English Language and Literature Commons^™

Review Of: Vignettes 2020: Anabaptist Women Writers—Sheila Petre And Gabriella Showalter, J.P. Miller

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Vignettes, compiled and edited by Sheila Petre and Gabriella Showalter, is a fascinating text. It is a book that was written by, and is intended for, Anabaptist women writers. The book is a collection of articles that profile around 400 Anabaptist women writers from more than 15 countries. The book provides many resources for aspiring writers; it recommends books on writing, such as The Elements of Style, and contains a directory of all the women profiled in this book. [First paragraph.]

Symposium Review: The Right Church: From A Seeker To A Finder—Peter Hoover, Sheila Petre, Osiah Horst

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

[...] Across 264 compelling pages of earnest semi-autobiographical work, Hoover sketches a poignant picture of many disintegrating organizations among which move small vibrant flames of living hope. He tells the story of a young man seeking for answers about Christianity, and the religious entities within it. He intersperses his narrative with glorious scripture passages and hymns, and includes wisdom borrowed from his uninhibited correspondence with the leaders of many different Anabaptist groups. The main character is part of “only a small group—a very small and shrinking group—of Old Order Mennonites trying to keep the ‘songs of Zion’ alive with all …

The Book - The Trauma, The Writing And The Healing, Hillorie S. Mclarty

English Theses

This is a trauma informed memoir based on letters that my 3 best friends and I wrote from September 1965 - May 1966. It is also a study of childhood verbal and sexual abuse, the effects of trauma on the brain, and the healing through writing.

Front Matter

The Robert Frost Review

No abstract provided.

The Worst Horror Of All: Greene’S Political And Salvific Imagination In Brighton Rock, James C. Mcguire

Theses and Dissertations

An evaluation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock as it apprehends the Catholic novel as form. With ample assistance from Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, Robert Hugh Benson's The Lord of the World, and select works of Fredric Jameson—most notably The Political Unconscious—this analysis seeks to clarify the politico-spiritual "horizon" evident in Greene's first "Catholic novel." By reviewing the novel through the lens of both Catholic theology and modern historical dialectic material criticism, this evaluation reclaims Graham Greene's early political radicalism that critics identify better in his later, less-religious texts. Discovered most clearly in the ending …

“It's So Normal, And … Meaningful.” Playing With Narrative, Artifacts, And Cultural Difference In Florence, Dheepa Sundaram, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article considers how player interactions with religious and ethnic markers, create

a globalized game space in the mobile game Florence (2018). Florence is a multiaward-

winning interactive novella game with story-integrated minigames that weave

play experiences into the narrative. The game, in part, explores love, loss, and

rejuvenation as relatable experiences. Simultaneously, the game produces a unique

experience for each player, as they can refract the game narrative through their own

cultural, identitarian lens. The game assumes the shared cultural space of the player,

the player-character (PC), and the non-player-character (NPC) while blurring the

boundaries between each of these …

Dead On Arrival, Paige Couture

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

The Legend Of The Legion: Nihilism And The Restoration Of The Aristocracy In Ouida’S Under Two Flags, Laura Clarke

Publications and Research

Ouida’s Under Two Flags (1867) is not a widely read Victorian novel today, but it is offers important insight into the philosophical concerns of a novelist who was hugely popular in her time. In Under Two Flags, Ouida explores what she saw as the epistemological problem developing in the nineteenth century, a nihilistic view that promoted scepticism, aestheticism, and idleness, which is a perspective she believed was responsible for the demise of the aristocracy. Wishing to restore the power and position of the aristocracy, Ouida sends her protagonist Bertie Cecil, a dandy who embodies the aestheticism and ennui of the …

Language And Meter, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

From a visual standpoint as well as a semantic and functional one, Middle English lyrics were often absorbed into their co(n)texts. In what sense, then, is a “Middle English lyric” a thing? I seek in this essay to show what metrical analysis may contribute to that question. Context is not all. If contextual analysis has tended to dissolve the presumed thing-hood of Middle English lyrics, metrical analysis shows that verses are robust enough to sustain that. Metrical structuration sets verse apart from its surround; it defines the verse object as a distinct entity, distinguished by a specifiable compositional craft.

Identifying Loss, Animating Melancholy: Asian-American Narratives In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Spirited Away, And Bao, Jered Connery Mabaquiao

English Theses - Archive

Animated film provides a complex illustration of the creativity behind constructing narratives. This thesis aims to explore the way that racial and cultural identity are displayed within animated film. The purpose of this thesis will be paying close attention to the intersections of psychoanalytic theories of loss that are placed on a spectrum with terms such as trauma, mourning and melancholia all within the scope of racial identification. These terms will be worked through from texts from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan as well as works that expand on these notions. These psychoanalytic texts will be applied to Nickelodeon's “Avatar: …

Post-Factum Studies In Trans-Corporeal Rhetoric: Triangularities Of Genre, Ethics, And Aesthetics In Kenneth Burke And Michel Foucault, Hubert Woodson

English Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation gives an account of and expands upon Stacy Alaimo’s term, “trans-corporeality,” in order to reconsider the rhetorical situation, through conceptualizations of how rhetorical bodies become embodied and traverse one another in various humanities. From “trans-corporeality,” what arises is a “trans-corporeal rhetoric,” which becomes an interdisciplinary rhetoric that speaks to the futures of rhetoric within the boundaries of various humanities, involving notions of embodiment, materiality, corporeality, and what Alaimo calls “bodily natures.” These futures of rhetoric not only wrestle with what embodiment is and can be for rhetorical bodies in various humanities, and what sort of ethics and aesthetics …

Asian Modernities: The Historical Unconscious In Asian And Asian American Literatures, Amanda Brooke Monteleone

English Dissertations - Archive

The question of modernity has been widely debated in postcolonial studies, with scholars such as Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo arguing that the emergence of alternate modernities unsettles the West as a cultural metropole. Dussel and Mignolo argue that the dominant narrative of modernity is rooted in Western colonialism, which situates the West as a cultural center. Thus, dominant modern ideology associates the height of human progress with Eurocentric culture. Transmodernity, according to Dussel, is a theory that focuses on the emergence of other modernities in the waning of Western colonization or influence. However, studies in transmodernity have not adequately …

Mythcon 52 - The Mythic, The Fantastic, And The Alien, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon Programs

To work toward being stewards of a more sustainable world, the Mythcon 52 Organizing Committee has chosen to promote digital materials and print only a few hard copy versions of our program book that will be for sale during the conference. Paper, ink, printing press machinery, and other resources involved in producing materials we can hold in our hands damage the world around us. As much as we love physical items for their representations of experiences, our Mythcon 52 organizers think many of the authors we love and admire would appreciate our desire to reduce our environmental impact on the …

The Eye’S Construction Of Power In Richard Ii, Julius Caesar And Macbeth, John O’Brien

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study seeks to analyze the optical performance of power in three of Shakespeare’s plays: Richard II, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. Using a political framework via Kantorowicz’s King’s Two Bodies and Maus’s Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, this paper explores the interior and exterior personas as they pertain and interact with public and private spaces. This paper will track Shakespeare’s contribution to this developing “modern” shift in the understanding of appearance and its role in the presentations of power in these three plays. In each of these plays, I argue, Shakespeare provides us with a series of presentational …

“I’M Not Like That!” : Reframing Contemporary Ecopoetic Criticism And De-Metaphorizing The Nonhuman Animal, Alexandra Franke

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In this paper, I seek to highlight the benefits and necessity of reframing our critical approach to ecopoetry. In order to do so, I attempt to define “ecopoetry,” as well as terms like “nonhuman animal” and “anthropocentrism.” Historically, critics have routinely romanticized the nonhuman natural world, rendering it something two-dimensional, like a painting or landscape, rather than an encompassing environment. As a result, critics have often failed to consider the legitimacy of the animals who populate the nonhuman natural world. Instead, these animals are typically romanticized and metaphorized, ultimately furthering anthropocentric hierarchies and distancing us from them. When anthropocentric thought …

The Framing Of Black And White Masculinities In Toni Morrison’S Beloved, Felesha Beckford

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study is an examination of white hegemonic masculinity and its effect on tyrannized black male figures in Toni Morrison’s Beloved . These disenfranchised figures suffered psychological trauma through the perpetuation of marginalized and subordinate masculinities within the “blues epistemological” apparatus by means of self-realization. Blues epistemology is a term that Clyde Woods describes as “a longstanding African American tradition of explaining reality and change. This form of explanation finds its origins in the processes of African American cultural construction within, and resistance to, the antebellum plantation regime” (25). Beloved serves as a form of historical text by means of …

Poetry, Prose, And The Loss Of Verse, Jackson Rowe

Honors Theses

In this essay, I argue that the presence of verse in a text initiates a mutually generative relationship between a text’s sonic and semantic qualities, and that critics’ tendency to praise great prose passages as “poetic” is a result of poetry’s historical connection to verse and the semantic elegance which said verse tends to inspire. I base this argument on Fredrich Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and explore, through it, various examples of prosimetrum - that is, works combining poetry and prose.

Engl 110: College Writing (Comedy, Satire, & Persuasion), Scott R. Kapuscinski

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus provides a themed approach to Freshman composition. Students are tasked with composing three essays in three distinct styles. Student engagement is high through the use of student-sourced primary sources (funny videos from YouTube, etc.) and the emphasis on thesis building and critical thinking.

Section 1: Comedy & the thesis-based essay

Section 2: Satire & writing to persuade

Section 3: Satire in Art & independent research

0879: Sarah And William Denman Collection, 1933-2013, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Sarah Denman served as the provost and senior vice president of academic affairs for Marshall University. She worked with the university for 33 years, starting her career with the Marshall in 1975. Dr. Denman played a major role in various projects including the merger of the West Virginia Graduate College in the Charleston area as a part of Marshall, development of the Marshall Community and Technical college, and worked with State Senator Robert Plymale to start an new engineering program at Marshall, as well as many other projects that broadened Marshall’s available programs, it’s national accreditation, and the recognition of …

Cinematic Poe: A Survey Of Films Inspired By Edgar Allan Poe And Their Importance In Film History, Devon V. Bradley

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, their respective adaptations, and their place in film history remains underappreciated in contemporary scholarship. Additionally, many of the most significant director/auteurs in cinema history have Poe inspired films. This project explores the filmic legacy Poe and his stories share across a survey of significant filmmakers, who have created memorable interpretations of Poe’s works. This thesis seeks to consider connections between several well-known Poe film adaptations and what I consider to be their significance in the development of film as a medium over its history. My investigation compares a range of films inspired by …

The Women Of Brewster Place : A Dream Deferred And Unactualized, Lauren Fuentes

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place is a landmark novel of black female empowerment, yet even as the novel affirms the necessity for black women to band together, Brewster Place simultaneously points to the idea that systemic racism and sexism may be a hurdle over which the community cannot leap—other systemic changes must be implemented before true equality can be achieved. This novel forces readers to grapple with questions that may present unsavory answers: Is it possible to eradicate systemic racism? To what degree do the subjugated have the ability to change the prejudicial system in which they live? …

Conceptions Of Space, Gender, And Movement Within Literature And Film: An Analysis Of "The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs" & Westward The Women, Stephanie Fishleigh

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Often portrayed as static, and neutral, “space,” as it is used in this paper, refers to a literary conception, one which encompasses a sphere of locations as well as settings of events, characters, and objects within a literary narrative. Much to our detriment, humans are often compelled to codify and compartmentalize the world around us, using perceived differences as our epistemological touchstone. This phenomenon extends even to our relationship to space. In examining the interplay between space, geographies, genre, and gender, using two objects of analysis, this paper seeks to further the current scholarship on how gender ideology informs our …

Language Ideologies In First Year Composition Textbooks, Joanna Clevenger

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis examines how standard language ideologies are perpetuated in the five most frequently assigned first year composition textbooks from four higher education institutions in Southern California’s Inland Empire. Standard language ideologies position one variation of a language as superior, correct, appropriate and the normal variation of a language which everyone should be able to speak. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the five textbooks were analyzed in order to uncover the embedded power and hegemony over women, people of color, and those from a lower socioeconomic status which are prevalent throughout society because they are unchallenged and widely accepted as the …

“Strange Faces, Other Minds” Tennyson’S Idylls Of The King And The Alien Other, Rebecca A. Umland

Mythcon

Encounters with the alien other commonly conjure images from science fiction film and literature—advanced spacecraft, alien species in human form from remote places of the galaxy, or in alternate places either in the subterranean realms or on the planet Earth. Varied as they are, a ubiquitous quality of strangeness accompanies these encounters, from those in nineteenth-century writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, through early 20th-century Lovecraft narratives, and in contemporary fiction and film. A writer who may not come immediately to mind is Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of England from 1850 until his death in 1892. …

Aliens And Others In The Inklings, David Bratman, Janet Brennan Croft, Robin Anne Reid, John Rosegrant

Mythcon

David Bratman, Janet Brennan Croft, Robin Reid, and John Rosegrant discuss the alien and the Other in the works of the Inklings, with time for audience conversation.

Reading By Jo Walton, Jo Walton

Mythcon

Award-winning author and Mythopoeic Fantasy Award finalist Jo Walton will read from her works and answer questions from the audience.

Common Elements In Ya Mythic Portal Fantasies, Sultana Raza

Mythcon

While Tolkien was inspired by Norse and Anglo-Saxon myths, he incorporated certain plot structures from Greco- Roman myths in Beren and Lúthien and Fall of Gondolin. Contemporary authors continue to be inspired by myths as well. This paper will explore mythic YA fantasy, and common elements mainly in the works of Rick Riordan, Michael Scott, Eoin Colfer, and Cassandra Clare, all of whom use portals to enable their main characters to enter parallel universes. Riordan often uses museums/artefacts as portals to fantastical dimensions. His Percy Jackson series, the Heroes of Olympus series, and the Kane Chronicles are well-researched, while the …

Et Phone Camelot: Alien Life Forms In Arthurian Fiction, Michael Torregrossa

Mythcon

As a living tradition, the Matter of Britain displays a voracious appetite as it grows over the centuries, absorbing characters, legends, motifs, stories, and even genres to create new Arthurian narratives. Science fiction is one genre that has recently found a place within the Arthurian tradition. Inspired by Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, tales abound of time travelers journeying to Arthur’s realm, but a smaller, less well-known subset of Arthurianthemed science fiction brings various extraterrestrial creatures to Camelot. Sometimes, these beings are hostile, but, more often, they try to make the realm a better place. Most …

New Mexico Speculative Fiction Authors, Leslie Donovan, David Bratman, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Grace Moon, Rivera Sun, Joseph Young

Mythcon

New Mexico is not only a place of many enchanting sunsets and landscapes, but also home to many authors of speculative fiction. Join us in this roundtable as we discuss and introduce a few works of fantasy and science fiction by New Mexico-linked writers that our roundtable members have found particularly interesting, enjoyable, or mythopoeic. Just a few New Mexico speculative fiction writers you may have heard of are Roger Zelazny, George R. R. Martin, Diana Gabaldon, Suzy McKee Charnas, James S. A. Corey, Stephen R. Donaldson, Rebecca Roanhorse, Daniel Abraham, Fred Saberhagen, Walter Jon Williams, Melinda Snodgrass, S. M. …

“Crossings In Mist”: Kantian Transformations In The Lathe Of Heaven, Daniel Viorica

Mythcon

A theme for this year’s Mythcon is ‘The Alien’; there is perhaps nothing more alien to contemporary science fiction and fantasy discourse than Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. He represents much of what today’s fantasy, especially under the influence of Ursula K. Le Guin, opposes: a human-privileged universe predicated on rational control. But I argue that a Kantian reading of a scene in Le Guin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven can in fact enrich our understanding of Le Guin’s noted Taoist themes of action and inaction, complicating the preexisting scholarly consensus that the novel provides a straightforward critique of Western culture. …