Category: 2024 Blog Posts

Primary Text:

Ehasz, Aaron. Avatar: The Last Airbender, created by Michael Dante DiMartino, and Bryan Konietzko, Nickelodeon Animation Studio, 21 Feb. 2005. 

Yang, Gene Luen, et al. Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Promise. Dark Horse Books, 2020.

Secondary Sources: 

1. Ching, Leo T. S. Anti-Japan : The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia. Duke University Press, 2019.
2. Kap, Ryanne. “Lessons from the Southern Air Temple: How Avatar: The Last Airbender Negotiates the Trauma of Imperialism.” The Avatar Television Franchise: Storytelling, Identity, Trauma, and Fandom, 2022, pp. 135–54.
3. Horowitz, Caleb. “Far from the Last Airbender: Cultural Trauma Construction and Diasporic Reimaginings in Avatar and Korra.” The Avatar Television Franchise: Storytelling, Identity, Trauma, and Fandom, 2022, pp. 171–86.
4. Yao, Xine. “Arctic and Asian Indigeneities, Asian/North American Settler/Colonialism: Animating Intimacies and Counter-Intimacies in Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Journal of Asian American Studies., vol. 24, no. 3, 2021, pp. 471–504.
5. Young, Robert C. J. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Academic Journal:

Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Keywords:

I. othering

II. diasporic identities

III. cultural hybridity

In crafting my thesis topic, I focused on two criteria. The first was that my primary text had to be something I loved enough that I would never get tired of writing about it. Second, I had to choose a text that I felt there was enough to analyze—there had to be substance beyond the fact that the text in question brought me joy. I thought about multiple different books, authors, and films, but what I kept coming back to was the 2005 animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender. I grew up watching it and rediscovered how much I loved it during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was put on Netflix. It’s a series that I have never run out of things to analyze and question, and when it came to framing a thesis around it, I knew that postcolonialism was the perfect lens to use. 

A postcolonial analysis of Avatar: The Last Airbender may seem like the obvious theoretical lens for anyone familiar with the show, but in my research so far I have found few articles discussing both the show and its postcolonial implications. Modeled after Japanese colonization throughout East Asia in the first half of the 20th century, Avatar is a surprisingly complex narrative for a children’s program, dealing with themes of genocide, gender and ethnic discriminantion, hierarchical status systems, colonization, decolonization, cultural preservation, and numerous other related topics. In effect, it is ripe with plot lines, character arcs, settings, and themes to analyze against a postcolonial lens. 

In crafting my reading list, I spoke with classmates, friends, Professor Kersh, and Professor Seiler. They all encouraged me to go for it based on my passion for the idea. As I go forward and refine my reading list, I will meet with Professor Young in the History department, who specializes in East Asian history. When looking for secondary sources, I looked for existing articles discussing Avatar in terms of imperialism, colonialism, etc., and managed to find a few that look promising. I’m also planning on doing a lot of supplementary reading on the fundamentals of postcolonial theory, starting with Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, which I got the idea to use from our class’ use of Culler’s Literary Theory from the same collection by Oxford. The last source, Leo Ching’s monograph Anti-Japan, will give me insight into colonial and postcolonial East Asia, which is the model for the Four Nations in Avatar. I landed on an academic journal and keywords through research on secondary sources and the frequently used terms and databases. 

There’s a lot to explore with this topic, but some of my leading questions as of now are: how are diasporic communities portrayed in children’s media? What does Avatar teach about the nature of hybridity, especially following decolonization? What does the show suggest about the roles of violence and nonviolence in decolonization processes? How do the roles of colonizer/colonized affect relationships between characters? 

Updates:

I decided that there was worth in looking at the Avatar comics, despite my qualms with them. I think the first installment has a really interesting, nuanced depiction of the process of decolonization which is something I know I want to explore in my thesis. While doing other blog posts, I also found that I’m really interested in the role that Aang’s pacifism plays in the show. He is the sole survivor of a genocide and is tasked with ensuring that fate doesn’t befall any other nation, but he refuses to use the same violence enacted on his people to bring an end to a brutal war. It’s a really interesting meditation on resistance and the roles of violence and nonviolence in a revolutionary context…other characters don’t hesitate to use violence when they use to, but for Aang the act of taking a life is something he wants to avoid at all costs. I didn’t realize how much this aspect of Aang’s character and the plot (which is a big deal towards the end of season 3 as Sozin’s comet approaches) interested me, but I’m excited to do more reading and figure out how it fits into my thesis.

Primary Sources:

Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2000.

Baldwin, James. Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone; a Novel. Dial Press, 1968. 

Koolaids by Rabih Alameddine

Hollinghurst, Alan. The Swimming-Pool Library. First Vintage international edition., Vintage Books, 1989.

Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Palace Walk. Doubleday, 1990

Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Palace of Desire. First edition., Doubleday, 1991.

Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Sugar Street. First edition in the U.S., Doubleday, 1992.

Keywords:

1. Queer
2. Black Masculinity
3. Masculinity
4. Homosocial Desire

Journal:

James Baldwin Review. Manchester University Press, 2023.

Secondary Sources:

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2007.

Donica, Joseph. “‘Addressing a Virus, a War, or Oneself’: Everyday Life in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” College Literature, vol. 46, no. 2, 2019, pp. 424–52, https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2019.0017.

Hout, Syrine. “To Paint and Die in Arabic: Code-Switching in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 4, 2018, pp. 277–99, https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.40.4.0277.

Hout, Syrine. “Koolaids and Unreal City.” Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 21–51, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748643431-005.

Baldwin, James. Collected Essays. Library of America, 1998. 

Karmakar, Pritikana, and Nagendra Kumar. “The Body Writes Back: The Pharmacopolitics of Cure and Care in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” QScience Connect, vol. 2022, no. 3, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5339/connect.2022.medhumconf.28.

Robert F. Reid-Pharr, 1997. “Tearing the Goat’s Flesh: Crisis, Homosexuality, Abjection, and the Production of a Late-Twentieth-Century Black Masculinity”, Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, and Wayne Koestenbaum. Between Men : English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Thirtieth anniversary edition, Columbia University Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.7312/koso17629.

Shannahan, Dervla. “Reading Queer A/Theology into Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids.” Feminist Theology, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 129–42, https://doi.org/10.1177/0966735010383800.

Foucault, Michel, and Robert Hurley. The History of Sexuality. First Vintage Books edition., Vintage Books, 1988.

Explanatory Essay:

            In creating the above list of sources and keywords I began with the choice of my primary source options: Giovanni’s Room and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. I have decided to write about these texts in particular because I find them to be extremely compelling, and for the most part, they follow Professor Moffat’s advice that we should choose to write about something that we find ourselves thinking about anyway. Indeed, Baldwin’s work is gripping and his ability to create complex characters with interesting identities and relationships makes his novels fascinating.

What I find interesting these works in the nature of relationships between men. How the lines between relationships of a sexual nature, and friendships come to be. With this inquiry in mind, Between Men by Sedgwick is an obvious inclusion. It seems, to me at least, to be absolutely critical reading for the discussion of this topic. I have read excerpts from this particular book in previous courses and enjoyed reading it as well. It seems also, that this line of questioning is tied directly to ideas of queerness, masculinity, and identity. Thus, the inclusion of the above keywords, “Black Masculinity” is specified in this case because Baldwin sees these two as completely intertwined with one another. Following in this thought process I then selected Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and The History of Sexuality by Foucault as understanding the development of sexuality as identity is critical to answering my questions. Further, sexual and gender identity as very tightly tied to one another, and thus Butler’s work is absolutely necessary as well.

Update:

My topic has changed significantly. Over Fall Pause I reread “Koolaids” by Rabih Alameddine and decided that I would like to write about the relationship between Queerness and Death in “Giovanni’s Room” and “Koolaids.” Professor Johnston recommended that I read “The Swimming-Pool Library” and “The Cairo Trilogy” because they cover the two areas that “Koolaids” is about. “The Swimming-Pool Library” is a novel about the AIDS Pandemic, and “The Cairo Trilogy” is a queer narrative set in an Arab country. As such, these books have found their way into my Reading List. My current thinking is that I will most likely abandon Baldwin entirely, and move towards narratives of the AIDS pandemic.

I have also added a number of scholarly sources on “Koolaids” to my list and removed the entire collection of Baldwin’s essays and Foucault from my List. In place of the essay collection I have put “Here Be Dragons” one of my all time favorite Baldwin works. The removal of these sources should better allow me to tackle these complex ideas and focus my energy on subjects more directly related to my area of interest.

Primary Source: 

• Goldman, William. The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure. Harcourt, 2007.
• Reiner, Rob, director. The Princess Bride. 20th Century Studios, 9 Oct. 1987.
• Winterson, Jeanette. Frankissstein: A Love Story. Johnathan Cape, 2019.

Secondary/Theoretical Works: 

• Attebery, Brian. Strategies of Fantasy. Indiana University Press, 1992.
• Birke, Dorothee, and Birte Christ. “Paratext and Digitized Narrative: Mapping the Field.” Narrative (Columbus, Ohio), vol. 21, no. 1, 2013, pp. 65–87, https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2013.0003.
• Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
• James, Edward, and Farah Mendlesohn. The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• Mendlesohn, Farah. Rhetorics of Fantasy, Wesleyan University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/dickinson/detail.action?docID=1110030.
• Salter, G. Connor. “Whatever Happened to The Princess Bride?: Thoughts for Further William Goldman Research.” Mythlore, vol. 42, no. 2 (144), 2024, pp. 181–87. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48771997. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.

Academic Journal: 

• Mythlore, vol. 42, no. 2 (144), Mythopoetic Society, 2024, pp. 3–6. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48771986. 

Keywords: 

• Paratext
• Narratology
• Storytelling
• Fantasy
• Escapism
• Mythopoeia

Description: 

I grew up with the movie The Princess Bride, so when I found out it was in fact inspired by a book by William Goldman, I was overjoyed. Aside from the great story, one thing that intrigued me about the novel was how Goldman presented the text. Instead of situating himself as the author, he created the pseudonym S. Morgenstern while he claimed to be abridging the story. In addition to inventing this fictional author, Goldman invents the kingdoms of Florin and Guilder, which he claims to be real places. Using paratext scattered throughout the pages, Goldman explains excerpts he cut from the “original” text and develops a history of the kingdoms and S. Morgenstern. He also reinvents his own history throughout the book, going as far as to tell readers how his father read The Princess Bride to him when he was sick as a child. Even in the novel’s added introductions for the 25th and 30th anniversary editions, Goldman continues with the charade, inventing a museum dedicated to S. Morgenstern (30th anniversary) and referencing a group of “Florinese experts” and Florin’s most popular tourist attraction: the Cliffs of Insanity (25th anniversary).  

When I first read this book, I wondered why Goldman decided to present The Princess Bride in this way, instead of admitting to being the author upfront. Fueled by this curiosity, I decided to take a narratological approach to Goldman’s novel for my thesis. What is the point of inventing a fake author and incorporating personal notes into the novel? What do these elements do for the story? What do they do for the reader?  

After a meeting with Professor Seiler, I learned that those “personal notes” I wanted to investigate were considered paratext, giving me my first keyword and research topic. My meeting with Professor Skalak helped me decide my other keywords, directing me to the theory of narratology and to my second through fourth secondary sources. With “Paratext and Digitized Narrative: Mapping the Field” and Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree I hope to further my understanding of what paratext is and how it can contribute to a text. The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature and the journal Mythlore will help me explore the fantasy genre in general and narrow my research. Using Attebery’s Strategies of Fantasy I will explore the uses narratology and storytelling within the genre. With Rhetorics of Fantasy I will examine the development of fictional worlds by various authors, which will hopefully give me some insight into Goldman’s creation of Florin and Guilder. Although the discourse on The Princess Bride is limited and mostly focuses on the movie, I plan to continue sifting through what I can find in case there is something I can apply to my own investigation.

Update:

Since my original post, I have decided to add both the film for The Princess Bride and the novel Frankissstein to my primary sources since both weave together different stories like Goldman does. With the movie we see the story of Buttercup and Westley alongside the story of the grandfather and grandson. In Frankissstein, Jeanette Winterson layers her modern Frankenstein retelling with a storyline following the creation of Mary Shelley’s novel. With both sources, I hope to explore the narratives and how the creators combine different storylines together. I have also added a specific article by Connor G. Salter from Mythlore to my secondary sources. This article not only describes the current scholarly field surrounding Goldman and The Princess Bride, but it also makes some interesting suggestions for further research. For example, this article emphasizes the idea of escapism in Goldman’s works which I had already been curious about. The article also introduced the idea of mythopoeia in connection to the novel which is something I hope to explore as I continue to research The Princess Bride. 

A certain binary that comes up repeatedly in horror texts I consume is that of “feminine” versus “masculine” violence—in other words, violence perpetrated on either side of the gender binary often containing differences. Coming back to Tomie by Junji Ito from my previous post, the character of Tomie is known as a “femme fatale” or “seductress character”—she is described as such in the book’s English translation description, and enacts violence by manipulation and sexuality. She possesses the ability of immortality/duplication, which allows her to come back after death, as well as the ability to make any man or woman obsessed with her to the point of insanity. This immortality is important because this “insanity” results in men killing her in increasingly horrific ways: the men who become obsessed with her, in other words, always resort to intense physical violence and even mutilation. Meanwhile, Tomie does not usually directly commit violent acts, only playing on other people’s jealousies and other emotions. 

On top of this, women in Tomie react differently to Tomie’s manipulation. Their jealousies do not lead to intense violence or mutilation of Tomie, and instead, they become manipulative and intensely angry in their obsession. This creates a clear gender binary in how those around Tomie react to her seductions, speaking to gendered violence and the confines of heterosexuality. This binary is almost entirely consistent throughout Tomie, pushing a distinct portrayal of what Tomie’s powers reveal about bringing out the worst in people through attraction and affection. While Tomie is villainous, taking over the minds of the men she seduces and manipulating their actions, their violent outbursts are consistently shown not to be a part of her conscious plans. Tomie consistently reacts fearfully in her body language and facial expressions towards the violence directed at her, and the men she renders obsessed with her consistently resort to mutilation due to their jealousy and obsession. Though this allows more pieces of her to spread and regenerate, perpetuating her curse and reinforcing her nature of torment, the fear she feels in these moments is evident. The gender binary shown, then, paints both parties as villainous: Tomie’s emotional manipulation is painted as evil, but male protagonists do not get off the hook for their violence, as Tomie and readers are disgusted again and again by it. 

This is the root of what is horrifying about Tomie—her effects on those around her. Readers and characters are terrified of the concept of someone, especially a woman, being able to get revenge and justice for herself even after death, and her ability to haunt them for the rest of their lives. Men in the story, specifically, are terrified by their own insecurities: fears of rejection, fears of lacking control over Tomie/other women, and their fears of not being able to control their own insecurities. Tomie as a character and a supernatural entity is an avenue for Ito to showcase the worst parts of each side of the social gender binary: the weaponization of emotions that many women resort to in place of physical violence, the mutilation that women risk facing by heterosexual men, and the perpetration of violence and insecurity by these men.

Citations:

Itō, Junji, et al. Tomie. Complete deluxe edition. San Francisco, CA, Viz Media, LLC, 2016.

Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically. Eighth edition., Cengage, 2019.

Primary Sources:

“Pilot” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 1, Showtime, 14 Nov. 2021. Netflix

“F Sharp” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 2, Showtime, 21 Nov. 2021. Netflix

“Blood Hive” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 5, Showtime, 12 Dec. 2021. Netflix

“Saints” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 6, Showtime, 19 Dec. 2021. Netflix

“No Compass” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 7, Showtime, 26  Dec. 2021. Netflix

“Flight of the Bumblebee” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 8, Showtime, 2  Jan. 2022. Netflix

“Doomcoming” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 8, Showtime, 9  Jan. 2022. Netflix

“Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” Yellowjackets, season 1, episode 10, Showtime, 16  Jan. 2022. Netflix

“Edible Complex” Yellowjackets, season 2 episode 2, Showtime, 2 April. 2023. Showtime 

“Old Wounds” Yellowjackets, season 2 episode 4, Showtime, 16 April. 2023. Showtime 

“It Chooses” Yellowjackets, season 2 episode 8, Showtime, 21 May. 2023. Showtime 

Secondary Sources: 

(I’m not able to strikethrough my deleted texts, so I just italicized them and added “deleted” before it) 

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

( Deleted) Goodwin, John. “The Horror of Stigma: Psychosis and Mental Health Care Environments in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film (Part I).” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 2013, https://doi.org/10.1111/ppc.12045 

Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. University of Minnesota Press, 1997

(Deleted) Handley, Sasha. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-Century England. Routledge, 2007

( Deleted) Hallsworth, Djuna. “Making Visible the Incomprehensible: Ambiguity, Metaphor, and Mental Illness in “The Haunting of Hill House.” Streaming Mental Health and Illness: Essays on Representation in New Media, June 2024, ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381769179 

Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books, 1992.

(Deleted) Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

(Deleted) Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge, 2013

Mancine, Ryley. “Horror Movies and Mental Health Conditions Through the Ages.” American Journal of Psychiatry Residents’ Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2020.160110 

Van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014.

Added texts: 

Blake, Linnie. The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity. Manchester University Press, 2008. JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155j8f0 

Phillips, Kendall R. Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture. 1st ed., Praeger, 2005.

Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. SUNY Press, 1997. 

Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980. Pantheon Books, 1987.

Sobchack, Vivian. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. 1st ed., University of California Press, 2004.

Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. Reaktion Books, 2006.

Wheatley, Helen. Gothic Television. Manchester University Press, 2006. 

Academic Journal:

• Horror Studies 

https://www.intellectbooks.com/horror-studies 

Keywords:

• • Horror
  • Supernatural
  • Trauma
  • Mental Illness

• Gender 

• Gothic

Update: 

While talking to Professor Kersh, we discussed how I should try to find something in my texts that I want to focus more specifically on. In doing this, I was inspired to shift gears a little bit and decided to focus more on how the mental state of women is portrayed in horror. I will still be discussing the ambiguity between trauma and the supernatural, but I thought that these concepts all overlap in the Showtime series, Yellowjackets. This shift has made me remove and add several texts from my reading list. I have also added two more keywords: “Gender” and “Gotchic” 

For one, I’ve removed some of the texts that focus on the broader topics of horror and replaced them with texts that focus more on Women in horror specifically. Below will be my new description. I pulled a few words from my previous description, as this is just a revised version now: 

I want to focus my senior thesis on the Showtime series, Yellowjackets created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson. This series displays an ambiguity between trauma or horror that shifts an entire narrative perspective based on which we are seeing. This show follows a girls soccer team that gets stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash. It follows them during their time in the wilderness in their teen years, and also follows their adult lives 25 years later. In this show, the mental state of the characters is unreachable. There are several scenes where the viewer does not know what is supernatural or what is “just in their head”. Horror often portrays characters who are dismissed as “crazy” for their supernatural experiences, usually being put in institutions by an ignorant society, despite their experiences being real. What stands out in Yellowjackets is the ambiguity between supernatural events and the characters’ psychological states. It’s often unclear whether what we’re seeing is a true supernatural phenomenon or the result of a character’s mental deterioration. Sometimes it really is supernatural and sometimes it is not and sometimes its both things at once. Regardless, this overlap is exactly what I want to analyze for this thesis. I want to ask “Why does the author/director want us to question what we are seeing? Why is it significant whether we are seeing either or even both at once? How would this be portrayed if it were in film/written literature? Why are these differences important?”

While talking to Professor Kersh, I realized that I could go even deeper into this analysis. On top of understanding the ambiguity between horror and trauma, I wanted to focus specifically on how this ambiguity is depicted in showing the mental state of women. Yellowjackets specifically follow a girl’s soccer team. While one of the characters already has diagnosed mental illness before the plane crash, the way that all of the characters’ mental states is depicted shapes the entire narrative of the film. It asks questions like “What is the significance of this show following women specifically? What are Lyle and Nickerson trying to tell us about the complexities in the mind of a woman? 

I will still be looking into texts by experts in psychology, as suggested by Professor McDermott, because it will be relevant for analyzing this series. I will also be looking at texts that focus more on how the mental state of women is portrayed in horror. This comes in several forms, from topics such as Women’s pleasure being depicted in horror to topics about the societal pressures that are brought metaphorically into horror and manifest in concepts of the supernatural. 

Overall, I have a basis of questions for my thesis and a plan to find the different aspects of answers to these questions. My keywords have both “Horror” and “Supernatural” because these two things often don’t mean the same things, and I want to explore that as well. While my other keywords, “Trauma” and “Mental Illness” often coincide with one another, the depictions of both of these in written literature and film are often portrayed very differently, so I want to also focus on the differences between those and the way that they are in partnership with Horror and the Supernatural in my primary texts. I also added “Gender” and “Gothic”, which were two words that are in several of the titles of my sources. Both of these new key terms help capture the entire essence of my goals for this paper. Gender hones in on the specifics, while “Gothic” allows me to look at broader themes and recognize patterns within these broader themes. 

Ia. 3-5 secondary sources or theoretical works

Fulton, Helen. “Origins and Introductions: Troy and Rome in Medieval British and Irish Writing” in Celts, Romans, Britons: Classical and Celtic Influence in the Construction of British Identities, edited by Francesca Kaminski-Jones and Rhys Kaminski-Jones, Classical Presences, Oxford, 2020.

Hardie, Philip. The Last Trojan Hero: A Cultural History of Virgil’s Aeneid, London, I.B. Tauris, 2014.

Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton University Press, 2021.

Rajsic, Jaclyn. “The Brut: Legendary British History” in Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500; edited by Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler, pp. 67-84, 2019. 

Alexandra, Kate. “The Problem with Greek Myth Retellings.” Youtube, 24 April 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tL3Pbc_zhU&t=3s.

Carson, Anne. “Introduction: Elektra.” An Oresteia. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, pp. 77-83.

Porter, James I. “Reception Studies: Future Prospects.” A Companion to Classical Receptions, edited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2008.

Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, Norton, 1995, pp. 33-49. 

Spacciante, Valeria. “Circe, the female hero. First person narrative and power in Madeline Miller’s Circe.” Classical Receptions Journal, vol. 16, 2024, Oxford University Press, pp. 405-418.

Suzuki, Mihoko. “Rewriting the ‘Odyssey’ in the Twenty-First Century: Mary Zimmerman’s ‘Odyssey’ and Margaret Atwood’s ‘Penelopiad.’” College Literature, vol. 34, no. 2, 2007, pp. 263–78. 

Szmigiero, Katarzyna. “Reflexivity and New Metanarratives. Contemporary English-language Retellings of Classical Mythology.” Discourses on Culture, vol. 20, no. 1, Dec. 2023, pp. 85-108.

Tatum, James. “A Real Short Introduction to Classical Reception Theory.” A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, vol. 22, no. 2, Fall 2014, Trustees of Boston University, pp. 75-96.

Zajko, Vanda. “‘What Difference Was Made?’: Feminist Models of Reception.” A Companion to Classical Receptions, edited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2008.

Ib. Primary sources

Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Translated by Ted Huge, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.

Atwood, Margaret. The Penelopiad. Canongate Books, 2018. 

Barker, Pat. The Voyage Home. Penguin Books, 2024.

Casati, Costanza. Clytemnestra. Sourcebooks Landmark, 2023. 

Haynes, Natalie. A Thousand Ships. Harper Collins, 2021. 

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Emily Wilson, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Saint, Jennifer. Elektra. Flatiron Books, 2022.

II. One academic journal

Journal Vergilius, published by The Vergilian Society. Accessed at https://www-jstororg.dickinson.idm.oclc.org/journal/vergilius1959

Classical Receptions Journal, published by Oxford University Press.

* I checked the 2019-2024 issues, found only a few articles that were relevant * 

Helios, published by Texas Tech University Press.

III. 1-3 key words 

epic, heroes, translatio imperii

Reception/adaptation theory, retelling, feminism

IV. Accompanying essay

For my thesis, I want to focus on how literature has shaped empires, specifically how many empires have established a Trojan descendance to create a national identity that’s based on a manipulated mythos. By hijacking this story of the Trojan War and manipulating it to their literary needs, authors have made these historical losers into the fathers of empire, whether the Romans, English, or Franks. Right now, my ideas and choices for primary texts are a bit far reaching, so I’d like to explore options and narrow down to what provides the most for close reading. 

In most cases, the Trojan ancestor is a refugee, fleeing from the fall of Troy and looking to establish a new home, a new Troy. The ancestor is usually a heroic figure (like Aeneas or Brutus) and has a clear value and moral system that reflects what is important to each culture. Furthermore, it may be interesting to see how these texts juxtapose the Trojan hero and his values with the ‘local’ peoples as a way to justify further colonization and empire. Right now, all I know is I want to look at these stories and their connection to Troy and understand why authors did this, and the impact it had on the larger conception of each ‘nation.’

For this reading list, I first spoke with Professor Mastrangelo. We mainly talked about The Aeneid, but he recommended two secondary texts of scholarship (Philip Hardie and David Quint) that explore how epic and empire are intertwined. Understandably, we mostly talked about The Aeneid and the ways it works to make Aeneas the model Roman, as well as someone quintessentially non-Greek. I then spoke with Professor Kersh to confirm that this was a good route of inquiry, and I finally spoke with Professor Skalak, who really pushed me in the medieval route and introduced me to the term translatio imperii, or the medieval concept that the authority of empires is translated from one to another, creating a sort of lineage for the transfer of power.

I originally thought of exploring the Brutus story in Geoffrey of Monmouth, but Professor Skalak recommended Layamon’s Brut, which is an English version of the story. I’m having trouble finding a translation of it from Middle English, but I put an academic article about it on my list to learn more. She also recommended looking at ‘Trojan sections’ of Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte D’Arthur, which were highly influential in the period. I’m hoping to get a more basic overview of the period and then decide where to dive in.

My main questions will be: What was translatio imperii? How popular and influential was the idea? Why was Troy chosen specifically as the ‘original’ empire? Why make the ‘losers’ into your ancestors? How did having precedent/ancestry give authority to an empire? What’s the significance of this ‘national literature’ making these connections?

UPDATE:

After some research and realizing my original topic was too large and history-based for this thesis, I have switched my topic to modern feminist mythology retellings. In particular, I have narrowed my scope to one mythological story that includes and highlights multiple women: the Clytemnestra saga, which includes Cassandra and her daughter Elektra and can connect to her cousin Penelope and sister Helen. The texts I have chosen center one of each of these women as the protagonist. This family of women from the time of the Trojan War have been revisited in modern retellings, and I want to know why. Why does the 21st century have an interest in putting previously marginal female characters into the spotlight, and what do they use these myths to say/reflect on in our own society?

My plan is to approach these texts and see how accurately and humanly they present these tales: are they anachronistic? Do the women act simply as mouthpieces for modern thought? Are certain women villainized while others revered? What ‘type’ of woman is seen by a modern audience as worthy of a voice? Are these tales really ‘feminist’? Furthermore, I want to explore how texts within the same mythological corpus interact with each other: does one portray Cassandra as insane and another as tragic? Is Clytemnestra a complex, understandable character or simply a crazy murder? Is Helen the slut who destroyed Troy or a woman filled with regret? I definitely want to explore the nuances within these texts, both ancient and modern.

Primary Sources:

1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
2. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
3. The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
4.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1997-2003

Keywords:

1. Heroine
2. Female Gothic
3. Trope

Journal to Survey:

1. Gothic Studies

Secondary Sources:

1. Contesting the Gothic : Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict, 1764–1832 by James Watt
2. The History of Gothic Fiction by Markman Ellis
3. “Gothic Success and Gothic Failure” in The Cambridge History of the English Novel by George Haggerty
4. The Making of Jane Austen by Devony Looser
5. The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare by Helen Cooper
6. Literary Character: The Human Figure in Early Writing by Elizabeth Fowler
7. “Northanger Abbey, Gothic Parody, and the History of the Fictional Female Detective” by Elizabeth Veisz
8. “Catherine Morland’s Gothic Delusions: A Defense of ‘Northanger Abbey’” by Waldo S. Glock
9. “John Thorpe, Villain Ordinaire: The Modern Montoni/Schedoni” by Nancy Yee
10. “Grad School Gothic: The Mysteries of Udolpho and the Academic #MeToo Movement” by Anna Williams
11. The Female Investigator in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture by Lisa M. Dresner
12. Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style by D.A. Miller
13. Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence
14. The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel by Alex Woloch

My thesis interest currently lies in analyzing how Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey conforms, resists, and overall comments on the female gothic heroine as popularized by her in-text idol, Ann Radcliffe. So, to understand Catherine, I must understand her literary idols, namely The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. Yet, the frameworks based on the Radcliffian heroine often simultaneously empower and misogynistically denigrate women- and not actually too different from modern popular “girl” books like Twilight and those by Sarah J Maas, situating my project in character tropes resonances broader than the 18^th century. I want to explore these tensions, and the implications of what it means to explore those in a Gothic setting, and refract them onto the “realistic” setting of Northanger Abbey.

My research will start to address these varying angles. This will mean reviewing articles with a sharper lens for the literary element central to my interests: characterization. Many of these articles I found or read while abroad last year (and will thus have to get many ILLs), but the 5-page limitation for essays meant I could not really tease out all their implications. I also discovered Gothic Studies last year, and found it helpful to consider the Gothic in broader genre and temporal contexts. Since I want to understand Radcliffe and Austen contextually, I will read Items 1-3 to understand the genre and historical context the works were produced in. Similarly, after talking with Professor Sider Jost, I will also look at Item 5 to examine how Austen’s own literary taste developed. I would also like to further research biographies of Radcliffe to understand how she navigated female authorship.

Items 5-6 were contributions from Professor Skalak as I explained that I wanted to do a Gothic character study, rather than a Jane Austen study, making these medieval-centric books on character tropes applicable to my interests. Radcliffian and other early Gothic characters are just as uncanny as the inhabited settings, making these books a useful lens to consider the sociopolitical purpose of adhering more to tropes than in-depth psychology.

My remaining items are also developed from prior research, and will help me think about the direction I want to discuss Catherine as a Gothic and “Realistic” character. For the uncanny does reflect life, even if in a nightmarish outsized version, which Item 9 relates to even the modern day. In turn, I will use this in concert with the Northanger-centric sources to consider Catherine’s patriarchy struggles and how Gothic novels help and harm this social navigation.

Overall, I want my thesis project to consider what goes into crafting a heroine rather than a “hero.” What makes Emily St. Aubert of Mysteries of Udolpho a heroine, and how does that cohere with other contemporary gothic novels like The Castle of Otranto? How does this understanding of heroinism relate to Catherine’s character development and conceptualization? Ultimately, what does this say about media and identity formation, and how that may help or harm us?

Update:

In my updated reading list, I have added the primary text of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and four additional secondary sources on the female investigator, Austen’s style, and characterization. My additional primary source comes from connections made in my previous secondary reading. While the majority of my thesis will still focus on Northanger Abbey, I think Buffy provides an interesting lens to discuss it though. While many of my secondary sources agree that Northanger takes overdramatized villains who nevertheless speak to real anxieties and puts them into an everyday context, many of them just focus on the one villain. In reality, what I think Buffy and Northanger get to, is that it’s the overarching patriarchal world itself that is the gothic danger. Buffy is also a text that meant a lot to me as a teenager, and since my project examines how a teenage girl consumes gothic media to understand the world, I think it’s only appropriate to include it in some capacity. As for my secondary sources, items 2 and 4 were recommendations from Professor Seiler in my conversations with her post the original deadline.  I discovered 1 and 3 on my own at the library. I had heard of 3 before, so I had decided to flip through the index for interesting points about Northanger, which I did find. Item 1 I truly just saw on the shelf, and having read a fascinating article about how Catherine can be read as a proto-female detective, I wanted to read through to see if she was included. Sure enough, she was, and I am excited to further think about her heroine construction from that lens.

When I first started this class, I already knew that I wanted to talk about Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings but I did not know exactly what my question would be. The way that Tolkien created cultures in the trilogy was something that had always interested me but I knew that that would be too big of a topic to conquer within the confines of my thesis paper. I spoke with Professor Skalak and we talked about world-building and narratology and how Tolkien tended to diverge from the plot and speak on topics that seemed to hold either little or no relevance to the events that were occurring in the novel. While speaking on that topic with Professor Skalak, I came to realize that I wanted to look into that more. My main question at the moment is; why do these moments occur and why are they important?

This is no small task though. There are many of these diversions and they can be as small as a paragraph to as big as a whole entire character. Professor Skalak and I decided that my first goal would be to read through the trilogy and find and categorize each of these diversions and then choose a category of diversions to look into more. We also spoke on how I needed to find out if I wanted to focus more on Tolkien’s world-building or narratology. After reading more on narratology, I came to the conclusion that it seemed the most interesting to me and the most relevant to what I have chosen to look at. 

I started researching more and I first found The Complete Tolkien Companion by J.E.A. Tyler which goes through and lists every myth, name, language, etc within all of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and every subsequent text that Tolkien has written that exist within Middle Earth. My other sources are all articles that I found that either focus on narratology or on specific diversions that happen within the novel such as the character of Tom Bombadil and the languages that Tolkien created. 

There are many academic journals that focus on Tolkien studies but the one that I found the most useful so far has been Mythlore as it focuses not only on Tolkien but on the genre of fantasy as a whole. Lastly, my three keywords are mythopoeia which means the creation of myth, narratology, and diversion as those are the two main things that I intend to focus on when writing my thesis paper.

Update:

As I finished reading The Lord of the Rings, my main interest zoned in on how Tolkien wrote about race and looking through the trilogy through a post-colonialist lens. Many times throughout the novels, the Hobbits have to define themselves to other as they are not a race that is well known throughout Middle-Earth even though they are one of the races of elder days. I was also interested in Tolkien’s depictions of Orcs and his use of color within the series such as how black represents evil and white represents good and purity. Once such scene that comes to mind is when Saruman used to be Saruman the white but once he introduced color into his life, he became evil and lost his higher status.

I have since learned that the world of Tolkien studies is a bit behind when it comes to what is being researched and talked about so they are currently catching up with adding to the conversation on race and ethnicity within the world of Middle-Earth. As such, due to my change in interest and current scholarship, I had to readjust most of my secondary sources to fit into the new ideas that I am researching.

My primary texts are all three of The Lord of the Rings books which follow Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship as they make the trek to Mordor to destroy the one ring. I have decided to not use The Hobbit or The Silmarillion as they tell of two very different stories and I believe that using all three would become way too much to analyze within the page restraints of our senior thesis.

Primary Sources:

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. New York, Del Rey, 2018.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. New York City, New York, Del Rey, 2018.

Secondary Sources:

Bowman, Mary R. “The Story Was Already Written: Narrative Theory in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’” Narrative (Columbus, Ohio), vol. 14, no. 3, 2006, pp. 272–93, https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2006.0010.

Emanuel, Tom. “It Is ‘about’ Nothing but Itself: Tolkienian Theology Beyond the Domination of the Author.” Mythlore, vol. 42, no. 1(143), 2023, pp. 29–54.

Jacobs, Suzanne. “Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil: An Enigma ‘(Intentionally)’.” Mythlore, vol. 39, no. 1, fall-winter 2020, pp. 79+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A639544043/AONE?u=carl22017&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=b63e703a. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Juan Coste Delvecchio, et al. “Building an Artificial Language from Scratch.” The Owl (Tallahassee, Fla. Print), vol. 10, no. 1, 2020.

Chance, Jane. “Tolkien and the Other: Race and Gender in Middle-Earth.” Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 171-186.

Dawson, Deirdre. “Language, Culture, Environment, and Diversity in The Lord of the Rings.” Approaches to Teaching Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Other Works, edited by Leslie A. Donovan, The Modern Language Association of America, 2015, pp. 157-164

Fimi, Dimitra. “Teaching Tolkien and Race: In Inconvenient Combination?” Approaches to Teaching Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Other Works, edited by Leslie A. Donovan, The Modern Language Association of America, 2015, pp. 144-149.

Flieger, Verlyn. “The Orcs and the Others: Familiarity and Estrangement in The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien and Alterity, edited by Christopher Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 205-222.

McFadden, Brian. “Fear of Difference, Fear of Death: The Sigelwara, Tolkien’s Swertings, and Racial Difference.” Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 155-170.

Tyler, J.E.A. The Complete Tolkien Companion. New York, St Martin’s Press, 2003.

Journal:

Mythlore: https://www.jstor.org/journal/mythlore

Far reaching keywords:

• Mythopoeia
• Narratology 
• Post-Colonialism
• Diversion

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, memory and trauma or two of the most recurring motifs throughout the novel. These motifs stood out to me particularly in reading the section we have read so far given that these two concepts are illustrated in such different ways. More specifically, these motifs mean such different things to each of the characters despite having somewhat mainly shared experiences.

A scene that I think of when I think of memory in Beloved is the conversation between Paul and Sethe in chapter 7, when Paul tells a story of him and Halle together after the boys had ‘taken Sethe’s milk’. Paul describes Halle working churning butter and himself with a bit around his mouth, preventing him from speaking to Halle. Paul also recalls the roosters roaming around freely while he stood with the bit in his mouth, illuminating a shame of being almost lesser than an animal.

Interestingly, the way this conversation even gets brought up is when Paul confronts Sethe and Denver about his distrust towards Beloved. Ultimately, Beloved starts this conversation, which is strange because she has nothing to do with what Paul later talks about. This seems to be a pattern involved with the motif of memory throughout the novel in that Beloved seems to bring out memories in people.

Another example of this is when she asks Sethe about the crystal earrings she received from Mrs. Gardner as a gift of marrying Halle. She continues into her past, as she tells of her mother and the branding on her chest Sethe could not see as she died hanging.

Here, Beloved encourages memory and remembrance more directly. With these two instances, it seems as though her character provides a way for both Sethe and Paul to become more comfortable with the past and acknowledge its existence.

The horror genre in film creates all sorts of perplexing forms of entertainment. Audiences willingly expose themselves to fear and discomfort, which has been a recurring motif for my selected texts. As a horror lover myself, I sometimes find myself asking the question “why do we seek out these horrifying experiences?” After searching for and reading different texts, I realized many of them focused on theories exploring the appeal of horror. One in particular stood out to me and delved deep into the topic. Katerina Bantinaki’s “The Paradox of Horror: Fear as a Positive Emotion” argues about the cognitive approach, which seems to suggest that curiosity and intellectual satisfaction of uncovering the unknown are central. And the emotional approach, which claims that the emotional responses drawn from horror are in fact key to enjoying the genre.

Noël Carroll, as discussed by Katerina Bantinaki, offers a cognitive explanation for the appeal of horror. One recurring motif in horror fiction which was discussed by Noël Carroll and referenced in Bantinaki’s work, is the idea of monsters as beings that lie, “outside our standing conceptual schemes” (Bantinaki, 384). This motif of the “other” (creatures that violate the boundaries of normal human experience) is significant since it connects with a universal cognitive drive to understand the unfamiliar. The horror genre repeatedly presents monsters that challenge our understanding of reality. From the alien in Alien (1979) to the demonic possession in The Exorcist (1973). These creatures embody both fear and fascination while their nature invites an audiences to engage intellectually as well as emotionally. Carroll’s argument highlights the cognitive pleasure of making the “unknown known” by suggesting that the primary draw of horror is found in curiosity. As Bantinaki explains, “the pleasure derived from horror fiction is cognitive” (384). This means that audiences are intrigued by the monster’s existence/behavior and they actively look for resolution through the narrative’s unfolding. The pattern of presenting a monstrous entity and then revealing its nature mirrors the process of scientific discovery where understanding and explanation serve as a reward for enduring the discomfort of the unknown. This recurring narrative structure can be seen across numerous horror texts and reinforces Carroll’s theory: horror is driven by human’s desire for cognitive clarity.

In contrast to Carroll’s cognitive approach, Katerina Bantinaki emphasizes the emotional responses horror provokes in its audiences. She suggests that it is this emotional engagement (not just curiosity) that lies at the heart of the genre’s appeal. A recurring motif in horror films is the intense emotional experience of fear and relief – emotions that fluctuate with the rise and fall of suspenseful sequences. This emotional rollercoaster is central to the audience’s experience since they are not only intellectually engaged but also emotionally invested. Bantinaki argues that “it is doubtful whether audiences indeed derive mostly cognitive and thus dispassionate pleasurable experiences in response to horror fiction” (384). The visceral fear experienced while watching a film like Jaws or Silence of the Lambs cannot be reduced to  cognitive process. Instead, the motif of emotional highs and lows plays a crucial role in the horror narrative. The pattern of building fear and releasing it through climactic moments is essential to the genre’s rhythm, which gives the audience a sense of catharsis as they confront and survive the threat alongside the characters.

Works Cited

Bantinaki, Katerina. “The Paradox of Horror: Fear as a Positive Emotion.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 70, no. 4, 2012, pp. 383–92.