Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons^™

Public Relations: Diaspora, Media, And The State(S) Of American Literature, Nathan Allen Jung

Dissertations

Like any good public relations campaign, this dissertation aims to offer a persuasive interpretation of certain key facts. The facts, as I see them, are as follows: first, a great number of contemporary novels and poems explore the personal and social consequences of diasporic migration. Second, these texts, along with their print and electronic paratexts, share a pervasive interest in media. And third, these works are rarely read in conversation with one another, despite their mutual concern for migration and media. Owing to this last point in particular, scholarship has failed to fully address the broader media theories developed in …

Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow

Honors Theses

How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.

Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven & Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. ISBN 90-420-0534-3 299 pages, bibliography, index. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents a framework of comparative literature based on a contextual (systemic and empirical) approach for the study of culture and literature and applies the framework in audience studies, film and literature, women's literature, translation studies, new media and scholarship in the humanities and in the analyses of English, French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian, and English-Canadian modern, contemporary, and ethnic minority texts. Copyright release to the author in 2006.

Transnational Influence In The Poetry Of Sarah Piatt: Poems Of Ireland And The American Civil War, Amy R. Hudgins

Global Honors Theses

Sarah Piatt, a recently recovered nineteenth century poet, is best known, where she is known at all, as an American poet. While this label is certainly appropriate, it should not obscure Piatt’s decidedly international focus, or more precisely, her transnational focus, especially in regard to Ireland. Piatt’s verse, considered by some to be the best poetry of her time second only to the work of Emily Dickinson, is remarkable for its quantity and breadth, but more importantly, for its subversive use of genteel style. Though her poems are generally divided into four overlapping categories, the two thematic classes of her …

Jim Crow In The Soviet Union, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

‘Stations Of A Mourner’S Cross’: Samuel Beckett, Killiney, 1954, Graley Herren

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Collective Commerce And The Problem Of Autobiography", Andrew Kopec

Andrew Kopec

This essay partakes in an ongoing conversation about the importance of economics to Olaudah Equiano's slave narrative. I argue that Equiano's text links the singular autobiographical subject to a future collective of Africans schooled in the protocols of international commerce. Equiano's text, I suggest, imagines this collective commerce as a solution to the evils of chattel slavery.

Angel Island Poetry: Reading And Writing Cultures, Adam Kotlarczyk

Adam Kotlarczyk

Object of a darker chapter in American history, the Angel Island Poems (as they have become known) are a recently discovered body of over 135 poems, written primarily in Chinese. These were literally carved into the walls at the Angel Island Immigration Station, where Chinese immigrants were detained, sometimes indefinitely, between approximately 1910-1940. This lesson demonstrates how history and culture can be integral to our understanding of poetry, even poetry that is deeply reflective and personal in nature; by requiring students to model and produce their own poetry, it also makes evident that writing poetry is a creative instinct and …

Who's Your Daddy?: Representations Of Masculinity And Coming Of Age In Television’S The Vampire Diaries, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

Fantasy narratives often use the metaphor of the werewolf for the adolescent identity-forming process. The Vampire Diaries goes one step further in the character of Tyler Lockwood, a teen wolf/vampire hybrid. An aggressive and abused teen, Tyler loses his father in Season 1 and his replacement father figure, a paternal uncle, in Season 2. In Season 3, he is “sired” by the Original hybrid, Klaus. In the face of these competing influences, Tyler struggles to come to terms with his own identity. The program uses the fictional township of Mystic Falls, populated by witches, werewolves, vampires and ghosts, to examine …

Angel Island Poetry: Reading And Writing Cultures, Adam Kotlarczyk

Understanding Poetry

Object of a darker chapter in American history, the Angel Island Poems (as they have become known) are a recently discovered body of over 135 poems, written primarily in Chinese. These were literally carved into the walls at the Angel Island Immigration Station, where Chinese immigrants were detained, sometimes indefinitely, between approximately 1910-1940.

This lesson demonstrates how history and culture can be integral to our understanding of poetry, even poetry that is deeply reflective and personal in nature; by requiring students to model and produce their own poetry, it also makes evident that writing poetry is a creative instinct and …

Paradox Of The Abject: Postcolonial Subjectivity In Jamaica Kincaid’S The Autobiography Of My Mother And Cristina García’S Dreaming In Cuban, Allison Nicole Harris

Masters Theses

In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva defines abjection as the seductive and destructive remainder of the process of entering the symbolic space of the father and leaving the pre-symbolic space of the mother, resulting in a desire to return to the jouissance of the pre-symbolic space. In this project, I read Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother as an attempt to link Xuela’s psychic abjection with the postcolonial identity. Xuela exists on the boundaries of the colonial dichotomy, embracing the space of the abject because she is haunted by her dead mother. She cannot return to her mother, …

Með Lögum Skal Land Vort Byggja: ‘With Law Shall The Land Be Built.’ Law-Speaking And Identity In The Medieval Norse Atlantic, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

Gwyn Jones famously posited the notion of a cogent Norse identity as manifested by common language, culture, and mythology; further, as he clarified in his landmark work A History of the Vikings, law and the practice of law in local and national assemblies was a fundamental component of such a unifying cultural characteristic: "…for the Scandinavian peoples in general, their respect for law, their insistence upon its public and democratic exercise at the Thing, and its validity for all free men, together with their evolution of a primitive and exportable jury system, is one of the distinctive features of their …

Werewolves And Other Shapeshifters In Popular Culture: A Thematic Analysis Of Recent Depictions, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman, Roslyn Weaver

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

In recent years, shapeshifting characters in literature, film and television have been on the rise. This has followed the increased use of such characters as metaphors, with novelists and critics identifying specific meanings and topics behind them. This book aims to unravel the shapeshifting trope. Rather than pursue a case-based study, the works are grouped around specific themes--adolescence, gender, sexuality, race, disability, addiction, and spirituality--that are explored through the metaphor of shapeshifting. Because of its transformative possibilities and its flexibility, the shapeshifter has the potential to change how we see our world. With coverage of iconic fantasy texts and a …

"The Ties That Bind: Family And Blood In Television’S The Vampire Diaries.”, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

No abstract provided.

Southern Civility, Sexuality And Secularity: Minority Politics In "True Blood.", Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

Southern Civility, Sexuality and Secularity: Minority Politics in True Blood. Paper Topic area: Science Fiction and Fantasy - True Blood (Burnett) In the popular HBO series True Blood and the novels by Charlaine Harris on which they are based, Sookie Stackhouse is a thoroughly postmodern Southern Belle. Sookie’s decisions are based on her notions of what it is to be a ‘lady’ and on her Christian beliefs. She is directly contrasted with members of the Fellowship of the Sun in that she refuses to believe that Jesus would hate vampires. The viewer is thus implicitly invited to become a resistant …

Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. ISBN 90-420-0534-3 299 pages, bibliography, index. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents a framework of comparative literature based on a contextual (systemic and empirical) approach for the study of culture and literature and applies the framework in audience studies, film and literature, women's literature, translation studies, new media and scholarship in the humanities and in the analyses of English, French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian, and English-Canadian modern, contemporary, and ethnic minority texts. Copyright release to the author in 2006.

Mystic Falls Meets The World Wide Web: Where Is The Vampire Diaries Located?, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

No abstract provided.

'Grung Tell Me Wud': An Introduction To Karl, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Olive Senior informs us in 'The Poem as Gardening, the Story as Su-Su: Finding a Literary Voice' that Jamaican elders believe the ground is the place where ancestral wisdom is located and they will explain and validate their warning or advice by saying, 'Grung tell me wud' (36). Jamaican linguist/literary critic/poet/and novelist Velma Pollard has put her ear to the ground of Jamaica and shared many important words of ancestral wisdom with us. This was a natural development for the talented girlchild born into an artistic family in Woodside, Jamaica, a rural community rich in folk traditions: her father was …

Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives And The Second Generation By Lisa D. Mcgill (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Using second generation Americans Harry Belafonte, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Piri Thomas, and the meringue hip hop group Proyecto Uno, Lisa D. McGill considers in Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives and the Second Generation the issues of identity formation of those whose heritage ultimately includes Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, most often New York City. Though her subjects come from different national, racial, and language backgrounds; though they have made their names in different media; and though they have different views of race, identity, and culture, she convincingly makes the argument that "African America becomes powerful site …

Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, And Survival By Meredith M. Gadsby (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

The folk will tell you that salt can either save you or destroy you. Toni Cade Bambara's Velma of The Salteaters realized that her survival depended on learning "the difference between eating salt as an antidote to snakebite and turning into salt, succumbing to the serpent." The lesson of similar folk wisdom is the subject of Meredith M. Gasby's Sucking Salt, where she propses as a new framework for the examination of Caribbean women's writing the survival techiniques implied in "sucking salt," techiniques suggested in her aunt's reflections on people she knew. Tantie expounded: "Little salt won't kill …

Who Was Cock Robin? A New Reading Of Erna Brodber's Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Much has been written about the quest of Brodber's protagonist Nellie for identity, for wholeness, for balance, for sanity, for finding her way back home into the community. Nellie's efforts to find herself and to integrate into the community will be easier, Brodber declared in a speech in 1988, "when Jane and Louisa come home, i.e., when the women find themselves" (Notes). Brodber also observed in that same speech, "'coming' rather than 'being' is the appropriate action word with which to address the issue of integration into the community," a fact suggested by the game that gives the title to …

Ismith Khan (1925-2002), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Trinidadian novelist who explored the conflicts experienced by East Indians in the Caribbean as well as the racial diversity that characterizes the region. A brilliant storyteller, he created memorable characters through whom the sights and cadences of Trinidad will forever live.

Bennett, Louise, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Louise Bennett, affectionately called Miss Lou, is Jamaica's most beloved folk poet, performer, and collector; she was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on September 7, 1919. Her father, a baker, died when she was seven years old, and her mother worked as a dressmaker to provide for her only child. She was educated in Jamaica at Calabar Elementary School, Excelsior High School, and St. Simon's College, after which she received a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in England.

The Colored Girl In The Ring: A Guyanese Woman Remembers By Brenda Chester Doharris (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Brenda Chester DoHarris's The Colored Girl in the Ring: A Guyanese Woman Remembers joins the company of some of the most memorable works of Caribbean literature, those classic accounts of coming-of-age, such as George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, Michael Anthony's The Year in San Fernando, Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey, Erna Brodber's Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Zea Edgell's Beka Lamb, Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, and Beryl Gilroy's Sunlight on Sweet Water. Like most of the bildungsromans - and …

Beryl Gilroy: A Bio-Literary Overview, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In 1992 when I joined the faculty at the University of Richmond, I taught a class in black women's literature to a group of mainly white students who had previously read little or nothing in this body of literature. One young senior--a white male--did a paper comparing the sympathetic portrayal of the white male character in Beryl Gilroy's Stedman and Joanna and Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. His enthusiasm for the rich body of literature to which I had introduced him continued after he graduated, and he often wrote to me about books he was reading …

Go Eena Kumbla: A Comparison Of Erna Brodber's Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home And Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

When I returned to Jamaica in July 1982, I took as gifts for friends some recent novels by black American writers, including Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters. Upon my arrival, Erna Brodber gave me a copy of her new book, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home. As I read it, I was struck by another instance of how similar experiences (in this case, being black and female in the Americas of the civil rights, black awareness, Rastafarian, and feminist movements) had inspired such strikingly similar expressions in books published the same year (1980) by an American …

Jamaica Novel Has Ring Of Truth. The Harder They Come By Michael Thelwell (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In a recent interview, Michael Thelwell told of being present at a Caribbean Day celebration in New York attended by countless people with "a nostalgia for their country" and of his resultant resolve to give Jamaicans and their children something to read about themselves. In "The Harder They Come," Thelwell has more than achieved his goal, for the novel does not merely offer a bit of nostalgia for homesick Jamaicans; it is also a thrilling introduction to a culture and a people for the outsider.