Archives - Honors Thesis Abstracts

Elizabeth Allagair's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Ernest Morrell & Michael Macaluso

From Students to Educators: How African American Male Teachers' Experiences Inform Classroom Practices

Within the United States, African American males comprise just two percent of our country’s educators, and this lack of representation of Black males within the field of education has drastic impacts on both students, especially young Black male students, and educators. This study orients itself around this two percent statistic and works within a mirrors and windows framework to emphasize the ways through which representation is important in both classroom content and in those who stand at the front of classrooms.

For this study, data was collected primarily through interviews conducted with current Black male educators, and the literature previously produced by scholars guided the interview questions to focus on the following topics: current Black male educators’ experiences as students, including their relationships with teachers and their connections or lack thereof with classroom content, their current experiences as educators, including the structural constraints they experience due to their identities, and their persistent hopes for the future of our country’s education system for both students and educators.

A primary aim of the conversations with these educators was to better understand the lived experiences of Black males in the field of education and to amplify those experiences. Although this study did not solve the lack of diversity, specifically that of Black males within education, it emphasizes the significance of entering into dialogue with those who have been historically silenced.

Olivia Barnard's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Susannah Monta

Ada Lovelace meets Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: Searching for Knowledge as Iteration

The play Arcadia, written in 1993 by Tom Stoppard, stands out in modern drama as highly scientific through the influence of chaos theory, a mathematical theory that describes unpredictable determinism and is largely rooted in the process of iteration. The play features characters that search for knowledge in a variety of ways, so many scholars attempt to analyze how chaos theory reveals itself in the play and how that relates to epistemology, or the study of knowledge. In this thesis, I aim to provide a new angle from which to understand this relationship. I claim that the interest Stoppard portrays in mathematical iteration can be paralleled by a humanistic reading of iteration in the characters’ searches for knowledge. In order to build this model of humanistic iteration, I myself perform an iterative search for knowledge about Arcadia, starting with my own knowledge of English and mathematics and honing my ideas through interactions with others. This thesis falls into three main parts. The first two sections lay the framework for the concept of humanistic iteration, with the first setting foundations and the second drawing on original archival research through the mathematical work and letters of Ada Lovelace, who discovered iteration in the early 1800s. The third and largest section tests this model in the characters of Arcadia, where Stoppard refines and complicates through his characters’ contrasting searches and their exchanges of knowledge in community. I ultimately assert that Stoppard puts forth humanistic iteration as the best way to search for knowledge, for when we model our search for knowledge, we can best find meaning in our lives.

Ryan Burns' Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Mark Sanders

Fast Fish, Loose Fish, and Lines of Determinism: Herman Melville as a Predecessor to American Naturalism

This thesis will argue that Herman Melville should be considered in the American naturalist canon because while he is generally considered a romantic, his writing advances themes of the American naturalism well before it is even considered its own genre. Some of these naturalist themes Melville develops include the concepts of free will, environmental determinism, and humanity’s inner-beast that influences one’s actions. Melville focuses heavily on forces that determine characters’ fates in his novels, especially in Moby-Dick, where he outlines two terms — the Fast-Fish and the Loose-Fish — which from a naturalist point of view represent two categories of characters in naturalist fiction, those determined by the wills of other humans in their environment and those determined by the forces of the environment itself. I then show how these two terms can be used to understand the characters in Melville’s later works of fiction, in which he deviates further away from the traditional romance in favor of an early form of naturalism to develop a concept of man’s inner-beast. Further, I will show how Melville’s concepts of the Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish can be used to understand later works of naturalist fiction, specifically Ann Petry’s 1946 novel The Street. Applying Melville’s Fast-Fish/Loose-Fish terminology to his short stories Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, Sailor show how issues of determinism are inherent to the African American and female psyche in the United States. The protagonist of Petry’s novel, Lutie Johnson, is a black woman who battles both internal and external forces of determinism, which can be described through the Fast and Loose terminology. Applying these terms to Petry’s novel not only shows how Melville is valuable to the naturalist canon, but also hints at why some black authors chose naturalism as the genre to tell their stories, as the forces of determinism that Melville describes, mainly in Benito Cereno, have arguably been inherent in the United States since the inception of the transatlantic slave trade.

Isobel Gorgan's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Susan Harris

"All Possibility Possible:" Marina Carr and the Pursuit of a Tragic Anti-theater

This thesis aims to discover Marina Carr’s current praxis as a classical adaptor and to provide an explanation for her methodology’s ill-success in recent years. My project deals with Carr, not only as the 90s child of Beckett who produced Low in the Dark, but also as a truly contemporary playwright who has become increasingly involved with the Greek world and the realm of conventional drama. I endeavour to understand Carr, not as she was but as she is: a respected and established artist who is poised to capitalize on her artistic legacy with more power and reach than she has ever had before. In situating her most recent staged adaptation, Hecuba, between Carr’s primary theatrical influences: Greek drama and anti-theater, I have uncovered certain stylistic and philosophical incompatibilities which call into question the possibility of successful adaptation in Carr’s innately post-Beckettian dramaturgy. This essay investigates several arguments made for Carr’s employment of epic theater in Hecuba and argues instead that Carr’s rejection of dramatic temporality ultimately leads to a dehistoricization which makes drama untenable and epic impossible. This thesis is more than a post-mortem of a failed piece of theater. It is an investigation into the nature of adaptation and the difficulties of combining theatrical legacies which seem to innately disavow one another. I interpret Carr as an artist in the midst of an ongoing investigation into adaptation which may yet yield promising results. However, I hope to impress upon the reader the futility of the path she currently pursues.

Sydney Haberman's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Noreen Deane-Moran

Defining the Undefinable: Rhetorical Device and the Philosophy of Cosmic Horror in H. P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Thomas Ligotti's Nethescurial

Horror, as a concept, has historically been exceedingly difficult to accurately describe. Many have tried through their research on the history of the genre, and the most widely accepted definition of horror as it is expressed in literature is that it is experientially based. Horror is found in a piece of literature through the reader - if the reader feels fear, then the work must be a work of horror. However, this definition leaves something to be desired in that it does not account for the various subgenres found within horror as a whole. These subgenres not only inspire fear in the reader, but can often be demarcated by specific rhetorical devices or literary conventions. This is true of the cosmic horror subgenre, a branch of horror centered around the belief that humanity’s existence is insignificant in the face of the vast universe, and that no actions taken by humanity in the past, present, or future have any meaning. Two authors approach this belief from opposing angles, but share common rhetorical devices in their work. H. P. Lovecraft and his short story The Call of Cthulhu and Thomas Ligotti with his short story Nethescurial both convey the central theme of cosmic horror in their works, partly through utilization of the rhetorical device of perversion of architecture. However, Lovecraft locates the source of his horror in an external creation (his eldritch monster) and Ligotti localizes the horror in his story as stemming from within the human mind. These opposing approaches represent two ends of an inner vs. outer binary regarding the source of horror in literature. Through their shared usage of perversion of architecture, a glimpse at the intricacies of their philosophies towards the locus of horror can be attained. This in turn allows the construction of a new and more informed definition of horror as something not only experiential, but also defined by convention and marked by an underlying sense of unnatural events - occurrences that defy the “laws of nature”.

Sarah Ielusic's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Yasmin Solomonescu

"I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach": The Relationship Between Psychological and Rhetorical Growth in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion

Conversation plays a prominent role in both Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. However, just as prominent as face-to-face conversations are alternative forms of conversation — most notably letter-writing, overheard conversations, and the use of coded language. Critics commonly agree on the importance of letters for Elizabeth and Darcy to overcome not just physical but emotional barriers to communication. Further, they focus on Anne's process of growth as she transitions from a largely silent character to one who finds her voice and is able to take control of the conversation.

However, what is missing from criticism on the characters’ transformations in both novels is an examination of how the process of growth for Elizabeth, Darcy, and Wentworth differs from that of Anne. Psychological and rhetorical growth follow a cause-and-effect relationship for the three: letters and other alternative forms of conversation allow Elizabeth, Darcy, and Wentworth to drop their pride, which then improves their rhetorical skills and their understandings of themselves and others. With Anne, the relationship is not as straightforward: the more she holds her tongue and does not speak up in conversations, the more self-conscious she becomes of the perceived inequality between her and those around her — and the more she is aware of this inequality, the more silent she becomes. It is not until a friend's fall and injury at Lyme, when Anne finds herself suddenly at the center of the situation and its resulting conversations, that she simultaneously finds her voice and learns to drop her inhibiting self-consciousness. I argue that this more complex process of growth ultimately allows Anne to emerge as the character with the greatest rhetorical prowess of the four, while also demonstrating Austen's increasingly complex understanding of the relationship between psychological and rhetorical growth.

John Kling's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Greg Kucich & Ian Newman

"There Was Nowhere to Go But Everywhere": Wordsworth, Kerouac, and the Self-Epic as Shelter from Revolutionary Storms

For my honors thesis, I am comparing the British Romantics’ and the American Beat’s responses to periods of political and social crisis. My two primary texts, The Prelude and On the Road, confront the dilemmas of the French Revolution and World War II, respectively. By adapting older quest narratives through the lens of the individual poet prophet, both authors use their journeys as personal refuges from issues that their institutions have failed to effectively solve. M.H. Abrams’ notion of the circuitous quest in his book Natural Supernaturalism references the poet figure setting out from his moment of crisis to reflect back, eventually working his way back to the present. Through this recollection of their youthful optimisms as well as the failure of their idealistic journeys in search of grand revelation and a more optimistic future, both Wordsworth and Kerouac retreat into their past memories and journeys to as a means of finding the root of their own personal and political crises. Although the Romantic period and the Beat generation both sought lofty revelation inspired by disillusionment with their political eras, these movements have not been properly compared and analyzed together in scholarship. By placing The Prelude and On the Road in tandem, a greater understanding of their literary quest is attained; by actively placing their own works in a long lineage of literary and visionary journeys, Wordsworth and Kerouac both achieve an inner contentment and resolve to face their tumultuous eras, even if they fail to bring about the widespread change they seek in the openings of their quests.

Elinor McCarthy's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Ian Newman & Melissa Miller

"What Have We to Do with Thee?": Ethel Voynich's The Gadfly as a Case Study in World Literature

Forgotten by the West, The Gadfly, by Irish author Ethel Voynich, became one of the most popular foreign language novels in the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century. Poised at the crossroads of European culture, The Gadfly develops two symbols which resonate across both Irish and Russian contexts – the New Woman and the secular martyr. This thesis analyzes Voynich’s approach to these symbols, as well as how their portrayal was received by Irish and Russian audiences. In the first part of the thesis, a comparison between The Gadfly, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Fyodor Gladkov’s Cement reveals facets of the New Woman character’s development across Irish and Russian contexts. The second part of the thesis explores the novel’s religious symbolism, its parallels with the Christian Passion narrative, and its commentary on martyrdom. The Gadfly exemplifies the internationality of publication and circulation of literature at the dawn of the twentieth century.

David Philip's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Barry McCrea

"The Poet is the Medium of Nature:" An ecocritical Study of Queer Natures and Anti-Futurity in Modernist Literature

Throughout history, conceptions of “the natural” and nature have been weaponized to stifle, derogate, and persecute queer individuals and the art they produce. Federico García Lorca, for example, was assassinated by fascist forces in 1936 Spain, in part due to his sexuality. Focusing on two homosexual poets, my research inhabits the tension between “the natural” and the queer poet in the Modernist era of literature. I argue that despite the biosphere’s ostensible antagonism towards queerness, Modernist queer poets such as Federico García Lorca and W.H. Auden co-opted natural imagery to assert the intrinsic nature of their sexual identity.

Moreover, these two writers made nature central to their poetics in order to refute the idea that humankind is separate from nature and ought to dominate the planet. In works such as Sonetos del Amor Oscuro, Poeta en Nueva York, Romancero Gitano, Nones, and Bucolics, the writers portray humans as both derivative of and indicative of nature. I utilize queer and ecocritical lenses to demonstrate the ongoing cultural significance of Lorca and Auden’s poetry, especially in the context of the climate crisis and globally-pervasive queerphobia. Lorca and Auden’s affinity for the natural world embraces the present sacredness of the planet and the queer person, who is intrinsic to the created order.

Ruilin Sang's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Susan Harris

Reconciling with Seamus Heaney’s Soundscape of Nature: An Acoustic Analysis of “Death of a Naturalist” and “Personal Helicon”

My paper examines two of Seamus Heaney’s most popular early poems, “Death of a Naturalist” and “Personal Helicon” through analyzing both the poetry of sound and the sound of poetry, both the natural soundscape these poems represent and the way Heaney transcribes soundscapes into poetry.

This paper primarily builds its discussion of natural soundscapes on R. Murray Schafer’s sound theories. Since the ear is better than the eye in capturing more subtle and unconscious influences in the natural environment, attentive listening is an important step for people, especially children, to explore the inexplicable aspects of Nature and to reconcile with their newfound roles in the natural world.

By closely focusing on the way Heaney’s poetic language embodies and maps the complexity of the natural soundscape, this paper expands on two typical soundscapes in Heaney’s poems, the “flat-line” soundscape in “Death of a Naturalist” and the “soundscape of silence” in “Personal Helicon.” The former goes on continuously in the background, while the latter creates an almost soundless environment. While both soundscapes cultivate the listener’s awareness and help them reconcile with the truth of Nature, the former nurtures and protects, whereas the latter “strains” and inspires.

Catherine Barra's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Yasmin Solomonescu

Loss, Grief, and the Therapeutic Power of Literature in Mary Shelley’s Valperga and The Last Man

In 1824, after suffering the loss of her husband, Percy Shelley and her friend, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley wrote in her journal: “The last man! Yes, I may well describe that solitary being’s feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race.” Shelley refers to being the last surviving member of a group composed of some of the most notable Romantic writers of the time. Scholars typically read Shelley’s novels through the biographical lens, reflecting on the presence of her own grief within the literature. In this, I look beyond the biographical lens to consider how Shelley’s characters cope with grief, and link their abilities to cope with their relationships to literature. I discuss four characters in Shelley’s second and third novels, Valperga (Castruccio and Euthanasia) and The Last Man (Lionel and Perdita). Although critics often see Shelley’s interest in grief as personal, her later novels indicate the author’s desire to observe the relationship between grief and literature beyond her own experience, and to show that literature, ideally, fosters selflessness, which allows one to cope with grief. I conclude that when characters have not been exposed to literature early in their education, such as Castruccio and Perdita, they resort to revenge and self-destruction, respectively, in order to cope with grief. When characters in Shelley’s novels have a close relationship with literature, as Euthanasia and Lionel do, they are able to use the wisdom learned from their beloved literatures to channel their grief into charity.

Paige Curley's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisors: Sarah Quesada and Maria McKenna

Canon, Curricula, and Classrooms: The Power of Multicultural Latino/a Literature in English Education

Earlier than we may expect, children understand which identities are valued and centered in schools and which are not. Experiences of low self-esteem and pride in one’s cultural identity result from a literary canon saturated with white, male, and other hegemonic voices. While the canon’s historical status in academia and influence over classrooms and curricular content may present it as a fixed and sacred entity, this is not the case. I align myself with scholars of multiculturalism who re-frame the canon as a malleable social construct subject to change and necessary to critique.

With this thesis, I contribute to a larger project of decolonization by interrogating the canon, its exclusive nature, and its grip on the American educational landscape through two questions: 1) How do we radically decenter the literary canon away from traditionally dominant identities and expand the canon to include diverse stories? 2) How can we best find, effectively implement, and responsibly teach Latino/a literature from a multicultural framework in early education? From these questions grew three case studies that construct the core of my project. The first is a community based research project at Holy Cross Grade School in which I measured 330 books from their dual immersion pre-k classroom for representation and cultural authenticity. From this data, I found that the majority of books feature white or non-human characters, with a small percentage of leading characters of color. The following case studies are two close readings: Grandma’s Gift by Eric Velasquez, a children’s book featuring an Afro-Puerto Rican boy; and Daughters of the Stone by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, a novel following an Afro-Puerto Rican family. Due to a dismal lack of Latino/a stories in the canon, as well as harmful generalization made about Latino/a groups, I chose to focus exclusively on Afro-Latino/a and Caribbean-Latino/a stories.

Ultimately, I assert that multicultural literature is an anti-bias, educational tool functioning within a pedagogy of decolonization that lays the foundation of validation and empathy necessary to prepare students for participation in social justice-oriented English education at higher grade levels.

Peyton Davis' Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Mark Sanders

Geobiographies of Violence and Survival in the Poetry of Natasha Trethewey and Colette Bryce

At the end of the 1960s, the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland escalated, leading to the decades of violence known as the Troubles. The Catholic side of the conflict, primarily known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, looked to the African American struggle for civil rights over the previous few decades, recognizing their experiences of segregation and discrimination, establishing solidarity across the Atlantic Ocean. Although evidence of this trans-Atlantic exchange of ideas has existed since at least the mid-nineteenth century, current scholarship has not examined the thematic and formal similarities between contemporary African American and Northern Irish poetry. In this thesis, I analyze the poetry of Natasha Trethewey (b. 1966, Gulfport, Mississippi) and Colette Bryce (b. 1970, Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland) to explore how they represent their relationship with the land and the past in their poetry. I develop the term “geobiography,” combining geography and biography, to frame this conversation and emphasize the role of the land in personal narratives. From the importance of the land and its role in developing self-awareness, geobiography becomes a context—like Édouard Glissant’s Relation and Thadious Davis’s Southscape—through which we understand the land and personal narrative. Although scholars such as Richard Rankine Russell and Alison Garden have discussed the ways that African American poets have looked to Northern Ireland—particularly Seamus Heaney—this paper explores the specific thematic and formal relationship of Natasha Trethewey and Colette Bryce. The investigations of twentieth-century and contemporary African American and Northern Irish poetry run parallel; this thesis seeks to explore an intersection of contemporary poetry and offer directions for further research and analysis.

Kaitlyn DeHerrara's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Sara Maurer

Determining Morality Through the Analysis of Narrative Structures in Jane Eyre

Contention over the moral messages present in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre persists throughout the chronology of its criticism, perplexing both readers and scholars as they attempt to work through the novel’s complex commentary on virtue. This thesis suggests that the moral message of the novel can best be understood through careful attention to motifs associated with the Gothic and with Nature. Consequently, this thesis provides an analysis of the narrative structure of Jane Eyre, offering insight to what moral messages are truly condoned by the narrator, and which are forsaken. These structures, in the form of Nature and Gothic motifs and forces, are created by the narrator, the matured and happily wedded Jane. While these motifs and forces are uniquely employed in different sections of the bildungsroman, the ultimate function of Nature is to guide younger Jane throughout her development into the mature narrator, whereas the Gothic works to derail Jane’s progress. In order to explain to the reader which morals and pathways are and are not effective in crafting young Jane into the person she is upon writing the autobiography, the narrator describes situations, places, people, and even supernatural beings as constructs of Nature or Gothic. Through this lens, readers are better able to understand what Jane deems as morally just, such as strict child-rearing and love in marriage, or morally corrupt, such as women’s liberation and marriages of convenience.

Abigail Dommert’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Declan Kiberd

Incarnational Paradox: Catholicism in Oscar Wilde’s “The Fisherman and His Soul”

There are few figures who have occupied the literary and popular imagination with more notoriety and flair than Oscar Wilde. While known best for his enigmatic wit and social comedies, Wilde also penned numerous fairy tales. It is one of these darkly ambiguous fairy tales, “The Fisherman and His Soul,” which is the focus of this thesis. Utilizing Joseph McQueen’s critical framework of the “logic of the Incarnation,” I aim to provide a new understanding of the paradoxes in one of Wilde’s most complex and confusing texts. By focusing on the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation as a mediation of oppositional ideas, the paradoxes in “The Fisherman and His Soul” between civilization and nature, the literary and oral traditions, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and the fragmented self can be comprehended in a fertile way. It is also inclusive of the dynamic political, cultural, and societal contexts of fin de siècle England and Ireland which formed Oscar Wilde, the artist, himself. Rather than attempting to solve such paradoxes present in “The Fisherman and His Soul,” an Incarnational lens allows them to co-exist without stripping them of their vibrant and creative power which Wilde so loved. He utilizes these paradoxes to endorse his own conception of theology, one of that is both Catholic and catholic in nature. It is my hope that by affirming the importance of the Incarnation in this work of Wilde’s, the critical conversation will begin to take seriously the importance of Catholicism more broadly in Wilde’s oeuvre beyond a merely aesthetic scope.

Mary Henrich's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Jesse Lander

“You Must Now Believe It” Poetic Faith and the Possibilities of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline in Performance

Shakespeare’ Cymbeline has been frequently dismissed by critics as “stagy trash” and “unresisting imbecility,” largely due to its highly elaborate and improbable plot. With its various fairy tale elements and Providence-asserting deus ex machina, the play poses significant challenges to an audience attempting to suspend their disbelief, and various rewritings of the play have attempted to mitigate these challenges by creating a more “realistic” or believable text. Rather than merely suspending disbelief, Cymbeline’s audience must awaken and practice poetic faith through engagement and empathy without suspending their critical faculties. Examining three contrasting modern productions of Cymbeline, I explore the moments where audiences are asked to believe and how their poetic faith is encouraged or discouraged by the staging choices of each production. In BBC Television’s 1982 production, realism is broadly enforced, yet also purposefully undermined in moments which awaken poetic faith, whereas the camp and postmodern melodrama of the 1989 Public Theater production consistently and actively promotes the audience's consciousness of the story’s artifice and theatricality. Finally, Fiasco Theater’s 2011 Cymbeline draws attention to the story by emphasizing the craft of storytelling through its cast of only six actors promoting an ever-present awareness of the poetic faith the audience chooses to practice. Thus, the theatricality of Cymbeline appears to burst out at the seams, suggesting that despite claims that the play is impossible to believe, a certain theatricality intrinsic to the play inherently encourages active audience participation and engagement of poetic faith.

Mary Hilliard's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Ernest Morrell

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live”: Exploring the existential identities of California’s native daughter, Joan Didion

“We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience”, Joan Didion wrote in the title essay of The White Album collection. Culturally and academically, Joan Didion has been difficult to contextualize, but her non-fiction works document a tumultuous time in American history when the country assumed its position as a global superpower post World War II while the threat of nuclear war loomed over daily life. In my analysis of her first two essay collections, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, I argue for Joan Didion’s inclusion in the existentialist tradition and American literary studies. She took principles from Jean-Paul Satre such as “existence precedes essence” and “man is responsible for all men” and made them American, using them as a framework for exploring the national gospel of self-determinism and individualism. Didion elaborates on the pre-existing French existential lexicon regarding freedom, responsibility, and the human condition, and creates terms with unique weight in her arguments: home, character, promise, self-respect, and morality. Her writing poses questions such as: What happens to the past when there is no one left to remember it? If community and family structure collapses, who will teach the next generation the promises humanity makes to one another to live securely, and the importance of keeping those promises? Through her personal and journalistic writing, she processed her own existential nausea in coming to terms with a highly atomized world, a social structure deteriorating, a center that was not holding.

Jane Honorlaw's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Yasmin Solomonescu

Re-Placing Pride and Prejudice: Modern Responses to Place-Based Insecurity in Adaptations of Jane Austen’s Novel

Writing an adaptation is a contradictory exercise: at once unimaginative by drawing on pre-established characters and plot structures, these works demand greater creativity of their authors in order to disrupt the familiar. This can be accomplished using a number of techniques, but the most fundamental change involves transporting the story to a new place. This basic space-defying experiment has been undertaken again and again for classic stories, perhaps none more than for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

This project compares Pride and Prejudice to two of its more recent counterparts: Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible and Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable. My interest in modern conceptions of place—which adaptations complicate through an expanded and destabilizing public sphere—is based in Austen’s own usage of Longbourn and Pemberley. I argue that Austen contrasts these two estates by the degree of social security they offer their inhabitants, with Elizabeth Bennet moving from a state of instability to one of stability by the novel’s end. Sittenfeld and Kamal, on the other hand, eliminate the heroine’s attainment of domestic security and imbue places with comparable emotional significance instead. Nevertheless, all three heroines realize contentment through their respective relationships and thereby demonstrate a change in conceptions regarding the opportunity afforded by mobility.

Hanna Kennedy's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Declan Kiberd

Love in the Time of Text Messaging: Exploring the Effects of Technology-Mediated Communication in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Normal People

After the publication of her two novels, Conversations with Friends and Normal People, in 2017 and 2018, respectively, Sally Rooney was quickly heralded as “the great millennial novelist.” In an attempt to explain her popularity, critics turned to what separates Rooney from her contemporaries: her novels’ deft incorporation of email, texting, and social media. In this thesis I agree with that claim and argue that Rooney’s use of technology-mediated communication not only explains her popularity, but that it reveals how her generation interprets and interacts with the world. Technologies, like email and texting, provide an opportunity for her characters to deepen relationships with each other and to say what they are unable to say in-person. Social media, on the other hand, provides a defining community in which the individual can learn about the self. Lionel Trilling’s Sincerity and Authenticity sheds light on how Rooney’s characters define themselves according and in resistance to social media’s rules. Additionally, Rooney makes visible the unspoken rules of all three technologies: email, texting, and social media. She invites her readers into the minds of her characters as they read and re-read typed messages in hopes of expressing themselves and understanding others. For some, what she writes is a recreation of a reality they inhabit every day, while for others it is a brave new world and a look into how another generation operates. Either way, the insight she provides on her generation’s relationship with technology grows increasingly relevant as more and more individuals grow up digital natives.

Jackson Mittlesteadt's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Laura Walls

“Seeds of Grass: Walt Whitman’s Quest for Democratic Perfection”

Walt Whitman was a patriot, devoted to the ideal of inclusivity which is implicit in the word “democracy.” The overarching inclusivity found in Whitman’s book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, was the cornerstone of his work as he attempted to spiritualize democratic life, and in so doing, achieve a perfected form of democracy. However, he was well aware that America was far from such perfection. In his post-war essay Democratic Vistas, Whitman notes that the word democracy is great and its history remains unwritten because it has yet to be enacted. Painfully aware of the imperfections of democracy as it existed in his time, Whitman turned to the future, to us.

Whitman's project is an unfinished one. Furthermore, his project seems to have been forgotten as nowadays divisions still run between us, lies are spoken on major news stations, and people grow apart over the smallest of issues. The answer to these issues and key to the establishment of a unified society is what Whitman calls “the composite American identity of the future.” National identity is for him a dynamic collective moving from the past through the present and into the future, a phenomenon which should not be boxed in by walls.

I hope to show in my thesis that we as a democratic people need to consider that our daily exertions are indeed contributing to a common spiritual cause, that our work is a continuation of Whitman's, that all people, all ethnicities, should be considered as a part of the community effort towards the germination of the democratic “seed perfection.” I hope that my readers will go forth from this essay, the seeds of grass having been planted in their minds, and spread the message of democratic inclusivity and its evolutionary capacity for perfection to all.

Connor Mulvena's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Susannah Monta

A Divine Equity: Marriage Law in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure

Much has been said in scholarly circles of “law and literature” about legal commentaries, or a lack thereof, found in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Among these commentaries are analyses of marriage and marriage law, as the play centers on a problem of marriage. But scholarly commentaries on marriage and the law in Measure for Measure tend often to focus primarily on the Duke and Angelo, each of whom represents a philosophy of law which is addressed in the play’s final scene. While this area of scholarship is valuable in uncovering legal meaning in Measure for Measure, my thesis seeks to shift the focus to the play’s female characters, namely Isabella and Mariana, in order to uncover a commentary on marriage law. I provide a concise background of the scholarship on marriage in Measure for Measure, both from those who address marriage tangentially as one of many themes in the play and those who focus on marriage by specifically addressing the function of law in the play. I also provide a brief background of legal understandings of marriage in pre-Reformation, Reformation, and post-Reformation England. I continue with an analysis of the Duke and Angelo, which ultimately leads to a focus on Mariana and Isabella in order to express the play’s commentary on marriage. In the end, I contend that Measure for Measure offers a critique of legal arbitration of marriage by human authority. Moreover, I hold that the play advocates for a divine mercy which mirrors legal conceptions of equity in the proper judgement of marital unions.

Katherine Rentz's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisors: Sara Maurer and Susan Ohmer

“Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who is The Fairest of Them All?”: Constructing Beauty and Body Through Recombinations of Snow White

Fairy tales have become deeply embedded in the cultural imagination. As Jack Zipes argues, fairy tales have staying power as socializing devices that prescribe certain behaviors, and in particular certain gendered behaviors, for children. This socializing power, however, has been complicated through the release of various adaptations of these stories across media formats that can maintain or subvert these normative behaviors. Though these adaptations often alter and subvert these normative behaviors, these contemporary re-workings continue to reflect the society in which they were written. In this thesis, I examine the ways in which gender is being prescribed through a selection of contemporary (published since 2003) film, novel, and TV young adult adaptations of the Snow White story, a fairy tale that relies on heavily stereotypical gender norms. I use both Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and more recent feminist conversation surrounding it to explore how beauty and the beauty hierarchy promote an ideal woman, both perpetuating problematic beauty norms and, occasionally, pointing to their danger After establishing this conceptual framework for discussing beauty, I shift my attention to the mirror, the object through which these problematic beauty norms are manifest. Using Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic, I develop a framework for analysis of how the mirror functions to impose the voice of the patriarchy upon the Queen, both in ways that hide its nefarious potential and in ways that call attention to it. These adaptations provide a wide range of ideas on gender, both serving to subvert and reinforce the patriarchal ideologies of beauty for a young adult audience.

Evelyn Stein's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Sarah Quesada & Brian Collier

Life on Paper: Exploring the Relationship Between Junot Díaz and His Texts

While the ideal role of the author has long been debated in literary theory, the conversation is inevitably complicated with the rise of technology. Junot Díaz provides a provocative example of various dynamics at play in today’s authorship debate because of his public persona and activism. In addition to this use of his platform, Díaz has become beloved to many in the last 25 years because of his normalization of Latinx and immigrant experiences and the ways in which his writing encourages readers to use their “decolonial imaginations” to question powerful and damaging systems still prevailing in society. Unfortunately, in May 2018 Díaz was accused by several women of sexual misconduct after revealing his own personal trauma, all of which greatly complicated critical and casual readers’ understandings of what to do with his work — and whether we should read him at all. I argue that Díaz can have a place in our classrooms if we discuss his literature with specific considerations of audience, teaching capacity, and financial investment in mind. Two interviews with teachers provide support for this conclusion, which ultimately generates further questions and hope for how the “American canon” can be transformed.

Isabel Weber's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Barbara Green

Meaningful Blankness in The Little Review

Margaret Anderson’s monthly publication, The Little Review, is largely known within periodical studies for advancing avant-garde modernist literature. However, for its first three years, The Little Review was mainly an anarchist publication. In this project, I show how Margaret Anderson was inspired by the feminism, anarchism, and individualism of Emma Goldman in some of her most notable editorial uses of blankness in her magazine, The Little Review. Anderson’s 1915 Blank Advertisements are clearly connected to Goldman’s ideas about the body, the individual, and commercialism. The 1916 Blank Issue comments on Goldman’s ideas about revolutionary art and anti-war anarchism, as well as weaponizes female silence in a way which emulates Goldman’s performative lecture stunts.

By studying Anderson’s 1915 Blank Advertisements and her 1916 Blank Issue, I recover Anderson’s connection to Goldman, and situate Goldman within feminist modernism. I also demonstrate that a rich understanding of modernist aesthetics requires an examination of feminism and anarchism along with it, making the point for a renewed study of feminist modernism. This work argues for the merit and inspiration of Anderson’s editorship, and also shows page design as a source of editorial commentary, beyond text alone. It is my hope that this project inspires greater investigation of Anderson and Goldman’s intellectual relationship, and the importance of page design for both editorial commentary and the feminist-anarchist project.

Ashtin Ballard's Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Ernest Morrell

“And, In Their Falling, Rise Again”: Unearthing Muted Voices in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Sanora Babb’s Whose Names Are Unknown

With poetic grace and provocative rhetoric, John Steinbeck’s quintessentially American text The Grapes of Wrath argues for the rights of migrant workers and the dismantling of harmful economic systems. A little-known contemporary of his, Sanora Babb, championed Okie migrants in a 1939 novel as well, Whose Names Are Unknown, but her voice has been long-overshadowed by Steinbeck’s literary prowess. Consequently, there is very little critical scholarship on Babb’s work, which is a shame. My thesis recovers her voice, in part, and puts these two texts in conversation with one another, addressing the overarching question: How might a literary and rhetorical analysis of Babb’s work challenge and complement Steinbeck’s own? Moreover, what might we learn about the field of English and American politics in doing so? Modeled on Toni Morrison’s landmark work of criticism Playing in the Dark, my thesis critically investigates canonicity and the importance of reading “with” and “against” texts. Among my findings are: the fact that Steinbeck’s text is largely allegorical and intercalary, while Babb’s is rooted in documentary realism; Steinbeck’s female characters are largely underdeveloped, but Babb’s lead the charge and are indeed the foremost protagonists; and, finally, Steinbeck’s family is entirely centered around middle aged men, yet Babb’s is more diverse, including impactful roles for the elderly and children. Placing these authors in conversation with one another produces a richer, fuller understanding of American literary identity and, as a result, highlights the crucial role literature can and should play in political advocacy and social healing in a severely fractured America.

Kara Copeland’s Honor Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Laura Betz

Graphing Canonicity: A Critical Reader Reception History of John Keats Using Digital Methods

Many literary scholars have created narratives of John Keats’ critical reception in an attempt to explain and document his rise to canonicity. However, there is a lack of distinction between how scholars define reception and how they define canonicity. Some critics provide a bibliography of influential essays while others cultivate a narrative for why Keats has remained a prominent author over time. The contrast among different discussions of his reception leads to claims that are not entirely supported, as they choose who the most significant Keats scholars are without standardized definitions. Utilizing emerging digital methods – namely topic modeling – it is possible to examine the critical archive afresh. Topic modeling identifies co-locating keywords probabilistically and forms them into a list with the words to which they most frequently appear in proximity, which I can then interpret. Digital tools provide the benefit of being unsupervised, and thus more representative of what has actually been the main focus in Keats’ scholarship. By analyzing the data of criticism, I can identify which topic words seem to be most influential, providing a more nuanced way of looking at Keats’ critical base and beginning to rework his current reception narratives. Whereas many scholars have cited Keats as the “poet of death” and have focused on the role of death in his works, the data suggests that “time” is in fact a more prominent theme than “death.” By refocusing scholars’ areas of interest in this way, previously unseen details of Keats’ reception and work are revealed.

Joseph Crowley’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Margaret Doody

“Nor Bound Thy Narrow Views to Things Below”: Dreaming as an Angle for Analyzing Crossover of Alchemical Ideals into the Enlightenment Era

Contrary to reductionist portrayals, the Enlightenment era saw astute literary writers, scientists, and philosophers actively recognized the contributions and advances of the alchemical age, actively embracing tenets of an alchemical understanding of the world in their pursuit of knowledge. A treatment of dreaming as a construct reveals the vast network of connections between alchemical understandings of the world and Enlightenment ideas. The work of Paracelsus and Margaret Cavendish in critically analyzing human beings’ conceptual understanding of their place within the universe can be seen contemplated by Newton. Acknowledgements about the boundaries of what physical science can and cannot tell us, those ideas of what we bring from the waking world into the liminal space of the dream realm and what we can bring back, these are the questions Shakespeare and Alexander Pope grapple with. Descartes and Henry More consider how the convention of the dream can be employed to solve problems, to reach conclusions about the nature of our interactions with reality and to come to a better understanding of who we are and what we believe in. To put it succinctly, analyzing dreaming as a construct invites us to a better understanding of our vantage point and relationship to the world we operate within, and whether through the scientific method or the philosophical approach thinkers have been fascinated with the contributions of the fantastic and the occult and its relationship to the truths we experience. I treat all of these thinkers and more, using Alexander Pope’s epic poem The Rape of the Lock as a grounding example of Neoclassical literature as a unifying factor with which to explore the construct of dreaming and the valuable wisdom that comes with a more holistic understanding of these two time periods. When the great partnership between the alchemical and the Enlightenment eras is properly understood, we expand our views beyond the narrow bounds that feel all too natural, gaining perspective intimately applicable to our world today.

Sabina Fernandez’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Romana Huk

Prufrock’s “Social Self”: A New Approach to T.S. Eliot through G.H. Mead

In this cross-disciplinary thesis, I read T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), in a new and revelatory way by considering it through the lens of G. H. Mead’s social psychology of the self. I argue that Mead’s ideas on social selfhood, specifically as he outlines them in “The Social Self” (1913), enlighten a fresh understanding of the causes and effects of Prufrock’s social construction and allow us to build on the recent critical discussion of Prufrock’s social nature. My analysis goes beyond assumptions that Prufrock is a social being to show specifically how his self is socially constructed in a social psychological sense. I supplement my thesis with material from chapter VI of Eliot’s dissertation on F. H. Bradley (1916), which deals with the philosophical idea of solipsism. With Eliot’s notion of solipsism in mind, I argue that Prufrock’s solipsistic self as recognized in the critical literature aligns with, rather than contradicts, Mead’s conception of the social self. In placing Eliot and Mead into conversation with one another, I apply a methodology of contemporality that views both writers as processing ideas of selfhood in the early twentieth-century, Eliot through poetry and Mead through prose. In doing so, I establish a previously unrecognized connection between Eliot and Mead—Josiah Royce, with whom both studied at Harvard—and complete a triangulation of these three figures in literary scholarship. I argue that Eliot’s poignant expressions of Mead’s “I” and “me” of self-consciousness take on implicit and explicit forms in the poem, that Mead’s argument for the self-conscious self as “the self in the full meaning of the term” provides the basis for understanding Prufrock as a social self, and that Prufrock’s communication problems reflect the consequences of social selfhood in modernity.

Louis Filipiak’s Honor Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Matthew Wilkins

Converging Values: Infinite Jest, The Great Divorce, and Service in the New Sincerity

The purpose of this thesis is to establish the apparent relationship between two seemingly unconnected works: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. Wallace, writing at the height of the postmodern cultural dominant, was influenced by emerging philosophical and sociological concepts such as Derrida’s linguistic theory of deconstruction, the development of late-stage capitalism, the merging of nation-states, and the rejection of societal grand narratives. Throughout Infinite Jest, Wallace attempts to redeem several of his characters from the supposed “anhedonia” of the postmodern condition through their learning to embrace the virtues of sincerity, authenticity in relationships, and a rich interior life. However, the success of these redemption arcs can be considered debatable. In this way, Wallace is considered to be one of the founding members of the “New Sincerity” literary movement, breaking away from its ironic predecessors. Conversely, Lewis, writing at the height of the modernist cultural dominant, wrote the mythic novella The Great Divorce, a story of a man who is able to visit both the dingy town of Hell and the vast meadow of Heaven, and discovers that a giving of oneself up to others in service may be the key to remaining in the meadow for eternity. Therefore, this thesis argues that the method from which one can leave the confines of Hell and be welcomed into Heaven within The Great Divorce is similar to that of the redemption arcs that the characters must face within Infinite Jest. The “New Sincerity” virtues that Wallace offers as meaningful in a contemporary setting, consequently, can be seen as extending towards or finding their conclusions in Lewis’s conception of service, the possible ultimate “New Sincerity” virtue. This assertion is supported by several indications that Wallace was not only aware of Lewis’s writings, but was likely influenced by them in his own works.

Anne Horcher’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Yasmin Solomonescu

Coleridge and Catholicism: The Religious Context of Christabel and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

In 1795, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that “He who sees any real difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England possesses an optics which I do not possess—the mark of the antichrist is on both of them.” Eleven years later, Coleridge was once again a member of the Church of England, but his opinion on the Catholic Church seems to have remained relatively constant from 1795 until his death in 1834. This project seeks to address the apparent gap between Coleridge’s views on the Catholic Church and his use of medieval Catholic settings in both The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. I argue that Coleridge used the Catholic setting of these two poems and the theological questions he explores in them to clarify his own religious beliefs, particularly with regard to his questions about original sin. Through an interpretive lens that emphasizes the knowledge of Catholicism evident in Coleridge’s writing, I explore the implications of a reading of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in light of the Catholic sacrament of confession and Christabel in light of the Catholic understanding of concupiscence. Each of these methods sheds light on the depth of Coleridge’s conflict over the question of original sin that would not be apparent without an understanding of the nuances of religious questions Coleridge was grappling with. I conclude that despite Coleridge’s return to the Church of England, these questions appear to remain unresolved in both his prose writing and his poetry.

Nicholas Jeffrey’s Honors Thesis Statement

Advisor: Matthew Wilkins

Narcissism vs Collectivism in Digital Communities: Investigating Social Capital Production in Social Media

New technology is often accompanied by concerns about the effects it has on younger generations. Time spent watching television has been linked to decreasing social capital in past studies, and the development of social media has been linked to the increase of individualistic tendencies in American youth. This study reviews the psychological literature on generational differences of narcissism, finding that, while individualistic tendencies are more common now in younger Americans, there is not a plague of narcissism causing maladaptive behaviors. Then the role of social media is investigated, whether it promotes narcissism or social capital production. To evaluate digital communities for social capital production and narcissistic symptoms, the study took text (Word count=89,175,174) from thirteen different subreddits and parsed the words using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count dictionary (LIWC). Two peer support subreddits (rDepression and rAnxiety) had significantly higher authenticity ratings than the other subreddits, indicating genuine conversation and feedback. However, these two subreddits did not have higher rates of social concern pronouns or social words, although the other three peer support subreddit did (rOffMyChest, rRelationship_Advice, relationship). The subreddits designed to support people with mental illness thus do not show out-group concern like the other peer-support subreddits, but they display personal concern that is related through individual experiences. This kind of interaction on the mental illness subreddits is thus considered a beneficial instance of social capital production, since it connects individuals from different backgrounds and places them in a broader community. The linguistic data collected in this study corroborates previous findings that social media correlates to social capital (Skoric et al., 2015), at least in the instance of peer-support subreddits. Limitations of the study to provide behavioral correlates are discussed, for which another Twitter study is brought in to provide evidence of social media affecting behaviors.

Megan Kollitz’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Matthew Wilkins

The Cybernetic Literary Aesthetic in Player Piano, The Crying of Lot 49, and Galatea 2.2

Cybernetics is the field concerned with homeostatic control mechanisms in systems. The key focus of those control mechanisms is communication, the process of information flow, into, out of, and within the system. In this thesis, I identify a cybernetic literary aesthetic and analyze its manifestations in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2. I provide background of the roots of cybernetics, including the relation of the field to general systems theory, information theory, and statistical mechanics, particularly drawing upon the works of Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, and Ludwig van Bertalanffy. I then subject each of the novels of interest to the cybernetic lens, such that character interpersonal relationships and relations with their environments compose a system. I identify manifestations of the cybernetic aesthetic in these novels, including cybernetic redefinition, system conflation between the realms of the human and the technological, and the identification of cybernetic tropes like feedback looping and entropy in form and content, and analyze their effects on reader interpretation. The result is a fresh perspective on extensively studied postmodern works, an increased breadth of understanding of authorial inspiration and motivations, and the recognition of new patterns in form and content that reveal insight into how these novels represent a different kind of historical and literary progression, occurring alongside evolutions in cybernetics.

Adam Kulam’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Laura Dassow Walls

Civil Disobedience in Context: The Incarceratory Texts of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Since its birth, the United States of America has been a constant experiment in progress. Though there is no “correct” way to conduct a democratic republic, the improvement of our society is the goal of public officials, political theorists, authors, and social activists. Despite the good intentions of the public sector, the American government occasionally threatens the wellbeing of its citizens. As societal experimentation invites mistakes, the government, at times, even compels citizens to harm one another, forcing them into positions of moral compromise—regardless of whether or not people are conscious of the evils that they perpetuate. In these insidious scenarios of government failure, the onus falls onto the shoulders of citizens to stand up for what is right—in direct defiance of the government that wrongs them. One strain of civilian activism, known as “civil disobedience,” enables one to resist and to draw punishment in such a way that other citizens and the government itself are awakened to the evils caused by the law. The phrase “civil disobedience” was popularized in the United States and has propelled the major moral victories of American history such as the abolition of slavery and the legislation of civil rights. This honors thesis explores the unique historical and philosophical contexts that cultivated two cases of successful civil disobedience. Specifically, I investigate the civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau within antebellum-era New England, and that of Martin Luther King, Jr. within the Civil Rights-era South. I rely on Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and King’s Letter from Birmingham City Jail as literary windows into their respective historical realities and philosophical ideals. At the end of this document, I consider how civil disobedience might aid the contemporary United States in advancing a public response to the issue of climate change.

Madison Loftin’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Greg Kucich

Toxic Femininity in the Gothic Novel: The Influence of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman on the Trope of the Vindictive Woman

One of the prominent tropes of the Gothic genre is that of the vindictive woman, often the foil of the heroine who strives to make the life of that heroine miserable. She is, typically, the orchestrator of the harm that befalls the young hero and heroine, and her vindictiveness is frequently translated into physical and emotional violence against the protagonists. The construction of this trope often aligns directly with themes that Mary Wollstonecraft discusses in Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), particularly in terms of her warnings against raising women to place all of their value in competing with other women for husbands. In this thesis, I compare two gothic novels, The Italian by Ann Radcliffe (1797) and Zastrozzi by Percy Shelley (1810) in their respective portrayals of the vindictive woman. Radcliffe’s villainess, the Marchesa di Vivaldi, aligns with Mary Wollstonecraft’s critique of mothers who transfer their trauma upon their daughters. Shelley’s antiheroine, Matilda, serves as a cautionary tale against breeding toxic competition between women. I argue that both iterations of the vindictive woman are influenced by Wollstonecraft’s feminist philosophy, and the vastly different endings of the two novels are different aspects of Wollstonecraft’s proposed solutions to what she sees as the problem with women’s status in her contemporary society.

Erin Pettegrew’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Greg Kucich

Publicizing the Private: Joanna Baillie’s Theater of Evolving Feminism

Theater in England has historically been understood as a masculinized space where conservative social norms and political commentary are both presented on stage and encouraged throughout the audience. Yet while strict laws were passed to preserve this patriarchal public sphere, progressive plays nevertheless slipped past the censor and were staged before hundreds of eager onlookers. Joanna Baillie, a female Scottish Romantic playwright, produced many of these revolutionary works.

This senior thesis analyzes three of Joana Baillie’s works—De Monfort (1798); The Legend of Lady Griseld Baillie (1821); and The Family Legend (1810)—to argue for the presence of a subliminal feminism within her plays. By analyzing her social commentary over the course of her career, this project proposes that Baillie’s feminism evolves from a focused critique of damaging gender systems into a much broader promotion of an inclusive history: a feminist historiography. However, this is not to say that Baillie entirely adheres to progressive sociopolitical beliefs. A significant (and seemingly incongruent) feature of her works is the presence of a conventional surface-level reading, a reading that ultimately complicates the argument in favor of Baillie’s feminism. This thesis consequently navigates the claims for and against a progressive Baillie and concludes by stating that the playwright forwards a limited (and thus more realistic) understanding of gender relations within her current society. Moreover, Baillie’s devotion to mobilizing the emotions and sympathies of the audience members who view her staged plays suggests that she participates in a career-long effort to publicize the private sphere within the masculinized realm of the theater.

Colin Rahill’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Romana Huk

Faith and Liberation: The Religious Experience in Kierkegaard and Shelley

This senior thesis investigates the experience of God as portrayed by Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Percy Bysshe Shelley with a focus on the concept of divine selflessness, or “ecstasy,” present in both of their works. This religious experience goes by different names in different esoteric traditions, and I argue that many of these traditions and thinkers are attempting to describe the same phenomenon. The interrelation between “eccentric” thinkers, such as Kierkegaard and Shelley, and esoteric traditions and “mystics,” such as Zen and Meister Eckhart, stems from their shared claim that they attempt to express just one ineffable idea that can only be understood by the individual who looks deeply inward. Further, they instruct readers and students to discover this ineffable idea for themselves by looking inward. The authors’ role in guiding them is to give them the concepts to work with, provoke them into examining themselves, and outline a path that they can follow. It is ultimately a method of liberation from what Kierkegaard and Eckhart call sin and Zen calls “dukkha.” The individual becomes liberated by experiencing ecstasy, attaining Nirvana, and seeing God with the same eye that God sees the individual. Further, this thesis argues that Kierkegaard and Shelley place the same essential importance on the notion of faith and that they both claim faith can only be present after the individual has resigned selfish interests in the world. These thinkers and traditions do not agree on everything, but they possess vital convictions in common that work toward instructing the reader on the ineffable idea.

Kathleen Ryan’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Elizabeth Evans

“The Ghosts of Lovely Things”: Virginia Woolf’s Literary Ghosts as a Vehicle for Localized Transition within Social Movement

Although Virginia Woolf is not known for writing ghost stories, research into her personal life and diaries reveal her scholarly consideration of the supernatural. Woolf wrote two articles on Henry James’s and Dorothy Scarborough’s ghost stories, and a close analysis of Woolf’s texts reveals frequent ghostly mentions. By examining Night and Day, “A Haunted House,” Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and “Street Haunting,” I analyze how Woolf’s literary construction of the ghost becomes a space of transition in an innovative way of analyzing trajectories of social change. The ghost depicts broad progress locally through individual characters. I identify three categories of ghosts in Woolf’s texts: simple ghosts, the ghost of multiple selves, and the ghost of memory. Simple ghosts, or typical ghostly references, establish an environment of ghosts in the texts. The ghost of multiple selves occurs when selves from different time periods appear to co-exist in a temporally ambiguous space. By experiencing the hybridity of past and present states of self, characters encounter gradual transition and individually represent changes from the broader social context. The ghost of memory appears when past events are visually recalled and exist as a vision in the present, acting as a reflective tool for characters to recognize their transition and understand how change manifests in the present. In each text, the ghosts function differently depending on the types of transition presented, from the evolving role of women, overcoming fears of death, grieving in a healthy manner, or acknowledging the virtue of community. Woolf’s ghosts create a space for each individual to transition from where they are in the process of change. Additionally, I consider today’s Women’s March, arguing that Woolf’s ghost provides a model for progress that highlights individual difference without demonizing others, deconstructing the myth of universality in the contemporary women’s movement.

Margaret Schaffer’s Honors Thesis Abstract

Advisor: Susannah Monta

“In me you have hallowed a Pagan Muse”: An Epistolary Approach to John Donne’s Petrarchism

Metaphysical poet John Donne is renowned for his lyric and religious poetry, but his verse letters are less widely read. Connections between Donne’s poetry and the poetry of Petrarch are also made in scholarly criticism. However, less well studied are the comparisons between Donne and Petrarch in regard to their epistolary work. I am making a comparative study between Donne’s verse letters to women, particularly the Countess of Bedford, and Petrarch’s body of letters, especially the one letter that he wrote to a woman, the Holy Roman Empress Anna, wife of Charles IV. In this study I analyze the effects of unrealized desire, both real and fictionalized, on male authors and their female subjects, and how power dynamics complicate the relationship between poet and object of praise in the work of both Petrarch and Donne. I first include a literature review detailing different critical responses to Donne’s responses, and outline my own middle-ground approach. I then examine the degree of Petrarchism in Donne’s verse letters through close reading and analysis in the light of three different themes: in regard to gender roles, the role of religion and idolatry, and finally poetic immortality. I connect these themes to views of intelligent and educated women in Petrarch’s and Donne’s times, and how education, wealth, and intelligence increase the power of the female patroness, while at the same time increasing poetic desire for her. In conclusion, I describe how the Petrarchism present in Donne’s verse letters asserts how Donne and Petrarch both strive for poetic immortality, and as a result achieve a high status in the literary canon.