Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation examines the use of vision (the sense of sight) and visuality (social seeing) in four women poets of the 1980s and 1990s in Spain: Ana Rossetti, Maria-Merce Marcal, Aurora Luque, and Montserrat Abello. All four combine the use of vision and visuality with questions of gender performance and identity as a challenge to normative and culturally constructed gender(ed) behavior. The very fact that the majority of the lyric voices in their poems does not have a defined gender, as many of the people that they view do not, permits them to move from subjectivation to subjectification. Through the manifestation of gender “difference,” the various lyric voices leave behind their status as marginalized members of Western gendered culture. Although not all of the lyric voices are ungendered or ambiguously gendered, sufficient questions of, and challenges to normative gendered behavior exist to warrant including these four poets in the same study, despite their ostensible differences. The theoretical framework for this study focuses on Freudian ideas of voyeurism and exhibitionism as well as pleasurable and unpleasurable looking (scopophilia and scopophobia), Foucauldian ideas of power, and Lacanian ideas of the mirror stage and subjectivity. The major flaw with all three when applying them to the poetic texts is that they all base their ideas on the normative man/woman binary. This by extension implies the subjection of the lyric voices, and the people and objects that they view, to what Judith Butler calls the heterosexual matrix. This idea assumes the “natural” existence of two genders, men and women, with the sexual relationships between them the only and “natural” option. This leaves out all other manifestations of gender as non-existent or deviant at the very least. Despite the distinctions between their works, due to writing at different times, with different approaches, and also from different cultural experiences (Rossetti and Luque write in Spanish, Ma (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephen Summerhill (Advisor) Subjects:

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

J. R. R. Tolkien has been revered as the father of twentieth century fantasy, however many initially criticized him for his handling of textual matter as male-centric magical lands that did not feature prominent female roles or significant female characters. In this discussion I present the argument that Tolkien created a vast community of powerful female figures within his fantasy writing, that stem from the distinct and dominant female forces he creates within his academic translations and poetry. Therefore, my aim in this discussion is to highlight the powerful and female forward translations Tolkien creates within his writing of original medieval, Norse, and Celtic figures, and unveil how these characters lend shape to the powerful and dynamic female characters that appear within his original poetry and transform into the central figures that shape Middle-earth. My research brings together these women as a culmination of female community, not just singular figures, who comprise the dynamic and prominent figures who shape Tolkien's creative art. Through careful research, study, and using the medieval model of triptych, I illustrate the transient power of the community of female strength; a fluid and diverse repertoire of influential characters that culminate into the Triptych art of women in Tolkien's writing compendium.

Committee: Christopher Roman (Committee Chair) Subjects: Comparative Literature; Gender Studies; Germanic Literature; Language; Literature; Medieval Literature; Modern Literature; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

Women are still invisible in most canons, whether these concern the arts or history. In order to understand the difference of treatment concerning men and women in European societies, Luce Irigaray, a Belgian philosopher and a feminist, developed the concept of sexual difference. This concept asserts that men's and women's experiences are neither equal nor reducible to a hierarchical homogeneity: they are diverse. Sexual difference is a limit that allows to construct a feminine point of view that questions the traditional male-oriented philosophy. The question of limits is therefore central to Irigaray's thought, aiming at establishing women as female subjects. On the one hand, limits were imposed onto female subjects to reduce them to a passive role; on the other hand, from the female point of view, limits might be hard to draw. Irigaray challenges patriarchalism as she suggests to subjects of both sexes to symbolize their own limits. One such case of new sexed symbolization is the writing of the contemporary French poetess Sophie Loizeau, who explores the limits of female subjects but also of literary genres and of language in general. Loizeau exemplifies many of Irigaray's propositions for change in our social symbolizations.

Committee: Andrea Righi (Advisor); Audrey Wasser (Committee Member); Anna Klosowska (Committee Member) Subjects: European Studies; Gender Studies; Literature; Philosophy; Romance Literature; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2008, English: Creative Writing

This manuscript aims to complicate notions of being, identity, and selfhood by examining the possibilities of the poetic "I." While much of this work is autobiographical in nature, this manuscript proposes construction of selfhood as being not just a single line of uninterrupted self-narration, but a trajectory scored with various adopted and discarded identities. The ephemeral tone and abstracted content of this work are an attempt to explore the fluidity of identity and the nature of experience in the context of language. The "I" functions as not only the poem's speaker, but the focal point to a moment in time, a feeling, a realization, and the culmination of cultural and historical affects.

Committee: Catherine Wagner PhD (Committee Chair); David Schloss MFA (Committee Member); Madelyn Detloff PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Folklore; Human Remains; International Relations; Language; Language Arts; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, 2012, English

During the mid to late Victorian period, Euripides' tale of Medea was given new life by the suffragette movement. As Victorians began to question women's rights and capabilities, Medea's story resurfaced as a cautionary tale showing the damage that occurs when women repress and shape their identities to fit uncompromising social expectations for their gender. In this thesis, I examine two Victorian women poets who interpreted Medea as a feminist statement: Augusta Webster, whose “Medea in Athens” (1870) was featured as the lead dramatic monologue in her collection Portraits, and Amy Levy whose closet drama “Medea: A Dramatic Fragment” (1881) was published as a part of her collection A Minor Poet and Other Verse. Both these writers examine Medea's psychology and the context in which she lives. Through their use of poetic conventions, Webster and Levy are able to suggest ways in which Medea's autonomy and identity are co-opted by a patriarchal society. I argue that Webster uses the tactics of the dramatic monologue to explore Medea's disintegrated sense of self, depicting her as a woman whose identity has been usurped by her husband's view of her. Levy appropriates the techniques of closet drama to focus on the voice of a patriarchal culture that excludes Medea long before her act of filicide. Through close readings of these two poems, I show the cultural impact and relevancy of Webster and Levy as female voices in the Victorian literary tradition.

Committee: Melissa Valiska Gregory PhD (Advisor); Matthew Wikander PhD (Committee Chair); Christina Fitzgerald PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Comparative Literature; Gender; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, Geography (Arts and Sciences)

This research seeks to establish an understanding of Appalachian women and their experiences of environmental justice through an arts-based analysis of their poetry. I ask two research questions that inquire how Appalachian express their experiences of EJ through poetry, as well how Appalachian women associate and relate gender to environmental injustices through their poetry. To investigate this process, I perform a poetry-based analysis of ten different poems by Appalachian women. Ultimately, I find that Appalachian women engage themes of empathy, othering, and gender to portray their connections to, relationships with, and understandings of environmental justice. This research is important because it addresses intersectional themes of both geography and environmental justice, however in new ways. Ultimately, this research portrays Appalachian women's use of poetry as an expression of their experiences with environmental justice, and as such, provides a different method and outlook from which to view environmental justice issues.

Committee: Harold Perkins (Advisor); Edna Wangui (Committee Member); Risa Whitson (Committee Member); Harold Perkins (Committee Chair) Subjects: Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Geography

PHD, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

The religious content of nineteenth-century American sentimental texts is often overlooked as a subject of study itself and is instead analyzed as a means to another end, such as its contributions to the abolition of slavery or to women's rights. Both are powerful uses of religion in writing; by contrast, this dissertation analyzes the use of religion in nineteenth-century American sentimental texts as an active and evolving blueprint by which to live everyday life. Utilizing the sociological/historical theory of ‘lived religion' and emphasizing the literary mode of ‘surface reading,' I explore how women writers of sentimental texts—Jarena Lee, Julia Foote, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Susan Warner, Louisa May Alcott, and Frances E. W. Harper—implemented religious themes and lessons in their sermons, essays, speeches, novels, and poetry in serving the purpose of faith itself. The analysis of lived religion focuses on how these women and their personal theology and religious practices interacted and evolved, which they then taught to society through their writing and speaking.

Committee: Wesley Raabe (Advisor); Babacar M'Baye (Committee Member); David Kaplan (Committee Member); Elaine Frantz (Parsons) (Committee Member); Jennifer MacLure (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American Literature; Bible; History; Literature; Religion; Religious History; Sociology; Theology; Womens Studies

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2021, English

Tin Roof Affairs is a book-length collection of poems that explores rural life, labor, domesticity, sexuality, and gender roles among working class Americans. It calls for readers to consider the nature and consequences of love, in all its manifestations, and how the human need to love and be loved both enriches and complicates our lives. Several of these poems were composed using found text from sources such as mid-century handwritten letters, The Farmer's Almanac, Reader's Digest, and YouTube, drawing attention to our culture's interdependent relationship with reading, writing, and other media over the past century.

Committee: Cris Cheek (Committee Chair); Cathy Wagner (Committee Member); Tuma Keith (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This dissertation addresses contemporary Chinese poetry's socio-cultural relevance through an investigation of a “crossover” (shige kuajie 诗歌跨界) trend that has loomed large in the past two decades, against poetry's paradoxical condition of being at once revered but barely read by the general public. This trend, in which practitioners simultaneously experiment with aesthetics and expand poetry readership by innovatively fusing poetry with other arts and forms of entertainment and communication, engages an extensive body of established and emerging poets, poetry texts and artworks, and various technologies. As the first systematic research into this long-existing, far-reaching, interdisciplinary trend, this dissertation not only offers insights into individual cases, but also challenges the theoretical and methodological limits to our vision of poetry's standing in contemporary Chinese life. This dissertation analyzes the following: the conversation between poetry and new folksong in a concert called In Ancient Times; the transference of poetry into paintings in the We Poetize itinerant exhibition and songs in the Sing a Poem for You television show; the integration of poetry into the documentary film The Verse of Us and the experimental theatre piece Following Huang Gongwang on a Visit to the Fuchun Mountains; and the interaction between poetry and social media in Li Cheng'en's personal poetry blog. Instead of viewing poetry as texts to be read in isolation, these cases call out for a reading of poetry as a multifaceted medium in constant interaction with other forms and media. Through the perspective of intermediality studies, which sees medial characteristics as both materially conditioned and historically conventionalized, all media as intersecting with and relying on each other, and medial borders as real but fluctuating, I illustrate common features of the crossover cases, chart out major ways in which medial borders are elicited and crossed, and demonstrate ho (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kirk Denton (Advisor); Mark Bender (Committee Member); Meow Hui Goh (Committee Member); Robyn Warhol (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Asian Studies; Film Studies; Gender; Mass Media; Performing Arts; Theater

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Cleveland State University, 2019, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Warming Up in Waves is a collection of nonfiction essays the explores different forms through which one can tell their story. The collection begins and ends with lyrical essays that are delineated like poems and that trace the narrator's thoughts in everyday moments as she works through issues of embodiment, desire, family, romance, perfectionism, trauma, illness, and more. The prose pieces in between fill in some of the narrator's backstory: an unsentimental discovery of sexuality, attempts at engaging in anti-racist discussions, personal and familial experiences with mental illness, and the legacies of large-looming grandmothers. The collection finds its way back to its signature form established in the beginning for one final meditation on childhood and the potential for generational growth.

Committee: Caryl Pagel (Committee Chair); Mary Biddinger (Committee Member); Varley O'Connor (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

BA, Kent State University, 2019, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This collection of poetry explores the complexities of living with multiple overlapping minority identities, and the experience of existing as a Jewish schizophrenic lesbian in the 21st century. This work includes themes of mental illness and therapy, sexuality and gender, love between women, family relationships, and Judaism.

Committee: Katherine Orr (Advisor); Edward Dauterich (Committee Member); Kimberly Winebrenner (Committee Member); Lauren Vachon (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Gender; Glbt Studies; Literature; Mental Health; Modern Literature

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2018, English

The goal of this collection is to complicate the dialogues of womanhood. The collection of poems combines a poetic perspective of womanhood with that of biblical woman, accompanied by a critical introduction that looks at the way contemporary writing and study categorizes narratives in the voice of the feminine with the aim of demystifing the statue of female “other.” This collection creates the female voice as the “I” instead of the Other. By initiating each major theme with a poem told from the voice of a woman from the origins of Christian womanhood, the collection lends legitimacy and belonging to the contemporary female voice. This collection expands through poetry to unfold a series of complicated and unanswerable questions, all of them asking, what does it mean to be a woman?

Committee: David Wanczyk Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Biblical Studies; Fine Arts; Gender Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2018, English

The goal of this collection is to complicate the dialogues of womanhood. The collection of poems combines a poetic perspective of womanhood with that of biblical woman, accompanied by a critical introduction that looks at the way contemporary writing and study categorizes narratives in the voice of the feminine with the aim of demystifing the statue of female “other.” This collection creates the female voice as the “I” instead of the Other. By initiating each major theme with a poem told from the voice of a woman from the origins of Christian womanhood, the collection lends legitimacy and belonging to the contemporary female voice. This collection expands through poetry to unfold a series of complicated and unanswerable questions, all of them asking, what does it mean to be a woman?

Committee: Dr. David Wanczyk (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts; Gender Studies; Religion

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2015, Creative Writing/Poetry

Free Women: Fairytales From A Lumbertown Brothel is a historically-based novel-in-verse inspired by the lives of trafficked women in the lumber camps of 1880s mid-Michigan. The poetic work pulls on the narrative traditions of Dorothy Porter and Anne Carson as well as historical records and fairytale tropes to try and make sense of senseless murders, enslavement, and violence. These poems seek to define womanhood in a dangerous time and place, give body and voice to a forgotten segment of people, and show the great strides and enormous failures society has made in the time since.

Committee: Sharona Muir (Advisor); Larissa Szporluk (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Fine Arts; Intellectual Property; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This is a feminist project that investigates the performative practices of contemporary female Colombian artists. It was guided by a main research question: Is there a particular kind of strength that comes from their specific situation as contemporary Colombian female artists? As such, this dissertation relies on fieldwork and critical theory in order to elucidate how such diverse individuals perform multiple art practices and what they do in and with their art practices. Two dozen women opened their doors, provided their time for video taped conversation and gave their archival material for the realization of this project. The main hypothesis this dissertation worked with relates to the existence of a possible double work or doubling of the work a woman artist executes in the need to undo what has been culturally assigned in order to then create her own images, ideas and concepts about being a woman in her society. Within the undoing and the doing, a liminal space allows the artists to realize how the cultural ideas of feminine essences evidence a conceptual void. Once the artistic work uncovers these supposed essences as false expectations, the strength that emanates from the vantage point of un-definition becomes the source of unbound creativity that produces artwork of political significance. The themes that emerged during fieldwork and writing show that in the same way these artists become others; multiplying possibilities of being while in their practices, they are able to influence their surroundings in minute, effective ways. Otherness is a central theme that has aided the understanding of the work these women realize. An important theoretical source is the seminal work of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, even though in five chapters the artistic work of nine artists are thoroughly discussed through multiple theories that traverse the text. Some of the theorists that have aided the present text are: Gloria Anzaldua, Rosi Braidoti, Judith Butler, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marina Peterson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Vladimiri Marchenkov Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennie Klein Ph.D. (Committee Member); Louis-George Schwartz Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; Art Criticism; Art History; Cultural Anthropology; Dance; Fine Arts; Gender Studies; Latin American Studies; Literature; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Theater

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2014, English

Salome: Reviving the Dark Lady is a rationale for an impending interdisciplinary reimagining of the literary Dark Lady for the early twenty-first century. The work comprises of poetry, dance, and film. This thesis recounts the history of beauty in the Early Modern Period and discusses the historical context of the Dark Lady to provide a frame for the journey of marginalized archetype into the twenty-first century. The choreopoem itself is built upon Salome, the character from Elizabeth Cary's1613 closet drama "The Tragedy of Mariam Fair Queen of Jewry." The choreopoem contains transliterated soliloquies of the princess interspersed through original poems and prose inspired by works of spoken-word artist Andrea Gibson, twentieth-century Afro-Scandinavian author Nella Larsen, and various literary and cultural critics.

Committee: Albino Carrillo (Advisor) Subjects: African American Studies; American Literature; Bible; British and Irish Literature; Comparative Literature; Cultural Anthropology; Dance; European Studies; Experiments; Folklore; Gender; Language Arts; Literature; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Modern History; Religion; Scandinavian Studies; Theater; Womens Studies

BA, Oberlin College, 1982, English

In this paper I will be concerned with one of these more neglected perspectives. I will be looking at the image of women as portrayed in Rossetti's non-devotional poetry, showing that, contrary to what I suppose could be called popular (literary) opinion, her women are often -- and increasingly so -- strong rather than weak, and that Rossetti herself was a conscious observer and critic of the "options" open to the Victorian woman. Given the emphasis that my work will take, I shall also be looking at various aspects of the poet's personal life, some of which have been largely ignored, and others, which, although generally considered by her critics and biographers, merit reinterpretation; I will be looking at them in a different light than that in which they have traditionally been regarded. Central, also, to her portrayal of women is what Rosenblum has referred to as her use of "doubleness." The veil or mask forced onto woman is not only a symbol of her oppression and the restrictions placed upon her. For Rossetti's women the mask/veil is often a form of protection which enables the woman to observe without herself being seen, to maintain some degree of inner personal integrity. All the while, however, the mirrors that surround many of her women serve as constant reminders that the only escape will often have to be inward; outside they are continually being scrutinized, objectified, framed. The wearing of a mask becomes vital, preventing the revelation of the unconforming living woman underneath -- in short, the unacceptable.

Committee: Katherine Linehan (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, 2010, English

Decades of scholarly research have portrayed Emily Dickinson as living a strikingly reserved personal and social life, distributing her poetry not through publication but through handwritten correspondence. In this paper, however, I examine recent critical scholarship on Emily Dickinson's letters to few close friends that reveal her to be a politically aware citizen. I pair this with a reading of the three poems: “Blazing in Gold, and quenching in purple” (02/29/1864), “Flowers – Well – if anybody” (03/02/1864), and “These are the days when Birds come back” (03/11/1864), published anonymously in a Union-driven newspaper entitled the Drum Beat alongside other contemporary poetry in February and March 1864. This Drum Beat publication shows that, at the crucial historical moment of the Civil War, the notoriously private and unpublished poet's work did, in fact, appear in a public venue, and begs readers to examine the significance of the three specific poems within their original context. While scholars have published legitimate and commonly-accepted readings of these works that emphasize their poetic form and their themes of nature, religion and death, these readings have, for the most part, been consistently non war-related. This paper adds to the recent and exciting scholarship of Dickinson's political awareness. Through close attention to the poems and their context, I argue that these poems serve as Emily Dickinson's public response to the Civil War.

Committee: Dr. Sara Lundquist PhD (Advisor); Dr. Melissa Valiska Gregory PhD (Advisor); Dr. Thomas E. Barden PhD (Other) Subjects: American Literature

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2001, Arts and Sciences : English and Comparative Literature

CANNED ROSES, the title of this collection of poetry and short fiction, metaphorically captures the plastic, transient, comic absurdist quality of modern relationships. In Japan, and perhaps soon in the United States, canned roses are being sold, apparently for those romantic emergencies when there's no time for fresh flowers. These plastic (literally, not just figuratively) roses are packaged in containers much like those designed for canned potato chips. Since roses are the classic gift of lover to beloved, canned roses serve as an apt symbol capturing the ideas this dissertation expresses about love in the modern world. This is a book about relationships, particularly male-female, but also familial. Seeming polar opposites are being expressed: the futility of relationships in this fast-paced, superficial, increasingly mobile, alienated, technological world; and, at the other extreme, the all-encompassing beauty, transcendence, and magic of love, fleeting though it may be. Tied to the theme of relationships is the motif of the self, that is, an essentially egocentric search for the self, especially as the self copes with and comments on, in witty satirical fashion, life in an absurdist universe. The fiction especially (the poetry to a lesser degree) has its roots in an existentialist view of an absurdist universe, especially apparent in the relationships of the characters and the comic satiric voices of the narrators.

Committee: Terry Stokes (Advisor) Subjects:

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2003, Arts and Sciences : English and Comparative Literature

This dissertation contains three papers that address the definition of "confessional" poetry, most especially that which has been written by American women. The primary section of the dissertation is a manuscript of original poetry: thirty poems in all. These poems attempt to negotiate the boundaries between fact and fiction, truth and deception, often employing rhetorical strategies similar to those of the confessional poets of the 1960's.

Committee: Dr. Don Bogen (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, English