English Language and Literature Commons^™

Short Story Collection, Kevin Bond

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis consists of four pieces of short fiction workshopped as part of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the University of Kentucky. Themes and topics explored include familial dynamics, depictions of childhood and coming of age, solitude, adverse psychological effects of toxic masculinity, natural sphere as sanctuary and source of spiritual renewal, and sense of place.

Writing Arguments In Stem, Jason Peters, Jennifer Bates, Erin Martin-Elston, Sadie Johann, Rebekah Maples, Anne Regan, Morgan White

OER Course Materials

A team of faculty at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, curated the contents to support instructors teaching first-year courses in critical thinking and communication.

“A Cascade Of Shifts In The Brain”: Kay Ryan’S Poetics, Sarah Gannett

Kaplan Senior Essay Prize for Use of Library Special Collections

In 2015, Kay Ryan wrote in her private journal that “I don’t feel that my poems have really been enjoyed yet, although they have been rewarded” (May 3, 2015 6:29 AM). This essay uses Ryan’s papers, acquired by the Beinecke Library in 2018, to develop an understanding of the poetics of this much-rewarded, but underappreciated two-term poet laureate, MacArthur fellow, and Pulitzer Prize winner. This essay is the first to use Ryan’s archives to analyze her poetic work.

Two poles of the Beinecke’s Kay Ryan Papers ground my discussion: her self-published 1983 debut collection, Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends, …

Deforming The Knight: Gawain's Descent Into Monstrosity In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Hannah Held

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sir Gawain has always been marked as a victim in the well-known poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but he is much more than that. Standing with the knights of the Round Table, he seems to be the perfect example of what chivalry should look like, especially with an adherence to the common religious beliefs. However, when put into the context of the manuscript in which it was found, Gawain seems to stand as an allegorical figure of the do-not’s of feudal and religious chivalry. Using the lens of Monster Theory via Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and David Williams, I …

Virginia Woolf And The Consolations Of Abstraction, Ella Murdock Gardner

Scripps Senior Theses

Woolf believed that there are “two spheres: the novel; and life,” and her “great difficulty is the usual one—how to adjust the two worlds” (A Writer’s Diary 203, 208). But with this “great difficulty” comes great possibility; by pointing to the separation of these two spheres within and throughout her works, Woolf finds ways to create meaning from this border. Even as Woolf’s novels deal with the tragic restrictions of social conventions, the insurmountable barriers to communication and intimacy, the petty insignificance of human life and death within the context of an uncaring universe, the abstraction of both their …

Intimacy, Unity, And Shared Consciousness In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf, Meghan Rose Condas

Scripps Senior Theses

In the novels of Virginia Woolf, the difficulties of deep intimacy are troubled by the limitations of language and the fear of shame and vulnerability. What can characters express, and do words have the ability to appropriately describe their feelings of love and desire? Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves grapple with the penetrability of the mind and the potential for shared thought between characters. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf utilizes Clarissa and her relationship with men to highlight how eroticism and affection are inhibited by shame. To evade the anxieties of articulating romantic feelings and …

Pedagogies Of The “Irresistible”: Imaginative Elsewheres Of Black Feminist Learning., Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In her foreword to the groundbreaking anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Toni Cade Bambara (1983) famously argues that the great work of feminist writing is “to make revolution irresistible.” This statement is often read as a founding call of women-of-color feminism, and of feminist literary expression in particular. Yet Bambara’s notion of the “irresistible” extends beyond the page; throughout her works, she also uses the term as a key descriptor of her pedagogy, and her vision of the classroom. Bambara joins Audre Lorde and other Black feminist writer/teachers in insisting on a …

Literary Needle Drops: The Use Of Music As A Postmodern Tool In Contemporary Fiction, Adan S. Alvarado

English Theses

An examination of musical references (“literary needle drops”) in contemporary literature: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. The novels are viewed through the various conceptual lens, literary and otherwise, such as Marcel Danesi’s Modal Flow Principle or “perceptual stimulations” as defined by Guillemette Bolens.

Egan’s novel utilizes punk bands and tracks to construct her characters’ identities, and send them on a journey through lost time to reflect on who they once were, who they have become, and whether they have been able to …

Reformed Men: Alternative Masculinities In Experimental American Literature, Manuel Reza

English Theses

Gender is an integral aspect to one’s lived experience; however, the collective understanding of gender is constantly being redefined. Consequently, the expectations attached to a particular gender identity are also being questioned. Current gender discourse calls attention to the fluidity of gender and experiences which diverge from traditional representations of gender. This thesis discusses works of contemporary experimental American literature from the perspective of masculinity studies. As a whole, masculinity studies seeks to address issues related to traditional male depictions in literature. This thesis aims to show how authors utilize traditional and experimental narrative elements to present alternatives to prescribed …

Criterion, Volume 40, 2022, Loyola Marymount University English Department

Criterion

Faculty Advisor: Sarah Maclay

Co-Editor-in-Chiefs: Alexandra Paradzick and Comer Wadzeck

H. M. Naqvi’S Home Boy As A Response To Post-9/11 Islamophobia And As Implicit Critique Of Mohsin Hamid’S The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Ambreen Hai

English Language and Literature: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hope, Sound, And The Materiality Of Print In Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Periodical Poems, Magdalena Zapędowska

English Language and Literature: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"What's Worth Risking Eternal Damnation For": Modernism, Language And The Social Impact Of Art In The Works Of James Joyce, Hozier, And Lil Nas X, Saranpat Chiangprom

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This research investigates the notion of human sexuality in selected modernist literary works from James Joyce to postmodern music by Hozier and Lil Nas X regarding the criticism of institutionalized beliefs and the depiction of sexualities. From the sexual and spiritual awakening in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to the public onanism scene in Ulysses, Joyce has intensified one's apostasy and sexuality by optimizing and experimenting with the multiplicity of the meaning of words. The postmodern music selected for analysis which comprises a mid-tempo soul song titled "Take Me to Church" by Andrew John Hozier-Byrne, and …

The Acoustic Measurement Of English Vowel Duration Regarding Final Consonant Voicing Produced By L1 Thai Speakers, Chalita Taothong

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This acoustic study focuses on the phonetic phenomenon in English called the voicing effect in which vowel duration followed by voiced consonants is longer than those followed by voiceless consonant counterparts. This study aims to 1) study the duration of English vowels preceding voiced consonants longer than vowels preceding voiceless consonants, which are produced by L1 Thai speakers. 2) investigate the influence of English tense and lax vowels on the vowel duration ratio regarding voiced and voiceless final consonants, which are produced by L1 Thai speakers. Participants include 10 students studying at Chulalongkorn University from various faculties. The research instruments …

The Imperial Gothic: Contact Tracing Narratives Of Disease, Disorder, And Race In Global American Literature, Emma Brownstein

Honors Papers

This thesis examines the intersections among gothic literature, empire, and contagion, and traces the emergence and evolution of a yet unexplored subgenre: the Imperial Gothic. Where early American Gothic narratives express anxieties about national stability and the republican subject, the Imperial Gothic explores anxieties that emerge when imperialism brings white Americans into contact with foreign commodities, environments, and bodies, ranging from foreign nationals, immigrants, and enslaved peoples, to Martians. It demonstrates how viral threats to the body correspond to the nationalist conception of foreign threats against the imagined white body politic. What emerges from this body of global and interplanetary …

On Cleopatra Vii: From Horace And Shakespeare To Self-Representation, Silja M. Hilton

Honors Theses

This thesis explores and analyzes Horace’s Ode 1.37 and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in context of their poetic and theatrical narratives, word choice, and grammatical structures in an effort to form a clearer image of Cleopatra VII. While each work is placed within its historical settings, I do not pursue their historical ‘truths.’ Rather, I draw from the authors’ literary conceptions about the Ruler, from Horace’s inpotens (“a woman lacking in self-control”) to fierce agency in deciding death (“deliberata morte ferocior”), to Shakespeare’s ‘othering’ of Cleopatra as tawny, gypsy, and whore, to his portrayals of her as Goddess …

Throwing The Snake, Michael Chitwood

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 71-72

Interview With Nicole Sealey, Jeffrey Peterson

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 36-43

Reprise, Amy Wright

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 157-158

What Reading Thomas Merton Will Do, Laura Van Prooyen

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 148

Cuttings, Hannah Dow

Nelle (literary magazine)

p. 18

Things That Collapse, Raye Hendrix

Nelle (literary magazine)

pp. 48-49

Different Birds Maybe 1, Shira Dentz

Nelle (literary magazine)

p. 82

Prufrock Villanelle, William Logan

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 105

Vultures, James Davis May

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 113-114

Featured Poet: Nicole Sealey, Birmingham Poetry Review Staff

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 1-3

In The Belly, Lesley Wheeler

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 149

Fallout, Leona Sevick

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 133

Migration, Maria Nazos

Nelle (literary magazine)

pp. 16-17

Collisions, Jenny Molberg

Nelle (literary magazine)

p. 47