentalism maintains a legacy of perceived innocence and incorruptibility towards the land, while Black Environmentalism demonstrates the limitations of that ideology. Limitations include the erasure of history in regards to stealing land from Indigenous people, the brutality of slavery, legalized lynching, forced removal from the land, exploitation in sharecropping, destruction of sacred lands, heavy pollution in urban centers, and harmful environmental policies. For Black and Indigenous peoples, it is impossible to view American soil as innocent. This project surveyed the …

Resisting Borders, Resisting Control Examining The Multiplicity Of Identities In A Map Of Home And The Girl In The Tangerine Scarf, Zainab Abdali

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In this project I examine identities as they are expressed through the use of language in the novels A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf by Mohja Kahf. Both novels are coming-of-age narratives of two Arab and Muslim-American female protagonists that depict their exploration of identity as they undergo experiences of war, migration, displacement, and racism in their respective contexts. I explore the protagonists’ negotiation of identity in the face of familial and societal pressure to conform to clearly demarcated categorizations of identity, arguing that the protagonists recognize clear borders between identities as …

Misrepresented And Unheard: The "Latino Rebels", Blanca V. Guzman

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

In today’s political climate, immigration, undocumented immigrants, and the Latinx identity have been pushed to the forefront of the news cycle, political campaigns, and social justice movements. The social justice movement associated with the undocumented will be explored through one alternative news source, "Latino Rebels." Through close textual analysis, it will become evident how "Latino Rebels" holds these identities of Latinx, undocumented, and immigrant very close to its own voice, and often amplifies a clear message for awareness and policy change, which goes beyond the traditional scope of objectivity in reporting.

The Presentation Of Postmodern Sexuality In Short Fiction, Allie J. Kapus

Senior Honors Theses

Shifting norms in twentieth century western society, coupled with emerging postmodern thought in the 1960s, radically changed the ways in which people viewed sexuality, gender roles, and the institutions of marriage and the family. The literature of the postmodern era, namely short fiction, also reflects such ideological shifts. Literature is a powerful communicator of the human condition as well as a crucial means for reflecting the customs, beliefs, and norms of a society at the time of its writing. Such evolving differences as were occurring in the realm of sexuality came to be represented in postmodern literature. This thesis aims …

Patterns, Collaboration, Practice: Algorithms As Editing For Historic Periodicals, Elizabeth Lorang

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

This presentation positions my recent work on the algorithmic “discovery” of poetic material in historic newspapers within the contexts of my various roles as an editor of periodical literature and also consider how duplicative processes and algorithms encode principles and values and function as editorial acts. Ultimately, I hope to pose a range of questions to prompt discussion around the place (or not) of machine learning in identifying and selecting texts and bodies of work; what ideas we’re actually exploring/are able to explore when we enlist technology in stages of this work; and the stakes of these activities, whether human …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.