English Language and Literature Commons^™

"What A Strange And Wonderful Story!": Literary Research And College Writing, Chloe Beam, Payton Charmichael, Amara Dike, Abigail Stewart

Collin College Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Student Research Conference

Panel Chair: Scott Cheney, Collin College

Exploring New Frontiers In Children's Literature, Matthew Vondersaar, Kylee Dodson, Byanka Ramos, Mariah Hightower

Collin College Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Student Research Conference

Panel Chair: Sean Ferrier-Watson, Collin College

Our panel will explore various issued related to children’s literature, but will specifically focus on the way old and new children’s literature are being adapted into cinematic and digital productions. We will also explore the way fairy tales are used to incorporate a wide array of social issues into child culture. The panelists have each prepared papers that explore the issues touching on new frontiers in children’s literature, ranging from classic fairy tales to contemporary comic books.

Children's And Adolescent Literature: A Roundtable Discussion, Hayley Pugh, Kinsleigh Sawatsky, Abigail Welsh, Matthew Vondersaar, Peizhao Li, Mike Morrison, Simiul Haque, Michaela Thompson, Jordan Abualijazer, Ife Adeyinka, Hannah Neely, Ashley Rush

Collin College Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Student Research Conference

Chairs: Khimen Cooper, Collin College; Searn Ferrier-Watson, Collin College; Susan Stewart, Texas A&M -- Commerce; Michelle Tvete, Texas A&M -- Commerce

Coming Of Age In The Disciplinary Structures Of The Catholic Church: Power And Discipline In A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man And The Land Of Spices, Rebecca Beaulieu

The Criterion

Coming of age in Ireland carries with it cultural and religious expectations drawn out from the history of Nationalism and the Catholic Church in Ireland. Using Michel Foucault’s theories on punishment and discipline, this essay looks at the way the Irish Catholic Church forms identity and conflict in characters from two different stories. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and The Land of Spices by Kate O’Brien depict the coming-of-age of two main characters struggling to create their own identity in a strict Irish Catholic Culture. Though each of the characters grow and change …

From Heo To Zir: A History Of Gender Expression In The English Language, Brodie Robinson

Senior Honors Theses

With the growing presence of the LGBTQ+ community on the global stage, the matter of gender has been rushed to the forefront of the public consciousness. News outlets have hotly debated the topic of gender expression, a topic which has motivated mass demonstrations and acts of violence, and this has promoted a linguistic conversation at the international level.

This thesis is intended to provide the historical context for the contemporary debate on gender expression in the English language, and explores both the grammatical background (the Indo-European origins of linguistic gender, the development of the modern pronoun system, etc.) and the …

“The Only Way Out Is In”: Negotiating Identity Through Narrative In The House On Mango Street And The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Brianna E. Taylor

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

While aimed at vastly different audiences, Sandra Cisneros’s beloved coming-of-age story The House on Mango Street and Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao both uniquely capture the complexities of navigating the hyphenated territory between their respective Mexican-American and Dominican-American identities. Cisneros engages readers with the simple yet profound narrative voice of Esperanza in a series of vignettes that subtly reveal a growing consciousness of her role as a young Mexican-American woman and her creative consciousness as an artist. Through the multifaceted narrative perspective of Yunior, Díaz skillfully weaves together “ghetto nerd” Oscar de …

Where Literature And Philosophy Meet And Diverge, Clare C. Hagan

Undergraduate Theses

Many writers and philosophers have asked “What is art?” or “What is philosophy?” but it is difficult to encounter a text where these questions are set beside each other. Many works of philosophy appear very literary in form and content, just as there are many literary works that are very philosophical in nature. This essay examines the intersection of literature and philosophy, using Kant’s Critique of Judgement as a way into analyzing Plato’s Phaedo, as an example of literary philosophy; and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as an example of philosophical literature. The first section deals with literature and philosophy as texts, looking …

Final Ma Portfolio, Elizabeth Armor

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

A Final Portfolio submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of English.

Engaging The Traumatic Past In An Apocalyptic Present, Timothy J. Jerome

The Criterion

This essay explores the necessity of confronting the underlying issues of one's history in order to heal historic wounds, despite the difficulty and immediacy of one's current struggles. I examine how Pentecostalism functions as a touchstone to the past for John Grimes and his family in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, and eventually allows protagonist John to transcend the traditional forms of self-identification in order to create a new informed model of identity within the religion.

Visitor Parking Only, Jeremy Caldwell

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

VISITOR PARKING ONLY is a thesis comprised of 40 poems and a fifteen-page introduction that travels simultaneously through the climatic seasons and familial generations, creating a cyclical effect of inevitable loss and regrowth. The poems start in late spring, early summer and dive into adolescent wonder, vulnerable, and loss of innocence. Gradually as the seasons change so does the speaker, diving into young adulthood and parenting and the sense of responsibility, guilt, and confusion that has played such a large role in developing me as a person. The poems transition into the winter months where older generations, such as my …

"Maybe He's The Green Lantern": Low Socioeconomic Status In The University Writing Center, Wyn Richards

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

University students with low socioeconomic status face a variety of unique challenges. With income inequality rising amongst the general population in the US, the gap between students with high socioeconomic status university students identifying as having low socioeconomic status is also increasing. This master’s thesis examines scholarship regarding students with low socioeconomic status at the higher education level, through the lens of composition studies, turning the spotlight on writing center studies. Through an Institutional Review Board approved, qualitative research study, the gap in scholarship on the role socioeconomic status plays in the university writing center is examined. This qualitative study, …

The Politics Of Utopia: Examining Three Hawthorne Romances As Political Allegories, Melanie A. Whiting

English Department Theses

The years between 1849 and 1852 were Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most productive in terms of creative output. Hawthorne penned three romances—the name he gave his longer fictions—in addition to a children’s book and a political biography during these years. These longer stories exhibit the high degree of influence the political climate of the late 1840s and early 1850s had on Hawthorne. The Compromise of 1850 sought to bridge the growing schism in the nation on the topics of boundaries and slavery. By reading Hawthorne’s novels as political allegories of the Compromise of 1850, the political instability of the time becomes clear. …

A Failure Of Femininity Within 'G.I. Jane', Maggie Weaver

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This essay was wrote and edited throughout my ENG 200H course which featured the theme of women in the military. In preparation for the essay the class watched the film G.I. Jane directed by Ridley Scott. The assignment was to address and analyze one prominent theme within the film and after research and consideration I decided to examine how the film portrayed femininity. After identifying which aspects of the film I wanted to address in my paper I wrote my first draft. This original draft then underwent several edits both from my professor and the University of Dayton Write Place …

Critique Of Kathleen Parker’S 'Women Don't Belong In Military Combat', Megan M. Rice

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

For this project, I chose an opinion article about whether or not women should be allowed in combat positions. The author believes women should not be in the infantry, while I believe women should be given the chance if they so desire to be in a combat role. The main idea in the original article was that women are not capable of succeeding in the infantry. I countered this idea throughout my response essay by agreeing that not every woman is cut out for a combat job, but the women out there who would thrive in the infantry should be …

Love As An Active Choice, Madison M. Millhouse

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

For this assignment, my professor asked us to find an image and to analyze it for its accurate (or inaccurate) depiction of love based on the works we read from Eric Fromm and bell hooks. I found this three-framed image of a moving statue by Tamara Kvesitadze and thought it was a great representation of Fromm's paradox that in love "'two beings become one yet remain two" (19). From there, I began to examine the other ways the image aligned with Fromm and hooks' concepts of love and discussed with my professor the best way to organize my ideas.

Research Project: Regarding Genetic Theft, Danielle Lancia

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

With two months left in the semester, my class was given the project proposal: write a 5-page research paper about any form of cheating. I chose cheating in the medical field as my broad topic and then finally narrowed it down to genetic theft, which is the acquisition of someone's genes without his or her knowledge. We had until the final day of class to turn in our final draft but I wanted to get started right away because the topic really grabbed my interest. I starting researching by using online resources, and I found more information than expected. After …

Evolution, Place, And Identity: Facing Global Crisis With A New Identity As Earthly Residents, Yu Zhao

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment is the first assignment for my Eng 200 class and we are asked to write about "place and identity." As a psychology major, I love thinking interdisciplinarily. Therefore, I decided to talk about evolution, place, and identity.

Holmes, The Weed Keeper?, Justin Smith

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

I woke up out of a dream with the idea to hold a conversation with Sherlock Holmes (the theme of our class). It is easy enough to hold a fictional conversation with a fictional character discussing facts about why marijuana is a better alternative than cocaine. To make the project a little more academically focused, I also discussed how 19th- century Europeans did not understand addiction. As a process, it came only through research and free writing sessions.

The Complicated Mind Of Sherlock Holmes, Madeleine Ryan

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

By taking a Sherlock Holmes themed Writing Seminar II class, I was familiar with the theory of Sherlock Holmes having a mental disorder. For my final research paper, I decided to write about this theory and diagnose Holmes. I began by researching mental disorders and their symptoms. Once I had taken notes, I looked at the symptoms and compared them to Sherlock Holmes. I removed the disorders that did not relate to Holmes and narrowed the list down to Asperger’s Syndrome, Bipolar Disorder, and Savant Syndrome. Next, I found specific examples from Sherlock Holmes pieces that exhibited Holmes demonstrating the …

The Key Versatility Of Stories: Storytelling And 'Sherlock Holmes', Anna Rose Redgate

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

When given the freedom to write my final essay on anything related to my course theme, Sherlock Holmes, I felt equally challenged and excited. I had found many of the topics interesting, but the one I found most interesting the Sherlock Holmes and forensic science unit. As I began my research, I realized that what was most engaging to me about the forensic science information as a communication major, was not the scientific evidence and analysis, but the stories that accompanied the real-life and fictional mysteries. This altered my course of research and forced me to ask how the role …

To Will Or Not To Will: A Close Reading And Interpretation Of Augustine's Argument In 'Confessions', Garrett Reese

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

After receiving the assignment, I went back and re-read sections 20-24 in Chapter VIII of Confessions. These are the sections in which Augustine details his belief of two wills, a willing will and an unwilling will, and then proceeds to attack the Manichee faith, the religion he used to belong to, for their belief of a good and evil will. From there, I analyzed Augustine's arguments and summarized them before focusing in on making Augustine's argument the weaker one, instead siding with the Manichees that Augustine is arguing against in this chapter of the book. I approached it as …

Enclosed: An Analysis Of American Healthcare Policies Based On Thomas More’S 'Utopia', Maggie Cahill

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This piece was the final essay of ASI 110, otherwise known as the fall semester of freshman year in the Core Program. The first part of the assignment required a reconstruction of Thomas More's argument against enclosure in his work, Utopia. Then, the second part of the assignment called for a creative parallel of More's argument to the modern world. When selecting my topic, I chose to analyze the singular topic of healthcare rather than address multiple modern issues to more fully assess and relate the issues. After I wrote my reconstruction, I brainstormed issues prevalent in the 2016 …

Re-Embodying Our Discipline, Chelsea Dryer

Theses

This Master's Thesis uses personal narrative and scholarly works to examine the benefits of embodiment in literary studies. Special attention is given to how lived experience can provide legitimate sources of academic evidence when examining texts and that texts can be used to integrate, examine, and reframe lived experiences.

Michalski Ma Portfolio: Finding My Path, Victoria L. Michalski

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio is the culmination of my work in the English Teaching specialty Master's program at Bowling Green State University. In addition to the works I produced for my classes and subsequently re-wrote for my portfolio, I've added an analytical reflection about my growth and evolution during my studies in the English MA program, and about overcoming my difficulties until I finally found the connection between English and historical interests that I sorely needed in order to heighten my enthusiasm and motivation. This reflection brings together the reasons I chose the works in my portfolio to represent my initial discomfort …

The Bird That Flew Backwards, Robin Gow

English and Creative Writing Honors Papers

The Bird that Flew Backwards examines women poets from literary Modernism in the 1910s and Beat culture in the 1950s. Analyzing these eras in tandem reveals contrasting historical constructions of American womanhood and how sociocultural trends influenced how the “poetess” constructed herself and her work and illustrates the retrograde nature of women’s rights in the 1950s. Through close reading, digital mapping, and historical background, The Bird that Flew Backwards establishes a new critical perspective by linking the more well-known Modernists with lesser-known women in 1910s Greenwich Village Bohemia. This linkage between eras branches off to explore themes of formation of …

Maybe She Found Me In A Poem, Robin Gow

English and Creative Writing Honors Papers

Maybe She Found Me in a Poem explores my own family relationship and family stories through a variety of poetic forms, persona poetry, and prose pieces centered on an imagined relationship with my grandmother who died before I was born. The collection asks, “How much are our family stories our own?” and “Can we create memory?” Themes of haunting, ghosts, queerness, shared memory, death, and burial are carried throughout the collection and brought forward in their respective sections. Images are placed throughout as part of the collection to amplify the “haunting” power of the text.

English People. Owen Barfield; Narnia And The Fields Of Arbol. Matthew Dickerson And David O'Hara; And The Mythic Dimension. Joseph Campbell, Phillip Fitzsimmons

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

Three books, written about differing themes and released decades apart, still manage to work together to present a complex picture of the images of mythology and their effect upon the human race. The books are English People, a 1929 novel by Owen Barfield; Narnia and the Fields of Arbol, a 2009 study of environmentalism in the works of C.S. Lewis, by Matthew Dickerson and David O’Hara; and The Mythic Dimension, a selection of essays spanning almost three decades by Joseph Campbell.

Letting Sleeping Abnormalities Lie: Lovecraft And The Futility Of Divination [Article], Carol S. Matthews

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

By way of divinatory dreams, astrology, geomancy, or other means, the Lovecraft quester discovers that universe is more deeply frightening than anything he could possibly have imagined. Lovecraft’s lack of faith in divination practices, not because of their inefficacy, but rather due to his conviction that humans lack the essential capacity to understand their lowly place in the universe, is ironically not shared by many of his admirers and followers, who have created magical and divination systems galore since Lovecraft’s demise.

Ursula K. Le Guin In Mythlore, Janet Brennan Croft

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

Ursula K. Le Guin, whose career and influence are examined in brief in the preceding note by David Bratman, has long been a writer of interest to the readers of Mythlore and members of the Mythopoeic Society. She was the Author Guest of Honor at Mythcon 19 (the theme of which was “Legends for a New Land: Fantasy in America”) at Berkeley CA in 1988, and was a finalist for the Myth and Fantasy Studies Award in 2011 and 2012 for her essay collection Cheek by Jowl (Aqueduct Press, 2009).

Petticoats And Spurs: Female Armor In Spenser's "Faerie Queene" And Pope's "The Rape Of The Lock", Patrick D. Wilks

The Criterion

Both Britomart in Spenser’s Book 3, Canto 1 of Faerie Queene and Belinda in Pope’s The Rape of The Lock wear their clothes and (in Belinda’s case) makeup as their armor, both literally and figuratively. Both suffer unwanted advances, their image publicly besmirched as a result. Even though Belinda dresses to show off her beauty and Britomart dresses to conceal it, both women use their array as protection from cruel male world around them. Both feel safe, and both women have this safety violated and attack to defend their honor.

For Spenser, Chastity is a virtue to be held in …