Matching Items (28)
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- All Subjects: English
- All Subjects: art
- Creators: Department of English
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Status: Published
Description
In this essay, I set out to explore and analyze how Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the character of Eleanor Vance in particular, disrupts and redefines the traditional conventions of the Female Gothic within the context of the 20th century. I utilize Tania Modleski's gendering of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in her exploration of the ‘Female Uncanny,’ arguing that the source of the Uncanny in the Female Gothic can be found in the "fear of being lost in the mother." I argue that Jackson's complex personal life, including her fraught relationship with her mother and her difficult marriage with literary critic Edgar Hyman, color her fiction and the primary motivations of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance. I also outline the traditional structure of the Gothic novel and the heroine's journey. With the necessary context provided, I then explain how Eleanor Vance’s character rejects these Gothic traditions and ushers in a new era of Female Gothic fiction.
ContributorsAlcantar, Sarah (Author) / Fette, Donald (Thesis director) / Zarka, Emily (Committee member) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
This thesis examines contemporary cinematic adaptations of the Ovidian Pygmalion story. The films Blade Runner (1981), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Ruby Sparks (2012), and Her (2013) are analyzed. This thesis seeks to understand why this particular myth is so resonant in today's popular culture and what this relevance reveals about modern society. The roles of female subjugation, sexualization, and relationship with technology will be major areas of concern. Research includes film criticism, Ovidian scholarship, and new advances in computer technology.
ContributorsStory, Sara Katherine (Author) / Corse, Taylor (Thesis director) / Ellis, Lawrence (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
DescriptionAn artistic film about a girl piecing together memories in search of meaning and hope.
ContributorsFarina, Chiara Rosa (Author) / Chiara, Farina (Thesis director) / Janaki, Cedanna (Committee member) / Scott, Jason (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
In the future a Community struggles for survival on an uninhabitable Earth. A small faction of rebels, called Villains, put the lives of the entire Community at risk as they fight for domination of their home. Heroes and their Sidekicks rise up from the population to fight the Villains and win back their world. As they complete their training and begin to enter the world of Heroes and Villains, Alyssa begins to struggle with her identity as a Sidekick, her new role in the Community, and whether she can really preserve all that matters most to her. This excerpt from the larger novel, Sidekick, tells the story of Alyssa's struggles to remain true to herself, and her best friend Jeremy, all the while being called to serve the Community and eradicate the threat the Villains pose to her way of life. I conceived Sidekick as a work of speculative fiction because I believe the genre is one of the most powerful tools for education in the present time. By freeing one's mind to wonder, the dull becomes an exciting thought experiment that can (and does) influence how individuals see their world. Reading pieces like Ender's Game and 1984 I have found my ways of thinking challenged and stretched, and ideas from these works of fiction have stuck with and changed me. One major goal of the work was identifying and integrating major academic and life lessons I have learned into the overall work, providing it an intellectual and emotional grounding in reality. Having its foundations in the real world, the setting of Sidekick becomes a stage for a fantastical story as well as the reader's own imagination and introspection.
ContributorsWarren, Taylor Ann (Author) / Finn, Ed (Thesis director) / Bell, Matt (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
"The Problem of Hope: Literary Tragedy in Mid-Twentieth Century American Fiction" examines Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar through the lens of tragedy. This thesis delves into how conflicts between internal and external identities can create a tragic individual, what kinds of success count toward achievement of the "American Dream," and whether the tragic "common man" is the socially normative one or the socially disenfranchised one. It raises a three-dimensional theoretical approach to American tragedy and, most importantly, considers the significance of tragic hope for American literature. This paper questions the construction of American identities across class, race, and gender according to social scripts. It seeks to uncover what forces these scripts exert on American cultural myths and rereads those myths through tragedy to explore Miller's idea of a noble common man. By moving from Miller to Ellison to Plath, this thesis traces the undercurrents of tragedy through some of the most identity-focused novels of mid-twentieth century American fiction to see how the overarching American narrative changed from 1940 to 1969 as the US underwent significant social changes domestically and image changes abroad. Ultimately, this paper concludes that tragedy in mid-twentieth century American fiction points toward a new idea of American success as a success that occurs beyond social scripts.
ContributorsMedeiros, Amy Marie (Author) / Holbo, Christine (Thesis director) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This paper explores how marginalist economics defines and inevitably constrains Victorian sensation fiction's content and composition. I argue that economic intuition implies that sensationalist heroes and antagonists, writers and readers all pursued a fundamental, "rational" aim: the attainment of pleasure. So although "sensationalism" took on connotations of moral impropriety in the Victorian age, sensation fiction primarily involves experiences of pain on the page that excite the reader's pleasure. As such, sensationalism as a whole can be seen as a conformist product, one which mirrors the effects of all commodities on the market, rather than as a rebellious one. Indeed, contrary to modern and contemporary critics' assumptions, sensation fiction may not be as scandalous as it seems.
ContributorsFischer, Brett Andrew (Author) / Bivona, Daniel (Thesis director) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
This project focuses on techniques contemporary American poets use in their work. Ten different poetry collections are analyzed for dominant writing styles and techniques, which I then apply to my own poems, concentrating on modeling that particular poet. I then reflect on those poems through an evaluation of my writing process, how those techniques were implemented, and how they affected the poem. In addition to these reviews and reflections, I also wrote three articles about the literary community and what I've learned from my interactions in that community. All these materials are organized into a website, which shows the connections between the different writings via links and menus. Creating this website brings all the materials together to demonstrate my growth as a poet, writer, and designer. This heavy focus on poetry and analysis has helped sharpen my critical thinking skills and has better prepared me for a career in design and journalism.
ContributorsHansen, Elizabeth Sarah (Author) / Murphy, Patricia (Thesis director) / Savard, Jeannine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This honors thesis features a translation of Andrés Bello’s “Historia físicia y política de Chile por Claudio Gay” that had never before been reproduced in English, as well as a discussion of translation theories and a biographical sketch of Andrés Bello, a prolific Latin American author and philosopher. The goals of this thesis include promoting Latin American literature, bringing awareness to Bello’s contributions to Chile’s history, and promoting translation as a creative form of education.
ContributorsDominick, Alicia Lorae (Author) / Humphrey, Ted (Thesis director) / Martinez, Maria Teresa (Committee member) / Burke, Janet (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
DescriptionDiscusses the reading experience and writing strategies in relation to four prominent novels from the genre
ContributorsO'Malley, Erik Andrew (Author) / Cook, Paul (Thesis director) / Mallot, Edward (Committee member) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-05
ContributorsPanosian, N. Zari (Author) / Ison, Tara (Thesis director) / Fortunato, Joe (Committee member) / Talerico, Daniela (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-05