English Language and Literature Commons^™

Dorothy Wordsworth’S Travel Writings: A Digital Critical Edition, Nicholas Mason

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Thanks to the MEG award we received in 2014-15, my colleague Paul Westover and I have been able to mentor six outstanding BYU students in archival research and scholarly editing and have made significant progress toward the publication of a major new critical edition of the works of the nineteenth-century poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth.

The Critically Annotated Collected Works Of Elisa Von Der Recke And Women’S Articles In Vienna’S “Die Neue Freie Presse:” A Digital Companion To Red Vienna, White Socialism And The Blues: Ann Tizia Leitich’S America, Michelle James, Rob Mcfarland

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Without funding there would be no Sophie project, which is why the first item in this report on the Sophie activities during 2015 must be an expression of our gratitude to both the ORCA office and to the College of Humanities, on behalf of the faculty members involved, and particularly, on behalf of the many students whose lives have been enriched in numerous ways by their Sophie work. We are aware of the many projects vying for your attention and funding, and are particularly grateful for the support you have given this project over the years. Your grants have enriched …

Victorian Short Fiction Project, Leslee Thorne-Murphy

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Our project was to prepare a digital collection of short stories, The Victorian Short Fiction Project (VSFP), for a scholarly review process. The VSFP is a digital anthology of Victorian-era short stories compiled and edited by students in undergraduate Victorian literature classes here at BYU. Leslee Thorne-Murphy designed the project to expand students’ knowledge of the Victorian-era short story, an under-studied genre in the field of Victorian literature, and to give them experience in the fields of scholarly editing and the digital humanities. Students would conduct research in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections library to find short fiction to …

An Annotated Critical Edition Of "The Show Folks!" By Pierce Egan, Audrey Saxton

Student Works

This is a critical edition of Pierce Egan’s 1831 Poem, “The Show Folks!” It includes an introduction written which grounds Egan’s poem in the tradition of Victorian England’s burlesque theater and circus acts. It also includes selected footnotes and appendices in order to further explore the text. At the end is included a list of sources for further reading and research regarding Pierce Egan and “The Show Folks!”

Of Angles And Angels: Political Unity And Spiritual Identity In Anglo-Saxon England, 871 – 1016, Susannah Morrison, Miranda Wilcox

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This project examined the development of English nationalism in the ninth and tenth centuries. Prior to this moment in the island’s history, England had been divided into a series of independent and self-governing kingdoms, including Mercia in the Midlands, Wessex in the West Country, Northumbria, stretching from the Humber River north into southeastern Scotland, and East Anglia in modern-day Norfolk and Suffolk. However, under the pressure of violent Viking expansion, these ancient kingdoms were largely dissolved. Only Wessex, under the leadership of the legendary Alfred the Great, survived essentially intact, and able to exert its cultural and political hegemony over …

Writing In Other People's Worlds: Two Students Repurposing Extracurricular Fan Fiction Writing To Fulfill Curricular Assignments, Alison Carol Blackburn

Theses and Dissertations

Through interviews and writing sample analysis of two secondary students who are fan fiction writers, this article examines the tensions between curricular writing and extracurricular fan fiction writing. This study finds students have rich extracurricular writing lives, and they repurpose familiar practices from fan fiction writing for the classroom. This study further discusses the role of genre in effective repurposing. This study argues students who develop genre awareness repurpose their extracurricular writing more effectively to fulfill curricular assignments.

Hamilton: Publics Theory, The Rhetorical Impact Of Theater And Reimagining The American Founding, Anna Sanford Low

Theses and Dissertations

In a time when our nation is particularly divided and confused about its identity, Hamilton, the Broadway musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda has become an example of art's ability to unify disparate ideological, socio-economic and racial groups. The play's reception deserves study to understand how both liberals and conservatives can agree upon an interpretation of a musical that celebrates diversity in race and representation. Celebration and interpretation of the play has been so widespread that a public has emerged, furthering the influence of the play's ideas. This public is unique in a time when most people cocoon themselves in …

Posthuman Maturation In Amie Kaufman And Jay Kristoff's Illuminae: Re-Conceptualizing The Human For Adolescence And Artificial Intelligence, Gregory Alaric Williams

Theses and Dissertations

In order to empower adolescents, this thesis examines how the adult conception of the human in humanism disempowers adolescents. This thesis examines this process in Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff's Illuminae, a work of young adult science fiction with non-traditional text structures. In consequence of their disempowerment, the adolescent Kady and artificially intelligent AIDAN impersonate human authorities in order to gain control over their lives. When these attempts fail, Kady and AIDAN transition from a humanist conception of the human, as an isolated self that balances rationality and emotionality, to a posthuman conception of the human, a distributed self …

The Living River: Ritual And Reconciliation In The Famished Road, Marissa Deane Compton

Theses and Dissertations

In Ben Okri's The Famished Road, rituals such as baptism are easily lost in the dense symbolism. The novel is, in the words of Douglas McCabe, a "ramshackle and untidy affair, a hodge-podge of social ideologies, narrative forms, effusive enthusiasms, and precision-jeweled prose poems" (McCabe 17). This complex untidiness can be discouraging for readers and critics alike, and yet "there is something contagious about the digressive, meandering aesthetic of The Famished Road" that makes the novel difficult to consign to confusion (Omhovere 59). Commonly considered post-colonial, post-modern, and magical-realist, The Famished Road deals with, among other things, spiritualism, …

Using Reading Strategies To Differentiate Reading Instruction, Kari Allsup, Dawan Coombs

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Struggling readers have often developed learning strategies, but not strategies that help them become better readers. Consider, a student who is checked out every day before English to avoid the discomfort of reading aloud, a student who gets up every few minutes to sharpen pencils to avoid a difficult task, a student who knows how to look busy in ways that disguise a lack of comprehension. In contrast to these strategies, reading strategies can empower students to succeed, not merely avoid reading. This study examined three reading strategies within the context of a reader’s theatre focused on the drama, The …

Keep Them Coming: Discovering Why Upper-Division Students Use The Writing Center, Ethan Marston, David Stock

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Because the development of writing skills is crucial to professional success, many writing center studies attempt to determine how to best encourage undergraduate students to attend their university writing centers. Many universities require freshmen to attend the writing center while enrolled in a first-year writing class. Because of this, a large portion of writing center research focuses on the effectiveness of this requirement, and its impact on students’ perceptions of and experiences with the writing center (Bell and Stutts, 1997; Bishop, 1990; Clark, 1985; Gordon, 2008; Rendleman, 2013). This research added to the extensive debate over whether or not writing …

Annotated Edition Of The Reminiscences Of Nate Salsbury, Katie Bowman, Frank Christianson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project was to prepare the unpublished manuscript Reminiscences of Nate Salsbury, written in the 1890s, for publication and to enter the critical conversation on the development of the frontier myth in American history. The first of three stages of the project was to do editorial work on the raw manuscript. The editing goal was to organize and clarify the narrated episodes of Nate Salsbury’s life in order to prepare it for optimal audience comprehension. Second, I thoroughly annotated the document and curated an appendix that situated the document in its historical and biographical context. Third, …

Emotional Truth In Fiction, Tamara Thomson, Stephen Tuttle

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to work closely with a group of youth patients, staff members, and clinicians at the Utah State Hospital. During that time there were several accusations of misconduct of staff with the youth patients, some of whom I knew personally. My project has been to create six short stories dealing with the experiences of both the youth patients and the staff at the State Hospital that are based on the interviews I did with former patients, clinicians, and staff. I wanted to investigate the way specific individuals remembered incidents of misconduct and how …

Annie Oakley Research, Hope Collins, Frank Christianson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

For my project I researched Annie Oakley. I specifically was looking into how Annie Oakley added complexity to the American Frontier Myth and how she interacted with William F. Cody who was also known as Buffalo Bill.

The purpose of my project was to contribute to a scholarly edition of The Autobiography of Annie Oakley. To accomplish this, I worked through these three steps: I edited and annotated the autobiography, wrote a critical introduction essay, and gathered material for appendixes to the manuscript.

An Annotated Critical Edition Of Wild Mike And His Victim By Florence Montgomery, Kristen Evans

Student Works

This paper is a critical edition of Wild Mike and His Victim by Florence Montgomery, a novel first published in 1875. This critical edition includes a critical introduction, footnotes, and appendices, as well as the original text.

All The Light We Choose Not To See, Hayley C. Campbell

Student Works

Throughout history, society's winners have selectively altered history to best fit the needs of a given population or political regime. Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See seeks to uncover the truth about selective remembrance and blindness as his characters traverse the complicated European landscape of WWII. This paper seeks to unlock this conversation that Doerr introduces through his 2015 novel.

Reflections In Detroit: The Personal Essay As Epistemological Method, Greg Wurm, Joey Franklin

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of my project was to explore and demonstrate how the personal essay could be used as more than just a literary form of the humanities, but as an epistemological method in the social sciences. I built off the work of Dr. Andrew Abbott, of the University of Chicago, who, in 2007, proposed what he called “lyrical sociology.” In his piece, “Against Narrative: A Preface to Lyrical Sociology,” he described that a lyrical sociology sought to “communicate its author’s emotional stance toward his or her object of study, rather than to ‘explain’ that object.” The personal essay has also …

Healing The Hurt: Creating A Graphic Novel That Repairs The Damage Of Mental Health Problems, Alyssa Carpenter, Chris Crowe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Since I was sixteen, I have struggled with self-harm and depression. One of my coping mechanisms was reading. I would read and read and read in search of a solution where my sadness and despondent nature would be whisked away into a made up world where all the problems were solvable and light always won out over darkness. However, many of the books I read simply thrust me deeper into my depressive state. Young adult literature is always and forever on the cusp of breaking the social taboos that exist in society, which often mean that these books deal with …

Obliterating Middle-Class Culpability: Sarah Grand's New Woman Short Fiction In George Bentleys Temple Bar, Nicole Perry Clawson

Theses and Dissertations

Scholars interested in the popular Victorian periodical Temple Bar have primarily focused on the editorship of George Augustus Sala, under whom the journal paradoxically began delivering controversial content to conservative middle-class readers. But while the Temple Bar's sensation fiction and social realism have already been considered, critics have not yet examined Temple Bar's New Woman fiction, which was published during the last decade of the 19th century and George Bentley's reign as editor-in-chief. While functioning as editor-in-chief, Bentley sought to adhere to the dictates found in the 1860 prospectus, to "inculcate thoroughly English sentiment: respect for authority, attachment …

"A Poem Containing History": Pound As A Poet Of Deep Time, Newell Scott Porter

Theses and Dissertations

There has been an emergent trend in literary studies that challenges the tendency to categorize our approach to literature. This new investment in the idea of "world literature," while exciting, is also both theoretically and pragmatically problematic. While theorists can usually articulate a defense of a wider approach to literature, they struggle to develop a tangible approach to such an ideal. By examining Ezra Pound's critical approach to poetry, especially in The Cantos, an applicable visualization of a global approach to literature becomes more transparent.

"This, Too, Was Myself": Empathic Unsettlement And The Victim/Perpetrator Binary In Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Brittany Bruner

Theses and Dissertations

At first glance, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a tale that reinforces binaries. One of these is the self/other binary that is central to David Hume's and Adam Smith's theories of sympathy that conceive of a self imaginatively identifying and experiencing fellow-feeling for an other. However, this notion is complicated because Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. Further, many critics argue that Stevenson actually challenges binary thinking. While Hume and Smith do not challenge the self/other binary in connection with sympathy, trauma theory critics do challenge a self/other binary that lies at the heart of …

Invisible Voices: Revising Feminist Approaches To Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" By Including The Narrative Of Mental Illness, Rebekah Michele Hood

Theses and Dissertations

Since 1973, the year in which Elaine Hedges's groundbreaking edition of "The Yellow Wallpaper" was published, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story has been read primarily as one of America's leading feminist texts. With potent symbolism and a fragmented style of narration, it is easy to understand why many feminist scholars fashion the story's narrator into a proactive feminist, a courageous heroine who rebels against patriarchal oppression. While this trend of interpretation compellingly attempts to empower the narrator, it often overlooks her perspective of disability and projects the characteristics of a nondisabled, high-functioning feminist on a mentally ill woman. This paper …

The Shadowland Of Shakespeare: Christianity And The Carnival, Micah E. Cozzens

Student Works

The moral complexity of Shakespeare’s work is created by balancing carnival elements such as subversion of authority, plays within plays, and ascension of thrones, with Christian elements such as repentance, the supernatural, and forgiveness. Far from being didactic or moralizing, Shakespeare’s plays—specifically King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Hamlet—frequently inhabit an ethical shadowland, in which right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right. This intricacy renders even the simplest of his plots an interesting exploration of human consciousness. But Shakespeare never exalts Christianity at the expense of the carnival nor the carnival at the expense of Christianity—rather, …

Dangerous Fictions In Shakespeare's Richard Ii, Terence D. Wride

Student Works

In Shakespeare's Richard II, Shakespeare deposes monarchy by exposing the dangerous fictions of The King’s Two Bodies, Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as expounded in Political Theology, and the English tradition of the divine right of kings and royal prerogative. By examining Ernst Kantorowicz's explication of the king's body politic and body natural as found his book The King's Two Bodies, I argue that Shakespeare critiques the popular political theology of his time by exposing the negative political repercussions of an ill-defined body politic. What past scholars have overlooked and failed to do is provide a concrete definition of …

The Devil’S In The Details: A Characterization Of Montresor In Poe’S “The Cask Of Amontillado”, Audrey Saxton

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The religious imagery present in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” allow critics to read this short story as an allegory and demonstrate the ways in which Montresor and Fortunato reenact the biblical struggle between good and evil. However, the criticism surrounding Poe’s character Montresor is divided. Some critics, such as Donald Pearce and Jay Jacoby view Montresor as a fully devilish character while others, such as Philip M. Pittman, read Montresor as the Christ-figure. Because of this confusion, Montresor’s character becomes complicated. This paper strengthens the Mephistophelean reading of Montresor’s character through a close examination of religious imagery and symbols …

Criterion: A Journal Of Literary Criticism, Vol. 10: Iss. 1

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Raciocultural Union And "Fraternity Of Feeling": Ishmael's Redemption In Moby-Dick, Emily Butler-Probst

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The process of redemption, or the complete transformation of an individual’s life that enables him to avoid personal destruction is precisely what Ishmael experiences as he embraces cultural pluralism over the course of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Ishmael first begins Moby-Dick as a character who embraces isolation and abstract pondering in a manner that is similar to the obsessive, isolated madness of Captain Ahab. He is saved from the “madness” of absolutism by Queequeg, a South Pacific harpooner, in a process which not only expresses the nineteenth-century perception that cultural Others were less afflicted by madness, but also invokes a message …

The Space In-Between: Exploring Liminality In Jane Eyre, Megan Clark

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

From Mrs. Reed’s house to Morton, Jane Eyre is always singled out as otherworldly. Throughout Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë creates different spheres and worlds through the means of social class, and the way people are thought of and treated. These worlds are presented in pairs and as a juxtaposition of each other, but Jane never belongs to either world. She remains in her own realm, always separated from the others. Throughout the text, she is compared to an elf or fairy, emphasizing the otherworldliness that defines her. While some look at Jane as a social outcast due exclusively to …

“Blame The Due Of Blame”: The Ethics And Efficacy Of Curses In Richard Iii, Alexandra Malouf

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Language, particularly the language of cursing, plays a powerful role in determining the outcome of events in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Gender imperatives reflected in the speech of Richard III’s characters indicate where power lies and how it is exercised across gendered spheres. While male characters in the history plays typically obtain and exert power through violence, both in war and in secret, the primary source of power held by female characters in Richard III is their use of language. Consistently, the women seal the violent ends of their enemies with curses, and Richard is perpetually given cause to …

Forum Prompt: What Can Poe Do For You?, Scott Peeples

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.