English Language and Literature Commons^™

"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 …

Vicar Victoria: Writing The Church Of England In Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Rachel Elizabeth Cason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vicar Victoria: Writing the Church of England in Nineteenth-Century Fiction shows how the organizing force of the Anglican Church and the figure of the Anglican clergyman were used to interrogate social, legal, and historical developments in nineteenth-century fiction. The project outlines how authors reacted to events such as Pluralism reform, the opening of training schools for clergy, and the Oxford Movement. There was a growing importance of institutions (including new physical buildings and Anglican reform movements). Further, the clergy, pushed by the increased expectation to modernize and professionalize, became a specialist career, with raised training and performance requirements. As a …

Disturbing The Ecological Pastoral: An Examination Of Willa Cather's Fictional Spaces In My Ántonia And Death Comes For The Archbishop, Anne Carter Stowe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Willa Cather is universally lauded for her ability to render landscape into prose. Critics have observed for years that the landscape often functions as the main character in her fiction, or that her characters can easily be evaluated in terms of how deep and successful their relationships to the land are. In an attempt to evaluate Cather’s treatment of two different “Western” landscapes, I will focus first on My Ántonia, one of her most famous Nebraska novels, and second on Death Comes for the Archbishop, whose narrative unravels on the New Mexican landscape. I argue that Cather treats …

Of Mules And Mamas: Four Women, Africana Mothering, And Resistance, Ebony Olivia Lumumba

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The black woman’s humanity is unjustly linked to domestic responsibility and, thus, the traditional constraints of mothering. The roles of the mother and the created archetype of the mammy often become marred with the latter role overtaking the former—leaving black children without full benefit and access to their biological maternal parent. With the pervasive threat to black lives present in spaces all over the globe, for women of the African Diaspora, simply deciding to accept the role of a mother to a life that is physically, socially, and economically under siege is revolutionary. Considering this, the act of mothering, especially …

Reimagined: An Analysis And Retelling Of Hans Christian Andersen's Works, Preston Smith

Honors Projects

Where do modern retellings of classic fairytales stick to their source texts and where do they differ? Inspired by ABC’s fairytale drama Once Upon a Time, my reimagining project was born. I originally became obsessed with Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen character both through this television series and through the character’s titular story, and after that, grew to love many of his tales from the nineteenth century. It has been two hundred years since Andersen was writing, and thus society has changed in ways potentially unimaginable in Andersen’s time. I have taken three of his stories— “The Snow Queen,” “The …

“Introduction: Theory, Practice, And Critical Agency In Andrew Marvell’S Poetry, Ben Labreche, Ryan Netzley

English & Linguistics Articles

An introduction for the special issue on theoretical approaches to Andrew Marvell.

"Woven Into The Deeps Of Life": Death, Redemption, And Memory In Bob Kaufman's Poetry, Peter Davis

Pomona Senior Theses

The scholars who have taken up the task of writing about Bob Kaufman have most often done so in response to a perceived demand: the lack of Kaufman scholarship, readership, anthology, publicity, canonization. The basis of this need is clear: Kaufman is almost never included as even a third-string Beat, a fringe Surrealist, or an underappreciated Jazz performer. To the committed readers of Kaufman – and almost all of his readers seem to be committed ones – it’s unforgivable. These various canons, major (mid-century American poets, Beat poets) and minor (Jazz poets, American Surrealists), are clearly missing one of their …

Lexical Complexity Of Academic Presentations: Similarities Despite Situational Differences, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

The present study examined the lexical complexity profiles of academic presentations of three groups of university students– native English speaking, English as a second language, and English as a lingua franca users. It adopted a notion of lexical complexity which includes lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication as main dimensions of the framework. The study aimed at finding out how the three academically similar groups of presenters compared on their lexical complexity choices, what the lexical complexity profiles of high quality students’ academic presentations looked like, and whether we can identify variables that contribute to the overall lexical complexity …

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 …

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.

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 …