Other English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Narrative In The Algorithm: Storytelling, World Literature, And The Smartphone, Chad Szalkowski-Ference

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I interrogate the role algorithms, artificial intelligence, and smartphone technology play in contemporary world literature. My analysis begins with the post-truth condition, which speaks to the contemporary era’s embrace of alternative facts, authoritarianism, and conspiratorial thinking. I draw on narrative theory and paradigms of world literature to show how “algorithmic reasoning” has led to a state of paranoid persecution. This reasoning has forged new collectivities across traditional borders. Additionally, I show that these new collectivities and new technologies have produced new narrative points of view: the algorithmic first- and third-person, allowing narratives to retain the intimacy and …

The Permanent Emergency: The Anti-Fascist And Anti-Colonial Intersections Of James Joyce’S Ulysses And Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, Lily V. Mcmanamy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is going to explore the (Irish) Anti-Colonial and (Spanish) Anti-Fascist parallels between James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004). Using the major epic novels of two exiled authors, I hope to explore the intersections of poetic fiction and political resistance. I read these texts as bookends spanning the pre- and post-war periods, highlighting the continuities of colonialism, totalitarianism, and fascism, and the way these authors develop a post/modernist narrative that nods towards these themes. I plan to draw on Alberto Toscano’s LateFascism (2023) as a means of situating these authors’ novels with our own political moment …

Just Roll With It: Literacy And Community Building In Hobby Board Gaming, Mackenzie C. Allen

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

With the rise in popularity of hobby board gaming in the last 25 years, their usefulness to studying adult engagement in literacy has emerged as a new avenue of exploration. Although there has been a large amount of research into how board games can be designed and played with learning in mind, the study of recreational board games in the context of literacy and community is lacking. This thesis explored the means through which board games played in recreational settings act as tools of literacy. Through direct gameplay of 36 games across 6 months, qualitative data was gathered in pursuit …

The Process Of Othering: Grief And Shame In Kanafānī’S “The Land Of Sad Oranges”, Eman M. Ahmad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how “othering” shapes Palestinian experience through Ghassan Kanafani’s fiction and Frantz Fanon’s theory. It argues that othering produces grief, survival, and resistance rather than assimilation, and proposes a model centered on power, dehumanization, and identity to explain how domination is sustained and challenged.

The Rhetorical Agency Of Student-Parents: Assembling, Archiving, And Naming Practices And Interpretations That Transform Worlds, Dhipinder Walia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary project that uses interview data collected from six student-parents attending Bronx Community College during 2024 to 2025. Using rhetorical and critical discourse analysis, this dissertation argues student-parents enact their rhetorical agency to transform their college experience. Specifically, student-parents use their rhetorical agency to interpret time and place in a way that centers their own wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of their children. This dissertation focuses on interpretations and ordinary practices that reimagine what time and place can look and feel like on a college campus. Additionally, student-parents enact their rhetorical agency through ordinary practices …

Formulaic Sequences: Teacher And Student Perceptions And Teaching Strategies, Ali Sayed Muhammad Abd Allah

Theses and Dissertations

Formulaic Sequences (FS), common word combinations stored and used as single units, are crucial for achieving oral fluency yet remain underrepresented in pedagogical materials. This study explores this gap by examining teacher and student perceptions of FS and the teaching techniques within an online Egyptian EFL context. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, data were gathered via teacher interviews (n=4), student questionnaires (n=100), a student focus group (n=4), and classroom observations. Results indicated that teachers unanimously perceived FS as essential building blocks for fluency, accuracy, and learner confidence, and they utilized a spectrum of techniques ranging from explicit instruction to incidental exposure …

Children Past Curfew: Surveillance, Resistance, And Childhood In Philippine Martial Law Children's Literature, Krisna Marie T. Balolong

Children's Literature (MA) Theses

This paper examines how two Philippine children's books depict state surveillance and its effects on a child's perspective of family, authority figures, and childhood. Through analysis of Augie Rivera's Isang Harding Papel and Sandra Nicole Roldan's At the School Gate, this project makes a connection between children's literature and surveillance studies, offering new framework to engage with children’s literature depicting authoritarian regimes and state violence, especially in cases where children were targets of their governments. Each book is examined by their representations of state surveillance during the Martial Law era of the Philippines, as well as each characters’ individual …

Unmasked And Unprotected: An Autistic Poet's Journey Of Imperfect Confession, Cynthia Short

Theses and Dissertations

Cynthia Short’s thesis analyzes the consumption and contortion of neurodivergent experience across the clinical, personal, and artistic stages. Combining intersectional memoir with clinical research, traditional poetics, and spoken word experience, she weaves a first-person narrative of consumption and redefinition by systems that did not understand her. Yet, she argues that imperfect confession -done without self-knowledge, resources, or proper self-worth to resist consumption – still has its place. Her collection of twenty-nine self-authored poems serves as a testament to the growth her imperfect confession allowed, outlining her struggles with identity, clinical experimentation and economic survival in a world not meant for …

Phantasmagoria: A Novel, Miran Bogedain

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

To Print A Remake: An Analysis Of Hollywood Remakes And Their Cultural Value, Connor F. Seaton

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, audiences and movie critics have expressed concern that Hollywood’s growing reliance on remakes, sequels, franchises, and similar adaptations has led to a broader worry that originality is fading from modern cinema and that the industry is instead focused on using adaptations to maximize profits. Although adaptation is often seen as a commercially driven framework for reproducing existing intellectual property in a new media format, this thesis argues that it should be recognized as an autonomous cultural category with its own artistic, historical, and social significance and merit. By analyzing adaptation scholarship and reviewing its complex historical development, …

Transgender Representation In Japanese Video Games And Their Corresponding American Fandoms, Aj Abad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores transgender and gender non-conforming characters within Japanese media and their corresponding American fandoms. In this thesis, I use a methodology named trans negotiated readings, stemming from Stuart Hall’s theory of dominant codes and negotiated readings. Through focusing on two characters from two different Japanese media—Arashi Narukami from Ensemble Stars!! and Mizuki Akiyama from Project Sekai: Colorful Stage Feat. Hatsune Miku, I uncover some of the dominant codes encoded the original source material. After, I also examine their corresponding American fandoms, uncovering the negotiated readings from the fanbase. This thesis attempts to show different cultures’ interpretation of transgender …

Resistance And Innovation: The Cultural Work Of Popular Romance Novels, Chelsee M. Niebergall

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Popular romance fiction is the highest-grossing genre in contemporary publishing, yet it remains one of the least examined in academic scholarship. As this thesis argues, while texts of this genre have been marginalized and stigmatized for their perceived lack of literary sophistication, they prove to be some of the most radical in terms of cultural impact. Their dismissal is not incidental but symptomatic of the very systems of oppression the romance novels work to disrupt. This thesis will examine these radical texts and uncover the cultural work they perform on their readers by using an analytical framework newly developed here, …

Bonny And Read: Navigating The Waters Between Truth And Tale, Fiona J. Faccilonga

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis examines piracy, cross-dressing, gender fluidity, and ambiguous identity in the lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read as represented in A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson. This thesis argues that Johnson’s narrative reshapes their piracy through feminine frameworks to align them with patriarchal expectations of womanhood and fixed identity. Specifically, he uses the breast and the belly as sites of gendered truth, attempting to reduce their masculine presentation as mere performance rather than intrinsic identity.

However, despite Johnson’s attempt at narrative authority, Bonny and Read ultimately resist such containment. Through close readings of both …

An Axe To The Funny Bone: Curated Instability And Horror-Comedy Intersections In American Storytelling, Samantha Box

Masters Theses

Funny. Terrifying. Subversive.

Horror-Comedy twists and bites at the intersection of two incredibly reactive genres— with both Horror and Comedy being well known for the political and social discourses they embody and reinvent through story. While prevalent in American popular culture, scholarly analysis of this hybrid space barely exists beyond a small number of Film Studies investigations. Despite this lack, Horror-Comedy works continue to be successfully produced. This thesis unpacks the vibrant relationship between fear and laughter in contemporary American storytelling through Horror-Comedy, maintaining a focus on structural dynamics and the audience-disarming results of simultaneously applying horror and humor to …

Recognition Through The Algorithm: How Emotional Identification Shapes The Circulation Of Classics On Booktok, Olivia Carolyn Cowles

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores how classic literature circulates within the virtual community known as BookTok. Rather than making any definitive claims, this study offers a preliminary look at how and why certain classics surface within a digital space. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes three Zeeschuimer data pulls paired with qualitative analysis of thirty-four unique top-performing videos. This thesis examines the recurring patterns regarding top performing content of classics. Early findings suggest that these posts tend to gain traction on BookTok due to recognition and relatability. The top texts retain their prominence not necessarily because of their canonical status, but because …

Management Concepts In Shishupalavadha, Sathyanarayanan V

Theses and Dissertations

Management of organizations, people, and entities has been a subject matter of great interest today. Schools of business and management were established in the West about 125 years ago, and countries in other parts of the world, including India, simply followed these practices. Consequently, there is a widespread feeling today that management concepts originated in the West. All Indian business schools teach management concepts propounded by Western scholars in the last 100 years or so.

Going by the first principles, whenever multiple people, resources, entities, and institutions are involved, there is a requirement for Management. This implies that management as …

My Achilles Years., Ash William Bittner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a historically and rhetorically grounded creative project exploring the traumas of war. This project is divided into three broad chapters, each using a different (and relevant) approach to cover the content contained within that chapter. The first chapter relies on that historical grounding, exploring the history of PTSD as it is currently understood, before exploring ancient Greek poetry and theater and both the historical and military contexts for each, before finally discussing modern warfare and the “Forever War” of the American War on Terror that lasted for nineteen years. With the historical grounding set, it moves into …

At Home In Horror: Women And Body Horror, Brooklynn Kreps

University Honors Theses

While most discussion around the subgenre of body horror focuses on its birthplace of film, the richest iterations come from women writing body horror fiction to explain the experience of womanhood. As body horror focuses on fear of painful or absurd mishap with the body. Women experience pain or absurdity in their own bodies every day with processes like menstruation, pregnancy, puberty, and heightened chances of becoming a victim of sexual assault. Furthermore, women experience society's forceful shaming and fear about natural processes of the body and experiences such as anger and sexual desire. Using this idea as a framework, …

Knowing Remembers Joe Christmas: An Exploration Of Trauma In William Faulkner's Light In August, Kendall Boyd

University Honors Theses

William Faulkner wrote Light in August in 1932, during the American prohibition and national Jim Crow laws. As a southern gothic/American modernism text, Light in August is a fictional story that takes place in the southern states of the U.S. and primarily relies on memory and ambiguity to reveal its dark themes of racism, sexual violence, and collective trauma. The novel features two separate narrators as main characters: Lena Burch and Joe Christmas. Joe Christmas, a man of mysterious heritage who lives a life of tragedy and violence, is the focus of my analysis of Light in August. Using …

The Shōnen Apocalypse: An Analysis Of The Shōnen Power System And Its Narrative Functions, Mario Da Silva Melo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis has two primary goals. First, it provides an overview of the history of manga as a medium, and manga studies as a field. In doing so, I observe a lack of terminological and methodological specificity. As a result, I provide a formalist approach to thematic criticism in order to address the above issues. Second, my thesis primarily centers on shōnen power systems and their narrative functions. Power systems are "magic rules" that determine how superhuman abilities mechanically function. I identify two main power systems in shōnen manga: spiritual manipulation and transformations. My thesis posits that shōnen manga authors …

The Narratological Maus, Isla Lader

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Complete Maus, a memoir graphic novel surrounding the events of character Art Spiegelman as he collects, records, and illustrates his father’s life pre-the Holocaust in Europe, his time in Auschwitz, and then life in the United States has been one of the focal Holocaust survivor testimonies and has redefined the genre it exists in as both a graphic novel, but also as a form of testimony. Like many popularized works dealing with the Holocaust, though, cultural preconceptions of Jewish people, genocide, and audiences’ desire to find morals within the work have made it so often audiences come to …

Poetries Of Abandonment: A Study Of Plath And Glück, Yara Abdelmoneim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersection between literature and trauma, which can be discerned in the key works of two poets, Sylvia Plath and Louise Glück. While offering readings of crucial poems, the thesis also examines the interrelations among trauma, memory and narrative as theorized by two contemporary psychiatrists, Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman. Both Plath and Glück wrote about personal and generational trauma after going through different experiences of abandonment. Absence, indirection and repetition provide the basis for literary techniques that allow their traumas to be better understood by authors and readers alike. The degree to which each …

Incorporating Scenes Of Torture In Literature, Kiera A. Croswait

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Fiction authors must consider the different ways a reader can consume acts of violence or torture in a piece of art. In this paper, I discuss the different considerations authors must make before writing such scenes, specifically within contexts of historical fictions. By analyzing the novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra through the lens of ethical theory, I argue that Marra effectively uses language, historicization and research, and authenticity/character development to represent violent torture in his novel set in the context of the Russian-Chechen conflict. Looking at the power dynamics through character and language, as well as …

Final Master's Portfolio, Sophia Michalski

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio explores research in technical writing revolving around digital products and literary practices such as Post-Structuralism as literary theory and the methodology Docile Bodies within literary texts. While half the portfolio includes analytical essays which examine how these themes intersect and arise in literary landscape, the other half aims to investigate how the current digital marketplace prioritizes cloud-based products and what limitations are placed through extensive research.

Storytelling Or Telling Stories: An Analysis Of Disnarration In Music Videos, Victoria Garrett

Honors Theses

Music videos have grown in popularity in recent years and have begun to augment the stories being told by the lyrics of their songs. This is done by using narrative techniques, such as disnarration, to develop complex narratives that can conflict with the lyrical content. Through analysis of the videos "Willow" (2020 dir. Taylor Swift) by Taylor Swift, "The One That Got Away" (2012 dir. Floria Sigismoni) by Katy Perry, and "One Beer" (2020 dir. Justin Clough) by HARDY, the distinction between the plots of the videos and the lyrics can be brought into focus. This distinction in the stories …

Negotiation, Expression, And Microlanguage: The Processes Of Student Welfare And Identity In High School English Language Arts Classrooms, Jencarlos Feliciano-Ponce

Master's Projects

In this study, I will explore negotiation and expression as processes that educators can utilize (or continue to intentionally engage with) to empower the student body of the current high school English classrooms to counteract current pressures and negative trends in ELA. Negotiation and expression are not topics that should be explored in only a single ELA unit, either. The small moments that students experience with language, culture, and power all culminate to the processes explored in this research study; they guide English educators in their lesson instruction, curriculum design, and student engagement. By managing negotiation and expression as undercurrents …

Her Hideous Progeny: Frankenstein'S Legacy, Adaptability, And Contemporary Prominence To Critical Story Telling, Ryan Penske

English (MA) Theses

This thesis situates the narrative of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley with two contemporary adaptations Get Out (2017) by Jordan Peele and Poor Things (2023) by Yorgos Lanthimos. The original 1818 Frankenstein text is composed of different discourses about race, gender, monstrosity, and what it means to be an abject other. As a text full of critical discourse, it has reached great popular culture legacy and has become adapted numerous times over the past two centuries. This thesis explores and acknowledges instances where the text has been adapted and applied to harmful discourses, such as British Prime Minister George Canning’s use …

Understanding Writing Center’S Motivations For Creating And Providing Online Writing Resources: A Qualitative Study, Mackenzie K. Croley

All Theses

This research-based thesis documents the process of creating online writing resources. The data was collected from an IRB-approved study where I interviewed writing center directors about how their centers have created and maintained online writing resources to support students. After conducting interviews, I share the results of the study about each center’s creation and maintenance practices. I discuss the labor that this type of project takes and how those centers have supported this process by using staff from all roles within the center. I explore how the online resources build ethos for the center. Finally, I explain how these online …

The Castle Is Still Here, And Yes, It's Still Scary: Reconstructing The Gothic Through Contemporary Short Story, Alyssa Kilroy

Undergraduate Theses

Since Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto published in 1764, the literary Gothic has grown and spread to include a multitude of subgenres in a variety of formats. Gothic literature has served as both a product and a showcase of its contextual influences, providing a deeper look at humanity's deepest flaws, fears, and passions that shape our societies. While the Gothic's historically fluid identity allows Frankenstein to exist in a literary realm alongside Wuthering Heights, something consistent in its core continues to appeal to modern audiences and remains relevant in contemporary literature and other media. This project offers a …

Myth Rewrites: Do We Need A Reboot?, Livia M. Nocito

Interdivisional Studies Honors Papers

As myth rewrites have permeated popular culture in recent years, the alterations made to their narratives have shifted the original meanings of the ancient texts. They have sought to provide a modernized retelling for readers of a new age to enjoy while simultaneously attempting to hold a mirror to a society that has remained patriarchal and redeems the narrative. By analyzing the three iterations of Medusa’s origins, as well as The Odyssey and it’s newest musical adaptation, “EPIC: The Musical,” myth rewrites are proven to not only be beneficial to introducing new audiences to ancient mythology, but also finds its …