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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Trauma Before The Name : Impersonal Violence In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Carolin Alice Hofmann
Trauma Before The Name : Impersonal Violence In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Carolin Alice Hofmann
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The dissertation studies the pre-history of trauma in US American fiction, examining how experiences of large-scale adversity are represented before the concept of psychological trauma emerges in the late nineteenth century. Distinctly modern forms of violence—diffuse, systemic, lacking direction and intent—bring forth less individual and personal experiences of grief and suffering than those imagined by twentieth-century trauma theory. Studying forms of feeling and of genre that make trauma legible historicizes the way a Western idea of modern subjectivity, as white, self-possessed, agential, and split, has shaped out understanding of how a person processes crisis. The dissertation visits three spaces that …
The Assemblage Of The Dead : Speech, Subjectivity, And Being Human, Nazia Manzoor
The Assemblage Of The Dead : Speech, Subjectivity, And Being Human, Nazia Manzoor
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
ABSTRACT“The Assemblage of the Dead: Speech, Subjectivity, and Being Human” reimagines the construct of the human as a political subject of the state through a bio(necro)political lens. The project re-envisions the conceptual framework of biopolitics through an engagement with the figure of the living dead, centralized in Giorgio Agamben’s work through his casting of the figure of the Muselmann as the cipher that reveals the limits of humanity and being human. With a bid to counter-narrate the twinning of death and resistance and death and subjectivity as foundational markers of humanity in current critical scholarship of the field, this project …
Between The Visual And The Verbal: An Aesthetic Of Open Wounds In Post-Traumatic Experience Of The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Maryam Ghodrati
Between The Visual And The Verbal: An Aesthetic Of Open Wounds In Post-Traumatic Experience Of The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Maryam Ghodrati
Doctoral Dissertations
Trauma theory of the 1990s pioneered by Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, and Geoffrey Hartman has been criticized by postcolonial scholars such as Irene Visser, Michael Balaev, and Stef Craps for being neglectful of the trauma of the colonial world in adopting a deconstructivist approach and psychologization of experiences of trauma. This antagonism between the traditional and postcolonial trauma theory has resulted in even deeper isolation of the human subject at the center of this argument. In my research, I highlight the reality and materiality of traumatic suffering in the shared realm of the human body to suggest a need for …
"Never Forget": Embodied Absence And Extended Relations Of Care After 9/11, Sophie L. Riemenschneider
"Never Forget": Embodied Absence And Extended Relations Of Care After 9/11, Sophie L. Riemenschneider
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation is a reflection on how loss was articulated in the wake of 9/11. The terror attacks engendered a memorial style that sought to give shape to grief, acknowledging it without filling it in or erasing it. This new style, which I term embodied absence, exists across a range of mediums, from literature to architecture. It is such a potent memorial form because it also captures the traumatic process, which is prolonged, layered, and potentially open-ended. However, despite their ability to mirror the nature of trauma, instances of embodied absence never verbalize the attacks’ root trauma—the disconnect between our …
Twistin’ The Night Away: Perverted Nostalgia In How I Learned To Drive, Coco Mcneil
Twistin’ The Night Away: Perverted Nostalgia In How I Learned To Drive, Coco Mcneil
English Honors Theses
This paper situates Paula Vogel's 1997 play How I Learned to Drive as an American memory play that is representative of 1990s cultural and political discourses rooted in nostalgia for the 1960s. By examining each character--the Greek Chorus, Peck, and Li'l Bit--within Lauren Berlant's 'intimate public sphere,' 1960s iconography, and memory practices, I argue that Vogel offers an allegory in Drive that characterizes this nostalgia as perverted and traumatizing rather than idyllic.
The Island Remembers : Land Memory, Collective Memory & Trauma In Gloria Naylor’S Mama Day, Justine Prusiensky
The Island Remembers : Land Memory, Collective Memory & Trauma In Gloria Naylor’S Mama Day, Justine Prusiensky
Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects
The purpose of this project is to define the concept of land memory in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, considering it in relation to scholarship by Jeffrey Andrew Barash, Paula Gallant Eckard, Patricia San José Rico, and others. This exploration of the relationship between land and memory alongside the magical realistic novel, Mama Day, reveals how the island’s memory constructs, preserves, and coveys the past while influencing the present. The island of Willow Springs retains and remembers the events that transpired there in 1823, which tethers the past to the present and exposes a ripple of consequences felt by Naylor’s characters. …
I Believe A Man Can Fly: Three Essays On The Themes Of Superheroes, Trayton N. Armstrong
I Believe A Man Can Fly: Three Essays On The Themes Of Superheroes, Trayton N. Armstrong
Honors Theses
An analysis of the three most well-known and popular superheroes, examining important themes that each revolves around. "Superman: The Hero in All of Us" examines heroism and how the Man of Steel defines and redefines what is a hero. "Batman: The Redemption of Tragedy" examines what makes the Dark Knight a compelling character and why he pursues his war on crime. "Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility" looks at how the titular themes define Spider-Man's career and why they are important.
How She Haunts: Missed Endings, The Fragmentary, And The Female Figure In British Romanticism, Jane Clare Bolin
How She Haunts: Missed Endings, The Fragmentary, And The Female Figure In British Romanticism, Jane Clare Bolin
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In this dissertation I discuss a relatively small grouping of fragmentary texts by Coleridge (Sibylline Leaves, “The Three Graves,” “Christabel,” and “Kubla Khan”), De Quincey (Suspiria de Profundis), and Keats (“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and Lamia). In critical discussions of the Romantic fragment, it is most often referred to as incomplete, lacking closure, and unintentionally so. The fragments I have chosen to include transcend such a reading of lack and embrace a perpetuation of possibility. My claim is not that these are exemplary British Romantic fragments but rather that they lend themselves to a …
Witnessing Difference: An Exploration Of Living In The Aftermath Of Trauma In Post-Holocaust America In Cynthia Ozick’S “Rosa”, Anastasia Kourotchkina
Witnessing Difference: An Exploration Of Living In The Aftermath Of Trauma In Post-Holocaust America In Cynthia Ozick’S “Rosa”, Anastasia Kourotchkina
Scripps Senior Theses
This thesis examines the process of witnessing in Cynthia Ozick’s novella Rosa as a crucial part of living in the aftermath of Holocaust. By using Kelly Oliver’s concept of witnessing, I approach the process of witnessing trauma as the process of restoring subjectivity. As my analysis of Ozick’s Rosa shows, what prevents both Rosa and those around her to bear witness to trauma is the failure to imagine oneself as implicated in the traumas of the other. I conclude that the tendency to ignore the essential connection and dependence that exists between the Self and the other is enabled by …
The Memory Of Mythmaking: Transgenerational Trauma And Disability As A Collective Experience In Afrofuturist Storytelling, Jessica Tapley
The Memory Of Mythmaking: Transgenerational Trauma And Disability As A Collective Experience In Afrofuturist Storytelling, Jessica Tapley
Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations
This project closely examines the relationship between transgenerational trauma, disability, and myth, particularly within Black speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, and Africanfuturism. Through the lenses of critical race theory, trauma theory, disability studies, and feminist theory, I will closely analyze how myth functions across five Black speculative fiction novels. I argue that disability appears as a common thread throughout each of these novels as a unique part of Black history and experience. Disability culture specifically offers community interdependence, a rejection of body and mind binaries, and a rejection of hierarchies in the pursuit of accessibility. I further demonstrate how myth centers racial …
The Comic Way Towards The Universal Self: Socioecological Trauma And The Wounds Left By Survival, Gabriel Bugarin
The Comic Way Towards The Universal Self: Socioecological Trauma And The Wounds Left By Survival, Gabriel Bugarin
WWU Graduate School Collection
Since its prominent emergence in the 21st century, speculative writing has become a popular genre amongst marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed peoples, largely due to its omission of westernized themes and tropes that have had a stranglehold on genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Some of the subgenres that have emerged out of this “counter literature” include spec. personal history, solarpunk, indigenous futurism, dystopian/utopian lit, spec. poetry, and many others. Using speculative writing, coupled with Garcia Lorca’s perspective on the duende and Joseph Meeker’s ideology of “The Comic Way,” I have started to excavate what the recent death …