English Language and Literature Commons^™

Wilfred Owen And Shell Shock: The Initial Sympathetic Understanding Of Ptsd, Rachel Eubanks

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

No abstract provided.

Submission Guidelines, Douglas Higbee

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

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 26, 2024, Douglas Higbee

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

No abstract provided.

Colonial Body-Logic In George Orwell's Burnese Days: A Contrapuntal Critique, Riley Mays

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

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 42.3.

Disability Untheorized: Critiques Of Eugenics, Then And Now, Maren Linett

Department of English Faculty Publications

Critiques of Anglo-American eugenics from the turn of the twentieth century through today demonstrate that the people swept up by the colossal eugenic broom were not biologically “unfit” without questioning either the notion of biological inferiority itself or the “menace” eugenicists saw in disability. They therefore imply that what was wrong with eugenics was its inaccuracy—that it was only ethically problematic because it did not correctly identify “unfit” people. Such critiques, while offering social models of race, poverty, criminality, and/or gender, leave disability untheorized and neglect the rights of disabled people.

The Monster Mash: A Monster Studies Approach To Literature In The University Classroom, Megan L. Bowen

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The Monster Mash is a course proposal for an upper-division undergraduate literature course focused on exploring monsters in literature and building connections between classic and more contemporary texts using high-impact practices (HIPs) with student success in mind. I build on previous work in the field of Monster Studies and introduce my own original monster pattern that prompts students to interpret monsters as they trek through Origin, Separation, Power, Threat, and Diminishment. This pattern highlights commonalities when it comes to the representation of monsters and their stories, allowing students to identify them across texts. I also divide monsters into three categories …

Looking For The Exit Door, Nicole Kowalewski

Honors Senior Capstones and Theses

No abstract provided.

Madwomen In Attics, Madwomen In Tombs Feminist Counterparts In Jane Eyre And Dracula, Bethany Howard

Theses

Charlotte Brontë’s early Victorian novel Jane Eyre (1847) enjoys a steady history of feminist interpretations. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) is perhaps the best-known. Andrew Weiler sees Jane Eyre as a feminist Christian bildungsroman, and Micael Clarke finds the “feminist ethic” in the Grimms’ “Cinderella” tale in Jane Eyre (708).

However, Bram Stoker’s late Victorian novel Dracula (1897) has generated more varied responses, ranging from ambivalence, as noted by Carol Senf, to highly feminist, to highly anti-feminist. Feminist readings include that of Stephanie Demetrakopoulos, who remarks, “Stoker’s attempt at feminism in this novel is …

Legal Vengeance And Popular Violence: Reimagining Justice In The Heart Of Midlothian, Melissa J. Ganz

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Literature And The Law, Melissa J. Ganz

English Faculty Research and Publications

The law underwent significant changes in eighteenth-century Britain. Although these changes resulted in an expansion of rights and freedoms for some British subjects, the liberalization of the law was far from complete. This chapter considers how writers working in a range of genres revealed the limits of the law, focusing on debates about the nature and ends of criminal justice, the legal regulation of marriage, and the legality of slavery and the slave trade. In different ways and to different degrees, the chapter shows, writers challenged and reimagined the inequalities inscribed in and fostered by the legal system.

Representation Of Lgbtq+ Characters In The 2019 To 2022 Iowa Teen Award Books, Jamie Thompson

Graduate Research Papers

This qualitative literary content analysis examines the representation of LGBTQ+ themes in the student-nominated Iowa Teen Award (ITA) books from the past three years to help librarians and classroom teachers build an inclusive library collection. The research question posed in this study is: In what ways are LGBTQ+ characters represented in the Iowa Teen Award books? The analysis of eight middle-grade books (Appendix A) using the book analysis tool (Appendix B) identified three themes: Transformation of Understanding, Hopefulness, and Richness of Plot. Results showed that while all the books had a complex storyline, only five of the books showed a …

Increasing Reading Fluency In Ell Learners, Jennifer N. Patton

Graduate Research Papers

I am creating a project on how to effectively teach fluency to ELL students. To do so, I had to first research. Recent researches have revealed that English Language Learners (ELLs) face certain challenges that threaten their academic success, especially their reading fluency, and as a result, make learning difficult. To achieve the purpose of this research, this chapter is focused on providing a deeper analysis into the problem of fluency and how it affects ELLs. The target with this is to review shared knowledge around reading fluency development in ELLs. This chapter, therefore, entails reviews of the literature on …

Doctors And Saints: Preparing Albert Camus’S The Plague To Address The Dangers Of Christian Nationalism, Christopher J. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

My project is focused on identifying and responding to Christian nationalism in United States politics by utilizing Albert Camus’s novel The Plague. The Plague found heightened popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting legacy points to what should be long-term prominence in the public eye. With its popularity and anti-fascist content, The Plague is an appropriate text to utilize for addressing America’s Christian nationalism. My paper functions with a foundation on the work of Kenneth Burke, particularly his focus on literature’s utility as equipment for living.

I use my project to suggest that The Plague is not in an …

Let Your Head Hang Down: A Narrative Examination Of Cultic & Conspiratorial Romance, Kyle Macy

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

A response to recent cultural trends of radicalization, extremism, and violence in American society, this dissertation, a novel rendered in ephemeral fragments of oral histories, interrogates the romanticist postures that compel a community of musical artists, the so-called “Folk Revival Revival,” toward infamy and tragedy. Where more traditional sociological approaches to cultic formations stress the importance of centralized charismatic authority, and more traditional psychological approaches rely upon a conspiratorial Cold War ethos of cognitive bias and coercive control (i.e. “brainwashing”), this project meets such assumptions with incredulity, asserting instead that cultic and conspiratorial entrancement awakens first from within, and may …

The Nebulous Binaries Of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, Amantia Menalla

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Much of C.S. Lewis’ novel Till We Have Faces can be examined through one of two binaries. The tension between rationality, or reason, and spirituality, or religion, is one of the core facets of both the text and its main character, Orual. Orual feels the pull of both ideas and thus spends most of the novel in a nebulous space between them. This tension is further complicated by the space between the feminine and the masculine which she also inhabits. By covering her face and body, Orual de-emphasizes her feminine identity and takes on a masculine role, dressing as a …

Countering Dominant Narratives In Community: The Many Voices In Spoken Word Poetry, Natalie Raquel Acuña

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In this project I research the counternarratives within spoken word poetry by authors of color (i.e., Rafeef Ziadah, José Olivarez, and Denise Frohman) and how they resist the dominant narratives that are broadcast towards a larger audience. I analyze categories of counterstory through the following paired themes: immigration/citizenship, and joy/trauma. I delve into the heavy importance of community within my project in the realm of spoken word poetry. A lot of poetry is going against dominant narratives, community within this discourse gives a sense of belonging and relatability to the experience of the spoken word performers.

Anxieties About The Future: Ecocriticism And Dystopian Landscapes In The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch And Selected Fiction By Philip K. Dick, Nickolas Michael Sykora

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In a literary analysis of selected fiction by Philip K Dick through an ecocritical framework, the focus of this study reveals the consequences of ecological destruction on futuristic societies reflecting the Anthropocene. Drawing correlations between various texts by the author, the separation of nature from humanity demonstrates how dystopian landscapes influence the identity of the characters in these settings and how dystopia serves as a prism which distorts or reflects what it means to be human. With this, ontology and artificial intelligence are analyzed as a notable facet of his literature which addresses the progress of innovation in society and …

A Post-Colonial Criticism Of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, Kaitlyn R. O'Dell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The representation of Indigenous land-based cosmologies within Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia communicates a real perception of our world through the constructed imaginative society within this speculative fiction novel. Ecotopia is an alternative Pacific West Coast society that counters the dominant United States model in its holistic and green approach. This green society relies heavily on Indigenous ideology but lacks actual Indigenous voices or communities within this white idealized society. This research provides an example of the deconstruction of this popular novel to its main problematic components, establishing why the use of Indigenous beliefs and values can cause negative implications to the …

The Persistent Voice Of The Colonizer: Troubling A Mascot’S Settler-Colonial Past, Linda J. Kuckuk

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The legacy of settler-colonialism permeates American culture. Remnants of westward expansion remain in our societal divides, political differences, environmental inequities and economic inequalities. Conversations about decolonization, gentrification, and other ongoing practices that precipitate and uphold colonialism are notably found in literature, art, social structures, icons and symbols. Mascots that rely on stereotypes or caricatures can contribute to negative perceptions and reinforce discriminatory attitudes, making it necessary to reevaluate and change representational practices. In this analysis I apply historical, textual, and visual methods to explore Cal Poly Humboldt’s mascot Lucky Logger and identify how this character is a “persistent voice” by …

"Kindness Eases Change / Love Quiets Fear": Mapping Change And Movement In Octavia Butler's Parable Of The Sower, Elizabeth Hershey

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In this project I take a digital mapping approach to reading and analyzing Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. A lot has been said about this novel’s relevance to our own world, and the ways it forces us to think about possible futures. To contribute to the conversations surrounding this novel, I add a digital humanities element to the conversation in order to see what digital mapping has to offer in the way of literary analysis and connecting this novel to our own world. Since the novel is so focused on movement and change, I mapped out the movement of …

Stratifying The Social: The Race/Class Dialectic And The Fetishization Of Race In Our Neoliberal Contemporary, Steven D. Delmagori

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation utilizes the lens of Social Reproduction Theory to examine the consequences of viewing race and racism and other systems of oppression like Patriarchy as separate or additive autonomous ontologies. Intersectionality Theory posits oppressions as independent systems that “add” or “intersect” onto oppressed subjects in particular circumstances. On the other hand, responding to Intersectionality Theory, Social Reproduction Theory understands systems of oppression as mutually constitutive social relations. Social Reproduction Theory therefore allows for a more thorough understanding of the relationship between racism and other systems of oppression and their own relationship to capitalism. Rather than theorizing these social relations …

Utopia And Dystopia In Shakespeare’S Plays, Wenhui Duan

Dissertations and Theses

Writers and literary scholars’ interest in utopian fiction has increased in the recent decades, although the term originates from Sir Thomas More’s 1516 Utopia. Many Shakespeare scholars show interest in studying Utopia in Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest, but not many scholars study Utopia in other Shakespeare’s plays. The contrary to Utopia is Dystopia, which appears as a term in 1952, however, More has set out elements of Dystopia in his 1516 Utopia. Few scholars study Dystopia in Shakespeare’s plays. In three chapters, this thesis compares Utopia in two of Shakespeare’s comedies and Dystopia in two of Shakespeare’s tragedies from the …

Troubling Waters: Anthropocene Marine Gothic In The 19th-Century Anglo-American Fiction, Phoenix Guqing Wang

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

The 19th century witnessed intensifying marine ecological disruptions by colonial, industrial, and imperial activities. Meanwhile, current scholarship acknowledges the significance of the 19th century in tracing the emergence of the “Anthropocene” – a loose shorthand for ecological damages that are planetary in scale. This thesis aims to analyze how gothic imagination of the marine space unravels the linkages between the two temporally intersecting phenomena. Drawing on ocean studies, ecocriticism, new materialism, and gothic studies, I theorize what I call “Anthropocene marine Gothic discourse” to understand how 19th-century Anglo-American writers attend to the marine space to grapple with planetary ecological concerns …

Improving The Writing Ability Of Thai Efl Undergraduate Students By Employing Group Dynamic Assessment, Siyanee Sawetsiri

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study aimed to investigate the effect of the group dynamic assessment (G-DA) on students’ writing ability, to examine the extent to which students can maintain their improved writing ability in the transcendence test or the other assessment context, and to identify the types of mediation that were used for the development of students’ writing ability. In this study, the group dynamic assessment (G-DA) was implemented in the genre-based writing instruction for a total of 12 weeks. The participants were an intact group of 15 second-year students from the Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Kanchanaburi Campus. The results of one-way …

“Why Blackness, Black Girl?:” Discovering Multilocal Blackness In Wonderful Adventures Of Mrs. Seacole In Many Lands And Americanah, Sydney A. Ware

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In “Why Blackness, Black Girl?” I argue that as a consequence of imperialism, Western Blackness has an interdependent relationship with whiteness, resulting in the domination of Western Blackness over non-Western Blackness. Tensions between both groups are usually portrayed by Western media as divisive. I pose Multilocality as a theory to reconcile this tension. I use Taiye Selasi's concept of the multilocal, and her Three Markers (3 R’s) to identify where hybridized identities are local to and how they can connect to each local space. I expand Selasi’s concept into a theory called Multilocality, and added a fourth marker that I …

There And Back Again: Nick Adams' Masculine Journey From 'Indian Camp' To 'Fathers And Sons.', Michael F. Basista

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In the following paper, I discuss how Ernest Hemingway’s hyper-masculine persona influences how his male characters are interpreted by some readers. More specifically, I take the character of Nick Adams and look at him as being a representation of one of Hemingway’s male characters that diverges from the hyper-masculine persona that Hemingway had created for himself. To do so, I focus on eight of Hemingway’s short stories, with those being “Indian Camp,” “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” “Ten Indians,” “The End of Something,” “The Three-Day Blow,” “The Battler,” “Cross-Country Snow,” and “Fathers and Sons.” The development of Nick Adams …

The Othered Mothers: Monstrous Motherhood In Dracula, Dawn, And Nightbitch, Makay C. Walsh

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the monstrous mothers in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn (1987), and Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch (2021). Stoker’s Dracula serves as the foundational, or “mother,” text in terms of the model monstrous mothers: Dracula and Lucy Westenra. Dawn and Nightbitch provide more contemporary examples of monstrous mothers, yet they are different enough to contrast each other: Lilith in Dawn must navigate motherhood living amongst an alien species, and Nightbitch is a stay-at-home mom who starts turning into a dog. This thesis also establishes 7 Markers of Monstrous Motherhood as a critical framework for classifying monstrous mothers. …

Transcending The Taboo: Using Literature To Explore Depictions Of Suicide With Adolescents In Secondary Classrooms, Elizabeth M. Williams

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines depictions of suicide in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597), Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986), and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979) in the context of teaching literature in secondary classrooms during the developmental stage known as middle adolescence. Using an analysis of these literary works, this thesis advocates for incorporating self-regulation practices when addressing conceptually challenging and emotionally complex ideas. It proposes model lessons and emphasizes the responsibility of educators to facilitate discussions on weighty concepts. This thesis also emphasizes the need for an intersectional approach when examining trauma and suicide. Furthermore, it underscores the unique developmental and …

Ethics In Literature: A Case Study Of Hades And Persephone, Mckenzie A. Howard

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The increased ethical scrutiny on art in the modern era places an emphasis on how those art forms are being taught in the classroom. This thesis seeks to answer the question: how do we teach ethics, if we should at all, when we teach literature to a modern audience? This thesis explores this question by looking at how modern adaptations of an ancient text, the “Hymn to Demeter,” change the ethical issues in the original text, to show the relevance of these issues in the source text and the modern adaptations. Through an argument that the ethical concerns are often …