Showing 31 - 40 of 64 Items

Minor, Ugly, and Meta: Feelings in Contemporary Korean American Literature

Date: 2022-01-01

Creator: Kyubin Kim

Access: Open access

In 2019, Korean American writer Cathy Park Hong published her memoir Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning in the midst of a turning point in Asian American politics. Hong describes minor feelings as “emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.” Used as a concept to summate the Asian American experience in white America as living in a country where one’s reality is constantly questioned and made invisible, minor feelings forges an affective framework to study minoritized, diasporic literature. My project enriches Hong’s “minor feelings” by studying Korean American literature through a transnational and multimedia lens, considering how Korea’s colonial history and nation-building play roles in emoting Korean American self-realities. I structurally model my project after Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings, split into four chapters, each focusing on one affect: shame, anger, han, and love. My project follows and documents the contemporary shifts occurring in Korean Americana, in how they perceive collective racial and diasporic identity, the intersectionality of layered identities, and the younger generations’ call for coalition. Since Korean American affects often are studied as an afterthought to Korean affects, my project retains a focus on the Korean American experience, recentering members of a diaspora whose globalizing homeland’s triumphs may eclipse their minor, invisible realities in America.


Miniature of Pathways: Montana Stories and Poems
Pathways: Montana Stories and Poems
This record is embargoed.
    • Embargo End Date: 2027-05-16

    Date: 2024-01-01

    Creator: Tess Davis

    Access: Embargoed



      "One Never Knew": David Foster Wallace and the Aesthetics of Consumption

      Date: 2016-05-01

      Creator: Jesse Ortiz

      Access: Open access

      Increasingly, David Foster Wallace is becoming a cult figure among literary enthusiasts. His novels, essays, and short stories are all known for their poignant critiques of modern culture. Since his 2008 suicide, Wallace’s name has come to represent a way of thinking that rejects – and perhaps transcends – the hegemonic power of late capitalism. Wallace had a problem with pleasure. His writing often seemed to deflate or deconstruct what many people enjoy. For him, so much was “supposedly fun.” To understand Wallace’s relationship with pleasure, we must see how pleasure incorporates aesthetics and consumption. Wallace takes issue with the pleasure that comes from the aesthetics of cultural commodities. Irony produces pleasure, which turns culture into a desirable commodity. In my first chapter, I argue that Wallace’s essays challenge aesthetic pleasure by deconstructing self-reflexive irony. In his descriptions of consumer culture, Wallace evokes the feeling of disgust to undo the aesthetic pleasure of consumption. In my second chapter, I move to Infinite Jest to show how Wallace engages with irony while using it to exceed aesthetic pleasure. Infinite Jest challenges the hierarchy of aesthetics and suggests that deformity and waste can be beautiful and important. Infinite Jest demonstrates that, by trusting others instead of pursuing aesthetic ideals, people can build communities that are more honest and fulfilling than the pleasure of consumption.


      Miniature of When There's A Fire–Short Stories
      When There's A Fire–Short Stories
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          Date: 2023-01-01

          Creator: Zoë Ellis Wilson

          Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community



            Miniature of “Unstuck in Time and Space”: Time Travels in Teen Cinema
            “Unstuck in Time and Space”: Time Travels in Teen Cinema
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                Date: 2021-01-01

                Creator: Hallowell Lyne

                Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community



                  Miniature of Palimpsestuous London: Spatial and Temporal Layering in Fin-de-Siècle Victorian Fiction
                  Palimpsestuous London: Spatial and Temporal Layering in Fin-de-Siècle Victorian Fiction
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                      Date: 2015-05-01

                      Creator: Elisabeth A Strayer

                      Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community



                        Miniature of Possessing Her: Embodying Identity in Exorcism Cinema
                        Possessing Her: Embodying Identity in Exorcism Cinema
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                            Date: 2021-01-01

                            Creator: Alicia Echavarria

                            Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community



                              "In Loving Virtue": Staging the Virgin Body in Early Modern Drama

                              Date: 2022-01-01

                              Creator: Miranda Viederman

                              Access: Open access

                              The aim of this Honors project is to investigate representations of female virginity in Renaissance English dramatic works. I view the period as one in which the womb became the site of a unique renewal of cultural anxieties surrounding the stability of the patriarchy and the inaccessibility of female sexual desire. I am most interested in virginity as a “bodily narrative” dependent on the construction and maintenance of performance. I analyze representations of virginity in female characters from four works of drama originating in the Jacobean period of the English Renaissance, during and after the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. Across four chapters, I examine the characters of Isabella from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604), Beatrice-Joanna from Thomas Middleton’s The Changeling (1622), the Jailer’s Daughter from Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), and Helen from Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (c. 1602-1605). To establish a framework for my readings, I situate each work in its contemporary cultural context, drawing upon Catholic and Protestant religious doctrines, period medical texts, and popular culture. I intend to explore the complex, often contradictory nature of the forms of virginity the plays depict. Still, I hope by uncovering the opportunities these four characters are provided by their virginity, that I can widen the confines of the category.


                              Miniature of They Used to Be Castles
                              They Used to Be Castles
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                                  Date: 2021-01-01

                                  Creator: Lily Anna Fullam

                                  Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community



                                    Miniature of Postmemory’s Shadow Archives: Reshaping the Punctum in Asian Diaspora Poetry
                                    Postmemory’s Shadow Archives: Reshaping the Punctum in Asian Diaspora Poetry
                                    This record is embargoed.

                                        Date: 2024-01-01

                                        Creator: Hannah Kim