English Language and Literature Commons^™

Defining Afghan Women Characters As Modern Archetypes Using Khaled Hosseini’S A Thousand Splendid Suns And Asne Seierstad’S The Bookseller Of Kabul, Alexandra Andrews

Masters Theses

Middle-Eastern women, specifically Afghan women, are often misunderstood. Yet, authors Khaled Hosseini and Asne Seierstad use the method of storytelling to show that Afghan female characters are not completely subjugated, voiceless, and powerless—despite how they are often depicted in media. Instead, in Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Seierstad’s The Bookseller of Kabul, Afghan female characters are represented as assertive, risk takers, and heroic. By applying Joseph Campbell’s theory regarding the archetypal heroine to the lives of Mariam and Laila from A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Sharifa and Leila from The Bookseller of Kabul, it is clear that these Afghan …

From The Office To The Classroom: Computer Simulations And Student Engagement In Advanced Composition, Lauren Fine

Theses and Dissertations

Higher education professionals are always seeking new and better ways to prepare students for life after college—a goal that requires not only providing knowledge and experience in their chosen field, but also helping them stay engaged in the process. Recently, computer based simulations have magnified role playing and case study techniques that have been used in classrooms for many years. These simulations have found great success in many settings, including engineering, business, and medicine, but there have been very few computer simulations designed for writing classes. Given that some of the greatest challenges in such classes are teaching students to …

Heaven On Their Minds, Rebecca Kate Robison

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Heaven on Their Minds is a novel written from the first-person perspective of teenage

protagonist Melody O’Malley. The plot details Melody’s attempt, along with two close friends, to undermine their conservative Christian theater camp’s summer production of Godspell via the edgier songs and theology of Jesus Christ Superstar. Though ostensibly a satire of the Evangelical Christian community, Melody’s insecurities are the true heart of the novel--her fraught relationship with her best friends, her concerns about her post-high school future, and her ill-advised crush on the most prominent RFC (Robot for Christ) in the camp, a crush that has terrible consequences …

Moving Interpretations : Using Drama-Based Arts Strategies To Deepen Learning About The Diary Of A Young Girl., James S. Chisholm, Kathryn F. Whitmore, Ashley L. Shelton, Irina V. Mcgrath

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Three drama-based arts strategies enhanced middle grades teachers’ and students’ engagement with Anne Frank’s diary and historical circumstances.

Dendron, A Collection Of Poems, Peter W. Rosenberger

Celebration

“Dendron” is the Greek word for “tree.” “Dendrochronology” is the study of a tree’s rings. “Dendrites” are the neural projections that grow like a tree’s branches in our brains so we can learn and respond to stimuli. This collection of poems, Dendron, is a poetic exploration of my growth. The collection—twenty-one poems, one for each year of my life—is a living, poetic memoir. Presented in chronological order, each of the poems is meant to capture a specific year of my life. The poems—of varying styles and sentiments—are not without quick moments of fiction, but for the most part, they coalesce …

The Consequences Of Failing: A Memoir, Olivia M. Zajac

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

Failing is part of our human nature. I have never met a person who has never failed at something. Sometimes when I look back at my failures I feel like crying, and other times I laugh at the mistakes that I have made. But no matter the type of failure I have suffered, I have learned one thing. Failures, along with successes, have shaped me into the person I am today. When I fail, I often fall. But each fall is a chance for me to get back up. I don’t plan to stop failing any time soon.

Just like …

The Closet Conservative: Oscar Wilde's Inadvertent Adherence To Traditional Gender Roles, Rachel Cote

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Typically considered a proto-feminist, Wilde occasionally lets slip a conservative ideology in his adherence to traditional gender binaries within the confines of the romantic sphere. The internalized binary set Wilde most heavily employs in certain writings relates to Artifice/Reality, where men are associated with Artifice and women with Reality. In specific scenes of The Picture of Dorian Gray, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde explores romantic dynamics under the duress of the genders' diverging preference for elements of deception and artificiality in heteronormative romantic relationships. This scheme inherently reinforces the patriarchy and sexism of …

Emily Dickinson: Myth Of The Perpetual Child, Rebecca Faust

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Critics have often described poems of the enigmatic Emily Dickinson, the "Myth of Amherst," as being suitable only for children's literature. In addition to having a well-known diminutive appearance, Dickinson exhibits a poetic playfulness, focuses on simple aspects of Nature, and explores faith and childish subjects and concerns which has led to a narrow understanding and even dismissal of her works as being decidedly "unsophisticated." This paper contends that the use of a child's voice or point-of-view is an intentional one in order for Dickinson to reconcile the conflicting ideologies of childhood, especially relating to the tenets of her orderly …

Born Digital Preservation And The Power Of Nostalgia, Emily Ann Pilat

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This work of segmented creative nonfiction examines nostalgia as a force that can impact and aid the preservation processes with regard to born digital works. Through research and personal accounts these segments work in conjunction with one another to evaluate the current state and potential future of digital preservation. Nostalgia in relation to digital technology is studied through concepts such as tech-nostalgia and Skeuomorphism, both of which directly frame digital preservation practices. Unique works of electronic literature are also assessed in relation to challenges in preservation and how the authors, preservationists, as well as audiences respond to the challenges that …

Review Of Amy Culley, British Women’S Life Writing, 1760-1840, Elizabeth Zold

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Sarah Raff, Jane Austen's Erotic Advice, Danielle Spratt

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A book review of Sarah Raff's Jane Austen's Erotic Advice.

Review Of Dale Townshend And Angela Wright, Eds., Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism And The Gothic, Ellen Malenas Ledoux

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Chasing Eliza: Shifting And Static Women In Elizabeth Craven's The Miniature Picture, Heather A. Ladd

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Georgian actress and author Mary Robinson famously wore a miniature portrait of her royal lover, the Prince of Wales, whom she captivated in the Shakespearean breaches role of Perdita. Intriguingly, Robinson’s final stage appearance was as the cross-dressing heroine of The Miniature Picture (1781), a three-act comedy penned by writer and socialite Lady Elizabeth Craven, later Baroness Craven and Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The play’s action, initiated by the threat of exposure, is driven by Eliza Camply, who aims to retrieve her miniature from the man who left her. Craven, like the actress playing her enterprising protagonist Eliza Camply, was no …

“Abused, Neglected,—Unhonoured,—Unrewarded”: The Economics Of Authorial Labor In The Writings Of Mary Robinson, Jennifer L. Airey

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay examines one of the central preoccupations of Mary Robinson’s authorial career, a concern with the poor financial treatment of authors. Writers, Robinson suggests, are demeaned by predatory publishers, heartless or anti-intellectual aristocratic patrons, and a disinterested, distractible reading public, none of whom care to compensate the author for the labors of her pen. In a culture that neither recognizes nor rewards female intellect, women authors are particularly vulnerable, but Robinson’s criticisms transcend the problems caused by gender alone; male authors, too, could fall into penury when their labor was insufficiently valued. Rejecting the Romantic ethos of the solitary …

Hysteria, Society Of Akron Graduate English Scholars

English Student Research

Proceedings from the Fourth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference: Hysteria, which were presented at The University of Akron Student Union.

An Anthropological Exploration Of Latino Immigrant Identity In Contemporary Migration Literature, Laura Hoppe

Honors Capstone Projects

Immigration remains one of the hottest topics of debate in the United States. As a country constructed by immigrants and home to over one million newly admitted immigrants each year, the immigration phenomenon has contributed extensively to the multiculturalism seen in the United States today. While many immigrant groups have historically lived in marginalization, the 21st century has proven especially difficult for Latino immigrants--those from Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin America. As the current largest immigrant group, Latinos have received a lot of backlash and discrimination in the U.S. Many of these immigrants, whether they immigrate to the U.S. temporarily or …

We're All Mad Here: Anti-Capitalist Criticism In Arden Of Faversham, Eileen G. Settlemyer

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This essay looks at the portrayal of capitalism in the anonymously written Renaissance play Arden of Faversham. As early modern England shifted to a capitalist economy, the nefarious means that almost all of the major characters employ in order to take advantage of opportunities for social mobility criticizes the greed and brutality that emerging capitalist values encouraged. While many critics criticize Arden for his greed as a landlord, he does not conform to the literary stereotype of the period for greedy landlords, allowing a broader reading of the play. All the deaths at the end of the play, both …

Crushed Violets And Collapsed Daughters: Gutman And Boss Finley And Power In Tennessee Williams' Camino Real And Sweet Bird Of Youth, Faith E. Rivers

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The paper, "Crushed Violets and Collapsed Daughters: Gutman, Boss Finley, and Power in Tennessee Williams' Camino Real and Sweet Bird of Youth," examines two largely overlooked Tennessee Williams' characters and how they exercise their power. This paper argues that Gutman is ultimately the more sinister and powerful authority figure because Williams wrote him during the height of the anti-communist movement, which threatened Williams personally. While both characters share the similarities of suppressing deviants and maintaining their power through the division of those beneath them and the use of rhetoric, Gutman and Boss Finley have striking differences. Boss Finley depends on …

Stories From A Millinery, Allie Maynard

Honors Theses

In 1911, Clydenia Jewett and her daughter, Bertha Martin, moved from Detroit to St. Joseph, Michigan. In 1995, 84 years later, Clydenia’s great-great-grandson, Brian, and his wife, Barb, moved with their three young daughters to the same small town on the lake. What the young family didn’t know was that they had a connection to their new hometown. Time had forgotten Clydenia and Bertha’s story in Saint Joseph. It wasn’t for another several years that the family found out about their lost family members.

Clydenia is my great-great-great grandmother. I am her direct relation through my paternal grandmother. It’s easy …

"She Left The Web, She Left The Loom": The Extent Of Agency In "The Lady Of Shalott", Christina M. Cox

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Alfred, Lord Tennyson began writing "The Lady of Shalott" in a time of tremendous social and political change for England. Ten years after it was written, in 1842, a new, heavily-revised version of the poem was published. The Lady's agency (or lack of it) within the two versions of the poem fluctuates; in parts of the 1842 poem, she gains more control over herself, only to lose some of the agency she possessed in the 1832 poem. This paper shows that even after his major editing, Tennyson's depiction of the Lady, while exhibiting some signs of power, perpetuates the lack …

Black Dreams: Sight And Sound In African American Life Stories, Karintha Lowe

English Honors Projects

This project examines the work of Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, and Langston Hughes, in conjunction with the work of literary and psychoanalytic theorists including Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Lacan, and Laura Mulvey. Beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s conception of the “American Dream” as emphasizing a linear, progressive understanding of time and space, I argue that Douglass, Hurston, Petry, and Hughes all reshape this narrative of upward mobility to include the experiences of marginalized communities. By analyzing how each author used multiple genres, including autobiography, parody, song, and poetry, to form a single narrative, I contend that these life stories …

Lingua Franca: An Analysis Of Globalization And Language Evolution, Abigail Watson

Honors Projects

This project details the evolution of languages and how globalization and advances in communication have effected smaller language groups. A world community in which communication is standardized by a Lingua Franca is in most cases harmful for isolated language groups without many speakers. The extinction of language is harmful for human society and culture, and there are many different ways to help prevent language extinction.

This project includes an essay, an animation, six illustrations, and a coloring book that all relate to endangered languages.

Uncovering America’S Horror Story: A Content And Critical Analysis Of American Horror Story., Jessica Maio

Honors Projects in Communication

The popular television series American Horror Story has captivated millions of Americans with its shocking and twisted plotlines that never fail to surprise. Perhaps one of the reasons that the show has become so popular is that it uses the horror genre as a way to explore controversial topics. The purpose of this project is to examine the controversial topics that are presented in American Horror Society and compare them with the current views of mainstream society to determine whether the show primarily reflects the views of the larger society or challenges them. In other words, how does American Horror …

Wives' Gain And Husbands' Losses: The Imbalance Of Marital Power In Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire And Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Kaitlin Gates

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper explores how playwright Tennessee Williams depicts marriage within two of his most central plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and examines the power dynamics between the married couples Stanley and Stella, Brick and Maggie, and Big Daddy and Big Mama. Through a discussion of how their respective husbands use age and sexuality to manipulate the younger wives, Stella and Maggie, I argue that it is only through the decline of the husband, in this case Big Daddy, that wives gain any marital power. These disproportionate power relationships ultimately reflect Williams' own experiences …

Cultural Studies, Pedagogy And Jane Eyre, Kaitlyn R. Berube

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The field of cultural studies is one that has received much academic attention. However, a vast majority of the research applies to higher education and college, with occasional forays into foreign teaching and writing classes. The idea of cultural studies teaching as it applies to secondary education is almost completely unexplored, especially the ways in which it can be placed into practice. The lack of study in this field is a serious problem due to the positive effects cultural studies can have on the critical thinking skills of students. Keeping cultural studies locked behind the gate of higher education keeps …

God And Man, Nicole A. Ratliff

Student Works

An analysis of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath in regards to Samuel Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The paper's argument is structured as the book progresses. In regards to Samuel Johnson's piece, both pieces of literature progress in the same way- starting off with very vain characters and ending with a change towards a more religious side. This paper tries to expand upon the religious aspects of The Grapes of Wrath, and come up with a theory that defies the socialist aspect.

Harry Potter And The Analysis Of A Hogwarts Education, Kayla M. Nelson

Student Works

A Hogwarts education is one that is coveted by many young (and old) people. The idea of a magical school is tantalizing. However, the magic only goes so far. This article exposes the flaws of a Hogwarts education.

Folklore, Stories, And Truth, Rebekah Hartshorn

Student Works

An exploration of Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story through the lens of the academic discipline of Folklore. Where is the line between reality and imagination? Stories are true because they influence lives and people interact with them. Many stories believed to be true have origins that are lost to time and their truth is questionable at best. However, when an audience interacts with a story, the story begins to exist within the timeline of the audience members’ lives. The story becomes part of the truths that they live.

Morbid Science & Monstrous Literature: Degeneration & Eugenics In R.L. Stevenson & Oscar Wilde, Justin H. Cook

Student Theses and Dissertations

The Victorian fin de siècle was a tempest of scientific discovery. These findings were largely set in motion by Charles Darwin’s research, but they were propelled by a vast number of scientists and writers who were constantly pushing the boundaries of what it meant to be human. My research explores the tension between these scientific and literary discourses. I argue that the locus for monstrosity of both Mr. Hyde and Dorian Gray is in that very tension. Many scholars have attempted to locate this monstrosity in other places, and I do not undercut their findings. However, I do suggest that …

Animacy And Alienability: A Reconsideration Of English Possession, Jaimee Jones

Senior Honors Theses

Current scholarship on English possessive constructions, the s-genitive and the of-construction, largely ignores the possessive relationships inherent in certain English compound nouns. Scholars agree that, in general, an animate possessor predicts the s-genitive while an inanimate possessor predicts the of-construction. However, the current literature rarely discusses noun compounds, such as the table leg, which also express possessive relationships. However, pragmatically and syntactically, a compound cannot be considered as a true possessive construction. Thus, this paper will examine why some compounds still display possessive semantics epiphenomenally. The noun compounds that imply possession seem to exhibit relationships prototypical of inalienable …