English Language and Literature Commons^™

“Community In Solitude”: The Solitary Self, Social Critique, And Utopian Longing, Colin S. Macdonald

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that the discourse of solitude in early modern English literature was used to construct a fantasy of resistance to political and social corruption and internecine conflict. Furthermore, the rhetoric of solitude and the positioning of oneself as an outsider, as “uniquely separate from society,” in Andrew Bennett’s terms, led to the development of an early modern authorial identity in opposition to the world, opening a space that allowed social critique and utopian desire to flourish. The notion of disengaged resistance, or what we might call disengaged engagement, is the key component of the rhetoric and practice of …

Hitchcock Studies The Working Class In Literature, Cinema, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“While in college I took a class on literary criticism. That persuaded me that I was actually quite good at reading literature, and that I had more to say about it than anything else. Although I had been interested in literature for some time before I went to college, it was really the college itself that influenced me to study it more deeply.”

That’s how Dr. Peter Hitchcock explains why he chose his academic field. A native of the East End of London, he received his bachelor’s in the arts and humanities from the University of Greenwich in London, a …

Swarbrick Works, Studies Environmental Humanities, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“I had the experience of finding a particular professor who really got me to think long and hard about texts like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Those were the experiences that really ignited something for me, and there was no going back. I became really obsessed with literature as a whole. It was much later that I came around to being a specialist in early modern literature.”

That’s the way Dr. Steven Swarbrick explains how he became interested in literature. A native of San Jose, California, he got his bachelor’s from San Francisco State University and his doctorate from Brown University, both …

Debt's Poetry In Timon Of Athens, Laura Kolb

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Fiqws: Writing And Social Justice, Thomas Peele, Caitlin Geoghan

Open Educational Resources

The syllabus describes a FIQWS course in which students explored social justice themes.

How Has Post Colonialism Affected Our Perception In The Novels “No Longer At Ease” By Chinua Achebe And “Samskara” By U.R Ananthamurthy?, Aaryan Manoj Nair

Publications and Research

A study in post-colonialism is a highly enticing endeavor. In the modern society, postcolonial literature is largely underappreciated in contrast to the more opulent reception of the Victorian or Elizabethan era of literature. The truth is, even today, modern perceptions of many colonial nations are largely constructed by their colonial masters. There is certainly a bias due to the influence of Western Hegemony and its monopoly on global media. The Western world still possesses a tendency to discredit anything which does not conform to its democratic liberalist ideals without glancing at other local factors. In the modern world, while the …

Eng 121 English Composition Ii, Dhipinder Walia

Open Educational Resources

English 121 is a continuation of the work accomplished in ENG 111. ENG 121 will advance critical reading skills and essay development with an emphasis on writing analytical essays and papers based on research in various academic disciplines.

The full course site is available at https://english121.commons.gc.cuny.edu/.

Aas 267 African American Literature, Anne Rice

Open Educational Resources

A survey course that will take us from the early days of enslavement to the present. We will read, analyze, and discuss literary texts written by African Americans, paying particular attention to the political, historical and social context that informs these texts.

The full course site is available at https://aas267.commons.gc.cuny.edu/.

Memory In Memoir & Biography: Science, Place, And Agency, Johnathan E. Longo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores modern scientific understanding of memory in humans and how it affects works of life writing. Scientific research shows that memory is unreliable and often misunderstood by the general public, and this has implications for different forms of life writing. This paper uses biographies, memoirs, and hybrid forms of life writing to explore how memory, with all its limitations, is used in service of a life story. How do writers of these sub-genres use memory and why are those strategies different from one another? Questions of agency and authority over written and spoken material make the issues still …

Tragedy And Theodicy: The Role Of The Sufferer From Job To Ahab, Nora Carroll

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The character of Job starts in literature, a trope and archetype of the suffering man who potentially gains wisdom through suffering. Job’s characterization informs a comparison to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and finally Melville’s Moby-Dick. These versions of Job rally, fight, and rebel against a universe that was once loving and fair towards a more chaotic and nihilistic one. Job’s suffering is on the mark of all tragedy because he not only experiences a downfall, he gains wisdom through universalizing his torment. The Job trope not only stresses the role of suffering, it …

"Betwixt The World Destroyed And World Restored": Subjectivity And Paradisal Recovery In John Milton's Late Poems, Chihping Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study focuses on the discovery of subjectivity through the recovery of lost paradise in Milton’s late poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. This theme revolves around the tension between the affective and the empirical, which also configure the spheres of the sacred and the profane. I explore how the irresistibly emancipatory impulse of recovering lost paradise compels Miltonic subjects to seek ways to return to their originary state or the divine ensemble. During this process, the subject is engaged with his own incapacity or privation while reaching into the sphere of unknown potentiality. In …

In Anthropocene Air: Deleuze's Encounter With Shakespeare, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

What We Mean When We Talk About Reading: Rethinking The Purposes And Contexts Of College Reading, Rachel Ihara, Ann Del Principe

Publications and Research

This study illuminates faculty beliefs about reading by closely examining their attitudes toward assigned readings and faculty professional reading practice. Drawing upon interview data from instructors teaching in a range of disciplines at a two-year college, we suggest that conversations about reading would benefit from greater awareness of the various contexts and purposes for reading. Rather than talk about reading as something students either "do" or "don’t do", or do well or poorly, we draw attention to the ways that different purposes for reading shape reading behaviors for students and faculty alike.

Considering Ethical Questions In (Non)Fiction: Reading And Writing About Graphic Novels, Gene Mcquillan

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Dmz Responds, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Seo-Young Chu’s “The DMZ Responds” appeared in Telos 184 (Fall 2018), a special issue on Korea edited by Haerin Shin.

'Behold The Dreamers' Raises Issues Of Class, Immigration, And Color, Elizabeth Toohey

Publications and Research

Behold the Dreamers follows the path of a Cameroonian family whose members, like many newcomers to America, harbor dreams of success unavailable to them back home. Undocumented immigration, the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the thinly veiled racism of an avowedly “post-racial” culture converge as major themes in this new generation of immigrants’ painful encounter with the American Dream. Yet Mbue’s novel is also a distinctly New York story, capturing the particular experiences of the city.

Creator And Creation: Artistic Development In Herman Melville’S Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities And James Joyce’S A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, Magdalena M. De La Cruz

Dissertations and Theses

This study focuses on the primary protagonists of Herman Melville’s Pierre; or, the Ambiguities (1852) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Pierre Glendinning and Stephen Dedalus, as well as Isabel Banford, a supporting character in Melville’s novel, to illustrate how the tensions of contemporary society have a direct influence on the artist-hero’s representations and perspectives on self-realization. This thesis will draw on the major concepts of the artist and artist fiction as put forth in Otto Rank’s Art and Artist (1916), Herbert Marcuse’s “Der Deutsche Künstlerroman” (“The German Artist Novel”, 1922), and Maurice …

From Amherst To The Other Side: The Integration Of Emily Dickinson Into The Italian Consciousness, Mia Jozwick

Dissertations and Theses

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Emily Dickinson’s poetry appeared in Italy in two key forms: anthologized alongside other American authors and in select translations by prominent Italian intellectuals including poet Eugenio Montale and writer Emilio Cecchi. Dickinson was both touted as one of the great American writers, but also kept as somewhat of an underground poet who spoke to a specific literary identity in Italy. The cross-hairs of history brought together increased knowledge of Dickinson’s poetry just as Mussolini and his fascist agenda threatened the influence of literature whether homegrown or international. What materialized was a dynamic in …

“I’Ll Come Back And Break Your Spell”: Narrative Freedom And Genre In The Haunting Of Hill House, Hilarie Ashton

Publications and Research

In The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson interplays repression and fear inside a “normal” world, reshaping the modern Gothic novel. In this article, I trace key moments in the text where the perceptions of her complicated protagonist, Eleanor Vance, appear without the mediation of the narrator, via verb tenses, punctuation/formatting choices, and quotation. Many of these moments, I argue, occur in narrative spaces that are more quotidian than Gothic (some not even chilling at all). With the periodic narrative freedom, which I call bare thoughts, this recalibrates the division between imaginary and reality while opening up possibilities for …

Rhetoric, Salience And The Reader In The Saddle: A Response To James Phelan, David Richter

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Towards A Queer Aesthetic: Biographical Readings Of Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville And Walt Whitman, Vanessa J. Ragusa

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

From Fear To Reverie: Incidents In Isolation In The American Wilderness, Serhiy Metenko

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis looks at Nineteenth Century American adventure narratives to examine the role of the wilderness. This thesis centers on a motif of isolated characters in the wilderness and analyzes the various techniques nineteenth-century authors use to project the psyche of their characters. The selected Nineteenth Century authors: Washington Irving, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Alan Poe, Harriet Spofford, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville root America’s identity in the wilderness. They emphasize its power on the human psyche as positive, restorative, inward-looking, and divine. This thesis argues that these authors portray the wilderness as a protagonist that needs to be preserved …

Writing Indigenous Identity In Herman Melville And Joseph Conrad's Polynesian And Malay Archipelago Novels, Catherine L. Black

Dissertations and Theses

The thesis of this paper is that cross-cultural writing can be done with the right methods of communication, such as engaging narrator and education—or simply sensitive, imaginative writing. Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad’s five books set in the Polynesian and Malay Archipelagos—Typee and Omoo and the Malay Trilogy (Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, and The Rescue)— are used as master models of how to write indigenous characters with rich characterization in pivotal roles, even circa 1846 and 1896. The unique perspective and technique by which they did this is explored, a technique and perspective not …

Crafting Oppression Of Women In Novels By Writers Of Color, Jacqueline Annette Phillips

Dissertations and Theses

CRAFTING OPPRESSION OF WOMEN

IN NOVELS BY WRITERS OF COLOR

Abstract:

This thesis explores methods used by the writers of five realist novels, to create oppressive situations for female characters in their work. In writing about these novels, the aim is to see how authors use fictional characters to illustrate actual female oppression. The novels drawn from different cultures, share the depiction of female oppression.

Specific situation: INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL Harriet Jacobs

Domestic / Social: THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD Bucchi Emecheta

COMING TO BIRTH Marjory O. Macgoya,

Violent Oppression: THE COLOR PURPLE Alice Walker

PURPLE …

Seeing Whiteness: The Progression And Regression Of White Identity In Four Post-Civil War Literary Generations, Sara N. Stone

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the concept of white identity as seen in literary works in four time periods: Reconstruction, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement and the 21st century. It examines the work of Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Kurt Vonnegut and contemporary writers George Saunders, J.D. Vance, and Jonathan Franzen. It seeks to understand patterns in racism, white nationalism, and white supremacy as part of the fundamental construct of the literary white man, and follows the evolution of that construct over time.

Whispering Together In The Dark: Rereading Samuel Beckett's Homosociality Through Harold Pinter, Aaron Botwick

Publications and Research

In a 1960 letter to a friend, Harold Pinter wrote of Samuel Beckett, “I’ll buy his goods hook, line, and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty; his work is beautiful.” What do we learn if we take the word “beautiful” seriously? Rereading Waiting for Godot backward through Betrayal, this article argues that Beckett’s landscape, typically read as a realization of postwar angst, is in fact one released of the pressures of contemporary living and for Pinter a homosocial Eden. Jerry’s joke upon discovering the adultery—“Maybe I should …

Representations Of García Lorca In American Poetry: Articulating And Floating Metaphor Of The Historical Connections Between Spain And The United States, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Tropes Trump Politics, Aaron Berkowitz

Capstones

This critical essay examines the use of tropes and themes in modern comic books and how they are used to protest President Donald Trump’s policies, actions and supporters. It begins with a detailed history of tropes used in comic books and how some of the first superhero comic book writers created these tropes in order to protest the social injustices of their times. It shifts to the first trope, the “compromised hero” where a hero is turned evil. It is used in “Secret Empire,” a book where Captain America turns evil and takes over the presidency. His rise to power …

A Refuge For Jae-In Doe: Fugues In The Key Of English Major, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

"A Refuge for Jae-in Doe: Fugues in the Key of English Major"

Author(s):

Seo-Young Chu (see profile)

Date:

2017

Subject(s):

Feminism, Creative nonfiction, Asian American literature, Sonnets, Social justice, Trauma

Item Type:

Essay

Tag(s):

#MeToo, Stanford, women in academia, early american

Permanent URL:

http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/cp82-8f39

Presentation And Final Research Paper For Eng 102 [English], Anita Baksh

Open Educational Resources

English 102 is a required course for almost all LaGuardia students. While most students enroll in the course in their second semester, there are some advanced students who take the course later. It is recommended that Composition I and II be taken in sequence since the latter builds upon skills acquired in the first composition course. Composition II is a process-based writing course. Students further develop the critical thinking, writing, and research skills they acquired in ENG 101. They learn close-reading techniques and study diverse texts in at least three genres (poetry, drama, and fiction). Students are required to write …