English Language and Literature Commons^™

Disrupters:Three Women Of Color Tell Their Stories, Dulce María Gray, Denise A. Harrison, Yuko Kurahashi

The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal

This essay is an amplified version of the presentation we made at the 7th Biennial Seneca Falls Dialogues. Our aim is to story back into the world our first experiences and motivations for investing in suffrage and democratic activism. We are three American professors of disciplines in the humanities, who for decades have taught and lived across the United States and have traveled the world. Yuko Kurahashi’s essay tells the story of how Raichō Hiratsuka and Fusae Ichikawa, Japanese activists in their suffrage and peace movements, helped shape her personal and professional life. Denise Harrison talks about the first wave …

Wwa Reflection: Losing Sight, Making Scholarship, Sabrina M. Durso

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Wwa Reflection: “So Near Approach / The Sports Of Children And The Toils Of Men”: Pandemic Labour, Pandemic Imagination, Kathleen E. Lawton-Trask

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This reflection calls attention to the idea that the merging of the domestic and the intellectual, while especially intense during the pandemic year of 2020-21, is a familiar conundrum for women especially. It suggests that creativity can emerge from the intensity of domestic labour, noting the domestic mock-heroic poetry that was written by women in 18^th century Britain as a counterpoint to the rise of domesticity, and suggests that (for female academics who are also primary caregivers) scholarly responses and reflections may be easier to bring out of this pandemic moment than scholarly research.

Wwa Reflection: Building Writing Momentum: A Year Of Digital Conferences, Brianna E. Robertson-Kirkland

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This reflection, which considers the positive impact of attending online conferences on building writing momentum is in response to the ABO Call for Short Reflections (500-750 words) on Writing and Research during the Pandemic.

Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: Jane Austen And Regency Romance's Racist Legacy, Bianca Hernandez-Knight

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Jane Austen is a master of genre, and her allusions and direct references in her Juvenilia and Northanger Abbey show that she is not just a satirist, she clearly understood and even appreciated the works she was often making fun of. So why then are people so reluctant to discuss Austen and Regency Romance, a genre directly tied to Austen’s works? Deeper still, why is there avoidance to critically read Georgette Heyer’s work?

The evolution of Regency-centered fiction cannot be discussed without looking at Heyer, an antisemitic and racist author whose abridged works have worked to overhaul her problematic writing, …

Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: National Trust In Jane Austen’S Empires Of Sugar, Tré Ventour-Griffiths

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: Notes On A Scandal: Sanditon Fandom’S Ongoing Racism And The Danger Of Ignoring Austen Discourse On Social Media, Amanda-Rae Prescott

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Sanditon fans have used social media more than many other past Jane Austen adaptations to discuss the series and to share news developments about the series. This was partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic preventing in-person marketing and fandom gatherings, but also due to some traditional Austen discussion platforms ignoring or banning pro-Sanditon discussions. White women from the UK and Europe dominated these online communities and set the tone for discussions of the plot as well as news about the series. BIPOC fans repeatedly clashed with white fans because the promises of an “inclusive” community were frequently dashed as soon …

Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: Eroticizing Men Of Empire In Austen, Kerry Sinanan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Downward Mobility: The Form Of Capital And The Sentimental Novel, By Katherine Binhammer, Carrie D. Shanafelt

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Downward Mobility: The Form of Capital and the Sentimental Novel by Katherine Binhammer, by Carrie D. Shanafelt

Grasses, Groves, And Gardens: Aphra Behn Goes Green, Heidi Laudien

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Laudien argues in “Grasses, Groves and Gardens: Aphra Behn Goes Green” that Behn moves beyond the stylized and artificial backdrops of most pastoral to explore the unique ways the landscape can be manipulated to investigate gender difference and the dynamics of desire and representation. Laudien suggests that in prioritizing the pastoral as political allegory in Behn, we overlook the descriptions of nature and the importance she places on the natural environments she creates. Through close readings of several of her pastoral poems, Laudien reveals that Behn’s landscapes destabilize existing notions of the pastoral space as an idealized and organized place …

Dress As Deceptive Visual Rhetoric In Eliza Haywood's Fantomina, Kathryn S. Hansen

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Writers of fiction capitalize upon dress’s potential as an agent of deception, using clothing as a means through which characters control their identity to perpetuate lies. Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze (1725) contains this type of heroine, and the novella shows dress can provide women with power that they can find in few other arenas. This novella constructs lying and dress as potent related tools that allow the protagonist to achieve her desires by creating untruths that pass for realities. In so doing, Fantomina capitalizes upon two related phenomena: the cultural perception of women’s status as innately …

Editors' Thanks To Dr. Linda Troost, Editor Of Ecw, Mona Narain

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Visions: Re-Historicizing Genre: Teaching Haywood’S The Adventures Of Eovaai In A Fantasy-Themed Survey Course, Megan E. Cole

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Eliza Haywood is an increasingly popular author to assign in eighteenth-century literature courses. But Haywood is also a prime figure to represent the eighteenth century in courses with a broader scope. This essay proposes teaching The Adventures of Eovaai in a fantasy-focused, introductory-level survey of British Literature. Identifying Eovaai as part of the fantasy tradition leverages students’ prior knowledge and facilitates teaching this complex novel to first-year students. Eovaai provides a wealth of topics for class discussions and activities, including the development of the novel as a genre, identity and othering in fantasy literature, and the use of fantasy conventions …

Visions: “If You See Her Face You Die”: Orientalist Gothic And Colonialism In Bithia Croker’S Indian Ghost Stories., Preeshita Biswas

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This paper analyzes Bithia Mary Croker’s ghost stories of the British Raj to argue that Croker in her texts reframes the eighteenth-century Orientalist Gothic writing tradition to critique British imperial presence in India. I specifically discuss two of Croker’s short stories, namely “To Let” (1893) and “If You See Her Face” (1893) published in her anthology of Indian ghost fiction To Let (1893). The paper traces how Croker uses two distinct characteristics of eighteenth-century colonial Indian society–-the tradition of nautch performances and the architectural space of the dak bungalows–-which continued into early-nineteenth century British India under the vigilance of …

Visions: "Which Made It Look Like A Gentleman’S”: Anne Lister’S Use Of Lord Byron In Her Construction Of A Gentlemanly Image, Michelina Olivieri

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Despite the rigorous study of Anne Lister’s personal and public identities, scholars have only minimally acknowledged the ways in which Lister appropriated the ideas and practices of others to construct the image of herself they themselves are so fascinated by. From her teenage years onward, Lister collected ideas, images, and published works that broke with the traditional, conservative ideals on which she was raised and adapted them for her own use in expanding her queer identity. Of the scholars who do investigate Lister’s use of the publicly queer, even fewer have thoroughly examined Lister’s method of adaptation as a distinctly …

Visions: The Dance Most Of All: Envisioning An Embodied Eighteenth-Century Studies, Susannah Sanford, Sofia Prado Huggins

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The editors introduce this special issue of ABO, highlighting the work of the authors included in the issue. The introduction draws on recent scholarship re-visioning the work of the long, “undisciplined” eighteenth century, arguing for an eighteenth-century studies that embodies our intersectional identities and honors the experiences of bodyminds surrounding texts and authors, as well as the bodyminds that interact with those texts in the present. Throughout the years, scholars have demonstrated that there is no single vision of what eighteenth-century scholarship is or should be, but rather multiple visions. This introduction urges scholars to consider how an eighteenth-century studies …

The Tragedy Of Gregory And Sampson: Teaching Romeo And Juliet’S Opening Scene, Heather G.S. Johnson

Feminist Pedagogy

Romeo and Juliet is as much about hate as it is about love. The tragedy focuses on a kind of toxic masculinity that thrives on aggression and anger and that turns communities into battlefields, men into adversaries, and women into prizes or prey. This short critical commentary zooms in on the conversation between Gregory and Sampson at the beginning of Act I.

Remapping A Feminist Classroom: Talking Circles And The Space For Agency, Amy Dunham Strand Ph.D.

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Preaching To The Converted: Religious Conversion In East Anglian Medieval Drama, Eleanor Davis

English Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation investigates religious conversion in late medieval East Anglian drama (c. 1400–1500). Each of my chapters examines a play with ties to fifteenth-century East Anglia, an economically prosperous region where orthodoxy and heterodoxy coexisted and religious drama flourished. All of the plays stage at least one miraculous conversion experience, yet the plays also offer reminders that conversion is an ongoing process that demands the convert’s continual effort to keep growing in faith. I demonstrate how these anonymous plays deliver their most important lessons about conversion in their much less miraculous moments, exposing a dramaturgy that revels in its ability …

Nsfw: Not So Feminist Women - A Media And Cultural Studies Analysis Of Working Women In Popular Media, Josephine Schofield

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

Even though gender diversity of characters has increased in television shows and films, this study hypothesized that female characters who are presented as feminist icons function as feminist backlash and perpetuate negative and harmful stereotypes. This was found to be especially true for career-focused women. Applying a cultural studies approach to reading television and film studies through a feminist lens identified the antifeminist factors that continue to cause the perpetual loop of independent women reverting to dated social roles. This research connects what audiences consume through popular media to how they perceive their female co-workers. The findings of this study …

Girlpwrd: Amplifying Silenced Voices Of Women Through Digital Storytelling, Brooke Schumann

English Theses

Drawing on data from a multi-month digital storytelling community project, this qualitative case study offers portraits of three marginalized women who re-author pivotal moments of silencing in their lives. The foundational framework blends scholarship on rhetorical silence, rhetorical listening, and semiotics of multimodal expression. These cases demonstrate how digital storytelling allows women a space to form and give voice to their silence, where they are the empowered agents of their own stories. The digital platform elevates these underrepresented narratives by creating new pathways for listening.

Seeking Visionary: Ginsberg And The Beat Influence On Progress, Mark Howard

English Department Theses

This thesis examines and reevaluates the impact of poet Allen Ginsberg and his Beat Generation counterparts on defining and portraying societal progress through countercultural literature and how they themselves may damage the impact of their works. Beat poets like Ginsberg may not act as the best representation of the counterculture due to unethical and immoral behaviors that take away from the credibility and impact of their work. In addition, the Beat Generation itself must be reevaluated for clarity in who should be associated with the original Beat writers as modern critics’ use of the beat terminology has lumped in artists …

What Is Literary? Teaching Diverse, Literary Young Adult Novels In The Secondary Classroom, Kathryn Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis defines what makes a novel literary and examines the benefits of introducing Young Adult literature into the English curriculum. The current classical canon that is taught in secondary classrooms consists almost entirely of books written by white, Eurocentric men with a few token novels from women, authors of color, or queer authors. While the books in the classical canon have earned their place there, the rapidly changing demographics in our secondary schools mean that the majority of our students no longer share the same characteristics as these authors. They have largely different life experiences and struggle to connect …

Dread Nation And Deathless Divide, By Justina Ireland. Reviewed By Phillip Fitzsimmons., Phillip Fitzsimmons

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Half Sick Of Shadows, By Laura Sebastian. Reviewed By Mckenzie Peck, Mckenzie Peck

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

The Fall Of Gondolin: Complete Demo Recording, By Paul Corfield Godfrey. Reviewed By David Bratman., David Bratman

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Afterlife: Exploring And Accepting Ideas Through Children's Literature, Kiley Vandevelde

Honors Projects

This project is a written and illustrated book for children to assist with the grieving process by exploring different cultural representations of the afterlife. Death is an inescapable part of the human condition. Belief in an afterlife can help children retain a connection to the deceased and can be a useful tool for healing. While very young children (age four to five) inherently believe in existence after death, this decreases after the age of ten. This book targets children aged seven to ten and explains the benefit to believing in an afterlife. It explores different ideas surrounding the afterlife and …

'Across The Sea': The Narrative Function Of Medieval Bridal Sea Voyages In Marie De France’S “Guigemar” And “Eliduc", Rebekah Olsen

Student Works

This paper analyzes the common medieval trope of the sea voyage in Marie de France's medieval romances, "Guigemar" and "Eliduc." Through framing both texts through an ecocritical lens tied to the associated symbolism of water and feminity, the paper highlights the importance of the sea due to it's association with female passivity in the medieval era. However, this paper focuses primarily on the narrative tropes found in the two stories and shows that throughout the lais, Marie both implements and subverts the assumptions of the Medieval sea voyage trope, which is clearly defined in Albrecht Classen’s article “Sea Voyages in …

Hannah & Nana: A Personal Memoir On Appalachian Intergenerational Trauma, Womanhood, & Family, Hannah Dunn

Honors Projects

I was deeply affected by the death of my beloved nana in 2018. After her death, my family asked me to be the storyteller for us. Thus, for my Honors Project at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), I decided to write a personal memoir on my family. This memoir explores how we fit into notions of womanhood and family in Appalachia, as well as studying the effects of intergenerational trauma on us. Qualitative research, in the form of the autoethnography, serves as the methodology for this project. In writing a creative memoir, I have transformed my personal to the academic.

A Leap Into Communion: Kierkegaard And Spiritual Practices In _To The Wonder_, Madeleine Hall

Honors Theses

The study of metaethics contains the question of where value comes from. Different theories of goodness encourage tracing goodness back to God, saying that goodness is that which is like God (the resemblance thesis) or that which perfects nature (the perfection thesis). Kierkegaard participates in these questions of goodness, and in Fear and Trembling concludes that the moral absolute of the akedah reveals a good, Divine mystery. Fear and Trembling is a work of Christian existentialism that encourages an internal faith that embraces mystery rather than attempting to conquer it. Rather than trying to understand exactly who God is, Kierkegaard …