English Language and Literature Commons^™

Political Bodies In The Ulster Cycle: Space, Conflict, And Comedy In Scéla Muicce Meicc Dathó, Glenn S. Ritchey Iii

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Scéla Muicce Meicc Da Thó (SMMD; The Tale of Mac Da Thó's Pig) is a humorous Old Irish myth that takes its cues from its Ulster Cycle cousins, notably, An Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). The connective tissue is its cast, plot structure, and the author's mastery of cultural and storytelling traditions. SMMD is brief and rapid, which aids its near-absurdist representation of masculinity, kingship, and honor in heroic saga culture. This thesis uses postcolonial and medieval literary scholarship to analyze medieval and modern depictions of the Ulster Cycle. Contemporarily, the Irish …

Bibliography, Alison Langdon

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Bibliography of publications by Alison (Ganze) Langdon.

An Analysis Of Unusual Case Assignment In Pronouns, Olivia Ziemelis

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Interpretation And Ovidian Myth In Alexander’S Bridge And O Pioneers!, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This essay describes interpretive strategies widely applied to Ovidian mythic materials during the period of Cather’s early career, especially those operative in Alexander’s Bridge and O Pioneers! The article assumes that widely held conventional interpretations of myths, in this case Ovidian myths, in a specific time and area are part of their semantic content, or iconology, and are tools Cather used in communicating with her audience. The essay then looks at a passage in the 1912 Alexander’s Bridge and two disputed passages in the 1913 O Pioneers! along with extended Bacchic themes in the latter novel that employ conventional Ovidian …

Reflections On The Victorian(Ist) Impulse To Totalize Africa, Adrian S. Wisnicki

Department of English: Faculty Publications

IN this essay, I offer some reflections on how Victorianists might understand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discursive practices for mapping Africa. In doing this, I respond to what Sukanya Banerjee, our panel organizer, asked us to do in determining the focus for our essays—namely, that we direct “attention to topics in Victorian studies that [we] feel might otherwise be overlooked or viewed differently.” In what follows I introduce and problematize a series of Victorian-era maps or, more specifically, problematize what such maps represent conceptually, then offer some alternate means by which Victorianists might critically engage with cultural and social reality …

The Politics Of Tools, Stephen Ramsay

Department of English: Faculty Publications

A consideration of the political meaning of software that tries to add greater philosophical precision to statements about the politics of tools and tool building in the humanities. Using Michael Oakeshott's formulations of the “politics of faith” and the “politics of skepticism,” [Oakeshott 1996] it suggests that while declaring our tools be morally or political neutral may be obvious fallacious, it is equally problematic to suppose that we can predict in advance the political formations that will arise from our tool building. For indeed (as Oakeshott suggests), the tools themselves give rise to what is politically possible.

Comparative Studies Of Cross-Cultural Poetics: Robin Coste Lewis And Timothy Yu, Lili Xu

Lawrence University Honors Projects

My use of the term cross-cultural refers to poetry that arises from cultures and ideologies other than the hegemonic ones, which in this paper means African American poet Robin Coste Lewis’s 79-page long narrative poem “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” and Asian American poet Timothy Yu’s collection of parody poems—100 Chinese Silences. Inspired by Jahan Ramazani’s book about transnational poetics, this paper aims to challenge a mononationalist way of reading cross-cultural poetry by suggesting new approaches to do so. A mononationalist way of reading cross-cultural poetry has been influenced by the residues of a literary paradigm that assumes the …

Forgotten Names And Unmarked Graves: A Collection Of Poems By A Nursing Major, Taylor Howse

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

These poetry pieces are a collection of works from my undergraduate experience as an English minor. "The Sheep in a Wolf's Skin" is a fairytale retelling with a twist. It is a dramatic monologue from the perspective of a villain, who hopefully will make you rethink your favorite childhood stories. "The Forgotten Cinderellas" is a free verse poem written as a twist from a favorite fairytale happily ever after. Finally, "Forgotten Names and Unmarked Graves" is a free verse poem written as a tribute for all the forgotten names that are not taught in history. For Samson Occom and William …

Entail, Elopement, And Marriage Law In Pride And Prejudice, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

"The famous first lines of Pride and Prejudice, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife' (3), alert the reader to a story about marriage. This 'universal' truth is presented ironically, of course, since it is the women without a good fortune who are in want of husbands. Remember that Emma Woodhouse indicates that she does not need to marry since she does not need “‘fortune’” or “‘consequence’” (E 84). But the Bennet sisters have neither, so '[t]he business of [Mrs. Bennet’s] life …

Teaching Grammar: One Day At A Time, Jenny Dunn

The Utah English Journal

When I first started teaching grammar to my high school students, I had to study up every class period to make sure I was teaching things correctly. It took me several years to feel comfortable and confident in my abilities.

However, even after seven years of teaching grammar to high schoolers (and five before that teaching junior high students), there are multiple times a year when my students ask me a question I do not know the answer to. Instead of panicking, making something up, or brushing it off as an unimportant principle, I simply say, "That's a good question. …

What Matters Most: Vision Boards For Unit Planning In The English Classroom, Johnny Allred, Corinne Downs

The Utah English Journal

In his first year as a high school teacher, Johnny sat down at the computer to plan a narrative writing unit centered on the text Chasing Lincoln's Killer. He stared at a blank unit plan template for a few minutes while crickets chirped loudly in his head-he had no idea where to begin! Sure, he was a first year teacher, but he had been well-trained in the art of lesson and unit-planning, and he was confident in his ability to teach. Why was this so difficult? What skills and knowledge really mattered for his students? What assessments could he develop …

Book Review: A Snake Falls To Earth, Heidi Stone

The Utah English Journal

Nina, a Lipan girl from Earth, and Oli, a Cottonmouth Snake from the Reflection World, are drawn together to save those who they love the most. Little Badger utilizes traditional Lipan Apache storytelling techniques to draw the reader into the stories of the animal people, monsters, and the importance of family.

Book Review: Kaleidoscope, Justin Scholes

The Utah English Journal

Characteristic of his award-winning style, Brian Selznick's newest book, Kaleidoscope (2021) blends text and beautiful pencil drawings that push readers to consider meaning in words and images. The book features twenty-four short stories, and as the title suggests, each story is a glimpse into a world, a life, a perspective.

Book Review: Ophelia After All, Madison Simpson

The Utah English Journal

Ophelia Rojas has always been the girl who is obsessed with boys. As a senior in high school, she can't remember a time when she wasn't crushing on a cute boy or dreaming of a perfect prom night. Ophelia is also curating her perfect garden as she dreams of studying botany at university, much to her English professor mother's chagrin. When Ophelia starts developing an unexpected crush, she begins to rethink everything she thought she knew about herself.

Book Review: The Girl From The Sea, Austin Andruski

The Utah English Journal

The Girl from the Sea, a graphic novel by Molly Knox Ostertag, is an emotionally rejuvenating tale of young love and self-identity. For Morgan, she wants nothing more than to fit in until she can graduate from high school and leave her island home, finally able to be herself away from people who might judge her.

Imagining Change: Metatheatre, Empathy, And Action On Stage And In The Classroom, Jayna Gearhart Fitzsimmons

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examines the intersection of metatheatre and theatre for social change with a focus on how works of metatheatre, when combined with subject matter that illuminates social issues, systemically non-dominant characters, or de-centered stories, create opportunities for audiences to practice participation and empathetic care that has the power to translate to social action. While existing scholarship on theatre for social change often relies on one-off, site-specific, or performance art events as key to understanding socially focused theater, this dissertation considers alternative approaches to thinking and learning about theatre for social change that expand definitions of theatre for social change …

"Why Do You Keep Alone?:" Isolated Women In The Plays Of Shakespeare, Alexus Litchfield

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The works of William Shakespeare have been well explored, but there is a lack of criticism that examines how the depiction of women is shaped by the genre of the play. Linda Bamber is one of the few critics who have explored this connection between gender and genre. However, while she focuses on the plays’ psychological dynamics, I examine the social dynamics between characters in my study of gender and genre. I suggest that, in both tragedy and comedy, isolation is a strong marker of unhappiness for Shakespeare’s female characters. Examining three tragedies, I find that Lady Macbeth, Goneril, Regan, …

Art, Propaganda, And Truth, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

This essay explores how British and American writers and theorists in the first half of the twentieth century thought about art, propaganda, and truth. Focusing largely on literature written during the First and the Second World Wars, this essay shows that very few authors defined their art as propaganda or truth and instead used words like “political,” “resistance,” “information,” and “anti-fascist” to describe their wartime writing. However, while authors might have eschewed the term propaganda, that does not mean that they avoided producing it. As this essay illustrates, what many authors wrote would now be considered “propaganda.” Moreover, even if …

Syntax, Newsletter Of The Suffolk University English Department, Issue 12, Fall 2023, English Department

Syntax Newsletter of the Suffolk University English Department

No abstract provided.

N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, And The American Imagination: Medieval Myth In 19th- And 20th- Century Children’S Literature, Alyssa Kowalick

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis attempts to elucidate how the illustrated images and text of the medieval myths of King Arthur and Robin Hood were translated from an English national epic to an American classic and used, I argue, to construct a new American identity. My analysis looks at both the written word and illustrated images in Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, as well as The Boy’s King Arthur written by Sidney Lanier and illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, and Robin Hood written by Paul Creswick and illustrated by N.C. Wyeth. …

“Any Means Necessary To Refuse Erasure By Algorithm:” Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’S Travesty Generator, Zach Whalen

Communication & Digital Studies Articles

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's 2019 book of poetry is titled Travesty Generator in reference to Hugh Kenner and Joseph O'Rourke's Pascal program to “fabricate pseudo-text” by producing text such that each n-length string of characters in the output occurs at the same frequency as in the source text. Whereas for Kenner and O'Rourke, labeling their work a “travesty” is a hyperbolic tease or a literary burlesque, for Bertram, the travesty is the political reality of racism in America. For each of the works Travesty Generator, Bertram uses the generators of computer poetry to critique, resist, and replace narratives of oppression and to …

Constructing (Un)Situated Women: Situated Knowledges In Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things (1997) And Balli K. Jaswal's Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows (2017), Necole T. Deloach

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis applies Donna Haraway’s concept of “situated knowledges” to postcolonial feminist novels such as Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Balli K. Jaswal’s Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows in order to illustrate why there needs to be a new framework for analyzing literary postcolonial women. Despite the applicability of Donna Haraway’s “situated knowledges” to postcolonial feminist literary studies, there has been little research published that analyzes not just the intersection of “situated knowledges” and postcolonial feminist literature, but also the problems that occur when Western scholars approach postcolonial texts without completely acknowledging their own worldview. I argue …

Maternal & Spiritual Healing In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, Emily Pittman Hoste

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

After World War II, spiritual and emotional healing was needed in America, despite a dependence upon materialism and conspicuous consumption for success. J.D. Salinger’s short-story cycle, Nine Stories (1953), explores what loss and trauma look like from all sides of war—mother, child, soldier, lover—all are harmed by war. Nine Stories emphasizes the need for nationwide spiritual healing and suggests that mothers offer the necessary antidote to consumeristic America. In fact, eight of Salinger’s Nine Stories employ one of three types of mothers: the self-serving and ineffectual mother; the spiritual, often surrogate maternal guide; and the ideal mother. While the ineffectual …

A Close Analysis Into The Portrayal Of Female Protagonists Through The Lens Of Gendered Authorship: Specifically Looking Into The Works Of Jane Austen, Frances Burney, John Cleland, And Samuel Richardson, Isabella G. Beyloune

Honors Theses

I explore the difference in gendered authorship in 18th century English literature. Choosing to focus on authors such as Jane Austen, Frances Burney, John Cleland, and Samuel Richardson, I aim to see if gender of the author matters in giving a realistic portrayal of eighteenth century British female protagonists, and if there actually is a difference depending on that gender (male or female, specifically). To do this, I perform case study comparisons. All chapters include a close textual analysis of the authors’ use of dialogue and narrative style for depicting their characters. Chapter 1 focuses on the comparison between Austen’s …

Lxs Caravanerxs And Nonsecular Protest: Rethinking Migrant Family Separation With Un Llanto Colectivo, Marcelle Maese

English: Faculty Scholarship

Written and directed by Celia Herrera Rodríguez and Cherríe Moraga in 2018, "Un Llanto Colectivo: Press Conference & Performa-Protesta" took place in front of ICE headquarters in downtown San Diego (September 15th) and then in front of Otay Mesa Detention Center (September 16th). Envisioned as an act of consciousness raising around family separation, Central American caravans, and the detention-industrial-complex, the flyer invitation read, "[T]his is ceremonial resistance." This writing is an extension of my witness of and participation in Un llanto colectivo. I provide a historical context for lxs caravanerxs, as well as interviews with Maestras Celia and Cherríe. The …

Passerby To Sonder: How Black Literary Sources Use Dance To Carve Out Relational Possibility, Zion Martin-Hayes

English Honors Papers

This thesis outlines the raw phenomenon of humans to exist in relation to each other as “passersby,” unaware of their tendencies towards desire and lack, when they should pursue “sonder,” the awareness that someone else’s life is as equally complex as your own. Relationality looks like a performance of bodies when it should embody the essence of dance. The performance of bodies equates to the purpose of passersby to prioritize movement as a way to remain unattentive of personhood. Whereas in dance, an appreciation for stillness to the same degree of movement brings people to sonder as a way to …

Trading Spaces: Space As Metaphor For Contingency In Writing Centers, Genie N. Giaimo

The Writing Center Journal

This article offers a critical reading of writing center workplace space. Weaving together counterstorying with semiotic, geographic, and rhetorical analysis of space, the author provides an alternative way of understanding the connections between our physical and metaphorical workspaces. Precarity and contingency, the article posits, are made more palpable through connection to physical space because writing center labor (and workers) are often identified mostly through their space and availability. Ultimately, this article argues for a new way forward that decouples writing center workers and labor from inhabited workplace space. Arguing that these spaces are gendered, classed, and raced (among other things), …

The Paradoxes Of Contingency: Stories Of Contingent Professional Tutors’ Lived Experiences, Beth Sabo, Kaia-Marie A. Bishop, Kristine M. Gatchel, Rachel Dick

The Writing Center Journal

Despite comprising the majority of labor in higher education in general and writing centers more specifically, contingent workers’ voices and experiences have often been overlooked. The contingent voices that have been represented have predominantly been those in director or administrative positions, not the professional tutors who engage in centers’ day-to-day consulting. This lack of representation in the literature perpetuates institutional inequities and belies a larger paradox: that contingent workers attempting to ameliorate the precarity of their situation may jeopardize their livelihood. Because contingent workers’ identities and roles have historically been ignored and marginalized, few research and publication options are available …

Writing Young Adult Fiction: Reflections On Narration And Theme In Young Adult Literature, Kimberly Davidson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to Young Adult Library Services, “Young Adult Literature is a genre that is separate from Children's Literature. It emerged in the twentieth century when teenagers became a powerful force of the economy in the 1930s and gained prominence in the sixties.” Various sources list common elements that make YA literature a distinct category. 1) YA books appeal to the interests of readers from ages twelve to eighteen. 2) YA books typically explore a teenage character’s entry into an unfamiliar “world.” 3) YA books usually feature a protagonist’s self-reflection on events that influence their forays into the adult world. 4) …

Reverberations Of Boarding School Trauma In Upstate New York, Grace A. Miller

Comparative Woman

The legacy of boarding schools in Upstate New York is one that non-Natives seem to have forgotten. This historical amnesia compounds other acts of genocide, including cultural genocide, of the Haudenosaunee people throughout US history. Established in 1855 at the Cattaraugus Reservation (Seneca), the Thomas Indian School would serve as an institution of forced assimilation and displacement, much like the other Native American boarding schools. While the larger US population has grown to forget these schools' existence, the shadowed legacy of institutions, like the Thomas Indian School, Haskell, and Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the rippling effects of these schools’ practices …