English Language and Literature Commons^™

Inclusivity In The Archives: Expanding Undergraduate Pedagogies For Diversity And Inclusion, Amy J. Lueck, Beverlyn Law, Isabella Zhang

English

This chapter uses the experience of two undergraduate students conducting research in their university archives to consider the “hidden curriculum” entailed in archival research at some institutions. When diverse identities and experiences are not represented in our archives, we run the risk of communicating a lack of value for those identities, producing a feeling of marginalization and exclusion for some students and foreclosing an opportunity to build solidarity across difference for others. In light of the limited holdings at many university archives and the increased prevalence of archival research in the undergraduate classroom, the authors draw on research from writing …

"Free Indirect Suicide: An Unfinished Fugue In H Minor", Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In this lyric essay/work of creative nonfiction (listed among “Notable Essays & Literary Nonfiction” in Best American Essays 2020), Seo-Young Chu uses poetry, autotheory, and creative nonfiction to explore the generational trauma/postmemory han she inherited from her parents and the importance of destigmatizing mental illness through dialogue.

Eleven: The Bitchin' Subject Of Desire In Stranger Things, Heather Domenicis

The Criterion

Throughout the Stranger Things series, Eleven’s telekinetic monster-fighting abilities incessantly establish her as the girl who

everyone wants on their side. The way she is closely shot on camera and the fact that nearly every other character seeks her help or companionship establishes her as the continual subject of desire— a figure that is present in many Gothic texts. In this essay, I wish to present a brief genealogy of that figure: Lucy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Miles in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw are two examples of early figures whose depictions suggest that Gothic genre relies …

Heroism, Terrorism, And The In-Between: The Validation Of Violence In V For Vendetta, Noah Mailloux

The Criterion

In Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, a graphic novel made up of three installments, the titular character V dons a Guy Fawkes mask in celebration of a man who is historically known as a terrorist. V, though representative of a supposed extremist and violent in his behaviors, exemplifies the traits of a traditional hero rather than a terrorist. The word vendetta defines a person or group seeking vengeance or revenge on another person or group, and though this fits V’s role in the story, a personal vendetta is not the catalyst for his actions. The text examines …

"You Knew Him Well": The Galsworthy Letters And Trauma In Heart Of Darkness, Alexander T. Grey

The Criterion

Edward Said’s dissertation-turned-monograph Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography (1966) was the first attempt in the realm of literary critique to apply Conrad’s personally letters to his fictions. Yet, since then, the multi-volume Collected Letters published in Cambridge University in 2008 has been but a resource for biographers and for a stray citation by an academic looking to ground a theory in a physical document. Considering the dearth of work looking into the Conrad letters, this essay traces the author’s understanding and processing of personal trauma through letters to Nobel Laureate John Galsworthy and use this theory to contextualize …

Chicken Paprika And Tug Of War: The Romantic "Dream Song 4" By John Berryman, Patrick Connell

The Criterion

Helen Vendler argues that John Berryman’s The Dream Songs synthesizes the Freudian Id and the Christian Conscience as personified by Henry and Mr. Bones respectively. Through a close reading, this essay seeks to analyze Vendler’s claim specifically within “Dream Song 4”, in which, the poet utilizes a trope from American minstrelsy to depict the lustful thoughts of a man, presumably Berryman himself, dining at an upscale restaurant. The two speakers of the poem personify and divide his mind and in keeping with the vaudeville performances Berryman draws from, Henry behaves with erratic irrationality, curbed only by the reason of his …

Drowning In Desire, Meghan Gavis

The Criterion

Despite being called a “love song,” T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is characterized by seemingly chaotic form that contrasts with a typical romance. Intentional irregularities in form express Prufrock’s overwhelming desire for companionship and his troubled self-consciousness. Through close readings of Eliot’s odd use of pronouns, rhyme scheme, and ellipses, Prufrock’s unsatiated desire and resulting inner instability are manifested. The undefined “you” and “I” demonstrate the tension between Prufrock’s public and private masks, which he creates to entice women. This romantic endeavor results in unharmonized versions of himself that wrestle with playfulness and agitation at his …

Father Figures In The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall: Bronte's Perspective On Victorian Era Masculinity, Mary Grace King

The Criterion

Anne Bronte presents two different depictions of fatherhood in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that correspond to different expressions of masculinity. Anne Bronte comments on masculinity in the Victorian Era by presenting these different examples in the characters of Mr. Markham and Mr. Huntingdon as they interact with Arthur, Helen’s son. Both men display masculine traits as viewed by Victorian Era thought, but these traits vary between manly virtue (dignity and honesty) and manly vice (drinking and swearing). Furthermore, Bronte depicts patterns of abusive masculinity in the character Mr. Huntingdon in his interactions with Arthur as his biological father while …

Music As An Expression Of Traumatic Pasts And Conflicting Futures, Nina Masin-Moyer

The Criterion

Chad Abushanab’s “On the Dred Ranch Road Just off 283” and Emily Dickinson’s “Better—Than Music!” use their poetic forms to express the idea of music as being representative of each of their speakers’ spectrum of experiences and troubles. Despite the two poems being separated by hundreds of years and completely different life experiences, both speakers use the premise of music to establish their troubled pasts. The two poems begin to diverge when they also use music as a means of conveying their expectations for the future. Abushanab’s speaker laments his father’s alcoholism and the speaker has convinced himself the he …

Power Of The Weaker: Feminism In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Cidre Z. Zhou

The Criterion

Due to its contribution towards the abolition of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was undoubtedly a huge hit in the nineteenth century and continues to influence our society today. This essay, however, focuses on the essentialist feminism of the book and examines whether it becomes male-chauvinist sexist in doing so. When men of the era failed to step out to defend the damned race, a group of women, though seemingly timid and frail, act boldly out of their kind, soft hearts and take chances to preserve the humanity left in this society. To illustrate this point, this essay …

Forgiveness: A Psychological Mechanism And Young Adult Fiction Motif, Paige Woolard

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

"Mother Earth, Father God": The Binary Power Of Religion And Gender Codes In The Writing Of Jeanette Winterson And The Music Of Torres, Hannah M. Wilkes

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Religious Persecution In Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Ashlee Burton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Using Spanish In English-Language Spaces: Identifying Bilingual Composition Students' Translanguaging Practices, Maria Isela Maier

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is a qualitative study that uses ethnographic research methods to examine the translanguaging practices of bilingual students in first-year composition at a university along the U.S.-Mexico border. Specifically, I observe how and why bilingual students employ translanguaging practices, as they are encouraged or invited by their instructors, in contexts where English Standard Language policies exist. The results of this qualitative project demonstrate bilingual students' use of translation as part of their translanguaging practices, as well as a tool that uncovers students' writing processes which also demonstrates their language negotiation. Furthermore, the students' translanguaging practices reveal the rhetorical use …

The Legend Of Zelda In The Anthropocene, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

The Legend of Zelda (1986), for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, posited an immediately familiar fantasy milieu: a sleeping princess, an evil king, magical helpers, ancient artifacts of intense power, the rise of a hero. Players guide that hero, Link, through a series of increasingly difficult dungeons, accumulating tools and expanding their abilities in a linear narrative of personal development until they are finally able to defeat Ganon, rescue Zelda, and save the beleaguered kingdom of Hyrule. The end. But subsequent entries in the series cannot adhere to this narrative of linear progress and individual triumph, developing instead an increasingly …

"One Crowded Hour Of Glorious Life": Growing Up And Growing Old In The Awkward Age, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Writing "Under The Most Trying Circumstances": The Life And Interrupted Career Of Harriet Putnam Hill Nowell (May Mannering, Harriet Putnam), Deidre Johnson

English Faculty Publications

Harriet Putnam Hill Nowell is one of several authors who fall into two of the general categories for this study – wives of ministers and women responsible for only one series. Like other ministers' spouses, she wrote to supplement the family income and submitted some of her work to denominational publishers; unlike her counterparts, she had a husband who left the ministry after less than a decade, though that did not deter her from sending stories to religious periodicals. Like several of the other women with only one series, she found a publisher in Lee & Shepard during the firm's …

A Conversation Between Mother And Son, Sheryl Kayne

SHU Faculty Publications

Short story by Sheryl Kayne, an adjunct instructor at Sacred Heart University.

“Trespassers Will Be Persecuted”: Oil And Property Law In Ben Okri’S “What The Tapster Saw”, Rose Casey

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

A movement appears to be underway in certain areas of property jurisprudence to recalibrate property law for more equitable and life-sustaining ends. For many legal theorists working from a Global South, indigenous, or minority perspective, international legal frameworks seem increasingly receptive to reformulating laws regulating property ownership to better protect frequently dispossessed communities and sustain ecological, animal, and human life. Perhaps the most promising such example of a potentially substantial change to prevailing formulations of property ownership is found in the area of indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights. Since 2007, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has been working …

The End Times, Gunnar Ohberg

Honors Theses

The End Times is a collection of apocalyptic short stories set within the same universe. The stories employ elements of magical realism and grit lit. It is the author's hope that each story deal with at least one external societal issue (such as digital discourse and sexual aggression) and one internal psychological issue (such as depression, obsession/compulsion, and survivor's guilt). Each story is told in the first-person in an effort to best demonstrate the various psychologies of its protagonist. In these stories, God has decided to punish humanity for their transgressions. The devices of this God are fantastic: limbs disappear, …

The Evolution Of The Bible In The English Language, Austin Taylor

Tenor of Our Times

While the Bible has been accessible for thousands and thousands of centuries, the introduction of an English translation is somewhat of a fairly modern innovation. The translation of the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular was a dangerous and risky endeavor, and the proponents of giving the Bible to the masses gave their literal blood sweat and tears to accomplish their mission. From early translations by Aelfric to the King James Bible, the story of the Bible in English is a saga of determination and faith.

Phantastes As Theological Critique Of Hoffmann's The Golden Pot, Charles Beaucham

North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies

No abstract provided.

A Repurposed Narrative: Mary Rowlandson’S Narrative And Pre-Revolutionary Sentiment, Steven F. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations--English

Leading into the American Revolution, Puritan captivity narratives gained a resurgent popularity as nationalized sentiment burned towards political upheaval. Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative (1682) was reprinted six times between 1770-1776, signifying an incredible interest in Puritan stories that seemed to antithetically inspire a progressive and radical revolution against England. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God or A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson enhanced an already fervent revolutionary sentiment, transforming a seemingly straightforward captivity narrative into a totem meant to represent the oppressive struggle between England and her most coveted colony.

Such a literary revival taps …

Values In The Air: Community And Capital Conversion In The Nineteenth-Century Novel, Deirdre Mikolajcik

Theses and Dissertations--English

Values in the Air argues that nineteenth-century authors attempted to challenge the individualizing and atomizing effects of the increasingly powerful and abstract investment economy by portraying the necessity of other fields of capital (cultural, social, domestic) to the formation and maintenance of local, knowable communities. I first look at the depiction of a successful integration of diverse capitals embodied in the figure of the male mill owner, wherein the idea of land stewardship is repurposed to include factories. Chapter 2 depicts an encroaching pessimism about tradition’s ability to answer the demands of the modern industrial economy even as the possibility …

Identity, Spectacle, And Embodiment In Social Protest, Craig Alan Crowder

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation examines the way rhetorical performances of identity function within a social movement. Examining the University of Kentucky chapter of a campus activist organization, United Students Against Sweatshops, I argue that embodied performances of identity often leverage spectacle in disruptive ways and work not only to solidify activists’ identities as part of a social movement but ultimately help to create solidarity within the movement, thereby working toward movement objectives. Historically under-examined in social movement literature in the rhetoric and composition tradition, identity performance examples are taken from an oral history project and archival materials to show how identity is …

Nineteenth-Century Pets And The Politics Of Touch, Valerie L. Stevens

Theses and Dissertations--English

Nineteenth-Century Pets and the Politics of Touch examines texts of the era in which both humans and animals find empowerment at the point of physical encounter. I challenge contemporary perceptions of human-pet relationships as sweetly affectionate by focusing on touch. I uncover an earlier interest in the close reciprocal relationships between human and nonhuman animals, arguing that these nineteenth-century thinkers presented what I call a “politics of touch,” in which intimate and often jarring physical encounters allow for mutuality and autonomy. I first turn to Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) and protective violence, a condoned ferocity that frequently unites and guards …

“I’Ve Known Rivers:” Representations Of The Mississippi River In African American Literature And Culture, Catherine Gooch

Theses and Dissertations--English

My dissertation, titled “I’ve Known Rivers”: Representations of the Mississippi River in African American Literature and Culture, uncovers the impact of the Mississippi River as a powerful, recurring geographical feature in twentieth-century African American literature that conveys the consequences of capitalist expansion on the individual and communal lives of Black Americans. Recent scholarship on the Mississippi River theorizes the relationship between capitalism, geography, and slavery. Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the …

Uncertain Inheritance: The Motherless Heiress In Big House Novels, Anna Bedsole

Theses and Dissertations--English

Thus, Uncertain Inheritance traces the heiress in Anglo-Irish Big House novels situated at key times of change for the Irish Ascendancy. The Gothic triad of orphaned heiress, dead mother, and sinister uncle does not belong exclusively to the realm of Irish Gothic authors, but rather this triad is used for different discursive purposes than in its English counterparts. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas (1864), Sommerville and Ross’s An Irish Cousin (1903), and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1929) use the Gothic trope of absent mothers both to address anxieties about and to question the Irish “half” of the Ascendancy Anglo-Irish …

Madness Narratives: Victorian Textual Responses To The Insanity Diagnosis, Jonathan Glenn Tinnin

Theses and Dissertations--English

In Madness Narratives, I examine four understudied texts at the intersection of Victorian asylums, patients’ lack of voice, and resistance narratives. I argue that these texts all reject the silencing power of the insanity diagnosis as they represent patients, former patients, and asylum reformers creating counternarratives that call for recognition of the patients’ humanity and right to be heard. In my first chapter, “Narrating Insanity: Constructing the Madness Narrative in Charles Reade’s Hard Cash,” I assert that Reade’s 1863 novel proposes a nuanced understanding of the insanity diagnosis as a collaboratively-composed story that justifies the confinement of the …

Modern Charity: Morality, Politics, And Mid-Twentieth Century Us Writing, Matt Bryant Cheney

Theses and Dissertations--English

Scholars over the past two decades (Denning, Szalay, Edmunds, Robbins) have theorized the different ways literature of the Mid-Twentieth Century reflects the dawn of the liberal US welfare state. While these studies elaborate on the effect rapidly expanding public aid had on literary production of the period, many have tended to undervalue the lingering influence on midcentury storytelling of private charity and philanthropy, those traditional aid institutions fundamentally challenged by the Great Depression and historically championed by conservatives. If the welfare state had an indelible impact on US literatures, so did the moral complexity of the systems of charity and …