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From The Illuminating Moon To The Radiating Sun: The Philosophical Writings Of Emerson And Nichiren, Sharon Mitsue Blythe

Theses & Honors Papers

Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophical writings possess deep correlations to the writings of Nichiren, a 13th century Japanese Buddhist philosopher. Both Emerson and Nichiren conceive the inherent and unlimited potential of human beings, and stress the inseparability of life from its psychological, spiritual, and physical environment. Both Emerson and Nichiren address the cyclical and universal nature of all phenomena, an understanding that derives from the oneness of all facets of existence. The greatest variation between these two writers occurs in the implementation and practice of their philosophies.

The Preface provides a synopsis of Buddhism and introduces Nichiren. It also discusses the …

A Seal Of Living Reality: The Role Of Personal Expression In Latter-Day Saint Discourse, C. Julianne Smith

Theses and Dissertations

A personal mode of discourse is central to Latter-day Saint culture. This mode is both pervasive throughout the culture and significant within it. Two specific genres-the personal experience narrative and the personal testimony-illustrate the importance of this discourse mode in LDS culture. Understanding the LDS personal mode of discourse is essential to properly understanding Mormonism. The personal orientation in LDS discourse mirrors a tendency towards personal expression which has become common throughout Western culture. This tendency has important roots in the Protestant religious movement. In particular, Puritanism represents a significant point of origin for American personal expression. Such expression has …

A Spectre Is Haunting Samuel Clemens: A Marxist Critique Of Wealth As Resolution In Mark Twain's Novels, Jeff Carr

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The distribution of wealth occurs frequently in Mark Twain's novels, especially at the resolution. Indeed, Twain uses wealth as resolution in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. The repeated use of this formula in the author's approach to novel writing indicates the tremendous influence that capitalism had in shaping his worldview. In his early works, Twain appears to endorse capitalism in his use of wealth as resolution. Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and Huckleberry Finn each conclude with the distribution of capital as a reward to …

Courtship, Loe, And Marriage In Othello: Shakespeare's Mockery Of Courtly Love, Leigh Copas

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Othello is the forgery of a comedic play turned tragedy, for the play begins where the ordinary comedy would end. While many critics prefer to discuss the racial and exotic aspects of William Shakespeare's tragedy, there are several critics who focus on the role of love and the marital relationships that are also important in terms of interpreting the actions of key characters. Carol Thomas Neely, Maurice Charney, and several other literary critics have focused primarily on the role of marriage and love in Othello. The topic of marriage is generally discussed in terms of the wooing scene (Act 1, …

Is This Her Fault Or Mine?: An Examination Of The Overregulation Of Sexuality In Measure For Measure As An Argument Against Early Modern Anti-Theatricalism, Heidi Nicole Tesch

English Theses - Archive

The early modern anti-theatricalist movement sought to permanently close the playhouses, arguing that theaters breed immorality through their association with prostitution and the female body. This thesis examines how Shakespeare's Measure for Measure reappropriates these symbols in an argument against the anti-theatricalist movement, as the overregulation of sexuality mimics the overregulation of the theater. The first section examines the overregulation of prostitution in early modern society and in the play. The second section looks at the resistance to excessive regulation of female bodies that were portrayed as weak and unable to resist sin. The final section evaluates the theatricality of …

Hold Your Tongue: Female Speech And Male Anxieties In Early Modern England, Lindsey Nicole Lanzisero

English Theses - Archive

For early Modern England, containing female speech was essential to maintaining order. Through their speech, women could raise questions about and subvert patriarchal power. The frequency of this trope shows that there was a great apprehension about what speech and the tongue could accomplish. The female tongue was used as a metaphor for many problems and issues within the culture. This thesis analyzes two body politic metaphors in which the female tongue as a character wreaks havoc on the social body. Thomas Tomkis and William Averell utilize this metaphor in very different ways. Tomkis uses comedy to communicate with rhetorical …

The Magical Sublime: A New-Old Lens On Magical Realism, Kim Danielle Sasser

English Theses - Archive

While magical realist critics often refer to magical realism's generic heritage of primitive cultures and indigenous mythology, Franz Roh's magischer realismus, and Surrealism, I will point to the sublime as a less recognized lineage, yet one which offers equally fruitful insights. Magical realism employs many elements of the sublime, such as astonishment and the alternation between the two phases of pain and pleasure, but perhaps most valuable in this comparative analysis is the sublime's offering new perspectives which illuminate how magical realism's most distinguishing characteristic, the magic, functions. Relying mostly on the theories of Longinus, Burke, and Kant, as well …

Review Of Troubling Minds: The Cultural Politics Of Genius In The United States, 1840-1890 By Gustavus Stadler, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Though the title suggests it is, this book is not a cultural history of genius in the 19th-century US. Working in a high cultural-studies mode, Stadler (Haverford College) addresses questions like those addressed in a special issue of American Literature, "Aesthetics and the End(s) of Cultural Studies" (ed. by Christopher Castiglia and Russ Castronovo, v. 76, no. 3, September 2004). He uses an oddly assorted group of figures to map out a grand narrative of how the genius works to accommodate ordinary individuals to "the troubling, potentially shattering phenomena associated with modernity." In the first three chapters Stadler focuses …

Kairos, Nomos, New Media: Paradox As A Reservoir For Invention, Robert Leston

English Dissertations - Archive

In the wake of the so-called "social turn" in writing studies, the scholarship of invention has enjoyed renewed interest. This dissertation is primarily concerned with invigorating the research of invention by turning towards viable but untapped generative approaches for composing that have been forged by artists working in areas external to composition studies by putting into practice what media theorist Gregory Ulmer calls a "heuretic" approach to invention. (I use the term heuretic to indicate the appropriation of an inventional model from a domain or discipline such as art, though other domains such as engineering would suit just as well.) …

Boffin's Books And Darwin's Finches: Victorian Cultures Of Collecting, Michael W. Hancock '89

Doctoral Dissertations

Although wealthy continental virtuosos had passionately and selectively accumulated a variety of natural and artificial objects from the Renaissance onwards, not until the nineteenth century did collecting become a conspicuous national pastime among all classes in Britain. As industry and empire made available many new and exotic goods for acquisition and display, the collection as a cultural form offered the Victorians a popular strategy of self-fashioning that was often represented in the literature of the age as a source of prestige and social legitimation. Through interdisciplinary readings of Victorian fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry, my study examines how textual representations …

Judith Merril: A Primary And Secondary Bibliography, Elizabeth Cummins

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

This Judith Merril bibliography includes both primary and secondary works, arranged in categories that are suitable for her career and that are, generally, common to the other bibliographies in the Center for Bibliographic Studies in Science Fiction. Works by Merril include a variety of types and modes—pieces she wrote at Morris High School in the Bronx, newsletters and fanzines she edited; sports, westerns, and detective fiction and non-fiction published in pulp magazines up to 1950; science fiction stories, novellas, and novels; book reviews; critical essays; edited anthologies; and both audio and video recordings of her fiction and non-fiction.

Is Teaching Always Local, Education Global?, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Bias And The Teachable Moment: Revisiting A Teacher Narrative, Darren Crovitz

Faculty Articles

Such responsibility may be vital for English teachers, especially, as we strive to establish communities of writers and spaces for critical thinking and conversation. When I sat down to write about this experience, I saw it as an opportunity to discuss a taboo situation and its positive aftermath, with the aim of demonstrating how it might be possible to use such events as points of departure in creating engaging writing assignments.

Maintaining An Immigrant Heritage Language Other Than Spanish Or English In The Bilingual Culture Of The Rio Grande Valley Of South Texas, Sonia A. Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

A 2005 study in the bilingual Spanish/English Rio Grande Valley of South Texas investigates the language strategies used by immigrant families from China, Greece, Hungary, Japan, the Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, and the Ukraine to preserve their heritage languages and pass them on to their children. Personal interviews determine that all the parents are well-educated and from an above average socio-economic level. This investigation categorizes the various strategies used by the parents. All the immigrant parents emphasize that the main reason they want to preserve the heritage language with their children is to insure that the children can continue to communicate …

The Importance Of Continuity In First Language Education For Learning A Second Language, Stephen M. Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Scores from the Texas Reading Proficiency Tests in English (RPTE) for ninety-four Newcomer ESL students were analyzed to understand the differences between students who had attended school continuously and those who had discontinuity in their first language (LI) education in their home country. This research was performed in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, a few miles from the border with Mexico. The hypothesis is that students who have gaps in their L1 education will not learn to read as quickly in English as those who had none since the former are lacking cognitive skills which the latter already …

The Rhetoric Of Crisis: How We Talk About The Vulnerability Of Youth, Casey Cramer

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The classical definition of rhetoric is generally understood to be the art of persuasion. Originating in ancient Greece, rhetoric was one of the three original liberal arts. It focused on effective use of language, most often in the arena of politics and public discourse (Brummett, 35). By mastering persuasive language, politicians were able to shape and sway public opinion in their favor. Conversely, by understanding the mechanics of rhetoric, citizens were able to recognize and interpret speech that was purposefully constructed. The prevalence of rhetoric in political speech made it an integral part of a democratic society - politicians needed …

Man Down South, Joseph B. Plicka

Theses and Dissertations

In this novella the main character, David Crumm, is getting older and decides not to wait around and die on his frozen ranch, but to retire to warmer climates. He leaves everything with his daughter, gets in his truck and drives south with his dog. In Florida, he accidentally hits and kills a migrant woman on her bicycle. The woman has a young son who survives the accident and, through a number of converging factors, David is compelled to personally take the boy back to his relatives in Nicaragua. The book then deals with David's experiences as he heads farther …

Japanese North Americans, War, And Communal Healing Through Literature: Internment Memory As An Ascent In Meaning And Beauty, Chikako D. Kumamoto

English Faculty Scholarship

To define ourselves as Americans, we often like to invoke the still-potent idea, inherited from the Puritans, of a "city upon a hill." Steeped in a mythic discourse on our earliest conception of America as an elect nation, this phrase envisions the community at large as "the pilot society for the world" engaged in a noble experiment of innocence, consensus, justice, and freedom for all, while driving to achieve myriad forms of greatness. But when this community at large is found fallen from the ideal conception of itself and conducts itself contrarily to its communal responsibilities towards its smaller communities …

What Archives Reveal: The Hidden Poems Of Amelia Earhart, Sammie L. Morris

Libraries Research Publications

The importance of primary source materials to scholarship is undeniable. Primary source materials can verify or contradict information accepted as true in history books and other secondary sources. They can tell the whole, or at least more complete, story of events. Unlike secondary sources, primary source materials offer first-hand accounts from the past, bringing history closer and making it feel more real. It can even be argued that primary source materials are less susceptible to the loss or misinterpretation of information over time in subsequent edition revisions. In particular among primary source materials, manuscripts such as diaries and letters offer …

The Transforming Power Of Grace, Eamon Maher

Articles

Material reproduced by kind permission of Reality

Towards A Bibliography Of Critical Whiteness Studies, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

As the title implies, this book offers a multi-disciplinary overview of the explosion of work in scholarly critical whiteness studies. The contributing bibliographers acknowledge that this work follows and builds upon a great deal of whiteness critique previously provided by African American writers, and by those writing from other racialized positions. Each section provides a solid introduction to key concepts and practices regarding whiteness in a particular field, including: philosophy, history, literature, cinema, the visual arts, psychology, education, media studies, qualitative inquiry, personal narratives, and international and comparative approaches.

"Don't You Mean 'Slaves,' Not 'Servants'?": Literary And Institutional Texts For An Interdisciplinary Classroom, Susanna Ashton

Publications

Editor's Note: This article begins a semiregular feature in which contributors analyze "texts" that figure in the daily lives of college English teachers: e.g., syllabi, course descriptions, administrative decrees, departmental bylaws, college Web sites. Your proposals are invited. Here, Susanna Ashton describes how undergraduates in her class on representations of slavery studied the words, sounds, and images they encountered at a historical site on her campus: the former slave plantation of leading antebellum racist John C. Calhoun. She also analyzes how her school depicts this site on the

Penned, Nathalie Anderson

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Poem No. 96, November 2006, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

Objectifying Anxieties: Scientific Ideologies In Bram Stoker’S Dracula And The Lair Of The White Worm, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

Scientific ideologies swirl throughout Stoker’s two most gothic novels, Dracula (1897) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911), and this essay will address those ideologies as literary manifestations of just some of the “weird science” that was permeating late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Europe. Specifically, the essay examines racial theories, physiognomy, criminology, brain science, and sexology as they appear in Stoker’s two novels. Stoker owned a copy Johann Caspar Lavater’s five-volume edition of Essays on Physiognomy (1789), and declared himself to be a “believer of the science” of physiognomy. The second major “weird science” infecting the gothic works of Stoker is …

Arthur Hugh Clough And Florence Nightingale: A Relationship Reexamined, Patrick G. Scott

Faculty Publications

Discusses the relationship between the Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough and his cousin-by-marriage the nursing reformer Florence Nightingale, using manuscript and other evidence to counter the varicature offered by Lytton Strachey in his influential book Eminent Victorians.

Lord Dunsany And The Great War: Don Rodriguez And The Rebirth Of Romance, David J. Carlson

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Considers Lord Dunsany’s response to the Great War and modernized conflict in general in Don Rodriguez. In a pivotal section of this Quixotic romantic adventure, the character of Rodriguez is shown visions of modern war that cause him to question not just his heroic warrior ideals, but the purpose of Creation itself; his following adventures are increasingly in the ironic mode. Rodriguez is able to transcend his experiences in the end.

Myth Maker, Unicorn Maker: C.S. Lewis And The Reshaping Of Medieval Thought, Chad Wriglesworth

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Deals with Lewis’s use of medieval legends and religious symbolism of the unicorn in two versions of a poem about the Ark and in The Last Battle and The Great Divorce.

"Surely You Don't Disbelieve": Tolkien And Pius X: Anti-Modernism In Middle-Earth, A. R. Bossert

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The disruption caused by a war of ideas is detailed in this paper on Pope Pius X and the Catholic Church’s response to modernism in the early years of the century, and shows this controversy’s clear influence on Tolkien’s thinking in his letters and fiction.

Wise Warriors In Tolkien, Lewis, And Rowling, Ernelle Fife

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Discusses the concept of the wise woman warrior, focusing primarily on Éowyn, Orual, and Hermione Granger but bringing in other characters from the works of Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling as well.