English Language and Literature Commons^™

Narratives Of Incarcerated Women, Kaceylee Klein

Honors Scholar Theses

Our criminal-justice system mandates the silencing and disappearing of 2.3 million people, a consequence of its historical context as an inherently violent institution, carrying on traditions of slavery, oppression, and extortion. While any voice that makes it out of a prison cell is resisting the effort to silence, smother, and make compliant the voices of those labeled criminal, the form of publication of that voice allows more or less agency to the author depending on its conventions and structures. There is a spectrum from more controlled or mediated forms of publications to more author-directed ones and they vary over the …

Saving Pocahontas: A Conversation On Gender, Culture, And Power In The Storied Saving Moment, Claire Ehr

Undergraduate Honors Papers

Pocahontas is a figure with much cultural capital, even today, and her influence was historically important to Native and European agendas alike. Pocahontas as a person indeed had a life that seemed to influence political relations between Native and European (specifically Powhatan, specifically English). However, the storied construct of Pocahontas has had significantly more cultural sway, influencing (or at least representing changes in) everything from gendered power dynamics to the interplay between the European Colonizer and the Indigenous Other.¹ Pocahontas’ image has been re-appropriated over and over throughout time to further political agendas and to represent the female and …

Narrative Style And The Female Story In Pride And Prejudice, Bridget Jones’S Diary, And The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Parker Jones

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen has remained relevant since its publication in 1813, in part due to the popularity of numerous adaptations in multiple mediums. Pride and Prejudice is a novel that champions protofeminism as well as offers 1 an example of Austen’s unique style of writing. The story follows the Bennet family, and specifically the second oldest daughter Elizabeth, as their mother searches for husbands for her five daughters. Elizabeth is a woman that is expected to enter into a successful marriage, which would be defined by financial security for herself and her family. However, she refuses this …

“Boadicea Onstage Before 1800, A Theatrical And Colonial History.” Studies In English Literature 1500-1900 49.3 (Summer 2009): 595-614., Wendy Nielsen

Wendy Nielsen

This essay examines the theatrical legacy of Boadicea, the British warrior queen defeated by the Romans around 61 AD, in three plays: John Fletcher's "The Tragedy of Bonduca, or the British Heroine" and two unrelated dramas titled "Boadicea" by Charles Hopkins and Richard Glover. Performance histories attempt to explain why audiences respond to Boadicea with ambivalence. Each production underplays the defeated queen and gives starring roles to one or more of her daughters and a male lead, who contrast with Boadicea's supposed brutality and provide British audiences with lessons about ways to rule in an ostensibly civilized fashion.

Women’S Writing And The Poetics Of Scientific Knowledge, 1620-1740, Rachel Mann

Theses and Dissertations

Women’s Writing and the Poetics of Scientific Knowledge, 1620-1740 probes the porous boundary between science and literature, revealing that the methodologies undergirding scientific experimentation were developed communally and through a confluence of interdisciplinary and cultural concerns. Ultimately, it shows that our contemporary understanding of the natural world and the scientific method have a history that is largely one of fragments. Secondly, and more importantly, it demonstrates the value of reading imaginative writing alongside scientific developments of the day.

Focusing on women’s imaginative writing in particular reveals the power and limits that ostensibly liminal voices have. As such, Women’s Writing and …

Monsters, Marines, And Feminism In The 1980s: A Look At Ellen Ripley From Aliens, Summer Reardon

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

The battle between Ripley and the alien mother symbolizes how women of the 1980s were grappling with their changing roles of motherhood brought about in part by their increased power over their own reproductive health, as well as broadening career options for women. During this time, more women began to take on non-traditional gender roles in the workplace, the family, and in society. Ripley's character reflects this the growing wave of feminism, and presaged a more assertive and adaptable woman, while still demonstrating devotion to her adoptive offspring.

"Mute Flesh": Women's Death-Worlds In David's Story And Waiting For The Barbarians, Kate Finley

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis expands upon Achille Mbembe's theory on necropower and death-worlds to incorporate the consideration of gender. This is done using the lens of violence against women during South African apartheid and through an examination of two novels: Zoë Wicomb's David's Story and J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians.

Multicultural Women Writers, Nashieli Marcano, Jennifer Jacobs

Research Guides & Subject Bibliographies

No abstract provided.

Basement Heart, Samantha Constance Tkac

Graduate Thesis Collection

Basement Heart is a collection of short stories with a goal of documenting the manifestations of rage and how it evolves throughout a woman’s life. In these stories, femininity is explored through the aesthetics of the grotesque. Female protagonists seek to inhabit new definitions of female sexuality that combat tired expectations made by society’s misogynistic and objectifying culture. Often, their feelings of unprovoked grief manifest themselves as pursuits of the flesh, which becomes the underlying heartbeat of each story; themes revolve around sex and obsession and explore what happens when sexual fantasies are realized and lived out in the real …

"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez

CMC Senior Theses

During the Victorian age, the law and society were in conversation with each other, and the law reflected Victorian gender norms. Nineteenth-century gender attitudes intersected with the law, medical discourse, and social customs in a multitude of ways. Abuse and gender violence occurred beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. The models of nineteenth-century social conduct were highly gendered and placed men and women in separate social spheres. As this research indicates, the lived practices of Victorians, across social and economic strata, deviated from these accepted models of behavior. This thesis explores the ways that accepted and unaccepted standards of female …