Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Heroine's Journey: Together We Rise A Comparative Analysis Of The Forgotten Beasts Of Eld And When Women Were Dragons, Kirsten Mann

English

This thesis examines isolation, solitude, and the search for community in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (1974) by Patricia A. McKillip and When Women Were Dragons (2022) by Kelly Barnhill through the lens of Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey (1990). While Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) has long shaped critical understandings of narrative transformation, its masculine focus leaves the solitary heroine’s experience underexplored. Murdock’s framework reframes the journey as one of healing the split between the masculine and feminine within both the individual and the culture.

Sybel and Alex, the heroines of these two novels, begin in …

Re-Membering Self, Rewriting Histories, Reclaiming Futures: Chicanafuturist Agency In V. Castro's The Haunting Of Alejandra, Julia Reade

Regeneración: A Xicanacimiento Studies Journal

Re-membering Self, Rewriting Histories, Reclaiming Futures: Chicanafuturist Agency in V. Castro's The Haunting of Alejandra by Julia Reade.

From Sensibility To Critical Engagement: Sympathy, Animality, And Subjecthood In Wollstonecraft’S Maria And Vindication, Yingnan Shang

Comparative Woman

This paper examines Mary Wollstonecraft’s strategic use of sentimental animal tropes alongside rationalist critique in Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), arguing that she mobilizes sensibility not as an end in itself, but as a pedagogical instrument within a broader project of aesthetic education—one intended to move readers from affective sympathy toward political and philosophical judgment. Focusing in particular on animal metaphors—especially in the character of Jemima, who repeatedly figures herself as a domesticated and brutalized creature—I trace how Wollstonecraft employs tropes of animality to illuminate the processes by which …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Reading Romance As An Act Of Resistance, Amy K. Krug

English Faculty Publications

A podcast discussion about how popular romance represents many different populations, including people of color, people with disabilities, and people who are LGBTQ+. Reading these romances with diverse characters can be a powerful mode of resistance against current anti-diversity efforts becoming more prevalent in society.

Listen to the episode. The transcript is available for download.

From Fort To Prison: The Production Of Iloilo City, Ram Paulo A. Anayan

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

The foundation of colonial cities in the Philippines rests on violence. The Spanish policies of the reducción forced the natives to settle in pueblos where colonial power is ensured. The resistance of some natives brought about the divide between tagabayan (town dweller) and tagabundok (mountain dweller)—respective connotations of civilization and savagery (Lumbera and Lumbera, 36). This paper examines how this centripetal-centrifugal force of simultaneous identity-production and displacement is echoed in the metonymy of the fort on which the origins of Iloilo City stand. I navigate how this movement manifests in the consciousness of the city across historical periods represented by …

"It Is Always Too Late For Truth:" Surveillance And Masculinity In "Wide Sargasso Sea", Kaz S. Schofield

2025 Fall Honors Capstones Projects - Archive

Significant analysis has been done on Jean Rhys’ 1961 novel Wide Sargasso Sea examining gender in relation to the women in the novel, but very little analysis has been conducted on the men. Using the work of Simone Browne, who has theorized how racial categories are maintained through surveillance, I examine how three men in the novel: a white colonist and two mixed race colonial subjects are restricted or otherwise kept docile through their differing masculinity. I argue that it is not only the women in the novel who are oppressed or otherwise disenfranchised by their race and gender, but …

Jute Mill Songs: Mary Brooksbank And Industrial Tradition In A Dying Industry, Erin Farley

Studies in Scottish Literature

This article outlines some key elements of Dundee’s industrial literary tradition, primarily associated with the city’s jute industry, as expressed in the songs and poems of Mary Brooksbank (1897-1978). It also explores ways in which writers working from the 1980s onwards have used the memory of the jute industry, Brooksbank herself, and associated verse traditions to imagine place and work in post-industrial Dundee.

‘And On One Toils, Into The Hill’: Working And Walking In Nan Shepherd’S North East, Sarah Leith

Studies in Scottish Literature

This article considers the duality of working and walking in Nan Shepherd’s writings about the North East of Scotland. Exploring Shepherd’s works from the perspectives of social and intellectual history, it considers the ways in which she represented both working and walking as labour during the first half of Scotland’s twentieth century.

New Suns: Fantasy And Science Fiction For A Better World, Jennifer Rosenstein

Social Justice Week

This event is inspired by the Octavia Butler quote "There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns." We will explore examples of fantasy and science fiction from the library collection that imagine worlds that are more just and varied. To work for a more just world we need to be able to imagine it. We will briefly present each book and explain how the world of the books presents a radical reimagining of some aspect of society.

Make It Pink: Superman, Pink Kryptonite, And Fandom, Tom Ue, Kristofer Starzomski-Wilson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores several representations of pink kryptonite. In Doug Murphy’s animated short film True Colors (2017), Superman (Jason J. Lewis) transforms into a woman when he’s exposed to this substance. This short, as we have shown elsewhere (2025), offers a useful lens for examining the perpetuation and the critique of gender stereotypes in superhero media: Superman may be equally capable regardless of his sex, but the film pokes fun at, rather than celebrates, his transformation. Pink kryptonite rarely appears in the canon. A single panel in Supergirl (2003) has received perhaps the most sustained attention. Tom Ue’s archival work …

Love Amid The Rage: Feminist Affect In Women's Life-Writing, Genesis Siverio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this thesis is to show the ways women’s emotions or affect, particularly rage and love, are described by women writers in their most intimate stories. I discuss the way emotion has been demeaned, and how feminist scholars have instead viewed the body as a place of insight, reclaiming a knowledge from the senses. In the midst of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, women give voice to their affectual experiences and cultivate the feelings they have so often been denied. Focusing on the particular ways women’s anger manifests in their lives and in their bodies, I zoom in on …

Problematic Ideas For A Problematic Group: Untangling Common Depictions Of Transgender Characters In Young Adult Literature, Asiyah Noujdi

Summer Research Showcase

The need and desire for diverse perspectives within young adult (YA) literature led to a boom in the amount of stories featuring trans people at the start of the 21st century and has continued to this day. However these perspectives have not all been positive with earlier books written featuring viewpoints that would be seen by a trans individual as not reflective of their lived experiences. This project aims to compare the depictions of trans people in trans YA from the start of the 21st century up to the present day. The perspectives used within this project will be from …

“Of Their Women We Hear Less”: Pride And Prejudice In The Tale Of ‘Aldarion And Erendis.’, Sara Brown

Journal of Tolkien Research

In discussing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age “Tale of the Mariner’s Wife,” past scholars have used descriptors such as ‘resentful’, ‘strong-willed’, ‘unhappy’ – even ‘misandrist’. There can be no doubt that this is a story of a deeply unhappy marriage between two people with irreconcilable differences, to use the modern parlance of the divorce courts, but it would also be true to say that Erendis seems to come out of the narrative with a more sullied reputation than her husband. In fact, Aldarion appears to have everything he could have wanted, such as his freedom to sail and an heir for …

On The Sisterhood: How A Network Of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture, Danica Savonick

Criticism

The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture by Courtney Thorsson. Columbia University Press, 2023. Pp. 296. $28.95 hardback, $19.00 paperback.