English Language and Literature Commons^™

Virginia Woolf & Ecologies: An Introduction, Laci Mattison, Shilo Mcgiff

Virginia Woolf: Selected Papers

No abstract provided.

Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez

English Language and Literature ETDs

There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …

Execution By Alien (A Collection Of Poetry), Sara Emma Kahane

Honors Theses

The following is a collection of poems narratively depicting the childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death of a woman and her memories. I will analyze the poetry in meaning and form as well.

“She Didn’T Know I Was In The Room”: The Effects Of Hatfield’S Illustrations On Readers’ Interpretations Of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Mason Repas

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

When Charlotte Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," was first published in New England Magazine in 1892, staff illustrator Joseph Hatfield created three realistic-style images to accompany the text. Research suggests that Gilman had no control or influence over these images, which altered readers' perception of her story about the dangers of the rest cure for female hysteria. While Hatfield faced artistic limitations and his intentions are not discoverable today, the choices and details in his illustrations support interpretations of the short story as a piece of horror fiction in which his cohesive series of images is a more reliable …

Humanization Of The Refugee As The Modern Subject In Mohsin Hamid’S Exit West, Ani Gazazyan

English (MA) Theses

This thesis discusses the central concern of the global refugee crisis through the fictional novel Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. The novel tells the story of two protagonists who are portrayed as the modern subject that Hamid comes to humanize, which reflects on current society’s representation of the refugee as dehumanized or “the Other.” Hamid takes his readers on a journey that represents his characters as normal everyday humans that are forced into the process of refugeehood and displacement. Throughout this thesis, I discuss what makes the novel so unique in representing the modern-day refugee. In the first section titled …

Owning The Body: Bodily Autonomy And Consent In The Works Of Octavia Butler, Korryn Plantenberg

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

During the 1980’s the Second Wave feminist movement provided more interest in interdisciplinary movements towards equity in the case of gender. One movement that slowly grew was Womanism, which included the intersection between race and gender. Specifically, the experiences of black women in the United States. Inspired by this movement authors such as Octavia Butler was a black science fiction author who wrote literature focused on black women. Alongside her preoccupation, with race in science fiction, Butler explores the nature of consent and bodily autonomy in utopian and dystopian futures. Within her novels, she uses Womanism to engage with futuristic …

Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford

Honors Theses

In my thesis paper I look at three primary texts, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to analyze their main antagonists through a vampiric lens. I explain how the characters of Bertha Mason, Miss Havisham, and Dorian Gray are all written with veiled vampiric traits that revolve around themes of sexuality, secrecy and seclusion, and unbridled physical and emotional violence. Although none of these texts is obviously a “vampire novel”, the authors lean into vampire tropes including eerie physical description, doubled relationships, and other vampire lore that can be best …

The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter

Honors Theses

Assuming the near impossible task of sorting through and delineating various conceptions of the self in and throughout literary and civil history, literary critic Irving Howe adopts a highly perceptive and profoundly analytical approach to the enigmatic individual. In the article quoted above, "The Self in Literature," Howe consolidates what he believes to be the most promising attempts at coding and decoding abstractions of the self across numerous literary, philosophical, and sociological texts. The success of Howe’s analysis lies in his ability to simultaneously embrace and scrutinize seemingly incompatible notions of bodily and spiritual discourse. With the knowledge that such …

Pecan Grove Review Volume 21, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

Sherwood Anderson And The Industrial Corruption Of Midwestern Individualism, Hudson Rice

Senior Honors Theses

Sherwood Anderson’s literary Midwest reflects many of the idealistic characteristics resulting from the region’s frontier, agrarian origin. The most prominent of these characteristics is the region’s emphasis on and appreciation of human particularity. His novels Winesburg, Ohio and Poor White document the region’s unique relationship with individual particularity and how this particularity clashed with a new industrial lifestyle. The two novels reflect the Midwest’s unique understanding of individuality and offer an explanation for why the region’s response to an industrial cultural overhaul was so damaging for the Midwest’s identity, as the traditional identity was supplanted by an industrial one.

"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin

Honors Projects

The art of adaptation is a difficult process, and is often hard to please general audiences that have a connection to the source material. As a student who studies both English Literature and Film Production, the question asked through this study is what does it take to write a “successful” adaptation? What qualifies as “successful”? How does an adaptation balance the themes, characterization, and plot of a piece of literature with the continuous momentum and visual complexity that the medium of film requires, all in 120 pages or less? This study engages with these questions by actively practicing adaptation, adapting …

Psychological Criticism And Shakespearean Allusions In J.M. Barrie’S Dear Brutus: A Neverland For Adults, Kathryn Alley

Senior Honors Theses

In Peter Pan, Sir James Barrie welcomes readers into Neverland, the realm of eternal youth. Barrie’s lesser-known play, Dear Brutus, ushers audiences into a supernatural garden free of responsibility, reality, and permanence. Referring to Cassius’ words in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the 1917 tragedy explores the consequences of romantic escapism and the seductive power of second chances. Through the lens of Freud’s and Lacan’s psychological criticism, and Barrie’s connection to his might-have-been daughter, Margaret, Dear Brutus unveils the plight of eight mysterious strangers by illustrating that all adults are lost children. Dear Brutus feels in many ways like …

Bad Blood: Octavia E. Butler Takes A Bite Out Of Gender And Racial Stereotypes In Fledgling, Abigail Cole

Senior Theses

For contemporary audiences the word “vampire” typically conjures two figures: a Damon Salvatore-esque[1] man with devil may care eyes, dark hair and an equally dark past. Dripping with sex and charm, he struggles with an internal dilemma, his animalistic urge to kill constantly at war with his human morality. On the other hand, we have the sexy, scantily clad white female vampire who uses her feminine wiles and socially “perfect” body to prey upon poor, unsuspecting men, until she is eventually corralled into domestic submission, or killed. While this description fits the broader scale of what the vampiric figure …

The Unconscious Never Lies, Judah Brass

Student Research

My paper examines the novel "The Picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde from a psychoanalysis lens, exploring the complexity of human emotions and the riveting effects of trauma, repression and human interaction. There is an emphasis on different ways expression of the unconscious or processes of emotions can be benefited through an appropriate mode of processing. This research purpose is to educate on applying a criticism to literature, advocate for mental health awareness, and emphasize the importance of processing emotions in a productive and safe way.

Dorian Grey’s past trauma (lack of father figure) seen through his progressive behavior …

A Conversation With Stephen Graham Jones: Horror, Weird Fiction And The Way Of Slashers, With Sopapillas For Dessert, Billy J. Stratton

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

An interview/conversation between Stephen Graham Jones and Billy J. Stratton, which took place in Denver on October 24, 2022.

On The Fictions Of Stephen Graham Jones And The Stories That Made Him, And Well, Us Too, Billy J. Stratton

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

Introduction to the issue.

Since being honored in 2017 with a Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in Mapping the Interior—his 17th novel—by the Horror Writer’s Association, the work of Stephen Graham Jones has exploded onto the national scene as so many of his readers have long anticipated.

Twitter, Emily Williamson

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 181

The Lost Sermons Of The Buddha, Ricardo Pau-Llosa

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 24-33

Swirling Lines, Ricardo Pau-Llosa

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 37-38

Biscuits And Gravy, Paul Bone

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 78

Crystal Ring, Christopher Buckley

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 83

Killing Machine, Travis Denton

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 99-100

Partial Eclipse, Kendall Dunkelberg

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 107

River Street, Jared Jones

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 115

A Trip To The Museum Of Modern Poetic Objects, Owen Mcleod

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 134

Dear Here, Mary B. Moore

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 135-137

The Teachings Of Naranja, Mary B. Moore

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 140-141

Why The Word Ripple Obsesses Me, Mary B. Moore

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 138-139

Landmarks, Salvador Peralta

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 145

Learning Latin, Natalie Staples

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 162