Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Pecan Grove Review Volume 23, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

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

Pecan Grove Review Volume 22, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

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

Breaking The Boundaries Of The Binary: Non-Normative Gender Expression And Rebellion In 19th-Century Literature, Anna Marie Wingard

Honors Theses

This thesis explores non-normative expressions of gender in three nineteenth-century novels: Valperga (1823) by Mary Shelley, The Hermaphrodite (c. 1846) by Julia Ward Howe, and The Awakening (1999) by Kate Chopin. Each novel’s protagonist displays gender expression that rejects nineteenth-century British and American ideals and is consequently exiled from society and faces death. The project diagrams trajectories of gender expression and identity by tracing adherence, failure, and consequences to illustrate how non-normative gender expression directly leads to social exclusion and death. The findings of this literary analysis suggest that nineteenth-century understandings of gender were rigidly policed and the novel served …

My Soul, She Walks Behind Me, Sanyukta Shiv Kumar

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This thesis reimagines the consequences of my great-grandmother’s life. It is an attempt to demystify women’s conditioned roles within private and public spaces and note how, through this conditioning, their identity is repressed to the point of diffidence and eventually, abhorrence towards their own bodies and the physical spaces they occupy. This is portrayed in poetry form through the voice of my great-grandmother as the primary speaker, and is interspersed with the voices of the grandmother, the mother, and the great-granddaughter.

My great-grandmother’s lived experience consisted mostly of her life as a young wife, mother, devotee, and storyteller. She told …

Diversity In Publishing: Does Author Identity Affect Author Treatment In The North American Fiction Publishing Industry?, Chloe Comeau

Academic Leadership Journal in Student Research

The fiction publishing industry has a long history of promoting only straight, white, cisgender voices in the books they publish and the staff they hire. This study employed the Delphi method to investigate the connection between author identity and author treatment in publishing. In a series of questionnaires, 11 participants answered questions and shared their experiences with diversity in publishing. The results indicated that sexism, homophobia, and racism all exist in the industry, and author identity impacts author treatment in North American fiction publishing. Moreover, the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality of authors combined with publishing’s long history of …

Catfish Dinner & Other Malicious Morsels, Bonnie Klein

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Catfish Dinner & Other Malicious Morsels is a collection of short stories utilizing the combined elements of Fantasy, Southern, and Gothic Literature. The collection demonstrates the feasibility of combining the three different literary genres, each with its own strong identity and literary history, in a work that appeals to readers reaching the age of young adulthood. Named for the titular story, the collection features seven short stories of varying lengths depicting the cultural influence of food, community morals, storytelling, and nature in East Texas communities. Each story is told through third-person point of view of a different character. The stories …

Pecan Grove Review Volume 21, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

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

'The Frank Exchange': A Historical Drama Novella, Ariel Finkle

Senior Honors Projects

I am an avid fan of historical fiction books such as The Royal Diaries. But given the recent popularity of more adult royal drama series like The Great, as well as impostor true crime shows like Inventing Anna, on this project I set out to create a historical fiction drama of my own. While searching for a real-life figure to base my story on, I happened to see a quick footnote at the bottom of an article on Catherine the Great that intrigued me. At the turn of the 18th century, an ordinary young Polish woman named Eva Frank managed …

Fascism In Sci-Fi: "Mobilizing Passions" In Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Alton C. Ayers

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis responds to criticism of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959) as a “fascist” novel by further investigating the claim through a close reading of the novel that applies political theory scholarship on fascism. Chapters I and II introduce the novel along with its general reception and controversy. These chapters consider the accusations of “fascism” given to the novel while at the same time understanding that a clear, exact definition of “fascism” has long been grappled with by scholars since the rise of the regimes in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Chapters III and IV apply political theory to …

Cultural Trauma Fiction: Political Violence, Rampage Violence, And Structural Violence In Contemporary American Literature, Courtney Mullis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation identifies and proposes a new subgenre of American literature, Cultural Trauma Fiction, that has arisen since the late 20^th century in response to numerous large-scale traumatic events and their representation in the media. Cultural trauma occurs when a shocking, shared event fractures collective identity and initiates a discursive process to understand what took place, why it happened, and how the affected culture can heal. Cultural traumas differ from individual trauma because cultural traumas affect a culture, rather than an individual, and because they are mediated; many members of the culture experience the trauma of these events secondhand …

More Than Just A Fantasy: Literary Fantasy As An Architectural Tool, Kae Schwalber

Architecture Senior Theses

Fantasy literature world building can suggest and support alternative paths for architectural practice using the super stimuli of fantasy “otherworlds” to promote and create more “placed” spaces and improve the wellbeing of communities. According to Edward Relph, the United States has had an issue with “placelessness” since the 1950’s, where building typologies are nationally distributed and rarely localized. Literary Fantasy has created worlds so desirable that they have permeated into a multi-billion dollar industry that reaches past literature, making the consumption of fictional worlds a central behavior in modern societies. The cultural importance and success of the genre is due …

Position: A Fiction Collection, Joelle Byars

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The creative thesis “Position: A Fiction Collection” is composed of sixteen short and flash fiction stories. The critical introduction to this thesis looks at my journey as a writer that led to its genesis. I analyze the methods used in my writing process, consider the ways in which instruction and passive reading influences what drives me to write, as well as delving into how the personal informs the creative. I discuss the themes of my stories, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, toxic relationships, and mental illness, and how they emerged in this collection. A creative sample that touches on all of …

I Love You, Go Away (A Novel), John Matthew Steinhafel

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

I Love You, Go Away, a novel set in Milwaukee, tells the story of a twenty-two year-old nobody, Gabriel Driscoll, who meets and befriends a middle-aged, drug addicted, recluse actor, Beau Brooks. But less than six months into their friendship Beau commits suicide. At the funeral Gabriel meets a twenty-nine-year-old corporate executive, Michelle, the daughter of Beau’s long-time girlfriend. Gabriel and Michelle bond over their mutual grief and quickly strike up a romance. At the same time, Gabriel’s semi-estranged mother, Sadie, a recovering heroin addict, reaches out to him in an effort to rebuild their relationship. What follows for Gabriel …

Course Syllabus For English 1120 - Speculative Fiction, Chad Luck

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This document contains a syllabus for a new version of the large-lecture course English 1120: Speculative Fiction. This version of the class focuses on horror fiction, in particular, and structures the course according to a series of discursive contexts crucial to that genre. So, the course is organized around five thematic units including: psychology, religion, gender, race, and science. Each of these units presents key texts in that given area and asks students to think critically about the relationship of fiction to that particular cultural context. The course, in general, cultivates in students the ability to analyze cultural objects—in this …

Introduction To Creative Writing, Sheila Y. Maldonado

Open Educational Resources

English 220 Introduction to Creative Writing - readings and exercises in fiction, drama, and poetry

Pecan Grove Review Volume 20, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

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

Hard As Kerosene, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

This novel is set in West Africa during the 1980s and concerns one man's trip through Peace Corps, war and alcoholism.

Treading The Winepress; Or, A Mountain Of Misfortune, Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen, Gabrielle Brown, Eric Willey, Jean Macdonald

Undiscovered Americas

“Every life hath its chapter of sorrow. No matter how rich the gilding or fair the pages of the volume, Trouble will stamp it with his sable signet.”

So begins the novel Treading the Winepress; or, A Mountain of Misfortune by Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen, which, had it appeared in book form in 1885–1886 instead of serialized in The Boston Advocate, would have been the second novel published by a black woman in the United States. Instead, Allen has been mostly forgotten by literary history. Now, thanks to the painstaking efforts of editors Gabrielle Brown, Eric Willey, and Jean …

The Meaning In The Music: Music And The Prose Of Chopin, Joyce, Baldwin And Egan, Colin Perry

Senior Theses

Kate Chopin, James Joyce, James Baldwin, and Jennifer Egan are collectively gifted in the art of prose, yet each author also experiments with music in their literary works. An analysis of Chopin's The Awakening, Joyce's "The Dead," Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," and Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad reveals a trend of authors utilizing music to enrich their texts and convey major themes.

Kentuckiana, And A Dash Of Cambodia: A Collection Of Short Stories, Brodie Lee Gress

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The following is a collection of five short stories set in regions familiar to me: “Dewberry Park,” “YouLead,” and “The Color Violet” in Indiana; “Mens Rea” in Kentucky; and “Tory Ride” in Cambodia. Gay identity plays a role in many of these stories, and other themes explored include family, region, socioeconomics, gender, mentality, and change. These stories are concerned with people on the brink, failing and surviving all the same. Some of them are intended to weigh, and some to satirize. I hope they all nick their readers.

Ghosts Of Madmen: A Generational Tale, Kristen Leigh Olin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A family story depicting an immigrant family that must deal with the horrors of the past while delving through the psyche of the present. One woman's look into the deepest reaches of her American family and their generations of alcoholism and abuse and her resolution to the ghosts that haunt the family's women.

Blood Fable By Oisín Curran, Michael Occhionero

The Goose

Review of Oisín Curran's Blood Fable.

The Wolf Is Back By Robert Priest, Kelly Shepherd

The Goose

Review of Robert Priest's The Wolf is Back.

Excerpts From The Novel, Bear War-Den, Vivian Demuth

The Goose

A woman park warden who works in Rocky Mountain National Park spends her time on such tasks as bear patrol, locating tourists who are lost or in other physical danger, and policing park rules. She has a particular affinity for grizzly bears, largely stemming from an experience she had in a Neolithic cave in Spain. During her work and her travels, she observes various ways in which bears are mistreated in parks, sometimes even by researchers with seemingly good intentions. While an out-of-control fire rages through the national park, the woman park warden, with two grizzly bear skulls in hand, …

The Sting In The Green City, Nicole Tsakoumagos

ETD Archive

In an irradiated, alternate earth, where a mysterious supernatural phenomenon caused a near-apocalypse, the human race is back on it’s feet. Four major cities dominate the landscape: New Sparta, The Mel, The Nocturn and Oz. In the first installment of “The Sting” series, explore the emerald, Greene Mob run metropolis, Oz. Gun-slinging, Ex-mercenary Kyra `The Sting’ Lee is living quietly in the outer part of the city with her dog, Doogie. The only family she has are the Castellanoses, a Greek four-part ensemble that own Kyra’s favorite greasy spoon diner. Maria Castellanos is Kyra’s best friend and her seemingly unobtainable …

A Reflection On A Dhc Senior Project: "Silvie Danger", Breann Watterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This is a reflection about an Honors College Research Project. The project was a work of historical fiction concerning the coming-of-age of a young woman in mid-nineteenth-century New England.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 19, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

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

The Montagnards, Jarred J. Marlatt

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 18, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

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

[Review Of The Book Brown Girl Dreaming, By J. Woodson], Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Jacqueline Woodson is an award-winning children's literature author, who, early in her career, was touted by renowned children's literature sholar Rudine Sims Bishop as one of the most promising children's literature authors of her generation. Lauded for her ability to write honestly about social issues, marginalized youth, and popular culture, Woodson, to date, has written over twenty-five texts for youth, spanning several genres- from novels and picture books to books-in-verse and short stories. She is, as predicted, a major voice in children's literature. In Brown Girl Dreaming, a book written for youth, Woodson explores how she learned to develop …