English Language and Literature Commons^™

Canonicity And The American Public Library: The Case Of American Women Writers, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

Beginning with an overview of the debate over American women writers and the academic canon, this essay inventories four clusters of American women writers—domestic novelists, regionalists, modernists, and writers of diverse ethnicities—within a representative sampling of small-town public libraries across the Midwest from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The survey reveals some surprising disjunctures that run counter to trends in the academy. It also highlights the role publishers and bibliographers have played in establishing favored texts for a general readership and demonstrates that publishers of literary classics and bibliographies geared toward librarians have not always promoted the same …

Post-War Europe: The Waste Land As A Metaphor, Semy Rhee

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the mindset of twentieth-century Europe through the perspective of a modern individual that T. S. Eliot creates in his poem The Waste Land. Although The Waste Land is the greatest modernist poem, it is often criticized for its esoteric nature. A thorough examination of the poem is useful in understanding and appreciating Eliot’s masterful demonstration of the modernist philosophy. This study analyzes the poem in light of the definition of modernism and the poem’s metaphorical nature. It also aims to reconcile the two most confusing elements of the poem—its allusive content and fragmented structure—to the design …

An Introduction To Life At A U.S. University: A Pre-Departure Orientation For Thai Students Going To The U.S. To Study, Alexandra B. Ashley

Capstone Collection

An Orientation to Life at a US University is a six-week pre-departure orientation designed for Thai students at The Human Development Foundation (HDF). The youth are preparing to study abroad in the United States at a four-year accredited institution. HDF is an international non-profit, founded in 1973, with its headquarters based in Bangkok, Thailand. The organization’s headquarters, settled in Bangkok’s largest slum area of Klong Toey, is known as The Mercy Centre, often affectionately shortened to Mercy. The organization grew from a one-baht-per-day preschool for children of all religions in the slums, to a Foundation with over 25 slum preschools, …

"That House Belongs To Me": The Appropriation Of Space, Place, And Heritage In L.M. Montgomery's Emily Trilogy, Rebecca J. Thompson

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Orientalism And Three British Dames: De-Essentialization Of The Other In The Work Of Gertrude Bell, Freya Stark, And E.S. Drower, Lynn Sawyer

Masters Theses

Although postcolonial criticism has run its course for thirty years, a fresh look at Edward Said's Orientalism offers insight into how Orientalism functions in the writings of three British dames. Gertrude Bell in The Desert and the Sown, Freya Stark in The Southern Gates of Arabia, and E.S. Drower in The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, however, challenge Said's theory. Their writing raises questions about how gender alters the discourse about the Other, and whether Said essentializes the Occident. Bell, Stark, and Drower serve as case studies in which to analyze the politically and rhetorically complex interactions between the West …

You Sir Are A Fine Young Gentleman. Thank You, My Lady: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Eighteenth Century Conversations Regarding Gentility And Gender, Kati Overbey

Masters Theses

This study rhetorically analyzed the eighteenth century work of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison's The Spectator and Eliza Haywood's The Female Spectator using Kathleen Turner's framework for rhetorical history as social criticism integrating text and context. Ten essays from The Spectator as well as ten essays from The Female Spectator were selected based on content and subject matter regarding manners and gentility. When Turner's framework for analysis was applied to the essays, defining characteristics of gentility were revealed. A presentation of the results of the textual and contextual analysis of these twenty selected essays is provided. An analysis of the …

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight And The History Of Medieval Rhetoric., Joseph Turner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

During the Middle Ages, rhetoric and literature were thoroughly intertwined, whereas current notions of disciplinarity, in which literature and rhetoric are constructed as separate traditions, muddy our understanding of medieval practice. This essay reads Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an anonymous fourteenth-century poem, as engaged in a Ciceronian debate over the ramifications of legislative rhetoric on civic decision-making. Because of the paucity of information on medieval rhetorical practice, it concludes, literature is a resource that illuminates this neglected and misunderstood historical period.

Review Of Poetry, Pictures, And Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book And Victorian Visual Culture 1855-1875 By Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Katherine D. Harris

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Writing About Violence In A Secular Age: Conrad’S Solution, Joyce Wexler

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

The Cultural Consciousness Of John Updike: Rhetorical Spaces As Representations Of Americana Through The “Rabbit” Series, Michael Bonifacio

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a scholarly examination of John Updike’s first two novels of the Rabbit saga: Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux. The discussion is centered on the cultural artifacts and geographic spaces that populate the novels and how they are a reflection of popular cultural and contemporary sociological, economic, and political climates. These items are also closely considered with respect to their rhetorical significance and how Updike makes use of rhetorical spaces to influence his readers. What may seem like ordinary places are, through Updike’s writing, imbued with rhetorical significance that sheds light on his contemporary culture and that of …

Redefining The Gothic: How The Works Of Carson Mccullers, Tennessee Williams & Flannery O'Connor Retained Gothic Roots And Shaped The Southern Gothic, Sarah N. Koehler

All Student Theses and Dissertations

My aim in this thesis is to explore the commonalities between Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams and Flannery O’Connor, particularly in terms of three main themes: isolation, the pervasion of American normalcy and gender roles. While each of these authors clearly inserts some autobiographical information into his or her characters, the real commonalities between the fictional characters can be found in their inability to fit into a traditional society; the characters in all three authors’ works are outcasts, pushed to the fringes of their communities or their families because of who they are. Sometimes these characters’ desire to be different is …

Regina Maria Roche’S The Children Of The Abbey: Contesting The Catholic Presence In Female Gothic Fiction, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

This article examines Regina Maria Roche’s immensely popular gothic novel, The Children of the Abbey (1796), in light of the ideological and political campaigns that occurred in Britain leading up to the passage of the Catholic emancipation bill in 1829. The Children of the Abbey has been the subject of recent critical interpretation by a number of scholars who attempt to argue that it is pro-Catholic. However, by confronting the portrait of her dead mother in the final volume, Roche’s heroine Amanda discovers not a magical representation of the unknowable and inexplicable past that often stands for Catholicism but instead …

Review Of Zombie Politics And Culture In The Age Of Casino Capitalism By Henry A. Giroux And Monsters Of The Market: Zombies, Vampires And Global Capitalism By David Mcnally, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Significance Of Silence: The Muted Voices Of Count Fosco And Laura Fairlie In The Woman In White, Melanie Page

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the intricacies of voice using narrative theory and reader-response theory with Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Since Collins first wrote this epistolary novel serially, he wrote aware of his audience as he printed segments with different narrators. This novel allowed Collins the opportunity to reveal an internal set of narrators' responses to other characters' voices--responses that sometimes conflict with and modify one another. At the same time, Collins' contemporary audience's responses to the novel reveal the role of characters' voices in shaping reactions of members of the novel's reading public. Two opposing figures--Laura Fairlie and Count …

And Then, He Folds His Patterned Rug: Repressive Reality And The Eternal Soul In Vladimir Nabokov, Elizabeth Cook

Masters Theses

While Vladimir Nabokov has deservedly earned fame as a stylist of the strange, most critics who study his novels approach his absurd and beautiful characters as little more than fractured victims of a wholly subjective reality. Compounding the misunderstanding is the tired debate over whether or not Lolita is literary, pornographic, or some cruel game of cat-and-mouse in which Nabokov seizes control of his readers' sense of morality. However, critics who read Nabokov as nothing more than a manipulative stylist neglect to realize that his characters suffer such absurd distortions of spirit and mind because their environment--the "average" reality of …

The Relationship Between Text Message Volume And Formal Writing Performance Among Upper Level High School Students And College Freshmen, Brian Wardyga

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to reveal whether there is a relationship between students' volume of text messaging and formal writing performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test writing section. The study also examined gender as a contributing variable in this measure. As a supplementary correlation, student text message volume was also compared to their Writing I course final grade. The study focused solely on texting because texting has become the preferred method of telecommunication among teens and young adults (Lindley, 2008, p. 19). The design included a questionnaire that collected data to show whether any relationships exist that indicate …

March 31, 2012: Bradburn And Mckittrick Present At Narrative Conference, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

March 30, 2012: Re-Make Of Utz/Emery, Ed., Cahier Calin, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Does Alan Moore Have The (Untranslatable) Approach To Translation?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

We’ve all experienced it: that moment when we’re reading a sci-fi story or watching a sci-fi movie about alien contact and we realize that everyone is speaking the same language….usually English. Early Star Trek episodes are sometimes lampooned for this Anglo-centric stance. So the question for us is this: how does everyone know the same language?

Authors and artists approach the problem of cross-linguistic translation in multiple ways. (In this post, I’m conflating translation and interpretation under the term translation, but these are different linguistic processes.) Fans of Doctor Who, for example, know that the TARDIS facilitates the ‘automatic’ translation …

March 29, 2012: Hybridity Conference @ Notre Dame (3/29-31), Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

March 28, 2012: Two Upcoming Wmu-Ncte Student Affiliate Events, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

The Dialectic Of American Humanism: The Lecture Script, H. Vernon Leighton

Library Faculty Works

This document is the script from a lecture given at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota on March 28, 2012. The lecture described the scholarly discovery process for the peer-reviewed article “The Dialectic of American Humanism,” which was published in the journal Renascence also in 2012.

March 27, 2012: Klekar & Nagle Speak At Asecs Conference, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

March 23, 2012: Christopher Hart Honored As English Department Presidential Scholar, 2011-2012, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

March 22, 2012: Student Wins Leads In Major Shakespeare Festival, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

March 21, 2012: 2012 Departmental Awards, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

March 20, 2012: Jen Bervin Events, 3/28-3/29, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

David Foster Wallace, Isu, And "Everything Is Green", Robert L. Mclaughlin

Faculty Publications – English

This presentation was delivered at the Red Note Music Festival: Words and Music on March 20, 2012 at Illinois State University's College of Fine Arts.

March 19, 2012: Dr. Melinda Moustakis Named Fellow At Princeton, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

March 18, 2012 Bonnie Jo Campbell Reads Her Work: Spring 2012: Gwen Frostic Reading Series, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.