My thesis, titled Female Agency in the Canterbury Tales and Telling Tales, compares Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth century work and Patience Agbabi’s modern adaptation in regards to their portrayal of female agency. While each work contained a whole selection of tales, I focus on four tales, which were The Miller’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale. I also include relevant historical information to support and assist in the analysis of the literary texts, and secondary sources were also used supplementarily to enhance the analysis. I argue that female agency is irrationally believed to be dangerous, and the consequent attempts at protection manifest as limitations, which are themselves damaging. The paper is divided into two main sections, which are themselves separated into three smaller categories. The first of the two main sections concerns what actions and options are available to women influenced by a distinction of gender; this section is divided into female gender ideals, marriage, and occupation. The second of the two main sections addresses the entities or individuals enacting the limitations upon female agency, and its three subsections are society, men, and women. I ultimately conclude that not only is it irrational to believe that female agency is dangerous, but also that making gender-based judgment on the capacity of a group of people or an individual is inherently flawed.

Jane Austen’s depictions of musical performers and listeners in her novels suggest her belief that musical performances should strengthen intimacy between people, both between listeners and performers as well as among listeners. Austen commends music for its power to increase intimacy through honest expressions of taste, which more often arise in private performances, but she warns against its power to decrease intimacy through pretentious displays of taste, which more often arise in public performances. Austen’s belief that music allows for this healthy intimacy indicates that music has great significance in society. Austen suggests that music has a greater importance to everyday life than many may originally suppose, as it is a universal connection between people. Ultimately, Jane Austen’s perspective of music’s great power both to expose pretentiousness and to cultivate intimacy should lead all of her readers to recognize and respect music’s true power and to consider seriously the importance and role of music in their own lives.

Video games are packed full of endless potential. They are the telling of impossible narratives with something for every type of person. So then why has the industry historically been one of the worst for representations of race and gender? In this thesis, I define "good" media representation and engage in the analysis of both Overwatch (2016) and Detroit Become Human (2018) to observe the ways these two video games, which so outwardly market their diversity, have failed marginalized groups. Accompanying the research paper is a video game poster representing a woman of color designed by the author which is meant to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.