Showing 31 - 40 of 53 Items
In and out of the spectacle: The Beijing olympics and Yiyun Li's The Vagrants
Date: 2011-01-01
Creator: Belinda Kong
Access: Open access
Vienna Secession
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Bobby Murray
Access: Open access
- ‘Vienna Secession’ is a poetry manuscript broken into four distinct sections: “The Vienna Secession,” “Waltzes,” “Short Talks,” and “Other.” Most of the manuscript is in dialogue with Secessionist artists, or the ethos of the Vienna Secession. However, others, like the haikus, are exercises of form and responses to other contemporary poets, such as Robert Hass or Richard Wright. The manuscript explores different genres, including ekphrasis, prose, and experimental poems, like the ‘Waltzes,’ which employ 3/4 meter to emulate the Viennese waltz. The heart of the project is its sonic awareness—pulling from W.H. Auden, August Kleinzahler, and other musically-oriented poets. Outside the ‘Short Talks’ section, the poems’ sonic and phonetic qualities are integral to their style and meaning. At times this may be subtle, or even indiscernible, but overall, careful attention is paid to the sound and rhythm of the poems. The manuscript should be considered in both musical and literary terms. Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Duino Elegies’ and advice in ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ are instrumental in creating these poems. As a ‘first statement,’ many poems battle with the insecurities of a young poet and exemplify the grapple of an aspiring creative. The poems consider antiquated things through contemporary frameworks; relationships, communication, masculinity, and suffering, to name a few. A general incentive of the work is to provide fresh perspectives on historical art and to import its most apposite sentiments into our current moment.
"This people which I made": The Character of King Arthur as a Mechanism of Unification in Medieval Arthuriana and the Idylls of the King
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Hallie Schaeffer
Access: Open access
Reframing Mourning: Liberatory Grief in Post-Tragedy Chinese American Women’s Fiction
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Sophia Li
Access: Open access
- My project approaches discussions of Asian American melancholia and mourning with a specific focus on contemporary Chinese American women’s fiction. Scholars such as David Eng, Shinhee Han, and Anne Anlin Cheng have long spotlighted the prevalence of depression among Asian American populations, particularly those with immigrant backgrounds, and they variously adopt psychoanalytic approaches to understand Asian American mental health and intersectional identities. Looking beyond psychoanalytic models, my project focuses on the works of Yiyun Li, Jenny Zhang, and K-Ming Chang to explore diverse forms of post-tragedy positionality. I read the authors paratextually, not only to locate them within legacies of diasporic fiction and intersectional auto-writing but also to highlight their critically self-reflexive authorship. I study novels and characters depicting complex processes of mourning, ultimately proposing a reading that views them not only as resisting complete recovery but as forging pathways toward liberatory grief.
This is What You Want: Stories
Date: 2017-05-01
Creator: Savannah Blake Horton
Access: Open access
- This is What You Want: Stories is a collection of nine stories exploring the role of humor in dark situations. It is a work of fiction.
Seasons Without Borders: the Ali Smith Quartet
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Claire M Burns
Access: Open access
- This project considers how the novels of contemporary Scottish author Ali Smith work to destabilize traditional constructions of temporal, formal, national, and gender borders. The motifs of the border and the border identity have been thematically pervasive in Scottish literary history, as reflected in the recurrence of the Scottish split identity. This thesis explores how the borders that have become essential to the construction of Scottish national literature, often relying on binaristic categorizations, have been disestablished in the contemporary era. Ali Smith’s novels, particularly the novels of her seasonal quartet, introduce forms and figures that highlight the instability of many of these borders, challenging fixed representations of the border identity. Through this focus on Scotland, Smith constructs a template for a consideration of national identity beyond the boundaries of Scotland, extending toward a more global sensibility.
Nonprophets: a novel This record is embargoed.
- Embargo End Date: 2025-05-14
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Nathan Osiason Blum
Access: Embargoed
Errandsphere Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
- Restriction End Date: 2026-06-01
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Aida Muratoglu
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
"What's Outside the Window?": Evil, Literature, and Detection in Roberto Bolaño's Fiction This record is embargoed.
- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Andrew YH Chang
Access: Embargoed
"Possessive gentleness": Insecure Attachments in American Literature
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Ella Pearl Crabtree
Access: Open access
- “‘Possessive Gentleness’: Insecure Attachments in American Literature” applies psychological attachment theory to works of American Literature. Each novel examined—Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851), Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp (1856), and The Minister’s Wooing (1859) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Third Generation (1954) by Chester Himes, and The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison—describes the forces behind insecure attachment relationships between child characters and their caregivers. The first chapter of this project focuses on Stowe’s anti-slavery novels. It argues that the institution of slavery is in conflict with Christianity in these works, because it impedes disinterestedly benevolent mothering and disrupts secure attachments. The second chapter analyzes The Third Generation, and suggests that colorism in the black community is the cause of insecure attachments in Himes’ work. The third and final chapter examines The Bluest Eye, and presents sympathy, as embodied by the novel’s narrator, as a potential remedy for insecure parent-child attachments. Together, these texts elucidate how societal forces (e.g. colorism, poverty) intrude upon the family structure and destabilize parent-child attachments. Optimistically, however, they also suggest that improved parent-child attachments might function as a vehicle of broader social change.