Matching Items (5)
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- All Subjects: Folklore
- All Subjects: Stories
- Creators: Ellis, Lawrence
- Creators: Horan, Elizabeth
Description
This project examines the intersections between sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration from the point of view of folklore and immigration studies using Sui Sin Far's short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Karen Tei Yamashita's novel Tropic of Orange. Using the lenses of folklore theory and cross-dressing highlights aspects of immigration (and its intersection with gender and race) that are otherwise missed; it is necessary to examine the evolving ways in which fictionalized cross-dressers re-craft and occupy the spaces from which they are barred in order to address and redress questions of immigration today. Incorporating anthropology, history, folkloristics, and gender studies, this project shows that historical forms of cross-dressing and immigration lead to the development of unstable identities and pressures to "re-dress" and return to one's original space. More recent studies about gender, however, reveal a historical change in how cross-dressers negotiate their identities and the space(s) they inhabit. Therefore, it is crucial to inspect cross-dressing and immigration as both historical and contemporary phenomena. While Mrs. Spring Fragrance (published in 1912) represents more conventional ideas of cross-dressing and immigration, Tropic of Orange (published in 1997) offers alternative ways to navigate borders, immigration, and identity by using these concepts more playfully and self-consciously. Although sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration are not the same in every case, there are enough similarities between the two to warrant investigating whether some of the solutions reached by modern cross-dressers and gender-ambiguous people might not also help un/documented immigrants to re-negotiate their status, identities, and spaces in the midst of an unstable and at times hostile environment. In fact, an examination of such intersections can address and redress immigration by changing the perceptions of how, and the contexts in which, people view immigration and borders. Thus, this project contends that it is the combination of folkloristics, gender and immigration studies, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and Tropic of Orange together that precipitates such a reading.
ContributorsZheng, Ding Ding (Author) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Horan, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Both "After Annie" and "When It All Happens, The End, And She's in Her Forties" focus on evolving familial relationships characterized by both love and loss. Though told in different styles, different voices, different tenses, both stories triumph the power of memory in relation to love while simultaneously emphasizing the trauma and long-lasting effects of loss. With one, through the relationship between grandfather and granddaughter and the other, through a daughter's loss of her mother, both stories converge at the intersection of duty and the need for flight (and perhaps self preservation). "After Annie" and "When It All Happens, The End, And She's in Her Forties" speak to the careful ghosts of memory, which are sometimes, thankfully, even stronger than the pull of what's been left in their absence.
ContributorsArregoces, Christina Marie (Author) / McNally, T. M. (Thesis director) / Ellis, Lawrence (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Once upon a time and in a land that is not quite here, a girl and her brother are left in the woods on the cusp of winter and lose their way home. They find, instead, a little house that smells of ginger and cinnamon and the ancient, bent woman who presides over it and calls herself Oma Yaga. Three tasks she sets before the girl, with the promise of food as her reward. She accepts, not knowing that this deep, the woods are a strange and hungry place: you do not make it out the same as when you entered, if you make it out at all.
You have heard this story before, you think, or one like it—listen again. It is never the same twice.
You have heard this story before, you think, or one like it—listen again. It is never the same twice.
ContributorsBlitch, Savannah Morgan (Author) / Ellis, Lawrence (Thesis director) / Cruser, Laura (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Nohokáá Dine’é Diyinii’s (Empowered Earth Surface People, Diné People) story begins with the origin of the cosmos as detailed in Diné emergence narratives, and continues in Diné ceremonial songs, film, and poetry. Diné people’s emergence narratives describe how life moved through the four worlds and how Changing Woman brought Diné people into existence. In the present, Diné people often tell stories against violent colonial domination that aims to unsettle the hope and safety that undergirds their life and prosperity. Through their stories, Diné people bring their past and present together to make futures where Diné life can flourish. Each dissertation chapter explores the contours of storytelling as imagination, power, and future-making through selected Diné stories. Chapter 1 draws from the story of Gus Bighorse as set forth in his as-told-to autobiography (1990). The chapter describes how this Diné warrior, who survived the 1860s forced removal of Diné people, spoke from the heart to tell of a future beyond the US Cavalry’s violence. Such future-focused storying illustrates how Diné people apply elements of Sa’ah’ Naghai Bike’ Hózhǫ (SNBH) in the present to encourage the people to live. SNBH is a philosophy, worldview, and organizing principle for the underlying power through and by which Diné people imagine, create, remake, and renew our reality to realize hózhǫ, beauty. Chapter 2 examines the critical discourse within and around the 2014 Navajo election language fluency controversy that led to Christopher L. Clark Deschene’s removal from the general election ballot. Chapter 3 analyzes the hooghan and the Treaty of 1868 to show how construction in the United States always has sustained and marked the permanence of settler colonialism as white colonizers usurped Diné people’s lands and destroyed their homes. Chapter 4 employs the concept of feminist rehearsal to map the production of life and death in the border town of Gallup. This chapter interweaves the author’s family’s border town experience, the Nááhwíiłbįįhí Story, and Sydney Freeland’s feature film Drunktown’s Finest (2014). Chapter 5, an examination of Diné narratives of catastrophe and emergence, establishes a Diné-based approach to the threat of removal that climate change imposes.
ContributorsClark, Jerome (Author) / Horan, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / Fonseca-Chávez, Vaness (Committee member) / Yazzie, Melanie K. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
In my thesis paper, I examine the gothic elements found in classical gothic fairy tales from European and Japanese tradition, particularly those works by the Brothers Grimm and Yei Theodora Ozaki. By examining the principle gothic elements that are unique to both stories, and further analyzing the commonalities of story, plot, and other major tropes, a better understanding of the message meant to be imparted and other cultural nuances can be ascertained. Gothic literature creates an atmosphere of gloom and suspense, toying with concepts of dread and darkness by employing Gothic elements such as shadows, the supernatural, sinister buildings, and strong-willed villains, all of which affect the rational mind in an irrational way. Fairytales freely use such tropes to their advantage, playing with the many fears of children, while simultaneously painting an idealistic fantasy world. The degree of usage and the application of gothic elements is closely examined in the Grimm works, "Hansel and Gretel," and "The Robber Bridegroom," as well as the Japanese tales, "The Goblin of Adachigahra,""Kintaro the Golden Boy" and "The Monkey and the Crab." These stories have been chosen due for their usage of animal tricksters, themes of control, and aspects of isolation, supernatural entities, and substantial gothic imagery. The gothic elements of death, sinister older women, the supernatural, fears of abandonment, and cunning animals are akin to both Western and Eastern tales, while the concept of gothic setting and the type of monsters prepared to feast on men is significantly different for both cultures, similar lessons are intended to be gleaned by children from these tales, with the intention of generally producing positive results \u2014 while the means differ, the message is strikingly similar, yet there remain cultural differences in terms of central themes and character traits.The effect of re-introducing the darker, gothic elements of traditional fairy tales into modern literature and retellings of the original narratives has been profound.Today, whether it has been at the bequest of the public or simply a new-age movement by modern cinema audience for the "gritty and realistic," fairy tales are returning to their former gothic forms. "Snow White and The Huntsman" is one example of a film which has gone this route, opting for a more gothic, classic telling rather than the chip, cheery, rosy cheeked Disney versions. There is a tendency for most media nowadays to be far less censored and fantastical, aiming for a more realistic, grittier approach \u2014 this bleeds into film and literature likewise, and thus children are impacted by this shift as well. Children seem to be able to handle more, perhaps desensitized at younger and younger ages by the products of our widely consumerist society, or perhaps due to parents raising their children in such a way so that the darkness that tinges these tales doesn't disturb and derail but rather, emphasizes their meaning of teaching certain lessons. Tales such as these are still valuable, and will continue to be so long as we seek a reality greater than our own, where the evil of the world is wiped away, and we all live happily ever after.
ContributorsMoschonas, Jerasimos Theodore (Author) / Ellis, Lawrence (Thesis director) / Hoyt, Heather (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05