English Language and Literature Commons^™

Colonialism And Globalism In Two Contemporary Southern Appalachian Novels - Serena (2008) By Ron Rash, And Flight Behavior (2012) By Barbara Kingsolver, Jasmyn Herrell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this essay, I investigate how the historic and current economic structures operating in Appalachia from the 1920s to the 2010s are represented in two contemporary Southern Appalachian novels – Serena (2008) by Ron Rash and Flight Behavior (2012) by Barbara Kingsolver. Through the lens of postcolonial theory, I show how Serena represents Appalachia as functioning under the colonial model outlined by Robert Blauner and Helen Mathews Lewis in 1978. Then, still under the theory of postcolonialism, I explore how Kingsolver’s work depicts regional identity in response to a post-colonial environment and the ever-expanding global economy.

The Enduring Hold Of The Bible On Modern Literature: Exploring The Fall Narrative As A Conceptual Metaphor For American Literature In John Steinbeck’S East Of Eden, Lauren Stotsky

Undergraduate Honors Theses

There is no greater work of literature, perhaps, than the Bible. The Bible has shaped and influenced more literature, art, and culture than any other work in our time. The effects of the Bible’s words are still woven into modern literature today, illustrating that the Bible’s themes, allegories, parables, fables, metaphors, and characters are things that we humans are unable to depart far from even many decades later. One of the very first stories in the Bible, found at the beginning in Genesis, tells of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve’s depiction as the first kind of our species and …

The Aesthetics Of Storytelling And Literary Criticism As Mythological Ritual: The Myth Of The Human Tragic Hero, Intertextual Comparisons Between The Heroes And Monsters Of Beowulf And The Anglo-Saxon Exodus, Daniel Stoll

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For thousands of years, people have been hearing, reading, and interpreting stories and myths in light of their own experience. To read a work by a different author living in a different era and setting, people tend to imagine works of literature to be something they are not. To avoid this fateful tendency, I hope to elucidate what it means to read a work of literature and interpret it: love it to the point of wanting to foremost discuss its excellence of being a piece of art. Rather than this being a defense, I would rather call it a musing, …

Haiti And The Early American Imagination, Michael Drexler

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Baby Loved, Gilbert Hu

Forces

No abstract provided.

2020 Forces, Scott Yarbrough

Forces

No abstract provided.

Me And Shadow, Gilbert Hu

Forces

No abstract provided.

Pottermore, A Case Study: What Publishers Can Learn About Developing Interactive Transmedia In The Post-Web Age, Megan Crayne

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

15 years after the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling’s magical world would be transformed into an interactive, playable website called simply Pottermore. It included all the elements that dominate successful interactive transmedia: exclusive narrative content that brought readers into the storyworld, spaces for members to create and build virtual communities, interactive gameplay, and additional forms of transmedia available for purchase. Then in 2015, Pottermore Publishing launched a major redesign of Pottermore in the face of declining eBook and audiobook sales.

By comparing and contrasting the three versions of Pottermore (Old, New, and now Wizarding …

Commensality And Connection: How Shared Food Experiences Connect Characters In Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials, The Book Of Dust And ‘Lyra’ Stories, Susan Anna Grace

Articles

Commensality is an inherently social activity that shapes society and enacts social dynamics. Consequently, these shared exchanges can reveal much about the society and the individuals who engage in the act. This thesis explores commensality in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, The Book of Dust Series and companion texts to the novels. The research investigates how commensal exchanges create and maintain connections between characters across the collection. In doing so, it considers how literary characters differ from real-life humans and how the existing body of knowledge on commensality can be applied to literary figures. A qualitative approach was …

"Boo" A Short Film On Jump Scares, Tatum Mcgovern

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The purpose of the short film “Boo” is to utilize cinematic techniques and psychological fears to create an effective jump scare. The goal is to create suspense through the use of sound, a dark setting, numerous camera angles, and video editing. Christian Gillion, a psychophysiologist points out that “when I make subjects anxious and then I startle them, the startle reflex can be increased by 100 to 300 percent.” By building the scene and focusing on the small details of the film, whether you are expecting the scare or not, it will be effective. Incorporating jump scares shines light into …

Music And Infrasound In Horror Movies - How They Can Be Used To Enhance Horror Films, Isabella Sills

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The purpose of this project is to research and investigate the effect music and sound effects have on horror films, specifically, the natural phenomena known as infrasound will be explored in depth. Just outside our range of hearing at 20 Hz, infrasound may not be audible, but can still cause physical reactions such as anxiety, uneasiness, and extreme sorrow (Morrow, 2017). I am looking to create a horror comic in the form of a video that heavily relies on musical cues and the incorporation of infrasound to build up parts of the story told in the form of a comic. …

Incentivized Learning And Libraries: A Comparative Study Of Summer Reading Programs In Connecticut, Andrew Morrison

Honors Scholar Theses

With digital forms of entertainment and media more inescapable than ever, it has become increasingly difficult to encourage children and teens to read. Simultaneously, despite an overwhelming amount of literature demonstrating the educational benefits of reading, especially as a necessity in the summer between academic years, library budgets are shrinking as federal funding nears its end. How do libraries promote summer reading amidst declining interest and decreased funding? Using data from public libraries across Connecticut, this paper investigates how libraries are adapting their children's summer reading programs to a changing landscape, how programs are designed to incentivize reading without eliminating …

Poem No. 123, May 2020, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

The Need For Christian Authors In Mainstream Fiction, Ashley Renea Starnes

Masters Theses

Fiction is an effective and underutilized tool in Christian circles to implicitly illustrate Christian ideas and values to readers of other worldviews. By adopting the writing approach of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, Christian writers can enter into the broad discussion of philosophy, morality, and theology going on in popular fiction.

Gendering Art History In The Victorian Age: Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, And George Eliot In Florence, Antje Anderson

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis investigates how three professional Victorian women writers, Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, and George Eliot, wrote about Renaissance art in Florence. As nineteenth-century women, they were excluded from certain realms of knowledge, agency, and influence. This exclusion (complicated by their privilege in terms of class, nationality, and education) influenced the way they experienced and wrote about art. The introduction addresses how changing modes of travel, broader access to publication, and art history’s gradual emergence as an academic discipline helped shape their careers as women art writers—the well-known “Mrs. Jameson” as a popularizer of art history for a broad readership; …

Politically Correct Language In George Carlin, Alan Schultz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

American stand-up comedian George Carlin is notable for his long-standing popularity from the early 60s up until his death in 2008. In this paper, I examine George Carlin’s stance on politically correct language. Focusing on his three books Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, I show how his attempts to remove himself from a politically correct system ultimately fail as he adheres to his own ideals of language and morality. Using his texts and various work from Stanley Fish to support these claims, I show how Carlin ridicules the redundancies and hypocrisies …

Tension Within Immigrant Identity In South Asian And Asian Characters In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Everything I Never Told You, And Disgraced, Dania Abdelsalam

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis examines the ways American fiction in the past two decades marked a renewal of the study of the immigrant experience. By examining this renewal, I argue that the conversation is no longer focused on the treatment of assimilation but moves into the psychological shock that transpires after assimilation is achieved. This shock is a critical condition of belonging to two opposing identities. Using Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) and Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced (2012), I clarify that these works present protagonists from South Asian and East Asian …

“Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters” : The Monstrosity Of Gender Inversion In Bram Stoker’S Dracula, Natalie Diane Cottrill

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) has elicited a range of different interpretations from critics over the years. Readings range from covering issues of race and colonization to science and religion, and everything in between. These interpretations all feature different anxieties relevant to fin de siecle culture, a title given to the period of transition at the end of the nineteenth century wrought with anxiety and conspiracy about what might come next. One of the sources of this unease stemmed from the rapid change in what constituted women's social roles, as well as developing definitions of gender and sexuality. This socio-cultural concern …

Anti-Semitism In American Realist Literature: Edith Wharton’S Sim Rosedale - A Thorn In American Identity, Elizabeth Pantirer

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

How does canonical American literature from the early twentieth century reflect the American Jew and anti-Semitic sentiments? How do these novels portray the American Jew as a threat to American identity? In this thesis, I answer these questions and argue how American literature is a product of its culture demonstrating and reproducing fears and accepted ideologies. These fears perpetuated and solidified anti-Semitic stereotypes and alienated Jews from society. In my research, I examine how literature acts as a cultural product specifically homing in on particular anti-Semitic stereotypes which represent a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant fear of "otherness." This analysis will draw …

“Mutually Exclusive” : Exploring Gender And Sexuality In Shakespeare’S Twelfth Night, Caitlin Moran Casey

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The thesis explores the treatment of gender and sexuality in William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, or What You Will. By examining Shakespeare’s exploration of gender identity and sexual fluidity, this thesis investigates the nature of these elements in relation to the overall theme of the text. While traditionally thought of as mutually exclusive elements, sexuality and gender are juxtaposed throughout the text, causing characters to reflect on their own identities.

Magic In The Classroom: The School Story And The Implications Of Discipline In Harry Potter, Megan Thompson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Set against the history of the school story in children’s literature, the Harry Potter series reinvigorates the genre. Specifically, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone addresses the significance of socializing disciplines within children’s literature while also demonstrating the effects that education has on individuality and maturation through the roles of the characters throughout the series. Perhaps much of what lends Rowling’s work its magical ability as compared to the traditional school story is its free use of traditionalism, as seen in fairy tales, in its narrative style.

Rowling’s writing gestures towards the need for imagination in order to decode a …

Girls In Wonderland: The Male Gaze, Disordered Eating, And Bad Women In Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland & Spirited Away, Arielle Westcott

English

This project aims to examine gender as perpetuated in the “Wonderland” trope, paying specific attention to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. At the surface level, these works seem like they don’t have much in common—they come from different cultures, different time periods, and different social contexts. However, to say that these stories are too dissimilar to compare is simply incorrect as both deal with the transitional periods of young girls who are approaching adolescence. Because both stories contain an alternate world in which the main little girl character wanders into and journeys through, …

The Pen As Your Sword: Writing Through The Lens Of Depression, Chris Lownie

English

Tragedy is one of writing’s earliest genres, and yet, why do we involve ourselves in the subject and write our own grief for the rest of the world? This thesis explores the act of tackling the subjects of mental illness and bereavement through the use of memoir, and simultaneously to analyze the use of such subject matter in contemporary fiction. Through creating a memoir of my own charting my journey through mental illness, familial death, and suicide, and analyzing the memoirs and works of those who have been through comparable experience, this thesis illuminates how grief is depicted in the …

The Fallen Woman: An Exploration Of The Voiceless Women In Victorian England Through Three Plays Of Oscar Wilde, Marco Randazzo

English (MA) Theses

This essay establishes the Christian myth within Wilde’s three plays, calling attention to the gender politics that he fought against in the Victorian era. Through Salomé, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband I will prove the Christological myth that each play adopts and establish Wilde’s ability to make the religion “transformational.” Wilde’s productions of characters like Salomé, Mrs. Allonby, Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Hester are examples of the “fallen woman” of Victorian England. The treatment of women by women will illuminate the passiveness of the Victorian Woman and their compliance with the patriarchal norm. This norm continues through …

Mirrors Of Our Own: Multiracial Representation In Children’S Picture Books, Kiana Foster-Mauro

Honors Scholar Theses

The United States multiracial population is a fast-growing portion of our population. As the multiracial population grows, so does the need for multiracial representation within books. This study analyzed the representation of multiracial individuals in children’s picture books for ages newborn-8. I identified 75 board and picture books published in the United States between the years 2009 and 2019 that feature mixed race characters. The identified texts were analyzed in a critical content analysis using a framework based upon Critical Race Theory. Through this framework, I examined how multiracial characters in the texts are portrayed, the power dynamics, and what …

Byron And Don Juan: A Case Study And Queer Reading Of The Closeted Libertine, Caitlin Stanfield

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the major theme of homosexuality throughout the poetry of Lord George Gordon Byron, ultimately focusing on his 1819 iteration of Don Juan. It presents historically relevant information regarding the sodomy laws, religious sermons, anti-sodomite publications, and other obstacles that, I argue, prevented Byron from expressing his sexuality openly. The queer Byron, of course, exists elsewhere. Through close readings of Byron’s correspondence and of his verse, my thesis argues that we can read Byron’s highly coded, homoerotic jargon for what it is, shedding new light on the active but concealed homosexual community of nineteenth-century England.

Experimenting With Adulthood: Liminal Play In Young Adult Literature., Kylee Auten

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Play is an unavoidable element of literature intended for younger audiences. Many scholars have taken up the task of describing, analyzing, and criticizing displays of play in young adult (YA) literature. Involved in discussions of play are the concepts of performance and innocence. Another way of examining play is through the characters’ state of liminality. Their in-between status provides them with the possibility to push against social expectations, escape the realities of their daily lives, and subvert authority figures. Because characters occupy both childhood and adulthood in terms of societal expectations, they possess some positive and some negative qualities of …

Crossing Borders, Crossing Genres: Utilizing Genres To Explore Literary Themes Through Genre Fiction, Michael W. Rickard Ii

English Theses

Genre fiction can be used to explore literary themes found in marginalized literature such as Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders, Emma Pérez’s Forgetting the Alamo or Blood Money, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Each author uses the respective genres of hard-boiled detective fiction, American Western literature, and science fiction to explore the elements of borderland literature and the neo-slave narrative. These elements include hybrid identities, the clash between two cultures, disjunctive localities, and the marginalization of both ethnic groups and women. This thesis will show how each genre’s elements are used to further explore the elements of …

The Psychological Effects Of Patriarchy And Courtship: Eighteenth Century Women’S Mentalities In Pamela And Clarissa, Peter J. Laporta

English Theses

I plan to analyze the effects of a patriarchal courtship system on female mentalities during the English eighteenth-century. Samuel Richardson's first two novels, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (1747-48), will be used toward this end based on their epistolary format. The usage of these letters and journals will be pivotal to the evidence based on the characters creating a written nexus of their minds and bodies through their writing. I plan to lay out the ways in which the reader can emotionally feel and understand both Pamela and Clarissa's breakdown …

Lexical Complexities In The St. Louis Dialect Island, Larry Lafond, Kenneth Moffett

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The Greater St. Louis “dialect island” poses interesting problems for dialect documentation, partly because Greater St. Louis is a transitional area where many overlapping linguistic influences have left their mark, and also because is an area with new immigrant communities, racial divides, and an aging population.Using a sample from survey and interview data from 815 participants over a seven-year period, we examine lexical diversity in Greater St. Louis, comprising counties both in Missouri and Illinois. We discover that both age and place are robust indicators of lexical selection in Southern Illinois and St. Louis. Our findings provide a concurring rationale …