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Articles 151 - 180 of 875

Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies

Learning Chinese Vocabulary: Understanding Students' Perspectives, Austin Gasiecki, Zuotang Zhang Jan 2024

Learning Chinese Vocabulary: Understanding Students' Perspectives, Austin Gasiecki, Zuotang Zhang

The Coastal Review

This study used a survey to investigate self-study and university-enrolled Chinese learners’ habits in studying Chinese vocabulary in order to determine what study methods influence a.) learners’ confidence in learning Chinese vocabulary and b.) what aspects of Chinese vocabulary they consider easy or difficult. We were particularly interested in seeing what the data had to say about students’ attitudes towards characters and the written language, given that the field of Chinese language pedagogy is known for a stronger focus on the written language as opposed to the spoken language. We found that aspects of Chinese vocabulary associated with the spoken …


Practicing Hedonism In The Face Of Nihilism: Onfrayian Insights On Individualism And Autonomy, Scott Truesdale Jan 2024

Practicing Hedonism In The Face Of Nihilism: Onfrayian Insights On Individualism And Autonomy, Scott Truesdale

The Coastal Review

Where many define nihilism as the belief that life and all moral principles are meaningless, the French philosopher, Michel Onfray, expounds on this classic definition and argues that true nihilism is the refusal to accept the world as it is. Unlike monotheistic religions and totalitarian regimes that urge their followers to practice asceticism now to attain happiness in the future, Onfray believes that hedonistic pleasure can be found when the individual rediscovers autonomy and returns to an atomistic worldview that is immersed in the imminent.


Between Pain And Glory: Memory Disputes Of The Brazilian Dictatorship In Retrato Calado And O Que É Isso, Companheiro?, Angela R. Mooney Jan 2024

Between Pain And Glory: Memory Disputes Of The Brazilian Dictatorship In Retrato Calado And O Que É Isso, Companheiro?, Angela R. Mooney

The Coastal Review

This article analyzes Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes’ Retrato calado (Silent Portrait) published in 1988, considering the theoretical discussions on testimonio's epistemology—addressing the challenge of narrating trauma and the risk of stylization. It compares Fortes' memoir with Fernando Gabeira's O que é isso, companheiro? (What's This, Comrade?) from 1979, examining diverse approaches to capturing historical trauma through literature and its impact on collective memory about Brazilian Dictatorship (1964-1985).


Global Communities: The Potential Of Street Art And The Public Space, Elena Picech Jan 2024

Global Communities: The Potential Of Street Art And The Public Space, Elena Picech

The Coastal Review

This paper highlights the significance of physical proximity and the potentiality of socio-spatial situations as tools to enrich study abroad programs. Particular attention is given to street art and the public space. While, studying on-site can be somewhat uncomfortable, it can potentially prompt unique reflections, enhance student’s learning and encourage introspection. Being on-site provides the opportunity to come into contact and to connect with the physical objects and their environment. It enables a multisensory and immersive embodied experience. Leveraging art for communicative educational activities can facilitate a participatory experience, promote critical thinking and enhance cultural understanding.


The Femme-Fatale “Bear’Ing Her Teeth: The Relation Between Women And Animals In Prosper Mérimée’S Lokis, William B. Holley Jan 2024

The Femme-Fatale “Bear’Ing Her Teeth: The Relation Between Women And Animals In Prosper Mérimée’S Lokis, William B. Holley

The Coastal Review

Abstract: Many French fantastic texts from the nineteenth century employ the use of a femme-fatale to highlight and underscore the dangers inherit with the female figure. This can be seen in vampires, ghosts, fairies, and other supernatural phenomena wherein a female character takes on incredible attributes. Propser Mérimée’s Lokis offers readers a tale wherein those same female figures are given traits that resemble the traditional femme-fatale, but in doing so they highlight the deadly nature of the titular half-man/half-bear creature. This paper offers a reading of Lokis which brings together an understanding of the social and political climate in which …


On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang Oct 2023

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cold Mountain Poems (CMPs), which have been neglected in the history of Chinese literature for ages, captured the attention of most Americans immediately after its being translated into America by the American poet Gary Snyder in 1950s, however. It is Snyder that reconfigured and recreated a sagacious Chinese Chan Buddhist poet Han-shan (literally, Cold Mountain), the acknowledged author of Cold Mountain Poems, in his translation for the postwar Americans in the midst of varied social problems and cultural identity crisis after World War II. Snyder eventually found in his translation of Cold Mountain Poems a back-to-nature remedy of …


Topological Tropology Of V.S. Naipaul’S Islamic Travelogues And Daniel Pipes’ Islamic History: Ahistorical Historicism, Md. Habibullah Oct 2023

Topological Tropology Of V.S. Naipaul’S Islamic Travelogues And Daniel Pipes’ Islamic History: Ahistorical Historicism, Md. Habibullah

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s (1932-2018) first Islamic travelogue Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) contains his experience of a visit from August 1979 to February 1980 to the four non-Arab Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Similarly, his last Islamic travelogue Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples (1998) has a description of another visit to the same countries for five-month in 1995. Concurrently, Daniel Pipes (1949-), an American historian, published his doctoral dissertation, Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), which represents Islamic culture as the first instigator of …


Decolonizing French: Afrophonics In Ken Bugul’S Aller Et Retour (2013), Hapsatou Wane Oct 2023

Decolonizing French: Afrophonics In Ken Bugul’S Aller Et Retour (2013), Hapsatou Wane

The Coastal Review

This article explores the innovative language strategies employed by Senegalese writer Ken Bugul in her novel Aller et retour to construct a dynamic and interconnected linguistic landscape that challenges fixed language boundaries. Ken Bugul's "langue fabriquée" combines elements of French, Wolof, and English, reflecting a transglocal dimension that embodies the essence of afrophonics—a poetics of resistance that empowers local cultures in a globalized context. Through a detailed analysis of Ken Bugul's linguistic choices, including the use of quotation marks, footnotes, and arbitrary transcription, the study reveals how she creates a language that defies categorization and decolonizes French without resorting to …


Figures Of Radical Absence: Blanks And Voids In Theory, Literature, And The Arts, Alexandra Irimia Oct 2023

The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, And Disgust In The Work Of Virginia Woolf And Zinaida Gippius, Yelizaveta Shapiro Sep 2023

The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, And Disgust In The Work Of Virginia Woolf And Zinaida Gippius, Yelizaveta Shapiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Confounding Body: Female Corporeality, Androgyny, and Disgust in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Zinaida Gippius examines how the discourses of degeneration, eugenics, and sexology shaped representations of women’s bodies in British and Russian modernist literature. Focusing on the writing of Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), I challenge the longstanding argument that both authors attempted to escape the material body by resorting to androgynous tropes. I argue that the material female body takes center stage in both Gippius’s and Woolf’s work and functions as a powerfully paradoxical entity: one that generates disgust and enables oppression while housing …


Frights And Forests: The Hellish Landscape Of The Dark Forest, From Sleepy Hollow To The Forest Of Arden, Minna Nizam Aug 2023

Frights And Forests: The Hellish Landscape Of The Dark Forest, From Sleepy Hollow To The Forest Of Arden, Minna Nizam

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

This paper seeks to explore forest settings in fantasy, and its hellish landscapes. From the headless horseman in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, to the frights and horrors of mythical creatures in fantasy settings placed in forests. The purpose of this study is to dive deep into the fear of the forest, its early days in storytelling, to more modern renditions. Sources used will be primarily books, and texts within books, such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Lord of the Rings, and much more.


Mythopoeic Awards Discussion, David Lenander, David Emerson Aug 2023

Mythopoeic Awards Discussion, David Lenander, David Emerson

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

No abstract provided.


Seven Minutes In Hell: Hells In Fantasy Games, Nyssa Gilkey Aug 2023

Seven Minutes In Hell: Hells In Fantasy Games, Nyssa Gilkey

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Join Nyssa Gilkey on a tour through several different fantasy video game depictions of hell. We’ll spend about seven (-ish) minutes looking around each hell or underworld before moving on, touring Helheim in God of War and God of War: Ragnarok, Hades and Elysium as portrayed in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey DLC, and the Duat of ancient Egypt in Assassin’s Creed: Origins DLC. With sufficient time and interest, we can tour other fantasy depictions of hell. Participants will be able to ask questions and discuss throughout the journey.


The Image Of Satan In Evangelical Children’S Fantasy, Melody Green Aug 2023

The Image Of Satan In Evangelical Children’S Fantasy, Melody Green

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Over the last few decades, niche publishers have presented several children’s fantasy series marketed as being “in the tradition of Lewis and Tolkien.” These publishers, however, are neither British, nor are they Anglican or Catholic. They are instead American Evangelical organizations, providing a space for faith-informed stories that wander somewhere between allegory and parable. Within the pages of these texts can be found not only the expected Christ-figures, but there are also Satan-figures and hellish landscapes much more likely to reflect concepts from Dante, Milton, and medieval witch-hunting guides than from the Bible, the text that evangelicals claim to be …


Hell As An Exploration Of Sin: A Comparison Of Alan Moore’S Providence To Dante’S Inferno, Zachary Rutledge Aug 2023

Hell As An Exploration Of Sin: A Comparison Of Alan Moore’S Providence To Dante’S Inferno, Zachary Rutledge

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In Alan Moore’s graphic novel Providence, Robert Black travels Lovecraftian New England and suffers a series of horrifying encounters—each an allusion to a Lovecraft story. These encounters contain direct references to various sins and taboos, thereby making explicit much of the sublimated sexuality in Lovecraft’s works. Therefore, Black’s journey constitutes not only a trip through Lovecraft’s mythology but also reads as a cataloguing of sins reminiscent of Dante’s passage through the levels of sin in Inferno. This paper identifies and explores the similarities between Dante and Black as examples of those who descend to the underworld along with a …


Political Demons: Society As Hell In Hellblazer And Sandman, Andrew Burt Aug 2023

Political Demons: Society As Hell In Hellblazer And Sandman, Andrew Burt

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In the Hellblazer and Sandman comic book universes, hell depends on the writer’s worldview and often on the decade in which they are writing, appearing as a twisted version of a dreary regular world. Thus, this hell is often related to the contemporary Western political and cultural landscape as seen through Judeo-Christian conceptions of hell, demonology, and fears of everlasting torment and damnation, just like Dante’s Inferno and many other representations for centuries. In creating a hell that mirrors the modern world and accounts for contemporary folklore about the supernatural, the creators humanize the character’s quests and reify the fruitlessness …


Panel: The Rings Of Power Season 1: Underworlds, Overworlds, And Ocean Worlds, Tim Lenz, Leah Hagan, Grace Moone, Pablo Guss Aug 2023

Panel: The Rings Of Power Season 1: Underworlds, Overworlds, And Ocean Worlds, Tim Lenz, Leah Hagan, Grace Moone, Pablo Guss

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Now that the first of five planned seasons of Amazon’s big budget Second Age adaptation The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has aired, we will provide a retrospective of Season 1. We will compare Tolkien’s Second Age writings with the realized version in the show, including how the writers and showrunners have interpreted certain specific passages from the texts, and where significant departures were made for sake of adaptation. We will highlight themes of the season, as well as specific characters, relationships, and settings that have resonated with audiences, and speculate on where the series could potentially …


Who The Hell Is Helen Of Sparta?, Nyssa Gilkey Aug 2023

Who The Hell Is Helen Of Sparta?, Nyssa Gilkey

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The rising popularity of Greek mythology is due in some part to female authors such as Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes lending a fresh perspective to the Homeric tradition. However, these female authors tend to actually reduce the importance of one of the most important female characters of the Trojan War: Helen. Helen of Sparta has been an enigma to writers throughout the last 3000 years, her story changing with each iteration and era. Since Homer’s Iliad, the most beautiful woman in the world has been victim and villain, strong and weak willed. She has chosen husbands, and been …


Pullman’S Problematic Paradise: Dissolving Into Dust, David E. Isaacs Aug 2023

Pullman’S Problematic Paradise: Dissolving Into Dust, David E. Isaacs

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In the His Dark Materials trilogy, Phillip Pullman has openly positioned himself as the anti-C.S. Lewis who attempts to embed the gospel of atheism through his fantasy novels. Pullman recasts classics such as Paradise Lost and Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven & Hell so that humans triumph over the oppressive Authority by learning that sinning is simply enjoying life. This paper will specifically explore Pullman’s depictions of the underworld and his alternative vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in The Amber Spyglass, examining Pullman’s attempts to assure readers that by rejecting Christian views of the final translation, one can …


Hellish Landscapes In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Legendarium, Willow Dipasquale Aug 2023

Hellish Landscapes In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Legendarium, Willow Dipasquale

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium is rich with magical and mythological elements—enchanted rings, powerful wizards, stories told long ago—and near-Biblical struggles of good over evil, power over life and death, and the inexorable passage of time. The Halls of Mandos in Valinor even have echoes of the “afterlife,” serving as a liminal place for the spirits of Elves to await their next destination. Interestingly, though, a “hell” in the classic sense (that is, a spiritual region of eternal torment and suffering) does not seem to truly exist in Tolkien’s imagined worlds. However, Tolkien does fill those worlds with hellish landscapes: Utumno and …


Planes Of Oblivion In The Elder Scrolls, Michael Barros Aug 2023

Planes Of Oblivion In The Elder Scrolls, Michael Barros

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The planes of Oblivion from The Elder Scrolls (TES) series are not explicitly Hell; they are any dimensions of reality which are not under control of the Aedra, the benevolent spiritual entities. As a result, these planes may be totally unknown, pleasant, chaotic, or horrifying, depending on who is in charge, reflecting the personality of its ruler. These planes are at the heart of the franchise, and the intrusion of the planes of Oblivion and its inhabitants is a constant in the series. The planes of Oblivion are a reimagining of Hell as a place of potential, rather than evil. …


Persephone Bites: Consumption In The Underworld, Erin Sledd Aug 2023

Persephone Bites: Consumption In The Underworld, Erin Sledd

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

If you know one thing about Persephone, it is that she was abducted by Hades, held captive, and ate pomegranate seeds in the Underworld. Although Demeter rescued her daughter, she had to return for several months each year as a consequence of consuming the “Fruit of the Underworld.” But tasting those succulent ruby red seeds was not the first time she succumbed to desire—according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter II, the first thing Persephone “bites” is a lure. Hades sets a trap: a flower with “one hundred stems of fragrant blossoms.” When Persephone grasps a stalk of this …


Only In Dying Life: The Production Of Hope And Peace, Taylor Johnson Guinan Aug 2023

Only In Dying Life: The Production Of Hope And Peace, Taylor Johnson Guinan

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Unlike fantasy authors of previous generations like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien who wrote depictions of an afterlife that mirrored their personal faiths, modern children’s fantasy authors of the last thirty years, such as Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phillip Pullman, Rick Riordan, J.K. Rowling, Jonathan Stroud, and Garth Nix, often merely use religious concepts as a way to depict the land of the dead. In their depictions, the land of the dead is a dark, terrible, and uninviting place. However, rather than ending on that dark point, these authors transition from fear to a sense of peace, acceptance, …


Through Sauron’S Eye: Hell, Arda Unmarred, Arda Marred, And Arda Healed According To The Maia Formerly Known As Mairon, Cameron Bourquein Aug 2023

Through Sauron’S Eye: Hell, Arda Unmarred, Arda Marred, And Arda Healed According To The Maia Formerly Known As Mairon, Cameron Bourquein

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

From the beginning of Tolkien scholarship Mordor has been analyzed in light of its Hellish iconography; from the perspective of the narrative voice, what constitutes “Hell” in Middle-earth may seem clear. But what is Hell to Mordor’s chief inhabitant? What is Hell in Sauron’s Eye? The Rings of Power has brought Sauron into the spotlight by interpreting him not as depersonalized evil but as a character in his own right. Actor Charlie Vickers has shared how he developed this character for the screen, adapting characteristics taken directly from Tolkien’s own writings: Sauron’s love of order and his desire to “heal” …


The Lord Of The Rings & Dante’S Inferno: The Pilgrim’S Path—A Descent Into Hell, Hayden Bilbrey Aug 2023

The Lord Of The Rings & Dante’S Inferno: The Pilgrim’S Path—A Descent Into Hell, Hayden Bilbrey

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

This project explores the parallels between the journeys of Dante’s Pilgrim in Inferno and Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. It asserts that these two examples are a variant of the hero’s journey, more akin to a divine pilgrimage. Through this analysis, each author’s use and repurposing of mythology and monsters to fit within a Christian narrative will be closely examined. Following the Pilgrim and Frodo, this project charts their voyages through hell (or hellish landscape) and the effects that has on each of them psychologically and spiritually. In essence, this project seeks to chart both external …


Hell As Colonizing Force: Postcolonialism In World Of Warcraft’S The Maw, Heather Bass Aug 2023

Hell As Colonizing Force: Postcolonialism In World Of Warcraft’S The Maw, Heather Bass

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The lore in World of Warcraft represents various global religions along with their multiple paths to the soul’s redemption. One quest asks players to approach various divintities and retrieve their sacred objects in order to save a paladin from the disease of undeath in desolate Icecrown. Scholars have also noticed World of Warcraft’s religious capacities with one such example being comparing Thrall to Jesus. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the World of Warcraft lore has its own version of Hell–a region known as the Maw–with its own version of Satan. The Maw is one of the new territories …


Hell Is School—And Other People—And Myself (But Mostly Other People): From Inferno To The Paradiso In The Scholomance Series By Naomi Novik, Nicole Duplessis Aug 2023

Hell Is School—And Other People—And Myself (But Mostly Other People): From Inferno To The Paradiso In The Scholomance Series By Naomi Novik, Nicole Duplessis

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In her novels A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, and The Golden Enclaves, Naomi Novik constructs a world in which school is Hell and the outside world is Heaven—or so it seems from the inside. From the competition and internal hierarchies that exist between the students, to the monsters, or “mals” that stalk students and devour them for their “mana,” to the brutal lessons, harsh punishments, and presumed Darwinism of the school itself, the inside of the Scholomance seems the embodiment of Hell to the novel’s protagonist and central consciousness “El,” short for Galadriel, even as she …


Orpheus, The Harrowing Of Hell, And Mary Magdalene In The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien, Giovanni Carmine Costabile Aug 2023

Orpheus, The Harrowing Of Hell, And Mary Magdalene In The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien, Giovanni Carmine Costabile

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Tolkien has a wealth of precedents in giving his Orpheus and Eurydice, i.e., Beren and Lúthien, a happy ending. My paper proposes to survey these precedents in the Orphic tradition of Ancient Greece, in its subsequent Christening in late ancient and medieval literature, and in its connections with the Harrowing of Hell. Looking for a female Orpheus, an undiscussed parallelism is found in the figure of Mary Magdalene.


Cloaked In Shadow: The Biopolitics Of Sauron’S Middle-Hell, Journee Cotton Aug 2023

Cloaked In Shadow: The Biopolitics Of Sauron’S Middle-Hell, Journee Cotton

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

This paper considers hellish aspects of The Lord of the Rings through an environmental bioethical framework focusing on the intersection of biopolitics, race, and ecology. Key figures that shall be examined include Sauron, Saruman, Uruk-hai, and the body of Middle-earth. Sauron shall be read as a Hades figure; they share numerous connections, such as their domain is hell, influence over invisibility (Hades’ cloak and Sauron’s Ring), characterization of giver of gifts, possession of dead bodies, and connection to the earth’s fertility (or lack). Sauron’s possession over dead bodies arises from the necropolitical power he incites over bodies in his sphere …


Through The Mirror Darkly: Link’S Journey To Hell And The Inversion Of Hyrule In The Legend Of Zelda’S Underworlds, Alicia Fox-Lenz Aug 2023

Through The Mirror Darkly: Link’S Journey To Hell And The Inversion Of Hyrule In The Legend Of Zelda’S Underworlds, Alicia Fox-Lenz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

When talking about The Legend of Zelda, “underworld” can have a variety of definitions, from simple dungeons hidden beneath the ground to fully realized parallel dimensions. Since the first entry in the franchise, the subterranean dungeons have been where the player character, Link, learns new skills and battles colossal monsters, honing the player’s skills and advancing the narrative. While not as ubiquitous as dungeons, since A Link to the Past, Zelda games have often included travel to parallel worlds, whether those are parallel dimensions or alternate time periods, where the rules and mores of Hyrule have been upended creating truly …