English Language and Literature Commons^™

Notes On How To Rework A Ph.D. Dissertation For Publication As A Book, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Altered Perspective, Jaymee L. Wagner

The Kabod

This paper analyzes Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations by discussing how and why Pip’s perspective on social classes and individual morality changes as a result of the various characters and events he encounters throughout the novel.

“For It Acordeth Noght To Kinde”: Remediating Gower’S Confessio Amantis In Machinima, Sarah L. Higley

Accessus

Visual adaptation of a medieval text, as tempting as it is in film of any kind, is never an easy conversion, and all the more so if the original is as formally structured as John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. This essay examines the philosophy and difficulties of making a “medieval motion picture” (animated and narrated by the author) reflect the message of three of Gower’s tales (“The Travelers and the Angel,” “Canace and Machaire,” “Florent”) as well as the multimedia properties of the manuscripts that house them, their illuminations beckoning us into colorful virtual worlds. In referencing theories of adaptation, …

Preface, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

Co-editors Georgiana Donavin and Eve Salisbury are delighted to feature the work of medievalist and machinimatographer Sarah L. Higley in this issue of Accessus. In a machinima production that debuted during the Third International Congress of the John Gower Society at the University of Rochester (30 June through 3 July, 2014), Higley refashions three tales from the Confessio Amantis for her film The Lover's Confession. In this issue of Accessus, we present the film and Higley's commentary on the intersections between her creative work with machinima and scholarly issues surrounding "The Tale of the Travelers and the …

A Lost Collection Of Robert Burns Manuscripts: Sir Alfred Law, Davidson Cook, And The Honresfield Collection, Patrick G. Scott

Faculty Publications

This essay traces the formation by William Law of Littlesborough, Lancashire, of a major collection of literary manuscripts and books, including works by Robert Burns, the Brontes, and Walter Scott; recounts the unlikely role in the 1920s of Davidson Cook, a cooperative society manager from Barnsley, in encouraging the then-owner Sir Alfred Law, M.P., of Honresfield House, to make the collections available for scholarly use; summarizes available information on the partial dispersal of the collection in the late 20s and early 1930s, and the disappearance after Sir Alfred's death in 1939 of much of the collection, including major items; and …

Emelio Betances, Professor Of Sociology And Latin American Studies, Musselman Library, Emelio Betances

Next Page

In this new Next Page column, Emelio Betances, Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies, talks about how growing up during turbulent political times in the Dominican Republic sparked his passion for reading and why he's such a fan of authors J.M. Coetzee and Orhan Pamuk.

Dr. Frankenstein's Hideous Progeny: A Typology Of The Mad Scientist In Contemporary Young Adult Novels And Computer Animated Film, Farran Leanne Norris Sands

Theses and Dissertations

The following study explores representations of mad scientists in a variety of novels for young adults, and in computer animated film for adolescents. Building from their typologies and furthering the work of scholars such as Glen S. Allen, Roslyn D. Haynes, and Sven Wagner, all of whom focus on texts for adult audiences, this study proposes and presents a typology of mad scientists as they are represented in texts for adolescents and young adults. Expanding the work of these scholars, this study aims to show where children's mad scientist texts both follow and deviate from current mad scientist typologies in …

The Role Of Culture In Comics Of The Quotidian, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Studies of the quotidian often start from a social sciences perspective that daily life is made up of routine practices and ingrained assumptions. This is also found in studies of literature, art and economics. The premise of the quotidian, however, must be examined through a lens of culture. This essay explores how the notion of the quotidian in comics rests on culture, which in turn comprises various nexus of practice. Drawing evidence from Exit Wounds (by Rutu Modan) and Questionable Content (by Jeph Jacques), the essay extends the notion of the quotidian from a specific reference to ‘slice of life …

They Read What They Need, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Michael W. Smith

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

An essay on the importance of allowing young people to read what they need to read aside from their assigned readings is presented. Topics include the four kinds of pleasure young people get out from the books they read outside of the school, findings from a case study conducted by the authors on a young girl who is an avid reader of romances, and a suggestion on allowing books that young people like to read into the curricula to help them become life-long readers.

Thoughts On African American Literature From The Imsa English Department, Michael Dean, Michael W. Hancock, Leah Kind, Adam Kotlarczyk, Erin Micklo, Tracy A. Townsend

Faculty Roundtable

This document is the product of an online collaborative discussion inspired by Black History Month that took place between members of the IMSA English team during the first week of February in 2015. In this conversation, English faculty ruminate on the importance of African American literature as teachers, as individuals, and as lifelong learners.

Review Of "Empires Of Love: Europe, Asia, And The Making Of Early Modern Identity" By C. Nocentelli, Eric B. Song

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Mystification Of Christian Salvation: On The Anxiety Of Redemption In Renaissance Poetry And Drama, Kimberly Paige Ambroziak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

"The Legend of the Red Crosse Knight," "Doctor Faustus," "Hamlet," and "Samson Agonistes" are secular poetic explorations with a common idea: the possibility of Christian salvation. These examples of the redemptive quest seem to reveal the uneasiness of salvation which is representative, if only broadly, of the atmosphere in which their authors were writing. More specifically, the intention of this study is to reveal the possibility and nature of Christian uncertainty as it is firmly rooted in the early modern period. As Christian doctrine proves protean from its beginnings in the first century to Protestant tracts in the sixteenth, these …

The Sadistic Reader: Gender And The Pleasures Of Violence In The Novel, Pamela Burger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project seeks to explain the prevalence of narratives that feature sexual violence against women in the tradition of the Anglophone novel. To this end, it posits the existence of a sadistic reading practice that coincides with readers' sympathetic identification. A sadistic reader takes pleasure in the bodily violation of the woman at the center of a novel; such a reader enters the text expecting violence, and experiences a sense of narrative gratification when the inevitable violation plays out. These expectations emerge from repeated interactions with a literary tradition in which victimized heroines are routine. To explore such sadism, I …

Dark Matter: Susan Howe, Muriel Rukeyser, And The Scholar's Art, Stefania Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instead of describing poetry as a set of constraints or history of practices, Muriel Rukeyser calls it "one kind of knowledge." Dark Matter heeds Rukeyser's call, theorizing a poetics of the "scholar's art," in which documentary investigation, autobiographical exploration, and formal innovation are mutual, interwoven concerns. The dissertation pairs American poets Susan Howe (b. 1937) and Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), reading their hybrid works not through the received categories of American poetry, or through common generic and disciplinary divisions, but using an inductive methodology that takes its lead from the poets. Understanding Howe and Rukeyser's literary experiments as serious interventions in …

Pierre Matthieu En España. La Biografía Política En Las Traducciones De Juan Pablo Mártir Rizo Y Lorenzo Van Der Hammen., Adrian M. Izquierdo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This Dissertation studies how history is construed in the 17th century through the reception, translation and adaptation in Spain of French historiographer Pierre Matthieu's historical writings, and particularly, the use of biography as a means to illustrate the political landscape of 17th-century France and Spain. We demonstrate how the biographical tradition inherited from the classics and the early Italian Renaissance is adapted to Counter-Reformation Catholicism to produce a political biography intended not only to advise kings and ministers on the dangers of political power, but also to warn those in power about their current excesses.

The appeal of Matthieu's biographies …

The Trickster In Nella Larsen's Passing (1929): Performing And Masquerading An American Identity, Rachael Miller Benavidez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines Nella Larsen's novel Passing (1929) and the performative nature of `passing' as white through the perspective of the archetypal trickster myth. I read the novel as a trickster tale that challenges gender roles and the construct of race in defiance of the dominant power structure that defines the American identity. I position the character Clare Kendry Bellew as a trickster figure, who performs an identity to defy race and gender roles. My argument challenges the general theory that black passing novels are solely tragic, and the perception that humor is not a pedagogical tool or representation of …

Loosening The Critical Corset: New Approaches To The Short Fiction Of Kate Chopin And Ruth Stuart, Kathryn Erin O'Donoghue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation uses the works and lives of two popular late-nineteenth-century writers, Ruth McEnery Stuart and Kate Chopin, as a heuristic to solve the literary mystery of how "fiction by women" became "women's fiction." While feminist scholars resuscitated Chopin, Stuart remains ignored. The realism and irony of Chopin's novel The Awakening resonate with modern readers, but the sentimental aspects of Stuart's work and Chopin's short fiction remain problematic. The aesthetic movements of realism and naturalism influenced literary taste to the extent that sentimentalism is anathema to contemporary critics. I participate in recent scholarship that explores how sentimentalism has been used …

The American Aspasia: The Woman Lecturer In American Women's Rights Fiction, 1839-1915, Angela Ridinger-Dotterman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of the figure of the woman lecturer/speaker that appeared in American women's rights fiction in the period between 1839 and 1915. I argue that examining the figure of the woman lecturer/ speaker in a wide variety of texts and over an extended period of history reveals that the figure served as a dynamic vehicle for women writers to advance a broad range of social and political interests; writing in a social and historical context that discouraged women's participation in public speech, women authors used fiction as a rhetorical space to articulate different visions …

The Literary Legacy Of The Federal Writers' Project, Sara Rendene Rutkowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Established by President Roosevelt in 1935 as part of the New Deal, the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) put thousands of unemployed professionals to work documenting American life during the Depression. Federal writers--many of whom would become famous, including Ralph Ellison, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, and Dorothy West--collected reams of oral histories and folklore, and produced hundreds of guides to cities and states across the country. Yet, despite both the Project's extraordinary volume of writing and its unprecedented support for writers, few critics have examined it from a literary perspective. Instead, the FWP has …

Ni Francaise, Ni Juive, Ni Arabe: The Influence Of Nineteenth Century French Judaism On The Emergence Of Franco- Jewish- Arab Literature, Deborah Rosalind Gruber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study proposes that the influence of nineteenth century French Judaism on the Jewish communities of the Middle East from approximately 1910­‐1956 has had an indelible influence on the evolution of Franco- Jewish‐Arab literature today. From the late nineteenth century, the education of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire was provided by the Paris based Alliance Israélite Universelle, an organization established by French Jews with the purpose of emancipating disadvantaged Jewish communities outside of France. The result was the establishment of Franco­‐Jewish-Arab communities that regarded French education as a means of both social and economic advancement. Although the curriculum of …

The Ties That Bind: Gender, Race, And Empire In Caribbean Indenture Narratives, Alison Joan Klein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the ways that oppressive gender roles and racial tensions in the Caribbean today developed out of the British imperial system of indentured labor. Between 1837 and 1920, after slavery was abolished in the British colonies and before most colonies achieved independence, approximately 750,000 laborers, primarily from India and China, traveled to the Caribbean under indenture. This is a critical but under-explored aspect of colonial history, as this immigration dramatically altered the ethnic make up of the Caribbean, the cultural norms and traditions of those who migrated, and the structure of British imperialism. I focus on depictions of …

The Many Voices Of Sylvia Plath, Millie Tullis

Research on Capitol Hill

No abstract provided.

Fiction In Fact And Fact In Fiction In The Writing Of Joyce Carol Oates, Tanya L. Tromble

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Joyce Carol Oates draws extensively on news stories, as well as on elements of her own family’s past, to find inspiration for her works of fiction. She has written about the Chappaquiddick incident involving Ted Kennedy and the JonBenet Ramsay murder case. She has worked the Niagara Falls Love Canal environmental scandal into the framework of The Falls and taken inspiration from sordid events from her own family’s past in the beginning of The Gravedigger’s Daughter. However, in none of these examples does Oates purport to relate the precise real-life “facts” of the historical events. Indeed, for an author …

A Model Citizen: Ethos, Conservation, And The Rhetorical Construction Of Aldo Leopold, Daniel Cryer

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation explores the changing, multifaceted ethos of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), one of the twentieth centurys most versatile environmental communicators. Drawing on scholarship in environmental rhetoric, rhetorical genre theory, citizenship theory and ecofeminism, I argue that throughout his career Leopold offered evolving rhetorical versions of himself as ideals of ecological behavior to be emulated by his readers. The chapters analyze Leopold's ethos as it was constructed in his early-career writings in the New Mexico Game Protective Association Pine Cone, a wildlife protection broadsheet; in the Report on a Game Survey of the North Central States, his first book; in reports …

January 26, 2015: Rogers Shakespeare Essay Contest 2015, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

January 26, 2015: Attention Medievalist Grad Students: Medieval Studies Workshop At Newberry Library, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Sacrifice, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Review of Joyce Carol Oates's novel The Sacrifice focusing on how racial politics in America can transform individuals into symbols, erasing their human complexity.

Sammye Greer, Sammye Greer

All oral histories

Professor of English Sammye Greer was on faculty at IWU from 1970-1982. On behalf of the newly-formed 2014 Women's Caucus, Greer was asked to provide any recollections she had of the ca. 1970s IWU Women's Caucus, including any records or documentation that might still exist. Her remarks describe the campus climate for female faculty, events of the Caucus in her era, and perspectives on the issues she encountered as department chair.

Dr. Greer received IWU's Teaching Excellence Award and gave an Honors Day Convocation address in May 1978. The text for that address may be found at http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/teaching_excellence/42

The Oil Man And The Sea: Navigating The Northern Gateway By Arno Kopecky, Patricia H. Audette-Longo

The Goose

Review of Arno Kopecky's The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway.

Imperiling Our Children: An Interview With Fred Stenson About Who By Fire, Jon Gordon

The Goose

This interview with Alberta novelist Fred Stenson focuses on his most recent novel, Who By Fire. The discussion examines the role of environmentalists and the legal system in responding to the oil and gas industry in Alberta, as well as other issues connected to Stenson's work.