Humanities Honors Program

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) published his major novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), in postcolonial Nigeria. In it he presents a colonial narrative using English as its primary mode of communication. However, his use of native Igbo words and the world they invoke problematizes a eurocentric assumption of the totality and universality of a given language, in this case, English. He employs acts of translation and introduces hybrid languages in order to engender dialogue that subverts the dominance of any one language and the world that it creates for its speakers. In a parallel fashion, this thesis uses two different theoretical approaches that have not typically been placed in dialogue with each other — postcolonial theory and hermeneutics — to view and interpret the nuances present in Achebe’s text that neither could illuminate on its own. This dialogical approach reveals insufficiencies in the independent theories and allows them to mutually supplement each other. Together these theories show how the novel subverts the presumed authority of the English language and universalizing discourses in order to identify the confrontation of lived linguistic worlds and horizons in the postcolonial context. The novel reorients those structures of understanding and interpretation around a subject that has historically been denied a voice.

American television, as a mass medium of storytelling, often gets scrutiny over its content, facing industry standards, censorship, and audience pushback. While sex and obscenity have been intensely studied, TV violence has had most scholarship aimed at the effects of viewing violence. This study is focused in a different direction, seeking to analyze the evolving presentation of violence on American airwaves. TV violence is composed of two parts: The first is the graphic portrayal of violence through fights, gunshots, and death. The second is the role violence serves within TV narratives, which has morphed from acts of justice and self-defense to plotlines intertwining moral indifference with pointless killing and righteous vengeance. Three case studies utilizing close reading and image analysis of various shows are used to analyze both aspects of TV violence. The first case study centers on Bonanza, a TV western that presents violence within strict moral boundaries. The second looks at The Day After, a TV movie that employed special effects, dialogue, and set design to portray the aftermath of nuclear Armageddon. The third case study analyzes The Walking Dead, a culmination of the changing TV landscape of the 2000s that led to a hyperreal level of graphic violence and storylines that emphasized moral ambiguity, villains that escaped punishment, and endless death. The portrayal of violence on American television has changed drastically in the last 80 years, and this study hopes to reflect the reciprocal relationship between a changing TV industry and a shifting American society.

Religious history is often preserved by the winners of ideological debates. The twenty-seven books composing the New Testament canon were selected by prevailing players in the battle for ideological supremacy within the early Christian movement and the emerging Catholic Church. The struggle culminated with an accepted definition of orthodoxy and a tradition of apostolic succession for legitimizing religious texts. The Gospel of Mary is an early Christian text deemed unorthodox by the men who shaped the nascent Catholic church, was excluded from the canon, and was subsequently erased from the history of Christianity along with most narratives that demonstrated women’s contributions to the early Christian movement. My thesis explores the intricacies of early canon formation within the context of the controversy surrounding women’s participation in authoritative roles within early Christianity and how the Gospel of Mary was labeled as an unorthodox text due to its pro-feminine narrative. I maintain that the motive for excluding the Gospel of Mary was not the text’s lack of conformity to the requirements of apostolic succession or orthodoxy, but was grounded within the struggle to suppress the agency and participation of women from the patriarchal hierarchy that defined the developing structure of the Catholic Church. I claim the exclusion of the gynocentric narrative of the Gospel of Mary facilitated the androcentric interpretation of religious doctrine and history that has predominated Christian scholarship for almost two millennia.

Identity is depths beyond what human beings perceive when they look into a mirror-- rather, it is the rich history of time, people, environment, and matters of the heart that afflict and influence them from their earliest memories to their present moment. This collection of poetry, composed of three sections representative of significant periods of one's personhood, is meant to explore the nuances and complications of one's being both a product of their experiences and carrier of memories from those experiences. The first section is composed of poetry concerned with identity formation in the early memories of childhood, with familial influence rooted at its core. The second section is focused on the movement from innocence of childhood to the infatuations, love, and heartbreak that come with young adulthood. The third section is comprised of poetry that looks introspectively at the former two in order to inform an identity that does not abandon those experiences, but builds independently from them. This collection strives to clarify the immense influence memories and human connection have on the development of one's sense of self. It is in hope that this exploration of identity and one's relationship to its ever-transforming essence will provide better understanding of the significance in claiming one's own identity while, at the same time, valuing even the experiences which may haunt them.

In 1860, Walt Whitman released what he called the “new American Bible.” This claim scandalized American readers of the day though, since then, much more than the small circle of intellectuals has recognized its importance. The 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass was also the first edition (of seven) in which he claimed to inaugurate a new religion. The centerpiece of this new religion was the mystical experience in which poet and reader embarked together. Through printed text, poet and reader, individual and cosmos, citizen and the democratic would unify. Or, at least, the poet would lead the reader through a mystical journey that may or may not have a destination. The character of this journey changes, like Leaves of Grass itself, from edition to edition. This thesis traces the unstable and multifaceted character of this mysticism with a special emphasis on its blossoming as a mysticism of death.

In doing so, it will hopefully complicate an often overlooked facet of Leaves of Grass and vindicate Whitman’s status as a mystic which has been a subject of both debate and embarrassment for Whitman scholars. Many have shied away from applying the “mystic” label. A brief outline of the appearances of mysticism of Leaves of Grass followed by a tracing of its roots constitutes the introduction. Then, a chapter on Whitman’s more egotistical mysticism focuses on the dynamics within the self. Following this is a chapter on Whitman’s expansive mystical role and the final chapter identifies death as the ultimate mystical transfer and explains the reasoning behind this bold claim.

In an age when everyday life demands less and less of the human body, it often feels as if we are growing further divorced from our nature as moving creatures. As the gym becomes the only sphere of life in which real physical exertion is experienced, our understanding and performance of exercise grows all the more distant—we get in and out of the gym as quickly as possible, using machines that isolate the muscles and limit the body’s movement. Our blood, sweat, and labor are transformed into numbers, cold steel, and increments of time. In this thesis I call upon the wisdom of both ancient and nascent strength communities to offer a perspective on exercise that is more human but does not lose sight of the importance of empirical data and quantitative values. In doing so, I give a brief account of the evolutionary histories of two not-so-typical exercise implements—the Atlas Stone and gada—as well as the myths and peoples to which they are tethered by history, legend, and science. Following my examination of the implements, I outline a three-phase exercise routine that synthesizes exercises performed using them with contemporary training principles and methodologies. Thus, in drawing upon the wisdom of the Indian wrestling and European stone lifting communities, I propose the need to cultivate a fitness culture that marries ancient techniques and attitudes with empirical findings and innovative technologies to produce trainees that are smarter, fitter, and greater in number.

In the words of Gertrude Stein: "Composition is the difference." Tender Buttons, her poetry collection published in 1914, is one of the most compositionally daring and misunderstood works within the modernist canon. Stein's composition brings into existence a way of seeing words: she forms her own use of language, both interpreting the rules of grammar and showing clear linguistic choices. In Tender Buttons, the word becomes the microcosm for larger philosophical issues embedded within language: identity, the body, being and knowing, and power. My thesis will closely observe how Stein's poems lend themselves to productive dialogs and/or cross fertilization with the linguistic theories of 20th century language philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, and Valentin Voloshinov. In placing Stein in conversation with these philosophers, I hope to draw Stein in closer proximity to popular language theory and introduce new lenses to help perceive her work. More importantly, I hope to show how uniquely Stein challenges and pushes the boundaries of language, demonstrating to her readers the practice of choice and intent in the language of the everyday.

Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin from 1924 to 1953, censorship notoriously became a central aspect of Soviet society.  As citizens were rewarded for exposing any possible opposition to the government’s policies, no sector was left unmarked by what scholars now call the “Great Purge.”  While music was not an obvious victim of this movement, the Soviet music scene nonetheless found itself at the forefront of government criticism and reform.  In this thesis, I conduct case-studies of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and his Fifth Symphony, as well as Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky film soundtrack and his cantata Zdravitsa.  Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District brought its composer, and Soviet music as a whole, to the disapproving eye of Soviet censorship policy, while Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony saved him from further consequences.  Alexander Nevsky and Zdravitsa played instrumental roles in Prokofiev’s reintegration into Soviet society after spending years abroad.  I examine the Zhdanov Affair of 1948, in which both prominent and upcoming composers were called into a government conference concerning the unsavory music production in the Soviet Union, as a central event in the history of censorship.  Music magnifies the inherent futility of censorship, and as such, I use this investigation in conjunction with the case-studies to evaluate censorship practices within society: past, present, Soviet, and beyond.   

The primary purpose of this thesis is to reveal both the inner and outer workings of apologies and forgiveness, verbal gestures typically viewed broadly in the context of relational repair. I intend to enlighten the reader with examples that substantiate the more complex processes involved in apologizing and forgiving. All too often are the valuable constituents and products of verbal interactions overlooked during their exchange. It is through my exhaustive presentation of apologies and forgiveness that I hope to ignite a greater appreciation for conventional utterances and their bases.

Although vampire lore has existed in various communities, countries, and times, the stereotypical creature that makes us cover our necks or, perhaps, feel a longing desire to be bitten, originates in the Victorian era. Examining texts from the eighteenth into the twenty-first centuries, I argue that vampire literature reveals and challenges the throughline of Victorian patriarchal binary in western society. Often, the authors of these stories, Bram Stoker among them, placed the vampire in a simple binary of good and evil, using the monster to prove patriarchy's morality and validity. As the typical demonic character, the vampire has maintained elements that Victorianism imbued it with--such as piercing fangs, fear of the light, association with the devil, and sexual promiscuity. And, although stories like Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2005) transform the vampire from evil monster to romantic lover, these characteristics remain. Ironically, however, despite the best efforts of some vampire authors to make the creature unfavorable, the vampire always disproves the efficacy of patriarchal structures. As a subversive figure, the vampire inherently attacks the offensive stereotypes thrown upon it by embracing viciousness. Through sexual promiscuity, for example, the vampire exhibits to women the power in bodily autonomy. As a creature that infiltrates the home, the vampire displays the home and nuclear family as sinister patriarchal institutions that trap women. The vampire’s true potential, then, is not as evil foil but active revealer--showing patriarchy’s illegitimacy and desperate need to formulate lies to maintain its existence. I also examine intentionally subversive vampire tales, such as Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories (1991) and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (2005), to demonstrate the vampire’s social power in its fullest extent. In these cases, the authors intend the vampire to disprove patriarchy in its various forms, allowing the creature to attack patriarchy directly. I propose that vampire media, which centers in Victorian social and literary tradition, reflects patriarchal lies and offers truth through targeted resistance.

Over the last two decades, Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG), transformed from a niche subculture to a mainstream aspect of popular culture. Tabletop gamers now utilize new media to create “actual play” experiences, in which a group of people play TTRPGs for an audience. In traditional tabletop, Dennis Waskul and Matt Lust propose that role-playing engenders three unique roles within one person, that of the person, the player, and the persona. In this thesis, I propose that actual play TTRPGs necessitate the addition of a fourth role: the performer. Because of the nature of live television and theatre, both the actors and the audience experience the effects of this fourth role, in recorded actual play and live actual play. I will explore how the division of self into four tangible roles reveals in and out of game identity negotiation. Through a case study of one of the most popular actual play shows, Critical Role, this thesis aims to uncover the ways in which a new type of media—the D&D liveshow—both performs and inspires new conceptions of personhood for players and viewers alike. My close reading and case study thus far suggest that play, the medium of D&D itself, engenders social recreation at the table, and therefore outside of the table, due to how closely the game mimics life and how the roles necessitated to play the game reflect real-life social roles. CR, and at large the new genre of the D&D liveshow, gives players, naïve and experienced, not only the permission and example, but also the opportunity, to take rules and break them.

This thesis examines the ways NPR failed to serve marginalized communities by analyzing the history and creation of the National Public Radio network. NPR was created on the founding mission statement that promised to represent the diversity of America and to provide programming that would supplement a lack of representation or opportunities on American airwaves, such as adult education programs. This mission statement was to also uphold the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) requirement of serving the public interest in order to justify NPR’s programming being on air. However, using the research study, Audience 88, conducted by NPR’s lead Research Analyst, David Giovannoni. NPR’s main audience was revealed to be educated, middle to upper class, older White people. This thesis asks the question, how did a radio network built with a focus on inclusivity fail to capture and serve a diverse audience?

Comfort women were sex slaves forcibly taken and used by the Japanese imperial army during WW2. These women were often poor and uneducated. These women were taken from many places across Asia, however, I specifically will focus on Korean comfort women. Comfort women were women who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese army. This is where the controversy starts. Japan refuses to state they were sex slaves but rather prostitutes. This is the controversy when engaging in discussion about comfort women. I am studying why it is considered a controversy versus a tragedy. Other works focus on the tragedy of comfort women, why it happened or what allowed it to happen. However, it does not focus on why on an international-scale we allowed people and a whole nation, Japan, to deny that these women were sex slaves. Finding translations, government documents, and first hand testimonies were important in understanding the reason why this tragedy is posed as a controversy. After researching, it was discovered that due to colonization, sexism, language, racism, and the historical circumstances around Korea after the second world war ended is what allowed these women’s lives to be contested. The hope is to broaden the understanding of these women’s experiences and how Japan was not the only offender in failing them and hurting them.

Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and while most former and current communist states have integrated themselves into the global economy, North Korea is still largely, and fiercely, resistant to it. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, with millions living without electricity and suffering from malnutrition. It is also one of the most repressive regimes in contemporary times, with hundreds of thousands imprisoned and tortured without probable cause, compelled to perform forced labor in a vast network of concentration camps. Typically, widespread destitution and oppression inspire liberal reforms or democratic revolutions, but neither have happened in North Korea. This raises the question of how the regime has maintained internal control so effectively for so long. One explanation for its survival is the pervasive security apparatus, but mass surveillance and state-sanctioned violence cannot be the exclusive explanations. One of the key ways cultures maintain stability without coercion is religion, which can be defined as a belief system adhered to by a community and supported through behaviors that result in a desired psychological state. This article argues that the ruling-Kim dynasty’s personality cult functions as a state religion that regulates the daily lives of North Koreans and contributes to the regime’s survival. Using Émile Durkheim’s religious framework and Clifford Geertz’s thick description I will examine propaganda works, social institutions, and defector testimonies to understand and explain the efficacy of the myths and rituals of the state.

This thesis explores the ways in which the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges used devices, principles, and strategies that today we would call deconstructionist, to write poetry that could transcend the communicative limits of language, which according to the author himself, it is not an effective tool to truly represent what is real. To accomplish this task, we first frame our work in the context of Derrida’s Deconstructionism, specifically in the area of literary criticism, defining what it means to take a deconstructive approach to critical theory. We then introduce Borges and his ideas, situating him within the sphere of deconstructionist theory as a sort of precursor (a word that we want to use carefully here, as we will be arguing for something different from a precursor). Next, we present the hard data obtained from an experiment involving thirty-two participants, analyzing the interpretations our volunteers gave to verses and poems by Borges, and we use the significant variety of meanings that emerged from the experiment to support some of our points, offering a different and new perspective. Finally, we engage in a critical analysis of Borges’ poetry, elaborating on concepts such as symbolic system, the use of opposites, referentiality, paradoxes, circularity, reversion of author-reader role, among others. This analysis supports our theory, which posits that the processes we now classify as deconstructive play a fundamental role in Borges’ construction of poetry. In fact, it is through these processes that the Argentinian transcends the limits of language, creating labyrinths of meanings – as we call them, using some borgean terminology – where the author relinquishes control to favor readers’ own agency and, in turn, the readers can get closer to some of the author’s intentions.

This thesis examines the vicissitudes of masculinity as it presents across three late-Victorian novels in order to unpack the anxieties produced by the shift of power from aristocratic to professional communities and the tensions this shift produced between and within those communities. The various models of masculinity on display in the examined works of Gothic literature operate on ideas that came into play during the period surrounding sexuality and gender structures. Furthermore, each work takes on a particular perspective on masculinity as it works on the physical body and how that body interacts with others of its kind. The common themes of mutation, metamorphosis, and bodily decay or degeneration stand in relief to the ideal of masculinity they implicitly reference, which points toward the focal point of power relations between men and the world they inhabit as well as between each other.

Chapter One examines the world of the Victorian professional man as it exists in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This formulation of masculinity is modeled both on a rejection of aristocracy in favor of a professional cohort of male socialization and on an implicit moral structure which works on a continuum of degeneracy to sophistication. Chapter Two focuses on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and its portrayal of the late-Victorian aristocratic man in the form of the dandy. This text, of the three, comes closest to incorporating an explicit homosexual valence into the interactions of the male characters, so the analysis here will adapt Eve Sedgwick’s adaptation of René Girard’s work on “erotic triangles.” However, instead of the typical formulation (as seen in Dracula) of two male rivals competing for the female romantic/erotic object, Dorian Gray’s triangle consists of three men, blurring the lines between homosocial desire and homoerotic desire. Chapter Three traces the reification of heterosexual masculinity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

It is undeniable that folklore has been a crucial aspect of human expression and connection for thousands of years. The nineteenth century saw interest in folkloric stories bloom thanks to the work of folklorists like the Brothers Grimm and fairy tale writers like Hans Christian Andersen. With these minds came widespread recognition of the literary fairy tale genre. Since then, fairy tales have skyrocketed in pop cultural prominence. Taking into account the fairy tale genre’s pervasiveness in storytelling, this thesis examines how the computer role-playing game (CRPG) series, Baldur’s Gate, utilizes this genre in an attempt to create a set of adult fairy tales for their players. In three separate chapters, this thesis will connect the Baldur’s Gate games to fairy tales in a way that exemplifies the latter’s influence on the former. The first chapter will focus on the “leaving home” plot arc as it is presented in the first Baldur’s Gate game from 1998, and we will examine how this narrative format is used in fairy tales to convey a message about self-actualization. In the second chapter, we will examine the hag character type, and how Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access (2020—present) both reiterates and subverts this feminine archetype. Finally, the third chapter will focus on perhaps the most important aspect of RPGs and fairy tales both, which is choice. Essentially, we will analyze how the Baldur’s Gate series honors the fairy tale principle of moral exploration through choice. Additionally, we will examine how the Baldur’s Gate series takes this aspect of moral exploration from fairy tales and amplifies it according to their targeted demographic of adults.

Derivative fiction is a genre of fiction that involves writing or reading about or within the worlds of previously established works. People often do not realize it, but many works of classic literature are, in their own ways, derivative fiction of other stories entirely. Dante’s Inferno is a derivative work based on The Bible, for example, but in addition to that, much of Arthurian legend—including all of Sir Lancelot’s legends, and the existence of Sir Lancelot in the first place—comes from derivative works, sometimes even from other countries such as France (which is where Sir Lancelot’s stories all come from). Even Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is based on an Italian play called The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, but while the original play framed the deaths of the main characters as caused by their not listening to their parents, Shakespeare changed the ending and other parts of the story to focus on tragic love (Spencer et al.). Even nowadays, derivative works are popular—the superhero comic book industry, for example, is almost entirely derivative fiction, seeing as how almost all comic books nowadays (that are about the big-name superheroes, at least) are written by people who did not create the original characters, showing their own takes on popular figures like Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, and the worlds around them.

Shakespeare: the greatest mind in English literature, the worst for the classroom. He’s been our pop culture for centuries, but it’s a struggle teaching his work.

I remember being a freshman in high school reading Romeo and Juliet. I’ve been captivated by Shakespeare’s vivid language and ideas since. As much as I loved the story, and Shakespeare, I knew my classmates were frustrated with it and didn’t like it.

As a fourth-year college student, I still think about my experience with Shakespeare in freshman year. My teacher summarized scenes and had us (the students) read the text out loud. Everyone was confused and our teacher’s succinct summaries were not enough for us to grasp his language. Although I was animated as we read the play, I couldn’t understand it.

I’ve realized that simply summarizing the happenings of a Shakespeare play is not useful because it’s the same as reading an online book summary in lieu of reading the entire book. Hence, teachers must help students decipher the meaning of Shakespeare’s words rather than giving them the main idea in each scene.

Before starting a play, teachers must demystify who Shakespeare is. Many students think that he was always a literary scholar, not that he was an entertainment icon in his era. Peter Sawaya, a retired high school teacher, explains "I would begin by teaching the history of theater because I wanted them to know that Shakespeare is primarily a playwright". Providing background information on Shakespeare’s era engages students in his work and guides their understanding and interpretations.

This thesis explores resistance work in Nazi-occupied France and Vichy France during World War II. The research uses paramilitary acts of resistance as a foil to political resistance, intelligence gathering and evasive resistance, and the home front as a site of resistance to spotlight women’s contributions to the French resistance. By exploring several types of resistance work and women’s participation (or lack thereof) in various resistance organizations, this thesis seeks to not only establish the extent of women’s participation in the French resistance but also explore their challenge to the established gender roles within the resistance. This thesis explores the extent of women’s resistance activities across World War II France through internal organizations, such as the French Communist Party and the French Resistance, and external organizations like the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action (BCRA), British Special Operatives Executive’s F (French) Section (SOE), the British Secret Intelligence Service, and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In the context of these organizations’ activities, this thesis analyzes the gendering of resistance while considering the presence of women in various resistance organizations and their resistance activities to contextualize scope and scale of women’s contributions to resistance work in occupied and Vichy France.