2022 English Graduates

Thesis Title: Imagining Africa: Representations of Colonialism in Heart of Darkness and The River Between Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong`o’s The River Between are both participants in the broader literary tradition of conceptualizing Africa during and after the European colonization of the continent. Conrad and Ngũgĩ ’s novels each present images of Africa, its inhabitants, and their relationships with European colonizers. Both texts use their narrators, descriptions of landscape, and stereotyped characters to critique imperialism. This thesis argues that Conrad has used these aspects of Heart of Darkness in such a way to generalize his text to the extreme, neutering his indictment of the exploitative imperialism at hand. Ngũgĩ employs a different strategy: in creating more specific, identifiable characters and landscapes through an omniscient narrator, The River Between mounts a fuller critique on a system that renders indigenous Kikuyu traditions and Christianity mutually exclusive. Favorite part of Reed: Classes, professors, classmates, pool hall Favorite class: Strindberg &amp; O'Neill with Pancho Savery Take away lesson: Things are stressful but eventually they're over.

Thesis title: Per Astra Ad Automata: three stories Three stories set in a space-faring, post-Earth future speculate about the post-human tensions between humanity and humane A.I. Favorite part of Reed: The humans! Favorite class: My favorites were the classes that taught me something. Strangely, that happened every class. Take away lesson: Take walks in the Canyon; and always read the footnotes.

Warp purple

Thesis topic: Constructed Utopias or Translating Silence

Thesis topic: Tone, Voice, Grammar, and Syntax in Elizabeth Bishop's poetry

Thesis title: "That while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she made a good end": Conflicts of Love and Duty in the Arthurian Romance In this thesis I trace the development of the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere over three centuries of the Arthurian Legend. I am specifically looking at the authority afforded to Guinevere via her courtly love relationship with Lancelot, and the development of other means to authorize her character once that relationship becomes problematic in the Arthurian tradition. I argue that as the Arthurian romances shifted from verse to prose, they shifted away from a romance mode of storytelling and towards an epic form. This shift in storytelling mode resulted in the devaluing of Lancelot and Guinevere’s adulterous relationship in line with conventional Christian morality. I argue that this change resulted in the source Guinevere’s authority being reallocated from the love relationship with Lancelot to her role as Arthur’s queen. Favorite part of Reed: All the flowers! Favorite class: It's very hard to pick but probably "The Novel and Romanticism" which I took sophomore year. Take away lesson: I can learn anything, given enough time.

Thesis Title: Where will we go from here?

Thesis Title: [some sentences &amp; phrases I wrote once]

Thesis title: "A Woman's Thinking and No Mistake!": Differing Perspectives on Female Agency in the Old Irish Táin Bó Cuailnge and Remscéla In this exploration of the Táin and its pre-tales, I will focus on the contrasting views of female power, arguing that the remscéla exemplify an early Irish perspective which regards female agency as a positive force, unjustly restricted and vilified by the masculine warrior culture. That such a stance dwells alongside the overtly misogynistic characterization of women in the body of the Táin, suggests a very complicated conception of female power and femininity as a whole. It would be an over-simplification to dub early Ireland purely chauvinistic by modern terms, just as it would be amiss to consider it a model of even proto-feminism. Rather, the coexistence of disparate perspectives on female power points to the complex range of beliefs present in early Irish literature. Favorite part of Reed: The muskrat family that I met in the canyon, ODB &lt;3, and the presence of kindred spirits. Favorite class: Medieval Celtic Lit with Michael Faletra! This class and my thesis greatly inspired my post-grad summer travel plans! Take away lesson: To pay heed to my intuition.

Thesis title: Coming of Age Stories and Landscape in Where the Crawdads Sing

Thesis title: The Power of The Novel: Recognizing The Subaltern In The Ramayana The Ramayana has remained timeless in its influence ad enrichment of the literary tradition of India. The aim of this thesis was to study how the themes and characters of this central epic are reconstructed, interpreted, and evolved in contemporary contexts, manifesting specifically in the form of the novel to address the reassure dominant narratives impose on subaltern peoples. My thesis speaks to historical background information on the Ramayana written by Valmiki, its influence on the socioeconomic status of India, and and how novels in particular can reread a historical narrative through a marginalized lens, such as gender, caste, or class. The two novels I use in my study alongside the epic are: Asura; Tale of the Vanquished, which questions the role of indigenous peoples and their king Ravana, portrayed as a villain in the original epic, and The Forest of Enchantments which is concerned with reading the Ramayana through the lens of Sita rather than Ram. Using the novel, subaltern studies can craft a more inclusive narrative of historical and cultural events. Favorite part of Reed: Adventures on the great lawn. Favorite class: English 205 Take away lesson: Stay humble and keep thinking good thoughts, things will fall into place.

Thesis Topic: Lesbian masculinity in domestic spaces

Thesis Title: Extended Gutters: Sequencing Space and the Narrative Power of the Panel in Watchmen Using Watchmen, as a particularly self-aware comic, this thesis considers the art of the panel sequence, narrative voice over, and Bakhtin’s chronotope in the medium of comics. I explore the novel concept of “crime-fighting time” in Watchmen as it describes a delineation of space which occurs in moments of vigilante combat. Furthermore, I address Rorschach’s voice-over narration as a noir pastiche, and the way Moore and Gibbons subvert Rorschach’s narrative authority by comparing his descriptions to the focalization provided by the panel image. Finally I briefly address Zack Snyder’s 2009 film version of the comic in the way it attempts to adapt some of these unique formal features of comics. Favorite part of Reed: I’ve gotten the chance to meet some wonderful people and work with some excellent professors. Favorite English class: Michael Faletra’s Dante’s Divine Comedy Take away lesson: As long as you swipe into the mill before 2am, you can stay there all night to work on your thesis.

Name

Safari may block some audio or video from playing automatically and ‘read to me’ will skip these. You can configure this in Safari’s preferences.