English Language and Literature Commons^™

Funky Fresh, Ryan Girard

Bryant Literary Review

Warm lights flash

Scuffs of roller skates litter the dance floor

Inherent Vice, Brennan D'Elena

Bryant Literary Review

The sun sets, pages age, leaves wither away.

Glass shatters, candy melts, eggs break, ponds dry.

This Man's Life, Brian Daldorph

Bryant Literary Review

If only for a short time

a man has all that he wants:

Escape, Dolores Redfearn

Bryant Literary Review

Mambo sounds provoke the silence, waking the sleepwalkers in the street below.

Laundry, Will Walker

Bryant Literary Review

It's what separates us from the beasts.

Plato did not say I only wear

the idea of laundry;

Laundromat, Sheila Golburgh Johnson

Bryant Literary Review

Out of the washer

endlessly swirling,

damp and wrinkled

and knotted from harsh

With Birds Flying Below Her, Patricia O'Donnell

Bryant Literary Review

Where Muriel wants to be is sitting on a terrace, one on a mountain with a view of the ocean.

A Fifth Of Old Crow, Mitch Lescarbeau

Bryant Literary Review

Feathers black as an undertaker's wingtips,

he struts resplendent with a monocle and a walking stick

Monastery, Marc Harshman

Bryant Literary Review

Inside the cloistered quiet the men dug vegetables

and listened for God

The Man Who Will Perform My Colonoscopy, Charles Harper Webb

Bryant Literary Review

As I slouch in the shower, drained by fear

and laxatives, does he look forward to a day

Love Match, Ann Robinson

Bryant Literary Review

Beast with cufflinks and condoms,

studmuffin with biceps a woman could climb,

Older Brother, Thomas A. West, Jr.

Bryant Literary Review

As a child I wondered

what the lobster saw in the last second

before it flopped twisting into boiling

The Higher Faith, Elton Glaser

Bryant Literary Review

New Orleans, August 2005

When the floodwaters licked at our ankles

And wind prowled around the house,

Whistler's Mother, Lisa Starr

Bryant Literary Review

"Why I are you whistling?" I ask.

Have I been? He replies.

Is it annoying?

Revolution, Redemption, And Romance: Reading Constructions Of Filipino Spanish American Identities And Politics Of Knowledge In Rizal’S Noli Me Tangere And El Filibusterismo Alongside Filipino American Fiction, Steven Beardsley

Departmental Honors Projects

This project analyzes the literary works and the iconic role of Filipino nationalist José Rizal before, during, and after the Spanish American War of 1898. Rizal’s social activism and writing inspired a revolution against the Friarocracy in the Philippines. He also influenced Filipino American writers who reference Rizal’s construction of the Filipino woman in Christianity and Filipinos fighting against colonial oppression. Additionally, Filipino American writers illustrate how being Filipino in the US today is a transcultural experience rather than a simple binary of traditional Philippines and modern America. Recognizing Spain as an earlier colonizing force is critical in understanding the …

“There Is Only Power”: Surveying The Structures And Operations Of Power In The Magical World Of Harry Potter, Aaron D. Marciniak

Departmental Honors Projects

As the internationally best-selling series Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling moves into its second generation of readers, it becomes increasingly important to analyze the assumptions it communicates about power differentials between people and belief systems. A central tenant of narrative paradigm holds that humans are innately narrative, internalizing narrative frameworks as a means to understand the world which then become externalized through human action. Thus, while the social hierarchies, collective actions, and institutional authorities in the fantasy world of Harry Potter in some ways map onto Anglo-American social and political structures, the significant differences between these textual and “real world” …

Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory, Rock Lamanna

Departmental Honors Projects

While postmodern theory and literature is typically viewed as either “anti-humanist” or a rejection of Humanism, this essay reconsiders these assumptions by exploring ethical questions in early postmodern novels and theory, referred to as “proto-postmodernism.” For proto-postmodernists such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, Humanism—the ethical framework that asserts a centered “self” and a collective “metanarrative” of human progress—causes and legitimates violence, yet in their theories and literature, they promote the humanist value of dignity in their critiques of modern ethics and politics. To examine this hybrid stance toward Humanism, the first section situates …

The Darkest Nation: American Melancholia In Modernist Narratives Of The First World War, Michael Von Cannon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, entitled The Darkest Nation: American Melancholia in Modernist Narratives of the First World War, re-conceptualizes U.S. modernism by attending to how the historical event of WWI inaugurated melancholia, or sustained grief, as the cornerstone of a new form of nationalism. Scholars have focused either on how consolatory mourning bolstered patriotism or how melancholia led to the demise of such an imagined community and to the growth of cosmopolitanism. I consider, however, an American modernist commitment to the nation of loss expressed, surprisingly enough, in narratives about noncombatants. For a country that entered the military conflict near its end, …

To Come Alive In Our Experience: The Sounds Of Listening In Sigurd F. Olson, Allison Fulton

Honors Papers

My research explores the reflective qualities of nature that can lead to different ways of being in and of the world. In The Singing Wilderness, Sigurd Olson details his experiences in the Quetico-Superior region, an international wilderness of lakes and forests on the border of Canada and Minnesota that is replete with spaces for reflection. Olson encourages his readers to listen to the sounds, songs, and silences of the wilderness. I address his creation of a literary terrain he made accessible to his readers by acting as a guide to the imaginative wilderness with a literary canoe and paddle.

The Reader's Complicity: Universality In Waiting For The Barbarians, The Laramie Project, And The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, Aubrey Kosa

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Skin And Smoke, Kelly Anne Baker

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

My thesis consists of the first ten chapters of a horror novel, entitled Skin and Smoke. My novel focuses on the character of Violet Masterson and her attempts to create her own identify and reconcile with her family's past actions. Violet lives in the small, recently unincorporated town of Nuovita in central Washington. Following her grandmother's death, she must face the paranormal events occurring in Nuovita, while her father leaves on an unknown journey. My thesis addresses themes of loss, identity, and revenge. In Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he proposes that the monomyth ends with the …

Religion In The Early British Literature Classroom: The Challenges Of Teaching Religion And Literature To Students Of Faith, Bob De Smith

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

No abstract provided.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 17, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

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

Satire And Synthesis: Parody And Satire Of Victorian Education In The Works Of Lewis Carroll, Cameron D. Sedlacek

All Master's Theses

Education is an integral part of any society. Victorian England saw drastic reform in the method of childhood education, shifting from religious to secular forms of rote memorization. An analysis of the works of Lewis Carroll reveals significant instances of parody, pastiche, and satire on these styles of education and their corresponding reform. Unlike traditional satire, however, Lewis Carroll’s satire does not simply criticize these targets, but utilizes a strategy of synthesis to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of various conflicting educational ideologies and to suggest ways of adopting methods from all available options.

Life In Translation, Marion W. Copeland

Animal Sentience

This commentary emphasizes Broom’s (2014) attack on “the widely stated human prejudices” that prevent modern humans from understanding and communicating with animals of other species. As a student and scholar of what is now referred to as literary animal studies, I find one of these biases — anthropocentrism (human exceptionalism) — of particular concern because much of the literature I study is valued only for its concern with animals presented as so remarkably similar to human beings that they are read as symbols or allegorical representations of the human rather than real animals: when some of these animal characters speak …

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

Illustrations Of Nepantleras: Bridge Making Potential In Ana Castillo's So Far From God And The Guardians, Amanda Patrick

All Master's Theses

Chicana literature to date has extensively illustrated the process of identity construction—the development of mestiza consciousness—as the means through which Mexican American females may thwart the agents of oppressive patriarchal authority in their lives. While this highly theoretical and politicized literature has contributed greatly to discussions of identity, agency, and the subjective self, many Chicana authors and activists express concerns regarding the fate of the Chicana/o collective. Some consider the relationship between feminist Chicanas and their more traditional families and communities to be irreconcilable. Using the theories of Gloria Anzaldúa, I argue that the novels So Far from God and …

No Sorrow In Sight, Jeff Hardin

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 98-99

Discussing The Crucifixion With Jehovah’S Witnesses At The F. Scott And Zelda Fitzgerald House In Montgomery, Alabama, Barbara Hamby

Birmingham Poetry Review

pp. 96-97

The Belt, Mike James

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 102