welcome everybody and thank you very much indeed for coming to hear this year's senior thesis students read from their now finished projects a year ago as you all know so these seven students were about to begin their projects they were full unsure of confidence they were I spoke to many of them they were gonna get that reading wrapped up over the summer they're gonna have project done pretty much by Christmas and then of course the reality of writing a senior thesis really kicks in I have a section on my on the syllabus of the colloquium that we offer in the fall which I title it's November and I started hiding from my advisor is this normal that I think is an inevitable part of the process but they all did a tremendous job they all push through which is testament to their own remarkable intellectual abilities their grit and determination but it's also Testaments many of you in this room it's testament to friends to partners to parents to family members and of course also to the advisors and I know our seven senior thesis students would want me to thank so now we are going to have each it's a each one of the students is going to read a short excerpt from the project and I've asked them just as they finish also to reflect if I could go back a year what's the one thing I wish I'd known going in okay so first of all we have is it for us no Jen Jen Jen Sega well for my thesis I study the rhetoric and language used to articulate gendered violence as communicated in hard-boiled crime fiction written between the 1930s 1950s I am I chose the side of this genre specifically because the shifting gender dynamics after the Great War period lends lended itself to a certain aesthetic of sexualized violence within hard-boiled fiction I wanted to see how these depictions served as a precondition for our own time period as I uncovered consistencies and contradictions of post-war gender stereotypes articulated by traditional and canonical male writers and largely unread women writers of The Hardball tradition so in my first chapter I looked at the hardwood formula set up by three canonical Hartville texts and attempted to cover the meaning of traditional hard-boiled masculinity my second chapter investigated how women navigated the overtly masculine framework of this genre what gender stereotypes they submitted to and in what ways were they able to articulate an empowered woman in this typically patriarchal and misogynist mrs. Hodge and a Sikh tradition so from here I'll read a section from the introduction of my second chapter in Chapter 1 the initial practice of the hard-boiled tradition is a commentary of maleness and masculinity the Harper love genre is a space in American culture where masculine fantasies get a kind of hyperbolic and public elaboration in this era in this arena implicitly gendered of those fantasies are heightened and rendered explicit a fantasy version of masculinity that defines itself against the femininity whose proximity demands that it be infinitely repudiated this femininity often returns with all the violence of the initial projection to per the probe every shatter and dissolve the male ego in this respect The Hardball tradition is a public articulation of gendered anxieties and a fantastical realm where pre-war gender ideology is resurrected the novel's examined in the first chapter embody at Jean Raqqah mitad - masculine prowess while also struggling with male toxicity one might therefore think of classic hard-boiled fiction as a cathartic purging and collective exercising of explicitly gendered demons naturally after looking at the traditional blueprint of The Hardball tradition the first chapter my next question was to explore how women writers managed to infiltrate this overly masculine tradition in recent years new attention has been given to women writers who've managed to infiltrate the tradition founded in 1970 the feminist press began as a crucial publishing component of second wave feminism reprinting feminists classics and providing much-needed texts for the developing field of women's studies in 2000 2003 they began their project femme fatales women write pulp which came first or print the best of women's writing in classic pulp genres from hardw are too racy romance too taboo lesbian pulp these rediscovered Queens of Pulp offered subversive perspectives at the heart of American culture this series acknowledges the contradictory nature of women writers in The Hardball tradition given the tough-guy image of Pulp Fiction yet points out that these writers were able to accomplish a difficult task of outpacing their male counterparts and challenging and challenging received ideas about gender race class and forbidden territories while still a hearing to the conventions of the heart village genre bringing to light a collection of deep and astonishing hard-boiled texts written by women the feminist press ivory a text that showed the capacity of women to write from the male perspectives narrating from inside the head of a serial killer a pie or a small-town farm who happens to know all the tempter they also wrote from places where women weren't supposed to go by experimenting with America's mass-produced easily dispensable texts women writers used pulp as a medium to reflect and shape the heart of American popular imagination and the culture that consumed it where as chapter one outlines a deliberate performance of active masculinity both underlining and defining the Hartville tradition my second chapter showcases the hard well text by female writers that experimented with the scripts of masculinity in this comparison I would like to I drew from Gilbert and Gubar infection of the sentence specifically women writers of the Harville tradition are closely connected to a trend of literary theory that explores psychology of literary history the tensions and anxieties hostilities and inaccuracies writers feel when they feel when they confront um only the achievement of their predecessors but the traditions of genre style and metaphor that they inherit from such forefathers in a male constructed and dominated canon masculine versions of larry history deny women writers from fitting in she is the anomalous in diff'ent in a bowl alienated and freakish outsider thus these women writers infect the sentence both abiding by rhetoric and conventions of the genre can impact the tradition in an experimental fashion whereas male writers constructed the femme fatale to shoot seduce and poison her way through pulp bestsellers as an iconic figure of evil his objection secured a new masculine ideal women writers created characters and used narrative techniques that agitated these customs within masculine hegemony I'm going to use two exemplary novels produced by the feminist press and recently republished and anthologized by the library of America Laura Boyer Cass Barry and in a lonely place by Dorothy Hughes these novels rework and experiment with various performances of masculinity and femininity normalized within the genre so I'm also going to read the concluding paragraphs of my project when Dashiell Hammett made his brutal privatise Sam Spade an American folk hero in The Maltese Falcon he also created a cruel code of honor which subsequently adopted by later Hardwell which was thought differently adopted by later high bull riders spayed as the CM burns Dale rights is an oblivious is oblivious to any kind of sentiment or softness unafraid of death unfettered by desire for wealth and unaffected by the lure of sex a number of writers followed Hammett's example with lesser or greater success in a simple art of murder Raymond Chandler gave his famous definition of The Hardball detective but down these mean streets a man must go who hit who is not himself mean who is neither tarnished nor afraid the defect the detective in this kind of story must be such a man he is the hero he is everything he must be a complete man and a common man and yet and in the usual man he must be to use rather whether Trey's a man of honor based on the above blueprint who created Philip Marlowe a tough-talking pie with a drinking problem James and James Gaines Frank chambers twisted the blueprint to show their romantic heart boyhood criminal who falls in love with his own gendered fantasies and self idealizations he's historical and pivilt pivotal text created a foundational script for the genre with misogyny and sexualized violence towards women woven into the fabric of the tradition from this Dorothy Hughes and Veera cast very know the masculine tradition they have inherited yet they're deeply critical of the genre they know they are writing through they powerfully melded this traditionally masculine genre created by Chandler Hammond and Kane with a perceptive commentary on gender and class issues of their time their novels consistently defy what were then conventional notions of womanhood by creating archetype breaking male and female characters often critics ignore these female writers because they did not explicitly unite feminist and female detectives but it's been my contention in the CSS that writers of the generation of he's and Caspari made revisions to the genre in a more subtle fashion what emerged from women writers entering the hard-boiled tradition started as early starting as early as in 1940s as a politically charged commentary and protest that draws on the traditions of masculine hard-boiled fiction Kasparian peas have taken words performance community the socio-economic violence and the power of interpretation too queer the conventions of the hard world tradition their revised pis can thrive in this difficult and conflicted genre because they do not adhere to the conventions create as created by Hammett Chandler and Kane conventions that shackled and brutalized masculinity and femininity instead they propose new social frameworks and strategies designed to protect power and politics that would not come at the expense of woman women writers of the Harville tradition like aspirin hughes negotiated issues of gender and genre for feminist purposes using the established popular formula in order to investigate not only the topic of crime in their novels but also the more general offenses in which the patriarchal power structure of contemporary society itself is potentially incriminating I would say also I guess as something I learned from this experience both that the topic that you start with it's not going to be the topic that you end with at all and definitely take the working bibliography super seriously while working on it or else in the last week you go into a panic because you don't remember where you cited anything which is what happened to me sorry dr. Dan I want to start off by thanking the woman without whom this project would not have been possible or nearly as much fun and that is my amazing advisor Sheila Fisher in my acknowledgments I joked that if I sent her an email at 6:12 a.m. I was have a response by 6:14 a.m. she's just that good and then I also think that if I sent any of my thesis questions into the world's fastest supercomputer the supercomputer would have a slower response rate than professor Fisher at any time so thank you professor so I wrote my thesis on the Canterbury Tales which whenever I told people about my topic people would be like wow four is that's so impressive and I'm here to tell you now my thesis has been an elaborate trick because everyone is so terrified of the middle English if your argument is baloney no one really called you so that's it's been nice to have that encoder ability as I went forward now it's been an absolute pleasure working on what is an absolutely canonical text and I approach my thesis with that issue in mind why is the Canterbury Tales canonical what makes it endure for us and the answer that I came up with is intertextuality the Canterbury Tales is remarkable because it presents us with a series of stories and storytellers that interact with and gain meaning from one another and many of the tales if they were considered in isolation would be considered fantastic any reader could approach the Millers tale and the Millers tale alone and say that's an amazing fob Leo thankfully we don't have to read the tales alone we get to enjoy them in the full richness of their context and so as I was approaching Chaucer I wanted to look at the interactions among the stories and the storytellers as the main locus of Chaucer's most I think thought-provoking and original content so definitely the interaction among the pilgrims is a deeply competitive one and that begins from the very general prologue the very beginning of the work in which the host outlines the competition the whole reason they're telling stories is the hope of getting a free dinner at the end of it and I think that that is one way in which that competitive tone is laid out but it doesn't really take form until the competition itself gets underway and that happens after the night the first storyteller tells his story and the Miller bursts forth from the pilgrimage train and he says I have a noble tale for the occasion which with with which I will now creat the Knight's Tale and that Middle English word Queen really came to be the centerpiece of my thesis and modern English it means to repay or to match and so the way that pilgrims kweep one another is that they adopt and adapt various elements of previous storytellers in the hope of improving upon that work and that really that became the main word in my title and it became a word in every single one of my chapter titles as well because I think it sums up this kind of competitive revision that's going on among the pilgrims here's where I want to apologize for those of you who attended the December reading because I'll be rehashing some some information I shared then the biggest breakthrough of my project undoubtedly came when I realized that the kind of quitting happening in the Canterbury Tales is not only going on among the pilgrims Chaucer the poet is engaging in his own Queen process instead of you know tweeting someone else where you're riding along with on the way to Canterbury Chaucer is quitting his source authors so for example the Knights tale is based on Giovanni Boccaccio's the two Sayeda and so Chaucer makes the Knight's Tale an adaptation of that and in doing so he identifies weaknesses in Boccaccio's work and seeks to improve on them and so that first kind of became an afterthought this idea that Chaucer is also engaged in his own tweeting process and in my final thesis that takes up 2/3 of it so it kind of grew from there so my first chapter is all about that interaction between Chaucer and Boccaccio via the Knight's Tale and in my second chapter which is based on the Millers tale that is all about how Chaucer examines the FOB léo genre which for any of you who are not familiar with that term it's um a very kind of antiquated genre very popular and I think 13th century France is full of very bawdy material if you read The Canterbury Tales in high school you might remember a certain character getting scalded in the butt with a hot poker and the Palio are full of very kind of scatological and raunchy things like that and so Chaucer takes this genre that was very primitive that was very much kind of just meant to be a light entertainment and he stretches it to the limits of its potential in the Millers tale so that's the way in which as he was quitting an author a specific author through the Knight's Tale he quits an entire genre in the Millers tale and then in my third chapter I do a close reading analysis of the Queen between the Miller and the knight and I hope that that analysis was informed by my work with Chaucer's sources so I'm gonna just read you a brief section of my conclusion in the Writing Center I always ask students to ask so what why did I write this and what did I learn so this is my so what section in which I hope to make a case for why this approach to Chaucer a valuable one a queen based analysis is an invaluable approach to the study of The Canterbury Tales because by exploring the details of the competitive revision that dominates the text critics and readers of Chaucer can glimpse an understanding of what he believed to be the hallmarks of an effective story because the process of quitting prompted the pilgrims to explore the very nature of how effective stories are made we invariably get some idea of Chaucer's thoughts of the subject in my study of weeding and the Knights tail in the Millers tale the overarching theme that stood out to me is the idea I alluded to briefly at the end of chapter 3 which you never read and that idea is that genre is not destiny in other words no one genre is inherently superior to another instead the success of any given story depends on the author's ability to work with and exploit the genre to its greatest effect this notion seems particularly resonant when considered in the context of Chaucer's revision of the FOB Leo that I've explored in Chapter to preach Assyrian fob Leo with a few exception with a few exceptions were not literary works at the highest quality before Chaucer's use of the genre in The Canterbury Tales one might assume that the lack of quality and preach austere and fob leo was the result of a fundamental deficit in the genre itself however Chaucer's milord Miller's tale which is both a fob Leo and a highly successful work of art shatters that notion in other words the excellence of the Millers tale seems to be a testament to the fact that any genre however simplistic or broken it may appear can be used to create a great work this idea of genre not being destiny seems to be one that appears in other parts of the Canterbury Tales as well for example and what George Lyman Kitteridge defines the marriage group we may note that although each tale within this group deals with the subject of marriage each tale belongs to a different genre the Wife of Bath tale is an Arthurian romance the clerk's tale as a morality play the merchants tale is a fob Leo and the Franklin's tale is a Breton lay each tale is firmly rooted in one of four distinct genres however they are all used to treat one common theme that of marriage an examination of the marriage groups suggests that these differences in genre are the reason Chaucer is able to explore the theme of marriage with such nuance and originality in other words the group of these disparate types of stories rather than being a liability is in reality an asset we may be so bold as to expand this idea to speculate more broadly on Chaucer's artistic inclinations Chaucer's choices throughout the Canterbury Tales suggests a belief that there is no such thing as unsuitable material for a particular genre any author can use any given John retreat any subject effectively so long as one the author is intimately aware of the strengths weaknesses and demands of the genre and to the author is willing to approach the undertaking with an attitude of ingenuity and experimentation if these stipulations are met it may be the case that the most unexpected pairings between genre and subject matter often produce the most compelling works of storytelling thank you as for what I learned oh gosh I would say don't leave proofread until 24 hours before the deadline that would definitely be a big one the other I would say is that I think professor Bilson put a pin on this last night allow the thesis to germinate because even though you might not get a lot of words on the page early on or you might not even get words that you'll eventually use it's amazing how quickly the thesis can take shape later on in the process when you've been treating these ideas for months on end thank you and Bridget Riley will be next so they're a tough act to follow I would say I don't want to follow it but actually for us it's a real privilege and it's been a real privilege to just be in a cloak room with all of you guys you're really wonderful so thank you and before I begin I'd also like to thank professor Rosen I really don't like the phrase I couldn't have done it without you cuz it seems a little hollow but so far as this thesis comes it's really true and I've tried to thank you many times but I always find that line my words are inadequate to explain immense amount of gratitude I have for everything you've done for me this year so thank you I mean now to the fun stuff so a few days ago I actually went to talk to Professor Rosen to get some advice about what I should say for the presentation meaning I asked well what exactly do you have to do and I said you know well I have to start by giving a one to two minute summary of the whole project at this he goes haha good luck so here it goes it's titled there's a wisdom that is woe knowledge through narrative and Milton Coleridge and Melville and more specifically I'm looking at Paradise Lost Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Moby Dick and within those works I'm focusing on the narrator's so Raphael for Paradise Lost the Mariner in the marginal voice for the Rhine and Ishmael of course or moby-dick sort of the premise I'm working off of is that through their respective narrators each author is consciously grappling with the fact that language never perfectly or at times adequately explains the subject they're dealing with and because of this their subjects can never be completely understood either by them or by their audience now for a writer I imagine this would be what call what Ishmael calls a poor pickle or as my mom would say it's a major problem oh so the question I was trying to answer in the thesis was how does each of these authors deal with this problem and I think they use their narrators to establish what a narrative told in an imperfect way is actually good for I think they're trying to explain in some dim random way how and why telling stories helps us live meaningful good and productive lives and I think they were aware of what the author before them or in Melville's case the authors that came before them had to say about that and they were building off of that except for Milton who doesn't seem to have listened to anybody it just seems to be that kind of guy anyway I'm gonna jump to the very end which is actually the one thing professor Rosen told me not to do for the presentation I'm not going to listen to you and in it I talk about comedy and sort of Ishmael sense of humor and sort of I feel as Melville's addition to sort of the discussion that Milton starts with Raphael in Paradise Lost and sort of I think he thinks that the failings of language actually permit a comedic improvisation that allows us to be funny yeah and I'm going to end here not because I think it's the best argument are the most interesting point but because I like the idea of ending the whole year with the lash the idea that Ishmael acts as the main comedic force in the novel is not new in his Moby Dick a work of art by Walter evens in sand Ben's ensign analyzes Ishmael's temperament and concludes that one of his most striking features is his ability to laugh I would suggest Melville's all comedy working in the rhyme through the marginal voice and in Paradise Lost and concluded it was a resource that his predecessors and not fully managed to tap through Ishmael Melville articulates the comedic benefit narrative can provide ish most comedy is finally Melville's original contribution to the discussion started by Rafael two centuries before compared to Moby Dick both the Rhine and Paradise Lost scene humorless however the moments in which these works have comedic potential are the strings that I believe Melville play close attention to when creating Ishmael well the rhyme itself is not very funny the in company misinterpretations provided by the pompous marginal voice can be quite hilarious especially when viewed in juxtaposition to the Mariners bizarre confusing and at times gruesome tale the Rafael dialogues are about as funny as Paradise Lost gets perhaps pictures picked perhaps picturing Satan's descent into the yawning mouth of Hell is less horrible when you consider that just moments before angels were playing with old-fashioned cannons and hurling mountains at one another well milton probably did not intend Rafael to be as funny as modern readers now find him his dialogues are the only books within the epic that are not entirely preoccupied with the fall well the first half of book 6 is dominated by Satan's in any other books the other books celebrate life in Eden and the wonders of creation and the joy of telling stories however the postbox hang reader also knows that Raphael's mission will fail she knows that no matter what Raphael says the world will end up the way Michel for sees it in book 12 in compensation Milton provides a slightly comedic interlude that separates the horse from how from the horrors of the fallen world at the end of the raphael dialogues Milton depicts the comic exchange between Raphael and Adam about love like Michael who offers Adam the solace of the Scriptures Milton seems to offer this comedic Essene as a fleeting solace for the pain and suffering the reader knows is about to come about to come after a stimulating conversation about the sublimity of outer space and creation Adam and Raphael turned their attention to Maura Zdenek matters Adam hath abashed begins talking about his feelings for Eve after he commits that nothing so much delights him as those graceful acts Adam becomes overwhelmed with embarrassment he quickly redirects the conversation by asking Raphael love not the heavenly spirits and how their love expressed thee in response to Adams probing question Raphael begins to glow celestial rosy red he briefly explains that because angels have no bodies if spirits embrace totally they mix in union pure with pure it is on this note that the blushing Raphael suddenly decides to end the lengthy conversation and zip back up to heaven although the two participating in the conversation fumble awkwardly it is hard for the post-op scenery don't Reeder not to chuckle over the pair's prudishness however the comedic scene is shadowed by the thought that within the epic this laughter comes at the expense of Adams and later all of humanity's happiness well milton offers a fleeting glimpse of happiness and a chance for momentary laughter the epic begins and ends with the terrors of the fallen world by the time Adam and Eve take their solitary way tragedy has sufficiently stifled any chuckles that Raphael's discourse has provided while Michael's scriptural scriptural solution might bring the Fond couple hope it sure does not bring back the laughs what comedy has a limited president presence in Paradise Lost it is the primary mode in which Ishmael narrates his experience in Moby Dick Ishmael takes us out of the murky waters of milk tonic comedy by offering us comedy as an alternative to Ahab's tragic storyline and suggesting that laughter is a necessary safeguard against the sublime horrors of the c-h know for fully endorses what his angelic predecessor never fully or intentionally condones and moby-dick tragedy specifically the catastrophic end of the Pequod only enhanced this Ishmael's comedy and makes it all the more necessary well Ishmael's comedic interludes are littered throughout the novel nowhere is comedy more value comedies more value more apparent than in the monkey-rope in this chapter Ishmael washes from the deck as Queequeg whose attachment by a rope flounder was about half on the whale half in the sea what we've quick slips about on the Whale and sharks chomp at his ankles Tashtego and daggoo flourish over his head a couple of keen wails fades wherewith they slaughter as many sharks as they can reach Ishmael wordly considers queequeg's dire situation but in true image Ishmael Ian fashion he soon zooms out from the scene before him and begins to contemplate its deeper philosophical significance in a humour filled tones besides well well my dear comrade and twin brother thought I as I drew in and then slapped off the rope to every swell of the sea what matters it after all are you not a precious image of each of Ollis men in this roiling world what that one sounded ocean you grasping is life those sharks your foes those fades your friends and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril poor lad Ishmael paints us a dismal picture of life in the world we live in however he does not dwell in horrible implications of his conclusions directly after Queequeg clambers up from the whale Doughboy rushes over and hands him a cup of hot Khan yack no Hanson ye gods hands him a cup of tepid ginger water in the sea nut in sooth Stubb comes thundering in to admonish Doughboy who we later learned had received the nuclear water from aunt charity who had intended to make the Pequod a floating model of temperance needless to say the slapstick scene ends with Stubb reappearing with a dark flask in here and a sort of tea caddy in the other the first contains strong spirits and was handed to Queequeg the second was aunt charity's gift and that was given freely to the waves after sending us down to contemplate the sharpish world around us Ishmael Yanks us back from the hopeless Polk back from hopeless peril and provides us with the one consolation he can no not steps cognac but laughter Nashville's humor does not simply reside in these slapstick scenes it's apparent in every event that he relates and it is the defining characteristic of his narrative voice well the world may be filled with some unknown thing some danger that he cannot express Ishmael still laughs something either Milton nor Coleridge managed to do well they both note the benefits that a fallible language can provide they always kept a thumb up against the same wall well narrative can make us better it cannot bring us back therefore within Courreges and Milton's works the exchange of narrative is always imbued with a certain amount of anxiety and extol juh the Mariner can only convey terrible truths perfectly to one select individual and Raphael's stories in the end do not prevent the fall now those predecessors are so preoccupied with what has been the perfect state that has been lost that they do not fully embrace how wonderful the inadequacies of language can be I'm concerned with what has been lost Melville finds something quite amazing the failures of language are liberating they can function as a springboard for improvisation and humor they allow him to be funny no innocents to lose and no God to disappoint Ishmael adopts humor as a mode of telling not because he must but because he can through Ishmael Melville suggests that we can laugh not only despite the vast only known world but because of it there we are with Ishmael bobbing in the immense sublimity of the scene how strange how funny so as far as what I learned why is it so hard I would say one of the things I learned is that I had a tendency to flatten the text I was working with to try to like shove them into my argument and while I believed in my argument I do think I didn't do the text complete amount of justice so I just go in with the idea that that's okay because it's only a one-year project so yeah it is what it is just so yeah a dispute yeah they speak comfortable with that I guess I mean that's what I have to tell myself that's what I'll tell them yes and next we have Mackenzie I also want to start by saying a few thank-yous to my advisor I'm into our friends and family who came today and monthlies don't take any pictures so my thesis was titled mistaken impulses of undisciplined hearts Marriage Plot adaptations in Jane Eyre David Copperfield and basil which I will mispronounce at some point and say basil it's an examination of the tensions and anxieties that disrupt the conventional Marriage Plot and I looked primarily at three mid-century Victorian novels and attempt to understand how the author's reconciled the ideal of companion at marriage so marry for love with the realities of Victorian society the things that work against that arrangement so fewer previously in history people have been married for economic reasons you choose a spouse more based on their family or the if their field is next to ours you're not married based on love so I found that the author's creatively resolved explored and navigated these issues brought forth by the crown dilemma using the marriage plot as a narrative framework my thesis then addressed two primary questions how did author as managed to resolve social anxieties about the disconnect between an emerging cultural ideal of romantic love I'm in the changing social reality and how and in what way did the marriage of thought were Marriage Plot evolved in reaction to a broader cultural and social shifts so it's difficult to sum up the answer in a sentence but I found that at a time where marriages were increasingly based on choice the novel's perhaps suggest that these choices should be guided by search not for a difference in chaos but rather sameness in order so found that the heroes and heroines married people that were similar to them so they searched for a sameness of values and their partners and today I'll be focusing on my second chapter and and trying to answer this question in that it didn't really turn out the way I anticipated when I presented in December I did not think I would be writing about brothers and sisters marrying each other but that was how it worked out that's how the question is answered so I'll be reading the introduction to my second section entitled talisman about his heart sister marriage and David Copperfield in Bazzle many 19th century novels represent a curious phenomenon brothers either marrying women like their sisters or living with their sisters and romantic relationships in David Copperfield for example David marries his adopted sister finding a happiness that eluded him during his unsuitable first marriage and in Wilkie Collins as basil the main character chooses to live with his blood sister Clara at the end of the novel instead of remarrying following the death of his first wife Bowser's relationship with Clara is passionately romantic even sexual as often noticed in critical conversations or under the text this remarkable phenomenon needs to be understood as a reaction to a number of social and cultural shifts particularly intense I an intense idealization of the brother-sister relationship in the 19th century sisters were so glorified by authors of fiction and conduct literature that they were presented as suitable even desirable choices for marital partners something that is pretty much escaped done critical and scholar detention so far incredibly virtuous faithfully devoted and domestically skilled sisters embodied all the desirable traits of a perfect one time and time again the relationship is held up by the ideal as the ideal relation between young men and women so much so that marriage itself was up and often present represented ideally as a sibling relationship both novels have what I turned the sister marriage model where the male protagonist marries their sister or sister figure because only they can fit the desired model of ideal Victorian middle-class white but the sister marriage plot is an example of the author's rethinking romantic marriage allowing them to simultaneously express dissatisfaction with normative Victorian marriage and their attempted to find a better model my chapter my chapter will address the uses and functions of sister marriage and the two novels and its function within the larger narrative particularly in terms of how it affects narrative resolution the relationships in Basel and David Copperfield need to be read as sister marriages as I shall stir as I shall show as the sister Marriage Plot better explains the seemingly unsatisfactory marriages and resolutions in the novel so I'm going to skip ahead a little bit to the section where I discuss the house of my Wilkie Collins so Basile recounts the disastrous love affair of a young upper-class man and his attempts to prepare his life following his marriages demise when Bezos first wife Margaret dies of typhus following the exposure of her infidelity he returns home to his sister Clara's recently inherited country state seeking restoration but he decides to remain indefinitely with her Basile his sister lived together first virtually alone on the isolated estate presumably for the range of their lives prior to this self-imposed exile basil strove to achieve an illustrious writing career and a degree of Fame but these these aspirations essentially vanished once he retreats to the country the conditions of the narratives return to normalcy after his marriages failure have puzzled critics and readers alike most often producing negative reactions like that our critic Tamara Heller Heller argues that basil is trapped in a pointlessly liminal world between action and repose at the conclusion of the novel the domestic space has a stifling effect on his writing career Heller argues because it represents a return to the Gothic maternal tradition the threat that wishes to silence and overwrite the male voice far is responsible friend engendering and sustaining the maternal tradition so her interrupting presence harms basil emotionally and creatively however Heller's reading dismisses the positive effects of Clare's unwavering support and encouragement of all of his literary and romantic pursuits I will argue that the unsettled conclusion can be better understood if clarin basis bond is viewed within the context the sister marriage plot their relationship but the conclusion is not one of the tonic companionship it is a sweeter marriage Claire is dr. Faisel sister she has a sister she is essentially pizza like hair is repeatedly depicted as a potential and more suitable marital partner for basil because of her sisterly qualities I propose that Margaret's purpose in the novel is to highlight Clara's superiority as a wife and as a sister the reveal of her true character direct spousal to his right way Margaret serves as an example of a bad sister who the narrator then miss identifies and miss labels as a good one my reader my reading alters traditional readings of the marriage plot as I believe that basil and dazzling Margaret's relationship cannot be understood as a primary marriage plot because it does not offer the resolution of the sister marriage fascist choice of Clara's his wife at the novel's conclusion demonstrates the privileges of the sister marriage plot over the traditional marriage part depicting the former as a more effective model for producing a successful happy and my advice like forests best advice I can give it's not to leave me proofreading to the end as my friends and teammates can attest to thank you for proofreading and also not to leave these footnotes to the end because you will forget what you wanted to say and there'll be a little number at the bottom of the page and you'll have no idea what you want to write thank you and up next is Maddie hi everyone so first I also want to start by giving a shout out to our amazing colloquium and professor Bilson and also to my advisor dr. Dan thank you so much for everything and I was thinking about it and since we turned in our thesis which he knows very stressful thing all year I have not stopped showing up at dr. Chan's office hours every week so clearly you made the process at least a little bit enjoyable um so I'm going to start by reading a section for my introduction the title of my thesis was the thing that made her beautiful and not us visible identity and postmodern motion in contemporary American fictions in her book visible identities Linda al-kahf critiques the relationship between appearance and identity in our modern American society as a result of an inherently materialistic capitalist model our culture equates the visible with the true born out of this equation is the unspoken yet widespread belief that physical appearance invariably indicates identity and that in turn all aspects of identity can be uncovered with sufficiently close observation of one's physical appearance I'll come Alcock notes that this belief is especially problematic when it comes to race and gender as these factors are seen as both intrinsic to identity and physically discernible based on physical features of the body this notion has made this early horrifyingly lorilynn Toni Morrison's first novel The Bluest Eye which since its original publication in 1970 has become a seminal work in the arena of modern American literature The Bluest Eye initiates a tradition of critiquing not only the racist and sexist under terms of society's ideals but also the notion that appearance defines identity at certain bodies and therefore certain people are inherently better than others so in my thesis I situate look-at-me by Jennifer Eagan and your face in mind by Jess row within a Canon of postmodern works in dialogue with The Bluest Eye and the way it constructs the emotional stakes of developing a sense of selfhood in a society that equates physical appearance and decentralized identity so each of these novels constructs the different framework through which your apples with the problems of physical identities in the blues diet Morrison enacts a sharp pratik of the racism inherent in capitalist culture to forge a space in her society for black identity to thrive look at me it forced the relationship between aesthetic surface level and interior fragmentation in a rapidly digitizing economy ultimately suggesting the return to genuine emotion can engender a stable sense of identity in your face in my mind Rowe engages in academically obsessed extremely self reflexive stories of storytelling to find a means of accessing authenticity in an artificially constructed world and my thesis I argue that the way these writers dramatized the notion of visible identity as a problem in postmodern society even when applied to people and positions of privilege indicates a trend more pervasive than what alcohol imagines through their literary representations of the emotional stakes of visible identity Morrison Egan and row all enact a resistance to the ubiquitous and destructive role that visibility has assumed in postmodern society so today I'll be reading a section from the introduction of my second top chapter which is entitled my word my world visible identity and authenticity and jestro's your face and mine in your face in mind jestro imagines and asks a not so far off future in which technological advancements allow people to literally transform their identities and become someone else by drastically altering their physical appearances the story is presented through a first-person narration of its protagonist Kelly Thorndike who's returned to his hometown hometown of Baltimore after a car crash kills his wife a Chinese woman named Wendy and their dog and their young daughter Mei Mei in the novel's first scene Kelly walks down the street and spots a black man who strikes him as uncannily familiar it is only when the man addresses him by name that Kelly recognizes him as his close childhood friend Martin who the last time the narrator saw him was 19 years old and wife Martin explains that he has become involved in the pioneering and up-and-coming cosmetic procedure called racial reassignment surgery he attempts to hire Kelly as a ghost writer to tell his transformation story or in Martin's own words to spring it on the world the way it needs to be done Kelly is skeptical that agrees to review some materials of the procedure and soon becomes intertwined in a strange Enterprise attempting to commodify a cell racial identity although the entirety of the story is told from Kelly's first-person perspective the novel as a whole is comprised of a variety of narrative sources that create fragmentation and add to expose modern characters for instance a large portion of Martin's backstory and explanations of racial rants reassignment are told through the beginnings of a book describing his self diet diagnosed condition the psychological reports that he and the search of behind racial reassignment surgery produced and the tape recordings in which he reflects on his journey to his new identity in some ways Kelly's story functions functions as framing device for Martin's narrative which in fact is precisely Martin's goal and involving Kelly Kelly newest business venture the novel also reflects the postmodern aesthetic and it's extreme self reflexivity which often manifests in red fish fictional references to theory academia and the nature of narrative itself the novel's ending which culminates in Kelly's racial reassignment an assumption of a new Chinese identity arises abruptly in the wake of his skepticism of the procedure throughout the story during the course of the novel he is shaped by his interactions with self-aware of postmodern characters who double his discursive devices for contending ideologies late in the story he encounters a Korean and white academic named Julian off who discourages him from undergoing the procedure Martin and Julie not in particular represent not only symbolically but also literally through their Street for dialogue opposing ends of the spectrum of theoretical discourse surrounding questions of appearance identity in truth the first section of this chapter discusses how Martin at one end of the South the spectrum represents a move away from authenticity although he begins at what seems to be a place of sincere emotion like any likening the feeling of belonging among among the family of a black friend during his childhood to feeling like part of the team in the world his entire identity eventually becomes a commodity designed to be reproduced and sold in the second section of this chapter I show how Julian off at the end up at the other end of the spectrum symbolizes movement on an opposite Trek trajectory her desire to change her race originates in her early exposure to idealized representations of white beauty in the movies she begins with the desire for D individualization to more closely resemble the culture industries mass-produce images of feminine beauty unlike Martin however she regrets her transformation by the time Kelly encounters her in the novel she has become an adamant critic of racial reassignment presenting it as a barrier to truth the third and final section of this chapter then analyzes how Kelly who engages in profound ideological conversations with both these characters must sculpt his own beliefs in order to make it life-altering decision so my piece of advice is I don't know how helpful it's gonna be because I have received this advice myself and did not follow it but if you try to follow it and that is to do your reading over the summer cuz you'll regret it if you don't and next up is Julia Callahan I I'd also like to thank our thesis colloquium I think that you know you guys were the support group that we all needed and also my advisor professor Barry for helping more than I could have ever imagined and also for giving me the super fun year-long challenge of learning to read your handwriting so my thesis considers the poetry of Robert Pinsky Philip Levine and Yusef Komunyakaa by looking at their work in terms of the civil emphatic poetic impulses and the need to bear witness through poetry so according to Edward Mendelsohn in the introduction to his biography early Auden pull it to write in the civil sphere a feel and obligations to speak to the public while those who write in the vatic tradition concerned them some concern themselves more with private matters and emotions and many critics acknowledged that poets feel an anxiety towards responsibility or a desire to address political issues but some argue that addressing such events doesn't follow the creative process of poetry so my thesis engages with the work of Pinsky Levine and Kumaon Janka to illustrate how the ideas of witness operate in these three poets and to understand how they use witness in deaf in different ways as a means to answer the call of poetic responsibility in my first chapter I argue that Levine and Cohen Jakob bear witness by striking balances between the vatic and simple and civil impulses in their poetry and that they do so by using personal experiences to discuss larger cultural issues I argue that by writing about their own life events in their collections what work is Indian Kayal Levine and Kamini aqua leave their personal marks of judgment on the time so as to become witnesses for future generations and then in my second chapter I argue that Penske bears witness in his poetry by engaging directly with civil poetry as a form of cultural criticism Pinsky's focus on language or more specifically the ability of language to capture accurately emotion and tragedy demonstrates the need to understand the effects of catastrophe on the poetic imagination and the ways in which you use and views language the limits of language and the co-option of language by the media and larger cultural forces often for political purposes I'll complicate the boats ability to deal with large-scale catastrophes so for Pinsky witness is not inherently connected to personal experience as it is Furley being in Kumon Janka but when the personal intersects with the political in a way that allows the poet to fulfill his sense of civil obligation that in the put is able to bear witness by making poems that hold public weight so the section that I'll read today is from the second half of chapter 1 where I discussed kuben Yaga's mode of witness it's a close reading of the poem to do Street which I chose to do because not because I think that it best sums up my project but because throughout this process that's what I've had the most fun doing as close readings all these columns so the stock file of unresolved conflict that is kuma nacos war memories manifests itself in the poem to do Street in a way that reveals cumin yoga's shifting feelings over race as well as well as many of the horrifying actions he experiences in Vietnam to do Street illustrates the distance that white and black American soldiers are forced to maintain in their free time but also the ease with which this divide breaks down when they find a shared humanity in the company of Vietnamese prostitutes in the poem komen Yakko recalls childhood memories of segregation in Louisiana as the white only signs from his memory mimic those he sees in a war in Vietnam the mamasan behind the counter acts as if she can't understand cumin yah his order because he is black and he finds himself traveling deeper into alleys where he can enjoy the company of a prostitute on a non-discriminatory basis according to Alvin Auburn the title of the poem acts as a play on the words for to door street to illustrate the nature of the site Asian bars separate the black and white soldiers and force them to find prostitutes in different locations but once they find this company they find a shared humanity there's more than a nation inside us as black and white soldiers touch the same levers minutes apart tasting each other's breath the soldiers inadvertently share the same women women whose brothers and the machine-gun fire they inspire bring the soldiers together though they are separated based on the color of their skin they're all men with the same desires and needs who find themselves in the company of the same women black white and yellow intertwined to show the intruder the deep interrelatedness of human beings in wartime however guberniya does not present the human the union between black and white as genuine but rather as very problematic and engaging with the same women the black and white soldiers become equally human but the fact that they only find this commonality through purchase sex is deeply ironic the irony runs even deeper than sex though as critics such as Stein and William bear note this shared humanity comes at a price the connection that the black and white soldiers share leads them to the same underworld soldiers taste each other's breath without knowing that these rooms run into each other like tunnels leading to the underworld Stein observes that the use of figurative tunnels to link the soldiers Parkins back to the deadly maze of tunnels the Vietcong used to ferry supplies to fight and quickly disappear and into which many American soldiers ventured never to return the tunnels that linked black and white equally insects also lead them equally to death when asked about this poem in a 1998 interview with William Baer Komunyakaa speaks of the confusing psychic space of the GI and the underworld set soldiers in Vietnam created in their own minds he says there are many symbolic underworlds in Vietnam the underground tunnel system some of the bars and the whole psychic space of the GI a kind of a kind of underworld populated by ghosts and indefinably images it was a place of emotional and psychological flux where one was trying to make sense out of the world and one's place in that world and there was romantic going back and forth between that internal space and the external world it was an effort to deal with oneself with the other GIS with the Vietnamese and even with the ghosts that we've managed to create ourselves so for me this is a very complex picture of the situation of the GI the going back and forth condemned in a way to track back and forth between those emotional demarcations while still trying to make sense out of things Kumi Erica's attempt to maintain his sanity in Vietnam reflects his need to write this collection he tells to do street from the first-person perspective and phrases such as I close my eyes I walk and I look exemplify his position as a witness through this flash back style poem ku and Yahoo records what he has done and suggests that those actions have constructed the person that he became through the process of remembering these emotions and recording them in his collection cumin Yaga gives up this psychologically haunted person he channels his mental turmoil into beautiful although at times very disturbing poems that equalize his inner and outer selves and some advice or something that I learned would be to know that at some point on April 14th to be exact the editing process has to end and your project although you might not think that it's done is going to be the best that it's going to be at that point and just to know that that's the best you could do up to that point and that's worth something and up next is Maddy burns so I wanted to start out by thanking people again so thinking my thesis cloak Liam and professor Bilson for leading it I couldn't have completed this project without that support network and then I also wanted to thank my advisor professor Hager who unfortunately can't be here today but this project wouldn't exist without him so my thesis explores the formal experimental poetry of three female writers Emily Dickinson Gertrude Stein and HD each of whom I believe wields substantial influence in the Canon of formal experimental American female poets they're an analysis of their experimentation with poetic form I discuss each poets primary objectives as a woman writing experimental literature and how those individual objectives merge is a collective attempt to defy the traditional gendered heteronormative and patriarchal norms of their time the chapters are ordered chronologically beginning with Emily Dickinson followed by cartridge sign and concluding with HD so as to explicate patterns of influence between the three poets each poets approached a formal experimentation functions as a response to the style of the poet before her where Dickinson is more accepting of language and presents it in new ways to tell all the truth but tell us Lant Stein rejects traditional language structures and emphasizes the ideas of beginning again and making it new where sine starts over stripping away the meaning of words and reconstructing new meanings HD embraces ancient forms of language and literature and beats these structures through experimentation with form in her poetry so the short excerpt that I'm going to read for you guys today comes from my Stein chapter in a section on cookbook language where I talk about how Stein uses that particular style of language and writing to assert female authority and subvert heteronormative structures just as Dickinson references the domestic fear sphere in her poetry in order to expose chauvinistic ideologies Stein uses traditional domestic text to employ a counter normative ideas and establish impressions of female authority in her article familiar strangers the household words of Gertrude Stein tender buttons Marguerite Murphy maintains that the short truncated sentences that Stein employees throughout tender buttons create a tone of authority by mimicking the style of home magazines and cookbooks popular for women at the time unlike dickinson who frequently asserts ideas of female Authority using the first person Stein shied away from the first person and instead uses the impersonal style of what Murphy refers to as cookbook language this impersonal and direct rhetoric is essentially especially apparent under the section food where many phrases resemble collage of language from cookbooks and home magazines seat a knife near a cage in a very near decision a morning nearly a timely working cat and scissors do this temporarily and make no more system or mistake in standing spread it all and arrange the white place does this show in the house does it not show in the green that is not necessary for that color does it not even show in the explanation and singularly not all that a stationary these chaotic directives and shortened phrases replicate the style of cookbooks which assume that women already have a certain amount knowledge about domestic tasks and omit certain steps and phrases suggesting that this shorthand of cookbooks and magazines is a language of its own to which only women are party these direct commands such as seen a knife do this temporarily and spread it all are juxtaposed with an indecisive rhetoric as the spacer speaker questions how to arrange certain colors in the home does this show in the house does it not show in the showing the weight of society's judgment on women's decisions within the domestic sphere Murphy argues that the authority of Stein's female voice imitates the form of domestic guides to living cookbooks housekeeping guides books of etiquette guides to entertaining Maxim's of interior design fashion advice which allows her to portray her own idiosyncratic domestic arrangement by using and displacing the authoritative discourse of a conventional woman's world Stein takes after from a familiar vocabulary and style of rhetoric typically written by women and for women to high profile eight the value of women's power within the domestic sphere but also to denigrate the gendering of the domestic sphere she simultaneously uses and displaces the uses and displaces the authoritative discourse of the conventional woman's world they're both using this cookbook style as a source of female authority and also recognizing the ways in which this style of rhetoric surrounding the domestic sphere limits women so my advice you're not gonna like but it's to write every single week professor Hager made me do it and I hated him for it but you'd rather have excess pages at the end that you don't use then not have enough when it comes to last day so that would be my advice and I'm the last reader so thank you again for coming