English Language and Literature Commons^™

How Disassociating The Past Reassociates The Present: Distilling The Magic Out Of Magic Realism In Susan Power’S The Grass Dancer, Abby N. Lewis

Undergraduate Honors Theses

American Indian author Susan Power’s novel The Grass Dancer is often categorized as magical realism, yet Power has stated the novel is a representation of her reality and that it is not a magical realist text. The term magical realism was first applied to the work of Latin American authors such as Gabriel García Márquez whose writing depicts magical events in a matter-of-fact narrative tone. It has since expanded to include other cultures. The question is whether it is a term that can readily be applied to the literary work of all cultures. The closest Wendy B. Faris, one of …

The Revival Of America's First Genre: Exploring The Panther Narrative's Feminist Principles In Post-Revolutionary War America, Abigail Bentley

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

America’s victory in the War of Independence posed new challenges for the men who drafted the Constitution. Gender roles shifted dramatically during the war, creating a new attitude about women’s roles in the new republic. Before the Constitution was ratified, women like Abigail Adams advocated for women to have a more active role in the new nation. Radical literature regarding women’s roles also became a driving force in the movement. The Panther Narrative used the resurgence of America’s first genre, the captivity narrative, to combine the new republic’s obsession with personal freedom and radical ideas about gender spheres. The anonymous …

Gender, Consent, And Hermaphroditic Legibility In James Joyce's Ulysses And Finnegans Wake, Carter R. Elsea

Honors Theses

It is difficult to imagine a more elusive, polemical author than James Joyce. He is often spoken of as both a cosmopolitan and a nationalist, syphilitic madman and genius, and misogynist and writer of écriture feminine. This final paradoxical view of Joyce is one that I find most compelling. However, this is not a project in feminist historiography attempting to reclaim Joyce for feminism, but rather a demonstration of the pulsing bodies that already exist between the texts. When exploring this idea of écriture feminine in Joyce’s Ulysses, one might be surprised that Hélène Cixous refers to Joyce’s treatment of …

Judging A Book By Its Cover: The Context Book Covers Provide, Virginia Emily Cranwell

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to prove how the context of books, specifically the book jackets and bindings, are a crucial part to understanding the history and the text of the story. The paper begins with printing history in order to illustrate how the context of books has changed, and how the Twentieth Century saw a use of book jackets to promote the book. The paper then looks at the books of a particular author, Alasdair Gray, as an example of how the context of the book can be used to enhance and reveal aspects of the text. Finally, this paper discusses …

Cross Roads Of The Living And The Dead: Necropolitics And Market Logic In Chris Abani's Graceland, Joshua Dunn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that Chris Abani’s 2004 novel Graceland presents the austerity programs imposed on Nigeria in the 1980s as a form of financialized necropolitics. Through its representation of the entanglement between transnational capital interests and repressive state security forces, Graceland offers new ways of theorizing neoliberal governance and its relationship to the construction of what Achille Mbembe calls “death worlds.” In the novel, the state’s instrumentation and destruction of human bodies (for the accumulation of wealth) becomes an apt metaphor for structural adjustment. But the novel goes further by demonstrating how this logic of accumulation utilizes biopolitical and even …

Supporting Immersion Teachers: An Autoethnography, Lauren Speece

Theses and Dissertations

Immersion programs face a variety of challenges that are common to the field, such as lack of materials appropriate for students’ language abilities, assessment, teacher recruitment and retention, balancing content and language, and relevant, high quality professional development for teachers. However, within specific micro-contexts, other issues can affect the success of immersion programs. Since the teacher’s role is critical in all aspects of the immersion classroom, more emphasis needs to be placed on talking with teachers about their experiences in order to provide better professional development, and to build a stronger community of support.

This narrative autoethnography examines my journey …

A Social Study Of Discworld Autonomy, Morgan Rogers

Senior Theses

From 1983 to 2015, Sir Terry Pratchett wrote a series of forty-one novels, several short stories, and companion works set on the Discworld. The Discworld is a flat world that rides through space on the backs of four giant elephants that stand themselves on the back of the Great A’tuin, a world turtle. The Disc is based around the Hub, or central point, and the Rim, or the circumference of the world. There is a waterfall all around the Rim of the world that falls into space itself. The Hub compares to the Earth’s poles in that it is the …

Bilingualism And The American Family, Caitlin M. Nickerson

Senior Honors Projects

Bilingualism is the ability to speak more than one language fluently. People of all ages may aspire to learn a second or third language in order to fulfill both personal goals and communicate with a variety of people in different contexts. Irrespective of one’s walk of life or socioeconomic status, being bilingual is a valuable skill. Although English is the language of power in the United States, there are hundreds of other languages spoken in this country.

There are a number of different ways in which children can become bilingual. For example, they may enter the school system speaking the …

Robert Burns's Hand In 'Ay Waukin, O': The Roy Manuscript And William Tytler's Dissertation (1779), Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Robert Burns's sources and manuscripts for his expansion of the song "Ay waukin, O," first published as song 213 in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, III (1790); highlights an often neglected and misdated printed item, William Tytler’s Dissertation, as Burns's source for two of the four stanzas; considers the two full-length manuscripts, identifying one as being an Antique Smith forgery, and detailing the provenance and purpose, of the other, now at the Birthplace Museum; examines and reproduces the Roy manuscript and its pencilled additions; and so clarifies the relationship among the three genuine manuscripts to argue that …

Disabled ≠ Disempowered: A Critical Framework For Analyzing The Representation Of Mental Disabilities In Young Adult Literature, Michele L. Dobbins

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this honors thesis, I focus on young adult novels that highlight rather than minimize the experience of having a mental disability, and I argue that this topic must be included in education and book discussions in order to create more inclusive classrooms and communities. I examine representations of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and autism in popular young adult novels, paying special focus to the way characters represent the relationship between power and disability. After reading a wide range of novels from award-winning bestsellers to reviewers’ recommendations, I noted the frequency of topics such as identity, community, institutions, and romanticization …

The Two-Sided Coin: Madness And Laughter As Subversion In Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland And The Sandman, Tessa Starr Swehla

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mad female characters in Western literature have traditionally represented attempts by dominant patriarchal discourse to subjugate women’s discourse: these characters are usually pathologized in both their dialogue with other characters and in their physical bodies. This subjugation by representation of mad female characters in dominant discourse parallels similar attempts to portray women as lacking in humor. This thesis studies the intersections between madness and humor and the ability of female characters that embody both to challenge and subvert dominant discourse. By examining the characters of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s novel and Delirium from Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel series The Sandman …

Running In Rem Cycles: Escapism In The French Postwar Films Le Silence De La Mer And La Vache Et Le Prisonier, Danielle Green

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This thesis compares two postwar critiques of escapist entertainment that appear in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Silence de La Mer (1949), and Henri Verneuil's La Vache et le Prisonnier (1959). Their directorial choices acknowledge the power, even shortcomings of escapism through entertainment. Overall, Melville and Verneuil's films argue that escapism creates a "dream" cycle in which the audience, in an attempt to escape reality through entertainment. The films' cyclical narrative structures symbolize their characters' psychology, a tactic that frames Le Silence and La Vache into France's postwar culture. In a side-by-side comparison, the repetitive narrative structure of Le Silence and La …

Tolkien And The Deadly Sin Of Greed, Amanda A. Kieffer

The Kabod

Tolkien’s genius as a writer and insight as a philosopher and theologian (of sorts) are reflected in his subtle yet impactful interweaving of the consequences of greed within the lives of the peoples of Middle-Earth. He shows readers that greed is not simply the love of money. Greed is the root of all evil, and it takes a variety of forms, as represented by Sauron’s desire to possess power over and control others, Saruman’s imitative desire, and Feanor’s over-possessiveness of his sub-creative acts. Tolkien also reveals that a proper relationship with nature can provide recovery from the drab familiarity which …

"Enchantment Dissolved": A Reexamination Of The Hymn's Authorship And Significance In The Commonplace Ms. Hannah Swynock, Hannah Bradley

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

“Enchantment Dissolved” is a hymn written by John Newton and a part of the first publication of the Olney Hymns in 1779. However, starting around the year 1803, the hymn was misattributed in multiple publications to William Cowper, the second author of the collection. This article will analyze Cowper’s literary style and consider why the hymn may have been mistaken for his creation. This particular hymn also appears in a 17-18th century commonplace, Hannah Swynock 1687, in the Parker MSS. at the Lilly Rare Book Library at Indiana University. In this hand-written manuscript, the hymn has four additional verses that …

The Intellectual Woman’S Cage: Complicating Ideals Of Fanon’S “Native Intellectual” In Nervous Conditions, Alyssa J. Mountain

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

This paper examines—through a post-colonial lens— Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions. In particular, this paper analyzes the characters of Tambu, Nyasha, and Maiguru and how their Western education allows them to fit into their roles as “native intellectuals.” Imposing Franz Fanon’s phases of becoming a “native intellectual” onto these strong, educated female characters greatly complicates his term and process. The idea of the native intellectual is most often applied to men. However, in terms of Dangarembga’s work, it is the female characters that rise to this title. In this acquisition of education the female characters are truly “between two …

True Crime As A Literature Of Advocacy, Leslie Rowen

Undergraduate Theses

True crime is often dismissed as a genre of cheap paperbacks with little literary merit and highly sensational, pornographic content. By contrast, my paper proposes an alternative literary history of true crime which merits further investigation because of its focus on advocating for justice where the justice system failed. I begin with Catharine Williams’ 1833 piece Fall River: An Authentic Narrative, an early example from true crime literature. The text disputes the acquittal of a Methodist preacher for the murder of a female mill worker, arguing that the trial was unfairly slanted in the defendant’s favor. More than a century …

American Prometheus: Carnegie's Captain, Bill Jones, Tom Gage

Trade & Scholarly Monographs

American Prometheus: Carnegie’s Captain, Bill Jones presents a compelling historical memoir of the illustrious life of rebellious steel genius and inventor, Captain Bill Jones.

Hero of the Civil War and Johnstown Flood, Captain Bill Jones built and supervised the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, which in its first five years advanced to the rank of the world’s most productive and profitable steel mill. His “hands-on, all over” style solved Carnegie’s production problems on the spot, enlisted baseball teams from the Works’ departments to defuse ethnic strife, promoted the eight-hour work day, and patented inventions, including the Jones Hot Metal mixer, which …

Neues Testament Und Märchen: Tolkien, Fairy Stories, And The Gospel, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1943 claim in “On Fairy-stories” that the Christian Gospel is a fairy story which “has entered History and the primary world” stands over against significant (and widely publicized) elements of Liberal Protestant biblical interpretation of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, exemplified in Rudolph Bultmann’s 1941 essay, “New Testament and Mythology.” Tolkien’s position, which seems to have influenced C. S. Lewis and Austin Farrer, owes something to G. K. Chesterton but has yet more direct parallels in Thomas Aquinas and Gregory the Great.

Believing Mary Karr, Stephanie Rae Guedet

Theses and Dissertations

Believing Mary Karr examines how belief, represented in the memoirs of Mary Karr, works in our contemporary moment. This examination is supported by the argument that our identities and the stories we tell about them are always constructions of belief, and that these beliefs are ultimately relational, enacted in the intersubjective relationship between writers and readers of autobiography. This dissertation provides the fields of both rhetoric and life writing studies not only an awareness of how ideas about belief—how beliefs about belief—have already shaped our scholarly imagination but also the possibilities a rhetoric of belief can offer to future conversations …

The Motionless Half-Sun Over The Postcolonial Horizon: Adichie, Bhabha, And Inaction, Themal I. Ellawala 2896594

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Action is a metaphysical reality of our daily existence, one so commonplace and privileged that it has transcended its dialectical relationship with inaction to preeminence. The latter has failed to capture the imagination of philosophers and critical theorists, leaving the subversive potential of this negative space unexplored. This essay seeks to interrogate the space of inaction, and restore the unity between the action and inaction. This exploration is situated within a postcolonial context, as a conversation between Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Homi Bhabha, to examine how inaction offers a site to challenge the violence of action …

Religion And Morality In Tolkien's The Hobbit, Sophia Friedman

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Much research has been done on J. R. R. Tolkien's works, but The Hobbit has been overlooked. Because of the time in his life that it was written, this particular novel can give unique insight in the questions of religion in Middle Earth that have been continuously raised. The first half of this essay will seek to answer that question. Though most scholars look for an allegorical representation of the author’s Catholic faith in the novel, it is not there. Instead, Tolkien found spirituality in the process of writing, in creating a believable Secondary World. Rather than trying to convert …

International Yeats Studies, Issue 2

International Yeats Studies

International Yeats Studies was conceived by the organizing board of the International Yeats Society as a means of bringing together national and other Yeats societies around the world. This journal is designed to complement the Yeats Annual, published under the general editorship of Warwick Gould. International Yeats Studies will be published twice a year and aims to include a variety of approaches to the study of Yeats. The editorial board draws together scholars from across the globe, and we hope that when it is possible, the journal will publish important essays translated into English from other languages. In addition …

Female Insanity: The Portrayal Of A Murderess In Alias Grace, Maria Medlyn

Honors Capstone Projects

In this paper, I analyze Margaret Atwood’s biographical novel Alias Grace which is based on the life of Grace Marks, a servant who was convicted of murdering her employer and his housekeeper. I use feminist and psychological perspectives to recount Atwood’s interpretation of the 1800s social hierarchy and the use of labels in controlling individuals. First, I explain the severe oppression of women in the 19^th century. For example, women in this era were financially controlled by men, held to high moral standards, expected to be chaste yet submissive, and restricted to domestic roles. Next, I describe the changing …

Private Deaths: The Impossibilities Of Home In The Modernist Novel, Ava Bindas

English Honors Projects

This project examines novels by Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Nella Larsen featuring female characters who contemplate or commit suicide. Relying on a composite theoretical framework that weaves together geography theories of spaces as well as gendered theories of bodies by authors like Judith Butler, Rita Felski, and Victoria Rosner, I argue women commit suicide because their modern homes fail to accommodate their gendered bodies. Focusing less on the moment of death than on the conditions that make choosing to live impossible, this project tracks how, during a moment of supposed liberation, conceptions of gender, modernity, and domestic …

Discursive Mapping: Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca And Thomas Jefferson’S Construction Of Selfhood And Otherness, Monica Doebel

Undergraduate Research Awards

The binary of savage versus civilized was deeply embedded in the structure of early American society and the consciousness of early generations of colonizers, codified through multiple methods of inscribing meaning upon native land. Thomas Jefferson, in his pseudo-scientific Notes on the State of Virginia, taxonomizes life in native America using maps, charts, and textual descriptions for the purpose of consolidating an American identity premised on superiority over native people and black slaves. In contrast, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca maps native America purely through language, constructing the illusory infallibility of European colonizers while crafting an overall narrative of native …

Delving Into Multicultural Literature With Inquiry, Juan Gonzalez

Honors Theses

This paper argues for the use of multicultural literature in the classroom, and puts forth a unit plan that uses critical literacy in an English 11 classroom, though it can be readapted to fit other grade levels. Bishop (1990) describes multicultural literature as a set of windows, that people use to view the experiences of others, and mirrors, that reflect and validate peoples’ experience, a core principal in this paper. Critical literacy is comprised of four dimensions (Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002) that allows for analyzing literature in a different and meaningful way. The final part of this paper …

A Scholarly Fictional Narrative Portraying The Stigma That Surrounds Mental Illness And Its Place In Literature, Adrianna Robinson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this scholarly fictional narrative is meant to reveal the struggles that individuals with mental illness go through, not only in their personal lives, but also with their place in society. I lay out research around the stigma that surrounds mental illness first, defining both public and self-stigma in relation to mental illness. I also briefly mention Girl, Interrupted and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to show how authors have addressed the stigma that surrounds mental illness in literature in the past. The research is an important part of understanding why I write the fictional narrative the way I do, …

Constructed Borders And Conditional Belonging: Refugee Narratives In Literature And Law, Rachel C. Wilson

English Honors Projects

Merging literary criticism and political theory, this project explores the representations of refugees in contemporary fiction and human rights law. Through a close reading of reports and press releases published by human rights organizations, I trace how NGOs’ moral and expert authority creates a narrow emphasis on refugees’ fear and victimhood. As novels by Dave Eggers, Susan Choi, Caryl Phillips, and Chris Cleave show, literature is not bound by the same constraints. These novels reveal the internal borders that continue to compromise refugees’ belonging after resettlement. Employing a metanarrative that considers the uses and limits of its own project, literature …

The Formation Of The Autonomous Woman Through A Hegelian Lens: A Comparative Study Of The British Fin De Siecle "New Woman" And The Post-Mao "Amazing" Woman, Robyn L. Buro

English Department Theses

This thesis utilizes the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness development to explore the formation of the autonomous woman within the New Woman movement of the British fin de siècle and the literature of women writers in 1980s Post-Mao China. The sexual figuration of the New Woman via an unremitting male gaze as well as the absence of individual awareness due to limited reflective self-assessment lead to a misrepresentation of the female figurehead in fin de siècle Britain. Through an in-depth study of literature by Charlotte Mew, Victoria Cross, George Egerton, and Thomas Hardy, the reader can identify key points of failure …

Blade Runner And The Divine Menace, Alexander W. Pickens

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

Following the decline of Christianity in mainstream Western culture, a void rose in the moral and societal code. Those writers that emerged presented alternate visions that worked their way into the literature of the 20th century. Karl Marx's interpretation of the structure of labor in capitalism presented a new societal hierarchy whose finer points have been worked out in the complex film Blade Runner. This dystopian nightmare, in which a Marxist interpretation of current society bogged down by the ennui of capitalist accumulation is confronted, describes a new religious order based upon this economic theory. Central to this reimagining …