Modern Literature Commons^™

When Bird And Fish Fall In Love, Matthew C. Mackey

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A work of poetry that offers a new method of poetics. By examining translation as a means of understanding relationships, this work offers a nuanced manner for the writing and experience of poetry. When Bird and Fish Fall in Love is a close examination of language, relationships, translation, and the intimacy of conflation.

Frankenstein: A Seminal Work Of Modern Literature, Traci K. Damron

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Although Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818, is assigned to the Romantic period of literature, it surpasses her contemporaries by its complexity of themes, philosophies, and social commentary embedded deep within. This paper contends that the novel should be considered one of the seminal works of modernity by closely examining the following elements of Modern literature as they apply to Frankenstein: the beginnings of speculative fiction found within the novel, science vs. religion, dark aspects of the psyche, disenchantment with the world, and the isolation/emptiness of the individual. Additionally, Mary Shelley’s own life and the influences …

Journeys To Others And Lessons Of Self: Carlos Castaneda In Camposcape, Ageeth Sluis

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this article examines the importance of place and gender within constructions of race politics in Carlos Castaneda’s series on shamanism. Championing a “separate reality” predicated on an indigenous worldview, Castaneda’s lessons invited transnational middle-class youth to "journey" alongside him to camposcape—an anachronistic and idealized countryside—as a means to escape the bourgeois values of their homelands and find spiritual fulfillment in a timeless and "authentic" Mexico. Castaneda’s work proposed new viable spaces of difference in Mexico, yet inscribed these spaces with a masculinist discourse that served to neutralize the gender trouble within the counterculture …

Contextos Y Prácticas En Las Humanidades Digitales, Joseba Moreno

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

La aplicación de la tecnología a los trabajos enmarcados en el campo de las humanidades y la creación de un nuevo conjunto de prácticas denominado humanidades digitales, es el tema principal de este trabajo, que pretende servir de introducción a algunas de las prácticas y metodologías más recientes en el ámbito académico.

Pre-Imposition Vs. In Situ Negotiation Of Group And Individual Identities: Spanish And English In Us Service Encounters, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper examines the supposed opposition between essentialist or positivist approaches to identity—which categorize group and individual members by a priori properties of sex, race, ethnicity, and native speakerhood—and constructionism, which views such properties as relational and negotiable. Even when categories such as sex, race, ethnicity, and native speakerhood are considered to have been imposed a priori, there nonetheless persists a general recognition that these are at least to some extent social constructs—if not the categories themselves, the ideas we have about them. Using data from previous empirical work in Spanish and English code-choice in US service encounters, this paper …

Designing Thematic Instruction With Authentic Resources: Alienation And Assimilation, Davara Potel, Brian G. Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

No abstract provided.

Ap French: Unpacking The Scoring Guidelines For Interpersonal Tasks, Davara Potel, Brian G. Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

No abstract provided.

The Ecological Dimension Of Natalia Toledo Paz’S Poetry, Ida Day

Modern Languages Faculty Research

This essay explores the position and contribution of Natalia Toledo Paz, one of the most recognized contemporary poets in the native languages of Mexico, to the field of environmental ethics in local and global contexts. I focus on her bilingual works, written in Spanish and Zapotec, Ca gunaa gubidxa, ca gunaa guiiba’risaca/Mujeres de sol, mujeres de oro (2002) and Guie’yaase’/Olivo negro (2005), which revive the traditions, the poet’s memories, the nature, and the spirituality of her native Juchitán. Her focus on the Juchitec women have extended and deepened the mission of contemporary indigenous writers by incorporating the concerns of Latin …

Vox Online Web Site Development, Deborah Poe

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

Pathos, Fall 2012, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Deena Anreise

Frédérique Aït-Touati, Fictions Of The Cosmos: Science And Literature In The Seventeenth Century, Anthony J. Desantis

Literatures and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications

Oxford French Literature Professor Frédérique Aït-Touati’s book Fictions of the Cosmos: Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century is packed full of information—perhaps too packed with information—about all sorts of interesting subjects relating to the interplay of science and literature in the seventeenth century. The book explores literary aspects of science writing, the history of astronomy and optics, and the history of the relationship between fiction and knowledge, especially in the early modern period. Her overall aim in this exploration is to instruct us on the value of fiction in science and the value of science in fiction. To accomplish …

Twentieth-Century Catalogs: The Poetics Of Listing, Enumeration, And Copiousness In Joyce, Schuyler, Mccourt, Pynchon, And Perec, Timothy Krause

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the occurrence of catalogs and lists in the literary works of several twentieth-century authors, including James Joyce, poet James Schuyler, novelist and cultural historian James McCourt, the postmodern fabulist Thomas Pynchon, and the French experimental prose author Georges Perec. The dissertation seeks to trace how each author makes use of catalogs in his work, how catalogs form a central part of his style and subject matter, and how his use of catalogs can be read against the biographical, historical, and social contexts surrounding his life and work. A theoretical introduction situates my work among theorists of epistemology, …

Sex In Rotrou’S Theater: Performance And Disorder, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Sexual desire is ubiquitous in all theater. It follows that virtually all theatrical traditions struggle with the issue of the representation of that desire onstage. The French stage of the 1630s and Jean Rotrou's theater of that period in particular constitute an unusual moment of relative freedom before the imposition of the bienséances banished sexual activity from the stage. What I propose is a theatrical reading of sex in Rotrou's plays, a tripartite examination of dramatic strategy: how Rotrou foregrounds the scandalous by direct depiction of sexuality onstage; how at other moments he moves to attenuate its prurient force by …

Reading Ineffability And Realizing Tragedy In Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden, Michael E. Gray

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Victory Garden, Stuart Moulthrop’s 1991 classic hyperfiction, presents a nonlinear story of U. S. home front involvement in the First Gulf War in a way that facilitates confusion and mimics a "fog of war" sort of (un)awareness. Using Storyspace to build his complex narrative, Moulthrop incorporates poetry, fiction, historical references, and low-tech graphic novel type elements. Among the graphic components are all-black and all-white screens that function as variables. Overtly, these screens speak of closure and signify unconsciousness; however, their nonverbal role may also be linked to the ineffability trope as used by Dante Alighieri and re-interpreted by contemporary …

Mind The Gap: An Analysis Of The Function Of Love In The Works Of Tom Stoppard And C.S. Lewis., Jacqueline C. Lawler

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Writers C.S. Lewis and Tom Stoppard, though philosophically different, both write about love that embodies the natural law. The natural law can be defined as law that is inherent in man and can be discerned by reason rather than by revelation. Both writers use their observational style in order to reason their way to nearly identical laws of love. Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, Arcadia, Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Real Thing will be analyzed using the framework of C.S. Lewis’s book, The Four Loves.

Ein Kurzer Brief Humboldts An Den Hofmarschall, Reinhard Andress

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The collections of the Lilly Library at Indiana University contain a short, hitherto unpublished letter written by Alexander von Humboldt to a Lord Chamberlain of the Prussian Court. The letter appears here for the first time with some explanations regarding its historical context.

The Journey Narrative: The Trope Of Women's Mobility And Travel In Contemporary Arab Women's Literary Narratives, Banan Al-Daraiseh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the trope of women's journey and the various kinds of movement and travel it includes employed and represented by three contemporary Arab women literary writers, Ghada Samman, Ahdaf Soueif, and Leila Aboulela in their literary narratives as well as travelogue in the case of Samman. The primary texts analyzed in this study are Samman's Beirut 75 and The Body Is a Traveling Suitcase, Soueif's In the Eye of the Sun, and Aboulela's The Translator and Minaret. These texts demonstrate how the journey trope becomes a fresh narrative strategy used by Arab women writers that …

Science Fiction And Fantasy: The Cosmic Players, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

This presentation gives an overview of science fiction and fantasy, including its origins, the prominent writers in each era, and its many subgenres and variations.

Review Of Herzog, Hillary Hope, Vienna Is Different: Jewish Writers In Austria From The Fin De Siècle To The Present, Sarah S. Painitz

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

A review essay of Hillary Hope Herzog. Vienna Is Different: Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin de Siècle to the Present. Austrian and Habsburg Studies Series. New York: Berghahn Books, 2011. 308 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-85745-181-1, by Sarah S. Painitz published online on H-Net.

Rocky Mountain Refuge: Constructing "Colorado" In Science Fiction, Carl Abbott

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Colorado has long functioned in American culture as the epitome of the American West, identified both as a safe refuge and as a place for starting over. This essay examines the ways in which writers of speculative fiction have drawn on Colorado's historically constructed identity as the setting for stories of refuge and retreat. The discussion examines parallels in the use of the Colorado setting by sf writers Robert A. Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Leigh Brackett, and Ursula K. LeGuin, by political novelist Ayn Rand, and by mainstream thriller writers Stephen King and Justin Cronin. The …

Book Review - The Agony Of Survival: A Novel, Harikleia Sirmans

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

"Just A Fool's Hope": J.R.R. Tolkien's Eucatastrophe As The Paradigm Of Christian Hope, Margaret A. Bush

Senior Honors Theses

In his essay titled “On Fairy-Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien uses the term “eucatastrophe” to describe the unexpected, fortunate turn of events for the protagonist in a fantasy story. Tolkien applies the word beyond its literary context to signify the Christian’s experience of joy, especially resulting from the Incarnation and Resurrection. Such an explicit link between fiction and theology seems absent from his more well-known work, The Lord of the Rings. Yet both Tolkien himself and critics of his writing have labeled the novel a modern-day classic of Christian literature. This thesis will defend the Christian label of The Lord of …

The Exchange: A Novella, Katie Knecht

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Grace Schmeidler is dealing with her recently broken engagement, which is horrible enough, what with her perfect wedding plans gone to waste. If she think nothing could be worse than the embarrassment she feels now, she is wrong. Her best friend, Audrey, shows up to deliver the only news that could have made her desire to be invisible even stronger; her ex-fiancé married someone else using all of Grace’s wedding arrangements. As if this weren’t enough, Grace’s mother calls with equally unsettling news. Work no longer provides Grace with an escape, and she is forced to deal with life’s circumstances …

Erste Briefe / First Letters Aus Dem Exil 1945-1950. (Un)Mögliche Gespräche. Fallbeispiele Des Literarischen Und Künstlerischen Exils, Reinhard Andress

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Zunächst eine Begriffsklärung durch die Herausgeber: „Als Erste Briefe werden hier jene Korrespondenzen verstanden und in den Blick genommen, die ab 1945–1946 zwischen Exilanten und im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland bzw. Österreich verbliebenen Freunden oder Kollegen und Kolleginnen die Wiederaufnahme eines Gesprächs markieren“ (9). Dabei geht die Forschung diesbezüglich auf David Kettler zurück, der sich schon seit Jahren mit Grundfragen des Exils aus interdisziplinärer und interkultureller Sicht beschäftigt. Im vorliegenden Band werden die ersten Briefe von solchen schreibenden Exilanten wie Hermann Kesten, Oskar Maria Graf, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Karl Otten, Friedrich Torberg, Robert Neumann, Johannes R. Becher, Annemarie Selinko, Heinrich Eduard …

House Of Leaves: The End Of Postmodernism, Joseph B. Noah

English Theses

Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut 2000 novel House of Leaves is written in part as an essay titled The Navidson Record by Zampanò. Within this essay, Zampanò includes footnotes and citations to many works both real and fictional. Through investigating some of his footnotes and allusions in The Navidson Record, certain connections to the postmodern movement may be drawn. By interpreting Zampanò’s allusions to Freud, Derrida, and Einstein, elements from Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late-Capitalism change the reception of Danielewski’s novel. Thorough investigation of a few allusions within the novel House of Leaves reveal many foundations …

Constructing Depth Through Jane: Contemporary Interactions Between Austen And Interiority, Nicole Catherine Peters

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The world is saturated with Jane Austen. She is in the movies, in bookstores, and in college courses. For years “lowbrow” and “highbrow” readers have fought over the “proper” way to read her work. Ian Watt, a popular literary critic, argued that Austen’s value resides in her use of interiority. For years, interiority was held as the measure of a novel’s worth or depth. Deidre Lynch exposed this interiority Watt spoke of as a cultural taste—one which Austen and Watt emerged from and helped to create.

In this project, I look at two contemporary manifestations of Austen—one that is considered …

Love Is Just A Word For The Last Body I'D Like To Keep Vigil Over, Robert Jagger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Love is Just a Word for the Last Body I'd Like to Keep Vigil Over is a collection of poetry that was composed during my time spent at UNLV. Comprised mostly of prose poems, it was heavily influenced by the works of Richard Hugo, Robert Coover, Joshua Marie Wilkinson and several French poets who are often categorized as being members of either the Symbolist or Decadent movement. At its best, the collection attempts to invoke a sense of Joseph Cornell's boxes--odd juxtapositions of everyday items and language that create new and uncertain circumstances. Unlike Cornell's boxes, however, the poems aren't …

Dickensian Characters In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Alison Mckeever

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

J.K. Rowling includes many Dickensian-esque characters in her Harry Potter series. This thesis compares the characters seen in Rowling's series with many of Charles Dickens's characters, specifically those seen in David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Bleak House. Rowling's work is similar to Dickens's novels in many ways. The most interesting connection between the two is how they treat the characters on the periphery of the societies they have created, most notably their orphans, servants, and women.

Orphans are their most obvious comparison. Each author based their texts on the story of an orphan. However, there is more to their orphan …

Whores & More: Selected Stories By Hernán Migoya, Nikki Noreen Settelmeyer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a collection of short stories written by Hernán Migoya from the books, Todas putas and Putas es poco. The stories have been translated from the original Spanish to English. The selected stories demonstrate the humor, style, and neurosis typical of Migoya's writing.

Power And Relationships In The Plays Of Neil Labute: Directing And Performing In Some Girl(S), Mary Peyton Griffith

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the major works of Neil LaBute's career as a playwright and screenwriter, including the criticism he has received on theatrical and literary levels. The themes most prevalent in the thesis are the use of power and manipulation in the relationships between LaBute's characters and the ongoing maturation of his characters that coincides with the maturation of his work. The second section of the thesis follows the production, directing, and acting in LaBute's play Some Girl(s).