Master of Arts in English

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Words and weddings: shifts in the vocabulary of marriage and literature
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2017) Astl, Catherine; Harrison, Marlen
Literature abounds with versions of courtship leading to marriage. By exploring the morphology and usage of words associated with matrimony, changes in grammar, as well as mining Greek, Elizabethan, Shakespearean, Romantic, and Victorian works, changes occurred in what marriage meant to society, and what words were used to describe marriage. Identifying patterns, alongside interdisciplinary applications, and the heavy use of New Historicism, shows how the institution of marriage –the modern ones based on relationships, versus mere family ties, rank, and “business-like” arrangements of old - resulted in an evolution that could only have come about with societal changes allowing that relearning. (Author abstract)
Telepaths, Social Constructs, and Panoptical Power in Octavia Butler’s Patternist Series
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2017-09-05) Matthews, Aisha Alia; Schiffman, Marc
Taking Octavia Butler’s Patternist series as its primary source of inquiry, this paper examines the ontology of power, intersubjectivity, and social reality through the science and speculative fiction tropes of body-swapping and self-transmutation. Butler’s re-invocation of American slavery opens new possibilities for understanding the nature of being and the definition of humanity, while encouraging new perspectives in postmodernist thinking, most notably centered on the belief in the socially constructed nature of identity. More broadly, this paper places such dialogues in conversation with theories on Foucaldian power structures, Cartesian duality, and phenomenology, ultimately concluding that the socially constructed nature of the self obfuscates the truly human desires, such as that for power, which transcend the demographic differences defining current social realities.
Onward Toward a New Horizon with Junot Díaz’s Oscar Wao
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2020-06-25) Burdett, Cherene LeeAnne; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
Most research on Junot Díaz’s Oscar Wao has been explored on diasporic negatives highlighting on an infinite regression in dictatorship and the resistance against these dictatorships in forming an authentic identity between conflicting cultures. Diasporic subjects are doomed to be assimilated and thrown back into the Hegelian rubric. What has been underexplored is the pull away from the negative nature of diaspora in creating a new consciousness in exploring transnational literature. I am pursuing this research because I want to highlight on how feminine recovery unpowers this infinite regression in creating a more modern approach in examining cultures and genders living between conflicting borders. I'm using Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands and Hélène Cixous’s Newly Born Woman because both theorists illuminate how the text performs as a mestiza who battles between opposing borderlands synthesizing a new consciousness within the divine feminine. I'm applying this theory by examining the text’s narrative, character identity, and language structures. This research is significant because embracing borderlands enacts feminine progression through difference which is significant in a growing cultural and gendered world. Future research on this topic should examine how transnational literature forms alliances, juxtaposed with other cultural literature, in sharing and borrowing from each other as a way to evolve.
Seeing Ourselves Rightly: Analyzing Spiritual Self-Awareness in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction as Literature Pedagogy for Moral Instruction
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2020-07-06) Filipek, Rebecca; Harrison, Marlen E.; Lee, Christopher
Homeschool teachers and mothers are thoroughly invested in the moral formation of their children and are therefore concerned with finding various ways to teach them morals and virtue. How can literature cultivate virtue in readers? Most scholarship that focuses on moral development by using literature is geared toward the classroom and forming good citizens for democratic societies. This scholarship leaves wide open the gap for focusing on people as individuals. Also, many literary theories focus on narrow aspects of a text without considering the total impact a piece of literature can have on a reader. This essay uses moral and biblical criticism to show how literature can help readers make connections between what we read and how it can help us to read reflectively to become better people. This essay shows how Flannery O'Connor's short story "Revelation" can be compared to Jesus's parables in the Bible to show how moral development begins with the self, then ripples out through the small community of the home and out into society. When we focus on changing ourselves and how we treat others, teaching our children to read reflectively to do the same, we will ultimately change society on a personal level and see people as the individual human beings that they are.
Literary Analysis of Trauma Narrative for Composition Course
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2020-08-12) Roper, Karen; Harrison, Marlen E.; Lee, Christopher
Analysis of a trauma narrative can empower an individual by providing opportunity and means to create or reform one’s self-identity. Including a literary analysis of a trauma narrative within a composition course offers a unique opportunity for a writer to not only rhetorically engage with the meaning of the narrative’s message, but also to acquire agency in his/her writing. This proposed unit plan weaves together social identity theory, feminist theory, and critical race theory to help students glean a deeper, and maybe more personal, meaning from a narrative. Additionally, this plan draws upon the ideas behind scriptotherapy and bibliotherapy. These are both clinical uses of writing and reading as methods to speed emotional and psychological healing. Social identity theory, feminist theory and critical race theory address how the narrative’s message connects to the greater culture within which the narrative is set. The application of social identity theory to the use of trauma narratives in the classroom allows for exploration of socially constructed identities and the ramifications of forced adherence to these identities. Consequently, within this unit plan lies the potential to empower an individual by providing a rhetorical situation in which to explore the creation of self-identity. Additionally, the focus on the feminist and critical race lenses offer a modern perception by which to examine the narrative’s message. While keeping in mind the benefits of scriptotherapy and bibliotherapy, the instructor can create a classroom in which students feel empowered to develop their own meanings of and relationships to the narratives. This plan considers multimodal literacies and incorporates listening and speaking activities. Collaboration among small group members is included as well as small group discussion. The final analysis is an individual project.
An Analysis of the Impact Literature Choices in K-12 ELA Curriculum have on the LGBTQ+ Student Population
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2020-09-04) Crowson, Sherri Dee; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
As a high school ELA teacher, I have seen first-hand, the negative impact some literature choices have on students identifying outside of the binary definitions most often encouraged in society. This paper addresses the challenges and concerns with the current literature used in high school ELA classrooms and breaks down the negative impact on the ever-growing population identifying outside of cisgender and heteronormative groups. While identities that do not fit within these two categories are becoming more accepted, school curricula are not keeping up with these changes. The subconscious identification of characters portraying traditional gender roles reinforces the stigma associated with alternate identities. In order to address the growing awareness of the fluidity of identity found in modern society, the current selection of literature used in the high school English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum which reinforces cisgender and heteronormative characters needs to be reviewed and revised.
Magical Feminism: The Manifestation and Evolution of the Witch Under the Male Gaze
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2020-10-28) Rapson, Sarah Beth; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
Since her fabrication, the Witch has been suffocated by the masculine voice and mode. Beginning with the witch-hunts, her social narrative has been completely dictated by men. All predicating texts were written by men, for men to use against women. From Macbeth to the King James Bible, from Glinda to Galinda, from Carrie to Sue, and from Myrtle to Madison, men have defined, silenced, and appropriated Witches’ voices in order to maintain social hegemony and hierarchy - man’s supremacy over women. Very rarely has a woman’s witchy voice been heard when set against overpowering patriarchal domination. While women have written Witches in the shadows, it is the male voice that has historically defined her as a threat to society, i.e., patriarchy. Women critics such as Matilda Joslyn Gage have defended the Witch as a source of Female power and an obvious display of brutal patriarchal persecution, but the literary Witch and her accompanying images that define public perception remain dominated by men, trapping her in a cyclical fallacy of female autonomy, fabricated by men. Through a Feminist theory of male gaze with New Historicism approach, this thesis will examine the manifestation and evolution of the Witch, starting with the Witch’s origin and connection to birth and death through Lilith. Next, it will provide an overview of the Witch in literary and visual mediums during European witchcraze in order to show its influence on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the King James Bible, and Christian rhetoric, codifying the social perception of Witches’ - and thereby all women’s - inherent wickedness. Turning to the first modern Feminist wave, Matilda Josyln Gage’s treatise Women, Church, and State, brings forward and defends the Witch as an intelligently educated women who threatened the patriarchy by living outside the bounds of male influence and paints Witches as victims of masculine fear. Her treatise proposed an image of a kind, intelligent Witch, persecuted and murdered for her female intelligence. The legacy of Gage’s good Witch lives through her son-in-law’s children’s book The Wonderful Land of Oz. The words asked by the Good Witch of the North upon Dorothy’s arrival opened the door to represent women with power and magic as beings of goodness. However, L. Frank Baum’s lasting legacy is the Wicked Witch of the West, further solidified by Margaret Hamilton’s iconic performance on screen. In the second Feminist wave, this thesis will explore the use of Exodus in Carrie to show how the King James Bible is still being used to justify and persecute women as Witches out of fear and hate. In the third Feminist wave, the Wicked Witch of the West is reborn through Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which explores the backstory and motivations of the Wicked Witch, exploring both her obsession with her sister’s shoes and her green hue. These Witches, echoes of the images of Witches throughout history, are further examples of the Witch under the male gaze. Ushering in the fourth Feminist wave, Witches have finally broken through patriarchal male gaze and limitations, opening new possibilities for a thoroughly Feminine literary structure. Ariel Gore’s We Were Witches is an extraordinary exemplar of the potential literary creation that happens when a Witch takes hold and fully claims her witchy power and forges an entirely new, magical literary structure - defining the Witch as a figure of women’s fortitude, love, and survival.
How Does a White Educator Critically and Empathetically Teach Black Literature?
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2020-12-01) Richardson, Jasen Walter; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
Currently in the United States, there has been social and political unrest, reviving a surge in racist ideologies. As an educator, I feel it is of the utmost importance for us to combat this civil instability with a more effective strategy of teaching multicultural texts. It is important for educators to find ways to empathize with people of all backgrounds and push against any socially set anxieties in regard to teaching multicultural texts, so to illuminate upon ways educators can find a semblance of reassurance and motivation to teach literary texts outside their racial and ethnic backgrounds, I am adding to scholarship by intervening textually in a critical reflective practice in which I engage important members of the Black community, both past and present, in a Socratic Seminar to answer questions I have formulated that will help me and other educators empathetically and critically teach Black literature. The methodological framework I use is autoethnography, which enables me to connect the oppression I have faced in my life to that of Blacks, and through a Critical Race Theory lens, I unveil some of the avenues White educators can take to empathetically and critically teach Black texts in American schools. Through the critical reflective practice in this paper, I expose, with the guidance of textual intervention, how teachers can build upon their knowledge and understanding of Black literature and how they can connect their lives and the lives of their students to the texts regardless of racial and ethnic similarities and differences. The objective of this paper is to further the dialogue about how educators teach and integrate multicultural texts in the classrooms and curricula across America, particularly in the English discipline, and expose teachers to ways in which they can disrupt any anxieties that have prolonged the neglection of the use of multicultural texts in their classrooms.
Looking For A Hero: The Development of the Christian Hero in English Literature
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-02-23) Tucker, Rafique Hakeem; Jones, Stephen; Lee, Chritsopher
The history of English literature is a history of cultural collision, fusion, and reappropriation. When the Germanic tribes who invaded England in the 5th century were converted to Christianity, their pagan ethos was reframed through a Christian lens, and a heroic literary and cultural tradition was born that reflected their spiritual and cultural outlook. The fusion of Germanic paganism and Christianity gave birth to the body of Anglo-Saxon literature, particularly Beowulf and “The Dream of the Rood.” As the Christianity of England matured, the Welsh legends of Arthur and the Round Table were appropriated to fashion a more mature heroic medieval heroic ethos, as expressed in such works as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Using the lens of New Historicism, this paper will trace the development of this heroic tradition, from the martial heroism of Beowulf, to the more explicitly spiritual heroism of Sir Gawain.
Where There Is Heroism There Is Hope
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-03-01) Schmidt, Emily; Jackson, Jennie; Lee, Christopher
Dystopian fiction, in many ways, reflects a broken, modern society that craves individuality, aches for purpose, longs for unity, and yearns for a sign of relief when there seems to be no hope in sight. With an ever changing, all consuming, life sucking, obsession with media today, coupled with the loss of individuality in a world that tries too desperately to sell the idea of uniformity for the common good, dystopian texts present an interesting perspective of the human existence. This paper seeks to add to the ongoing discourse on the human existence within the world of literature, which includes a close examination of several examples of dystopian fiction that demonstrate opposition toward modern reliance on consumer capitalism, criticizes mass manipulation through oppressive media propaganda, and calls for a response to an instinctive obligation for renewal of the human existence. George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games reveal an unsettling, yet realistic and unfiltered view of the human existence with a modernistic response that attempts to restore peace and balance to the human experience through the audacious actions of an antihero. Central to this examination are the fears and anxieties exposed in dystopian fiction that ask readers to consider life’s purpose, showing that without the ability to think and act freely, humanity is doomed to a life that is void of individuality without needed social change.
The Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Women Writers: Past and Present
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-03-01) Yu, Michelle; Jackson, Jennie; Lee, Christopher
Since the beginning of recorded history, women have often been relegated to the roles of wife and mother. As such, the workforce has been largely a male-dominated arena; exceptions given for occupations that men viewed as too feminine, such as nurses and educators. Despite many women having had equal abilities to their male counterparts, professional writing was generally reserved for men. Looking back through the ages of British literature, one thing is glaringly obvious; women who were set on having writing as a career were prepared to assert themselves against the patriarchal views of society. Despite their assertion of their abilities and worthiness, there were— and continue to be— outside factors that would determine the success of female writers in England from the nineteenth century all the way through to the modern era. This thesis aims to show how these outside factors, specifically gender and socioeconomic status, have affected women writers throughout multiple centuries. It is not enough to study only the literary works of these prominent female writers, but this thesis also considers the circumstances of their personal lives as well. While there have been many studies of the lives and works of British female authors, there have been few that consider the effects of gender and socioeconomic status, while also spanning centuries to include women writers from vastly different societies. By applying both the feminist and Marxist lenses of literary criticism to the lives and works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, and J.K. Rowling, this thesis asserts that while women’s socioeconomic status may have an effect on their becoming a successful, published author, it is not the only determining factor. All of these women were born at different times in British history, under different reigning royal families, within different social classes, and with different hardships to be faced— yet they still have all become wildly successful in their own rights.
Cross Temporal Analysis of Existentialist Authors Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, and Ellison Relative to the Divergence Between Their Disenfranchised and Non-Marginalized Characters
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-03-03) Beal, Sherri Guffey; Jackson, Jennie; Lee, Christopher
Through their works, existentialist authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, and Ralph Ellison endorsed groundbreaking beliefs which advanced the limits of intellectualism. Traits such as alienation, nihilism, absurdism, and authenticity seeped into the plotlines of their novels. Through the literary lens of New Historicism, a cross-temporal examination will be performed on several of their works. It will explore their intentional minimization of certain characters and how their storyline conclusions were deliberately written as ambiguous in order to bring their plights to the foreground. The authors purposely othered characters in order to make their story heard. These four authors created characters whose shared existential transformations and profound life experiences paralleled or were painfully close to their own. Through their protagonists and supporting characters, Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, and Ellison utilized a type of rhetorical chronotope to convey a message about the negative effects of hegemonic exploitation due to race, gender, or economic circumstances. In addition, the writing of nineteenth century Dostoevsky and early twentieth century Kafka influenced the later writings of Camus and Ellison. Although these authors were trying to impart this message to their own respective audiences throughout a time-span of almost one hundred years, they were all essentially conveying a tragically similar message. It is a message that still needs to be heard today, as has become overwhelmingly apparent.
Destabilizing Gender Binaries and Ideologies: The Progression of Gender and Queer Studies Through Twentieth Century Literature
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-04-02) Cole, Nakida LeeAnn; Jackson, Jennie; Lee, Christopher; Christopher
Today, when you pick up a new novel, it hardly comes as a surprise when you are introduced to characters who defy gender binaries and ideologies that have been in place for hundreds of years. This has not always been the case. During the 1900s, there seemed to be a shift in the creation of literature, the intent of literature, and the way that literature was analyzed in terms of gender and sexuality; ample research has been done in the field of gender and queer studies, allowing new perspectives to form and new information to be shared. And while the different genders and sexuality preferences have been voiced in various ways, literature has been an exceptional outlet to share this knowledge, especially during the twentieth century. The addition of queer studies that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s has provided a new perspective not only on feminist aspects presented in literature but also on how gender identity and sexual preferences are portrayed in literature, giving a voice to those who have been silenced for far too long. During the twentieth century, authors such as Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Jeanette Winterson pushed the boundaries of gender ideologies, effectively using the strength of their own voices to upset the oppressive nature of gender binaries. The unsettling of these binaries in twentieth-century literature has created a long-standing platform for others to speak their own truth.
Feminist Fractured Fairy Tales: Angela Carter, Emma Donoghue, and Heroines Who Embrace Their Desires
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-07-27) Kelly, Caitlin Michelle; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
Among the earliest tales told to children are fairy tales; these stories stick with us into adulthood, and we pass them on to the next generation because they speak to the human experience as well as provide guidance for moving through the world. However, while the themes of fairy tales comprise so-called universal truths of the human experience, further examination of these tales reveals antiquated social views whose dissemination may be harmful. Many fairy tales, for instance, silence their female characters while promoting patriarchal, heterosexual family structures as being necessary to a happy ending. To challenge such outdated perspectives, feminist writers have taken to rewriting fairy tales through a woman-centric lens. Such retellings are known as fractured fairy tales. Two such collections are The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter and Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue. Carter’s retellings of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” and “The Company of Wolves” respectively, give voice to the heroines, allowing them to narrate their own stories as well as throw off traditional gender roles to embrace their sexuality and desires, thus becoming three-dimensional people. Meanwhile, Donoghue’s retellings of “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Little Mermaid,” “The Tale of the Rose and “The Tale of the Voice respectively, play with the very structure of the tales by providing new endings, often with a queer twist, as well as providing an outlet for all these women to express their own desires and exercise their agency, something they are unable to do when they are silenced and forced into heterosexual boxes. However, though fractured tales like those of Carter and Donoghue have power, they cannot be the only way to challenge the shortcomings of traditional tales; they should not be the end of the process—but rather the beginning.
Gender in Fiction: An Autoethnographic Approach to J.R.R. Tolkien, Female Characters and Gamers
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2021-10-25) Riggins, Lois; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
The thesis is an autoethnographic approach to J.R.R. Tolkien, female characters and gamers. It will focus the gender studies theory to study how female characters have changed and grown throughout history in Fantasy. J.R.R. Tolkien's work The Lord of the Rings are the primary source and how he had few female characters in the work. The paper will also look at how he wrote his characters and depicted them in the work. Laura Măcineanu’s “Women Figures in George Macdonald’s and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fantasy Writings” makes a point about Tolkien’s characters “It has often been noted that women are hardly present in Tolkien’s legendarium. However few they are, though, these women hold positions of power in the hierarchy of Middle-earth and easily stand out among the multitude of male characters that populate Tolkien’s world” (70). Female gamers are studied in the paper to tie together how female characters were/are written and portrayed in multiple media outlets. Female avatars/toons in most games are still sexualized and female gamers a lot of times play in a toxic environment. Christopher J. Ferguson and Brad Glasgow’s “Who Are GamerGate? A Descriptive Study of Individuals Involved in the GamerGate Controversy” is a look at a controversy involving the gaming world “In 2014, the GamerGate controversy erupted, focusing international attention to issues related to sexism and misogyny in gaming communities. Exactly how the controversy began remains an issue of debate” (243). The paper will be used to bridge the gap between how female characters were portrayed in early Fantasy to how times are changing and female characters are becoming the protagonists of the story. The paper will look at bridging the gap in how fiction is taught in English programs by studying female characters as an important part of Fiction. Keywords: fantasy, gender, The Lord of the Rings, video games
Derek Walcott’s Omeros: How Effective Stories Benefit the Human Experience
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2022-01-25) Gustave, Trisha Pauline; Harrison, Marlen E.; Lee, Christopher
This thesis offers a fresh perspective about the benefits of stories on the human experience when they are written, structured, and told effectively. To examine how stories inform us, Derek Walcott’s epic poem Omeros is deconstructed through the theoretical framework of narratology in the paper. The theory of narrative highlights how Walcott’s exceptional use of structure, language, characters, and themes educate readers about the past and present struggles of life on the island. In his poem, Walcott revisits the history of St. Lucia through the tale of local characters who feel dispossessed in a post-slavery/post-colonial environment. Mieke Bal’s “The Point of Narratology,” Mark Freeman’s, “Why Narrative Matters: Philosophy, Method, Theory” and David Herman’s “Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind: Cognitive Narratology, Discursive Psychology, and Narratives in Face-to-Face Interaction”, explain how stories help readers form human connections whilst providing them with an opportunity to understand familiar and unfamiliar worlds that are imagined or real, in the past, present, or future. Through Walcott’s Omeros, this thesis expands on the idea that stories allow writers to transport their interpretation of identity and their experience of the self and otherness, as readers experience how Walcott uses storytelling, textuality, and expression to revisit unhealed wounds within himself and his people.
Immigration, Identity, and the Caribbean Immigrant Student in the English Language Arts Classroom
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2022-01-26) Jones-Young, Neisha; Harrison, Marlen Elliot; Lee, Christopher
The incidence of immigration to the USA from the Caribbean region has seen a steady increase in the last few decades. As such, the number of Caribbean immigrants, in particular those of school-age, has increased exponentially. These immigrants often experience a sense of displacement and alienation as a result of being uprooted from their Caribbean culture and transplanted in a foreign one. The absence of adequate Caribbean cultural representation in mainstream society and in the schools, in particular, serves to deepen this identity crisis. However, there are a variety of ways in which this problem may be addressed and alleviated. One such way is through the expansion of the ELA curriculum to incorporate representations of Caribbean culture. Such an expansion would benefit not only the Caribbean immigrant student but also the other students as well.
Literary Evolution: How Technology Can (and Will) Enhance Literary Scholarship
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2022-01-29) Niesen, Joseph Leo; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
The impact of computer technology on the creation of the written word is something apparent in the multitude of available e-books, blogs, and collaborative writing sites that populate the internet. Existing and emerging technologies are starting to change not only the format of what is written, but the content and context of modern literature as well. For the Literary scholar the opportunity to explore writings that would not have seen public release without the rise of electronic publishing is both exciting and terrifying. Contemporary and future scholars need to be cognizant of the role that software, format, and electracy played in the creation of a given text. This project examined the secondary skills necessary for the modern literary scholar to assess the increasingly populous textual landscape and make sense of the wealth of secondary and tertiary information available. Computer driven research methods like topic modeling and data mining were explored as they have been used by those in the humanities to study both current and historical works in new and exciting ways. In the case study for this project, Omar Robert Hamilton’s The City Always Wins was examined in the context of the secondary media that applies to the primary text. Because Hamilton’s novel is set during, and primarily focused on, the Arab Spring protests that took place in Cairo in 2011, this analysis incorporated information found in non-literary sources like YouTube videos, news articles, and social media artifacts of the period. By incorporating additional sources, this paper brought lite to how Hamilton’s novel reflects both the ever-present civil unrest in 2011 Egypt and the growing importance of digital literacy to the development of a well informed and ideologically aligned population.
Latina Voices, the Immigrant Experience and the Missing Stories in American Literature
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2022-03-20) Camacho, Crista Cristella; Harrison, Marlen; Lee, Christopher
Latina/Chicana stories in American literature are important to understand contemporary America as a multicultural society. However, Chicana/Latina literature is not considered part of mainstream American literature. Previous papers regarding this topic have brought up challenges that Latina/Chicana literature confronted in the space of American literature. The absence of Latina/Chicana stories in American life has affected the development of immigrants and their children’s identity. This paper explores and suggests the importance of Latina/Chicana stories in America from the perspective of Chicana/Latina writers. Looking at the text through Feminist and Marxist lenses highlights the problems that ultimately marginalize Latina/Chicana writers. Their stories are rooted in economic and gender inequalities in America and in their countries of Origin/Heritage. The Autoethnography method provides the narrative of the author’s personal experience as a Latina/Chicana developing her identity as a guiding point to display the need of advancing the growth of multicultural American literature.
Comics Literature to the Rescue: Multimodal Theory within Composition Literature Classrooms
(Southern New Hampshire University, 2022-06-23) Allaire, Faith; Harrison, Marlen
A top priority for community colleges is ensuring student retention and overall academic success, and core class requirements bear the responsibility of ensuring this. Degree demographics from Three Rivers Community college in Norwich, Ct were analyzed to show that the majority of students on this campus will be required to enroll within the ENG 102- Composition and Literature course in order to graduate, making this course a key area to ensure that student engagement and retention is at its peak efficiency. However, students are often not connecting with literature in the classroom, leading to low student engagement and contrasting the objectives of this course. After reviewing numerous academic texts and pairing them with respective comics literature, this study confirms that comics literature is an exemplary tool to mitigate growing ambivalence in students while still ensuring that course objectives can be met. This is due to comics literature’s ability to maximize multimodal elements. Multimodal theory is meeting the needs of students who are acclimated to digital technology while also providing an environment that allows for a new academic structure found within on-campus classrooms and online to adapt. This study looks at various elements found unique to comics literature structure. It also looks at literary genres and how they appear in the text and applies traditional literary theories taught in current classrooms. Finally, sample discussion questions, assignments, and essay prompts are provided to show the practicality of implementing multimodal theory and comics literature into a Composition and Literature course.

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