English Language and Literature Commons^™

Possibilities Of Being: Black Women's Storytelling As Archival Undoing, Dasharah Green

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs a discursive genealogy of Black women’s storytelling, positioning its art and aesthetics as a form of colonial archival undoing. Each chapter explores how transmission and documentation can transform—and circumvent—traditional colonial archives. Beginning at the start of the twentieth-century to present, this project traces the discursive legacies of Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, and Staceyann Chin, examining each writer as a site of becoming as they individually (and collectively) seek to articulate an expansive idea of a Black world that constitutes a broader understanding of Black freedom. They each share a common goal of creating a …

Remixing Dialogue: A Case Study On Perceptions Of Hip Hop Pedagogy In A Professional Learning Course, Kelly J. Thelen

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This qualitative case study examines how teachers’ decision-making and professional autonomy shift while participating in a Hip Hop Pedagogy Professional Learning course supported by structured FIXIT (Lo & Wachter, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d; Wachter & Lo, 2024) game-facilitated dialogue in a rural, culturally and linguistically diverse Midwest community. Grounded in Freire’s (1970) Critical Pedagogy, Ladson-Billings’ (1995) Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris and Alim, 2017), and Adult Learning Theory (Knowles et al., 2005), the study explores the reclamation of agency by teachers in a time of constrained creativity and educator autonomy shaped by strict policy environments, an emphasis on …

The Narrative In The Algorithm: Storytelling, World Literature, And The Smartphone, Chad Szalkowski-Ference

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I interrogate the role algorithms, artificial intelligence, and smartphone technology play in contemporary world literature. My analysis begins with the post-truth condition, which speaks to the contemporary era’s embrace of alternative facts, authoritarianism, and conspiratorial thinking. I draw on narrative theory and paradigms of world literature to show how “algorithmic reasoning” has led to a state of paranoid persecution. This reasoning has forged new collectivities across traditional borders. Additionally, I show that these new collectivities and new technologies have produced new narrative points of view: the algorithmic first- and third-person, allowing narratives to retain the intimacy and …

Postmodern Fantasy & Its Twin Traditions, Skyler J. Alexander

Honors Thesis

Fantasy literature is diverse and difficult to categorize; nevertheless, throughout the twentieth century two main subgenres emerged: sword-and-sorcery and high fantasy. This thesis examines the differences and similarities between these two traditions, how contemporary examples of the genre fit into or diverge away from the traditions that influenced them, and proves in the negative what and how much of contemporary fantasy fiction is original to itself, with no prominent antecedent. The analysis was performed by comparatively reading two contemporary fantasy novels, The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, with …

Land And Language At St. Joseph’S Indian Industrial School And Beyond, Ciera R. Tucker

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the impacts of the Indian boarding school era on Menominee people through using St. Joseph’s Indian Industrial School in Keshena, Wisconsin, as a focal point of study. Through analyzing the social and political contexts of the school, oral texts from St. Joseph’s survivors, and contemporary popular culture texts, this thesis examines the intergenerational impacts of the boarding school era on Menominee people and Indigenous people in general. I employ Indigenous methodologies from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Anishinaabe), Kathleen Absolon (Anishinaabe), and Shawn Wilson (Cree) to ground my approach to research and engagement with survivor testimonies. Further, I draw …

From Margins To Center: Los Deslenguados In The Borderlands, Brissa S. Porras Villalobos

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Borderland literature is a subgenre that often includes narratives of migration, tribulations, identity development, and resilience. It foregrounds the collaboration of vulnerability, isolation, connection, and power, showing that hybridity is a source of cultural energy. Acknowledging the borderland and its culture is crucial because it challenges stereotypes, validates marginalized voices, and celebrates heritage in all its complexity. By centering these experiences, borderland literature affirms the potential of living between cultures, prioritizing the recognition of the in-between, valuing and celebrating the space where identities are continually reshaped, histories are reclaimed, and resilience is nurtured rather than neglected. Using Gloria Anzaldúa's theory …

The Female Gothic And Marianne Dashwood: The Gothic Heroine Of Sense And Sensibility, Samantha Cottle

English (MA) Theses

In the late eighteenth-century, the rise of the English Gothic novel propelled an extension referred to as the Female Gothic. Through the complexity of the English Gothic genre, writers—particularly women writers—explore the intersectionality of gender, class, natural horrors, and race, creating a space where the heroines of these Gothic novels exist beyond the confinement of the domestic sphere. The Female Gothic was a way for these women writers to acknowledge the natural horrors that plagued the experiences of being a woman—it addressed the oppression of a patriarchal society in which the subversion of the female body was perceived as an …

Regenerative Writing: The Rhetorics Of Indigenous Futurisms As Pedagogical Praxis, Madeline R. Mendoza

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation explores how land-based writing and Indigenous Futurisms can reshape writing pedagogy in higher education, focusing on English courses at the University of New Mexico. At the center of this project is the Land Memoirs assignment, which I designed to encourage students to engage land as a living relative and active participant in the learning process. Through the frameworks of Indigenous Futurisms, Land as Pedagogy, Rhetorical Sovereignty, and Pueblo understandings of marking, I analyze the rhetorical choices across student multimodal narratives, reflections, and interviews to examine the assignment’s pedagogical impact. My findings reveal epistemic differences in how Indigenous …

A Modest Proposal For Discourse Analysis In Nonbinary Communities: Method And Case Study, Nikoli Michael Daigneault

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While linguists have long used discourse analysis to study language variation in binary and nonnormative gender groups, nonbinary people have often been excluded from analyses or treated without a nonbinary-informed framework. Nevertheless, nonbinary language use can provide key insights into the relationship between gender and language. In this thesis, I propose Nonbinary Discourse Analysis, a set of recommendations and best practices for conducting discourse analysis in nonbinary communities. These methods are informed by previous empirical research on nonnormative gender identities and theoretical work in trans linguistics (Zimman, 2020) and trans epistemologies (Nordmarken, 2019; Raclaw, in press). To demonstrate the methodology, …

America The Monstrous: The Birth Of American Horror Fiction In The Long Nineteenth Century, Rachel Kietzman

Dissertations

American gothic works that center the affect of horror explore themes of abjection, inhumanity, and monstrosity that impede a coherent expression of American identity. By approaching these works through the lens of horror rather than only as Gothic works, a picture ofa visceral, embodied becoming takes shape: America is a monstrous birth in the most literal sense of the word, a sign and demonstration that unity and uniformity are not the same, that wholeness does not require conformity, and that political choices are paid for in flesh. In short, American horror fiction is the head of Medusa, an apotropaic sign …

Tomboys In Dystopia: An Analysis Of Gendered Traits In Ya Dystopian Literature, Bethany H. Jenkins

English Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

This thesis explores the world of young adult dystopian literature. Katniss (Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games), Tris (Veronica Roth’s Divergent) and Tierney (Kim Liggett’s The Grace Year) are all tomboy protagonists living in a dystopian society. Apart from the expected challenges of living in a dystopia, being a tomboy means facing conflicts that are a result of their gender non-conformity. Drawing heavily from the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, each protagonist is analyzed within the context of their own story to identify feminine and masculine traits that they express. These traits’ impact on the events of the story is …

You Burn With Us: How Fire Functions In Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games Trilogy, Lucy Evans

University Honors Theses

This paper examines Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy and how fire behaves as a multifaceted element that constructs, exposes and transforms power. Through tracing the development of the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, this research explores how fire evolves from a weapon into a symbol for revolution. This analysis uses the framework of other dystopian novels, and previous character analysis of The Hunger Games, to understand Katniss's role in the revolution of Panem. It does so through three main behaviors: the construction of Katniss's "girl on fire" persona that commodifies her for the capitol's gain; the exposure of the state's …

Irish Identity: Symbols Of Nationalism In W.B. Yeats's Cathleen Plays, Emma Mady

University Honors Theses

William Butler Yeats was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Renaissance. Two of his plays, The Countess Kathleen (1892) and Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902) portrayed themes of nationalism and revivalism in strikingly different ways. Each play uses figures from folklore and mythology to establish a sense of national identity: the tale of "The Countess Kathleen O'Shea" inspired The Countess Kathleen, and the Irish Sovereignty goddess inspired the figure of legendary Cathleen ni Houlihan. The Countess Kathleen was met with harsh criticism and accusations of blasphemy, while Cathleen ni Houlihan is still widely regarded as Yeats's …

The Permanent Emergency: The Anti-Fascist And Anti-Colonial Intersections Of James Joyce’S Ulysses And Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, Lily V. Mcmanamy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is going to explore the (Irish) Anti-Colonial and (Spanish) Anti-Fascist parallels between James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004). Using the major epic novels of two exiled authors, I hope to explore the intersections of poetic fiction and political resistance. I read these texts as bookends spanning the pre- and post-war periods, highlighting the continuities of colonialism, totalitarianism, and fascism, and the way these authors develop a post/modernist narrative that nods towards these themes. I plan to draw on Alberto Toscano’s LateFascism (2023) as a means of situating these authors’ novels with our own political moment …

The Good Knight, Elektra Koozer

University Honors Theses

The Good Knight is a comics adaptation of Sir Galahad's story through the lens of a queer retelling. This story focuses on queer relationships, struggling with depression and isolation, and death. It begins at the end of Galahad's life, where he is forced to question his legacy and who he is after completing the quest that has dictated his whole life. The story weaves through time, reflecting upon his past, thinking about his mother's expectations of him, being chosen for the grail quest, confronting his estranged father, and trying to cope with the world on his shoulders. He has to …

Ammonihah's Allegory Of Damnation: "Fire And Brimstone" In The Book Of Mormon And Doctrine & Covenants, Ella Bethany Sessions

Honors Projects

This paper examines D&C 76, an 1832 revelation penned by Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon that details Mormon theology in regards to eternity, salvation, and damnation, and Mosiah 27 and Alma 9–14 from the Book of Mormon to observe and analyze how the D&C 76’s specificity is mirrored and encased in two Book of Mormon stories: Alma the Younger and Ammonihah. The first section synthesizes D&C 76’s doctrinal claims and contextualizes Mormonism’s salvation and damnation as uniquely epistemic—or reliant on knowledge—and oriented around the internal processes of progression towards or away from God as necessary precedents to external and eternal …

A History Of The Underground Comix Scene: The Seriousness Of An Unserious Genre, Harris Darcie Shugart

Master's Theses

The Underground Comix Scene of the 1960s and 1970s was born out of an age of censorship. The Comics Code Authority, a regulatory body created by the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954, established guidelines requiring publishing houses to self-regulate following a recommendation from the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1953. Comix with an X, for their X-rated nature, represent an emerging counter-culture in the latter half of the 1960s and the 1970s, with an epicenter of San Francisco. These comix and their artists were not interested in obtaining the looming ‘Seal of Approval’ from the …

The Desire Of Strict Souls: The Poetry, Criticism, And Letters Of Paul Valéry And Wallace Stevens, Michael Healy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation compares the poetic, critical, and epistolary oeuvres of Paul Valéry and Wallace Stevens and the influence of the former on the latter. Valéry famously advocated for the pursuit of “poésie pure” (“pure poetry”) and influenced Stevens especially in this way, though both of them concluded it was not achievable. I establish an approximation of a critical framework based on the work of the following critics and scholars: Wendy Lesser, Wendy Steiner, Anthony Cuda, Michael Clune, Paul Bové, and Liesl Olson. Harold Bloom’s passionate advocacy and deep, sustained engagement with Stevens and his work strongly influenced my choice to …

A Twilight World Of Unspeakable Horror: Lesbian Camp And The Vampire Lovers (1970), Mirielle Lemay

University Honors Theses

From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, a wave of lesbian vampire themed exploitation films proliferated through UK, US, and Western European cinemas. In critical literature on this subgenre, camp reading is often dismissed, unacknowledged, or understood as circumscribed by authorial intent and/or intended audience. With this alternating lack of attention to and dismissal of camp, the interpretive agency of the queer spectator is constrained, their spectatorship implicitly subordinated to that of the "conventional" horror audience—the voyeuristic-sadistic male spectator. Through a reading of The Vampire Lovers, a 1970 British production from Hammer Studios, I seek to explore how …

Kicau Kericau: The Chirps And Warbles Of A Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the tale of bird-human relationships and what it means to live alongside one another, subverting the hierarchical view of humans as above birds inherited from colonial history. It asks how the practice of illustration can function as a site of Two-Eyed Seeing, where scientific and local knowledge are held together as an entangled narrative. It also examines how mendongeng (storytelling), as I have experienced it within Indonesian culture and everyday contexts, can help us understand birds as a companion species with their own agency.

This project takes two forms: first, a picture book titled Sun Bird …

Cartooning From Life: A Graphic Guide To Using Non-Fiction Comics In Education, Maxwell Zawatsky

Masters Theses

The world is a visual place nowadays. Media, books, movies, art, and more constantly surround us. What might we do if we consciously incorporate this visual stimulus into our educational spaces? What might we learn about ourselves and the world around us?

In this comics thesis, non-fiction comics are the focus. Through personal reflection and semi-structured interviews with three cartoonist-educators, non-fiction comics’ role in current and future pedagogical practices is explored, with the aim of thinking about how these types of works encourage exploration of oneself, others, and the world at large. I offer three guiding tenets for educators who …

An Anxious Artist's Guide To Magic, Mot Tuman

Masters Theses

Illustration’s essence is using some type of media to tell a story. This could be anything from sculpture, watercolor, even just text alone. Beyond its medium, I have been thinking for a while of illustration and storytelling as a type of illusory magic. Magic, according to the Oxford language dictionary as being "The power of using supernatural or other unseen forces to apparently influence events or human behaviour." It gives us the power to reach inside the mind and heart of a person and change their emotional and mental state. It's the ability to create a world and have others …

Love Letters To Insects: Affect-Based Science Communication, Manuela Guzmán

Masters Theses

Love Letters to Insects is a series of artists’ books that, mimicking a scientific insect collection, asks how visual narrative can shape and reframe our relationship to our environment.

Delving into the historical construction of the nature-culture divide, my thesis considers how colonial history has shaped modes of representation in Latin America that distance, objectify, and “other” living beings. Engaging with science, history, philosophy, and decolonial and Indigenous perspectives, as well as the work of comic artists and theorists, I think about the way I learned to interact with my environment and find in visual storytelling a place to challenge …

Corazones Urbanos: Literary Cartographies And Southwest Cities In The Mexican American Spatial Imaginary, Jorge A. Hernández Jr.

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Corazones Urbanos: Literary Cartographies and Southwest Cities in the Mexican American Spatial Imaginary examines how Mexican American writers from Tucson, San Antonio, and Albuquerque narrate, critique, and reimagine urban space across the U.S. Southwest in the twentieth century. Integrating literary studies, cultural geography, urban history, and critical regionalism, the project analyzes responses to racialized development, urban renewal, and gentrification that have displaced Mexican American communities from historic downtowns. Moving beyond borderlands and transnational models, it advances a critically regional approach attentive to local histories, municipal policies, and community pressures shaping urban life. Through close readings of creative and nonfiction texts …

Inherited By “Merit”: What Caste Carries Across The Indian American Diaspora, Aarushi V. Jaiswal

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

This project traces the rhetorical formation termed “meritocratic nationalism,” a political vocabulary that makes national belonging conditional on moralized merit, converting structural advantage into the language of individual character. Meritocratic nationalism is traced across three political figures whose rhetoric represents successive moments in a single ideological trajectory. Reading Narendra Modi’s 2014 and 2018 Independence Day addresses and his 2014 Madison Square Garden speech to the Indian American diaspora as the formation’s originating texts, this project argues that Modi’s recurring moral tetrad of conduct, values, traditions, and ability translated the structurally concentrated advantages of India’s upper-caste professional class into a universalist …

"Free To Fall": Milton's Satan And The Trial Of Discernment, Mae Legare

English Honors Theses

William Blake once wrote, "Milton was of the Devil's party without knowing it," reasoning a deep-seated alignment with evil that only becomes illuminated in Satan's vibrantly humanized character. By analyzing Milton's earlier political prose, Areopagitica and The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, alongside Satan's monologues in Paradise Lost, the author and his fallen characters' voices begin to sound synonymous. They are enraged by similar injustices and failures of political institutions, and they employ very similar methods of argumentation and political rhetoric. Blake was correct, in a sense, that Milton was "of the Devil's party," but I argue that …

The “Fallen Woman” Reconsidered: Inner And Outer Redemption In Victorian Literature, Caroline Kramer

English Honors Theses

This undergraduate thesis critically examines three female protagonists situated within the “fallen woman” character archetype of Victorian literature through a lens of redemption: Ruth Hilton in Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell (1853), Mercy Merrick in The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins (1873), and Tess Durbeyfield in Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (1891). While nineteenth-century readers may have expected that these women needed to undergo a moral transformation based on circumstances of their past, this thesis argues that none of them fundamentally require “redemption” according to any of the word’s typical definitions; rather, the question posed regards the modes through …

“Ain’T That Love?”: How Morrison Writes Against Stereotypes Of Black Mothers, Charlotte G. Collins

English Honors Theses

This thesis argues that Toni Morrison uses violent motherhood to add nuance to and challenge negative stereotypes of Black women. The first chapter investigates neglectful and violent mothers, examining Polly Breedlove from The Bluest Eye and Eva Peace from Sula. This chapter explores how these mothers use their cruelty as a way of claiming their title as head of the household, which they have long been denied due to their intersecting identities as Black women. The second chapter argues that Sethe from Beloved and Eva Peace from Sula murder their children as a way of reclaiming the ability to make …

“The Hond Hire Helde”: Solidarity, Mirroring, And Foreshadowing Between Helen, Cassandra, And Criseyde In Chaucer’S Troilus And Criseyde, Mallory K. Warner

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Geoffry Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde has divided readers and critics alike when addressing the main female protagonist: Criseyde. The poem follows Criseyde and her love interest Troilus, during the final days of the Trojan War, as the two are thrust together into a tragic affair then ripped apart by outside forces and the consequences of their own choices. By the end of the narrative, Criseyde’s autonomy is stripped from her as she is traded in a hostage exchange to the Greek army. In her last present moment in the poem, Criseyde comes to the realization that remaining true to Troilus …

Eat Or Be Eaten: A Posthuman Ecofeminist Reading Of The Vegetarian And Organ Meats, Erin Grace Elizabeth Kostic

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

As two novels that feature the reformation and reconstruction of the female body, both Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and K-Ming Chang’s Organ Meats emphasize the posthuman existence of women seeking to break free from the gender-based shackles that constrain them, leading to a striking rejection of the anthropocentric and patriarchal worldviews that plague contemporary society. My thesis comparatively examines each novel through an ecofeminist lens in an attempt to prove that it is only when a woman is able to reframe her existence outside of a male-centric worldview that she can truly find freedom. The Vegetarian’s Yeong-hye loses her …