Undergraduate Research Journal, Volume 14

Table of Contents: The Myth of Chechen Radical Islam / by Jonathan Parker (p.1-8) -- Genre and the Perception of Massacre... / by Lauren Ferguson (p.9-18) -- Sentinel of Liberty: Captain America on the Home Front in WWII / by Carolyn McNamara (p.19-34) -- Embracing Myth in Mrs. Dalloway / by Aza Pace (p.35-48) -- Cannibalism and Witchcraft in The Tempest / by Kenneth F. Harlock (p.49-62) -- Evolutionary Game Models of Optimal Nuclear Weapons Strategies / by Christina Kent (p.63-82) -- Optimization for a Bio-Impedance Measurement System / by Matthew Normayle (p.83-94)Senate of College Council

Identity dissolved in isolation: the contrasting notions of density and ‘thin-ness’ in haunted places in the literature of the supernatural from the 18th century to the modern age, with particular reference to works by Shirley Jackson, Stephen King and John Langan, and the development of these themes in the writing of no man.

My aim is to illustrate the development of inter-related themes of personal identity and isolation, in both physical and psychological senses, within the literature of the supernatural and to trace the development of a treatment of the horror of physical and mental disintegration which is increasingly psychologically-aware both in authors and readership through the introduction of ‘the thin place’ as a trope as it became an explicit feature of stories within ‘horror fiction’. To begin this thesis I will offer explanations of some key terms relating to the literature of the supernatural, incorporated within a necessarily brief historical review in Chapter 1, DEFINING THE INDEFINABLE: The Development of Themes of ‘Thin-ness’ Within Stories of the Supernatural From Early History to The Gothic. In literary works predating the arrival of ‘the Gothic’ as a distinctly identified form, I will show that there is no clear boundary demarcating the ‘natural’ from the ‘supernatural’. This boundary becomes more clearly defined in later literature wherein the ‘supernatural’ is increasingly seen as a wholly separate, often inimical realm. I will demonstrate that the notion of ‘density’ which I will identify as emerging more fully and precisely in the later twentieth century should be seen as representing a ‘consensual reality’ in contrast to the ‘indeterminacy’ which is one characteristic of the supernatural. In the course of this investigation, I will draw upon a number of different approaches, including definitions of the various associated genres in Section 1.2, with an exploration in sections 1.3 and 1.3.3 CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT: The Horrors of Isolation and The Dissolution of Identity, of some major critical currents shaping the treatment of these themes. This will be linked to the psychological insight which views irruption through ‘thin-ness’ as a transgressive motif, often including both metaphorical and literal ‘penetration of the boundaries’ - metaphysical, as between planes of existence, and physical, as in penetration of the flesh. Thus a new understanding of a hitherto familiar literary trope in this stream of fiction was developed, combining the psychological horror of isolation, the physiological horror of ‘penetration’ (with concomitant death a likely outcome) and a third, metaphysical element of horror in the face of modes of existence wholly inimical to humanity. In Chapter 2, the works of Shirley Jackson, Stephen King and John Langan, along with material from other authors working within broadly similar traditions, will be examined and compared to reveal common threads in their treatment of isolation in ‘thin places’ along with the subsequent dissolution of the ‘density’ of identity suffered by their characters. I will reference the ways in which particular settings have been used in stories by these authors, namely the ‘haunted places’, increasingly described as ‘thin places’, where the boundary between natural and supernatural is easily traversed. In the course of this examination, I will demonstrate the continuing emergence, and import of, the notion of ‘density’ as a marker of normality, in contrast to the ‘thin’ nature of the boundary with the transgressive supernatural, and also show some of the ways in which this treatment manifests in modern stories of the supernatural. This trope, I contend, has developed following a conscious ‘psychologisation’ of the experience of writing and reading tales of the supernatural which suggests a blurring of traditional boundaries of inner and outer experience, and, by extension, of reality and fantasy. I will also demonstrate some of the ways in which this particular stream of literature of the transgressive has developed to reflect the concerns of readerships of the time. There will be a focus upon elements which became of central importance in attempts to define the genre: issues concerning setting as character; and of identity and ontology, the latter in the sense of exploring what there is. I will seek to show how dissolution of identity plays a key part in many related genre stories, and how this dissolution is reflected in the themes and language used in the texts as ‘thinning’. The notion of ‘density’ is taken as being of fundamental importance in modern novels of the supernatural placed within the tradition of ‘Contemporary Gothic’ (as opposed to the more thematic concerns of the ‘new Gothic’). In modern times, physical and mental injury have both become seen as methods for demonstrating the dissolution of identity, in which both body and psyche wear thin (as examined in section 2.2.5). In the third chapter, the thesis sets out a thematic record of the process of the creation of my novel of the supernatural, No Man, tracing influences, techniques and methodologies employed in two sections: looking at characters and settings in section 3.1, and at autobiographical influences on the roots of the story in section 3.2. I will identify where the novel draws upon the methodologies outlined previously, and where it consciously draws upon contrasts of exteriority and interiority and where the boundary which separates these contrasts becomes foregrounded. Finally, I will attempt to place my novel within the literary tradition of tales of the supernatural, and bring to bear an authorial analysis, with explanations of the ways in which elements described above are developed within the story. This element of the thesis will aim to illuminate ways in which traditional themes, tropes and motifs of isolation and the dissolution of identity have been incorporated in a modern novel of the supernatural, developing the contrasting notions of density and ‘thin-ness’ as major thematic concerns and plot elements

Symbolic utopias: Herbert, Asimov and Dick

The body of work that we usually call science fiction has a rich and often ambivalent history. Its humble roots in pulp magazines and dime novels contributed to an image of disposable, low brow writing, unworthy of the title “literature”. Those incipient assumptions, which still remain, became themselves ways of establishing what we now call a genre. In part, due to this uncomfortable image of a bastardized literature, the history of science fiction criticism frequently reflected a sense of discomfort with the way this genre was perceived. As a result, there have been many readings that attempt to lift the texts under scrutiny from a perception of polluted beginnings. While this impetus has produced some of the most essential science fiction criticism, it has also stirred a level of controversy by inevitably inscribing a canon. In recent years, we have begun to encounter a frontal discussion both on the literature itself and on the significance of these readings. These include further connections not only with theory, but also with their pulp legacy. In this regard, this study attempts to link utopia to science fiction, particularly in relation to how the roots of science fiction became enablers for a thoroughly utopian-driven genre. For this purpose, three authors are analysed: Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. Their prominence has garnered an enormous amount of study, perhaps the biggest of any other author. Tied to this is the fact that all three have a background in writing for pulps and their work has become iconic on its own. Therefore, it seems productive to analyse the threads that run through their work, the links their writing might have to each other and to external input but, most of all, how utopia may be a fitting way to interpret the science fictional impetus

Faith in the Furnace: British Christians in the Armed Services, 1939-1945

Many historians have sought to portray the World Wars of the twentieth century as drivers of secularisation in Great Britain. Much of this analysis has been based on an over-reliance on religious statistics, typically those relating to churchgoing. More recently, greater focus has been brought to bear on other manifestations of Christian belief and practice in British society, with some historians focussing on the impact of warfare on religious faith on the home front or in the British Army. To date, no wider, in-depth study of the religious experiences of men and women across the armed services, who considered themselves to be active Christians, that is pre-war church members and regular attenders, has been undertaken. This study argues the British armed forces during the Second World War was a milieu within which Christian faith could flourish. This was supported by the provision of effective chaplaincy services, as well as by service personnel developing their own modes of devotion and worship. Although, initially, not always fitting comfortably into a military environment, Christians were able to develop new aspects of their identity as warriors, identities that were informed and underpinned by their religious convictions. The resilience of pre-war faith, as expressed through frequent use of the Bible, hymnody and prayer, enabled them to mediate the ethical and moral challenges of warfare, and to emerge from the war with a strengthened faith. Ultimately, this study challenges existing notions of a slump in faith during the war years and positions itself within a growing historiography that acknowledges the continued and renewed importance of religious faith for millions of Britons during this period. It also suggests that this recasting of faith helps to account for the religious revival in 1950s Britain, therefore challenging recent narratives of this being a decade of religious torpor and decay

‘A truth best told through fiction: on developing the Catholic presentation of the doctrine of Satan as a mythic probe into the possible’

The Catholic Church's stated teachings on the interpretation of scripture provide a mandate for exegetes to interpret the biblical text in light of the historical-critical method, including attention to its literary genres, so as to yield findings that can contribute to the development of doctrine. With particular reference to myth, Catholic exegetes have adopted an understanding of the genre as the symbolic expression of limitations and possibilities that characterize the human experience, rather than a reconstruction, even in figurative terms, of specific historical events involving particular personages. In view of these hermeneutical considerations, this thesis proposes that the Church's presentation of the doctrine of Satan should be emancipated from a historicized interpretation that appeals to mythical narratives as though they affirm the existence and historical misdeeds of Satan as a particular ontological being. The myths that give rise to the doctrine of Satan have long explored possibilities in the relationship between the Creator and free-willed creatures. As such, the doctrine can be developed so as to express the possibility that a person might irrevocably reject God's invitation to friendship, and hence experience the condition traditionally referred to as 'hell', yet still be sustained by God's unconditional commitment to being

Ghostly Sounds and Questions of Belief in Thomas Hardy and Walter de la Mare

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) and Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) share numerous reciprocal echoes in their works, especially at the height of their literary activities in the early twentieth century. Despite their singular admiration for each other and strikingly similar working methods, their mutual influence has never been explored. This thesis traces and reevaluates their literary relationship through analysing many unpublished sources, such as letters, notebooks, drafts, fragments, and annotations, alongside printed works. Uncovering new manuscripts from Oxford, London, Dorchester, Eton, Yale, and other archives, the thesis reveals how they responded imaginatively to each other’s craft and shaped each other’s thinking about poetry and prose. Bringing their works together shows how their preoccupations with ghostly sounds reflect their complex attitudes towards religious belief: their provisional, agnostic views of the world, as well as their sense of being out of place. Instead of closing off the empty space left by an absent God, they explored the possibilities of tentative, momentary belief through literary language, drawing on the inherent uncertainty in auditory perception, and attending to what minute, imaginary, or inexplicable sounds can invoke. Such listening was also a literary haunting — the means of shaping a poetics of absence, full of an immanent but never satisfying sense of presence. This focus on ghostly sounds places their works in the dynamic landscape of discourses on belief, and developments in science and technology during their lifetimes. Chapter 1 outlines the writers’ biographical and literary connections, while contextualising these in the period’s legal, social, and institutional changes. Chapter 2 establishes a link between the writers’ haunted listening and their uneasy sense of God’s abandonment by focussing on the vacant church: an obsolete relic that still resonates with elusive voices and presences in such texts as Hardy’s “Copying Architecture in an Old Minster” and de la Mare’s “All Hallows.” Chapter 3 shows how reading names on gravestones recalls ghostly voices, especially those of past writers, such as William Wordsworth and Thomas Browne. Chapter 4 enquires into the writers’ obsession with the figure of the suicide. This figure, carrying the metaphorical burden of the stranger and the outcast, haunts their works at the level of literary echo and “return”: for instance, in Hardy’s The Return of the Native (1878) and de la Mare’s The Return (1910). Chapter 5 examines those texts in which a call is answered only by a ghostly sound that resists semantic interpretation. It explores the intimate correspondence between several crucial poems, published between 1911 and 1921 — Hardy’s “The Voice” and “The Shadow on the Stone”; de la Mare’s “The Listeners” and “Who’s That?” — as well as the poets’ persistent attention to the sound of words both in their manuscripts and published works. Overall, the thesis demonstrates how their distinct characteristics evolved through reading each other. The project attempts to recover a relationship that has been lost to literary history, and thus aims to reshape our view of early twentieth-century literature more generally.Japan Student Services Organization Graduate Scholarshi

Unlikely Comparison and the Transdisciplinarity of Comparative Literature: The Boundaries of Gender, Technoscience, Literature, and Visual Culture

The dissertation argues that current shifts in the humanities provide opportunities to transform comparative literature into a more transdisciplinary field that more fully attends to the agencies of knowledge work. In particular, comparative literature should center the intersections of the humanities and sciences, and feminist technoscience approaches in particular, to theorize and pursue "unlikely comparisons" that shed light on current debates on difference, disciplinarity, narrative, and the changing role of literary studies and the humanities more broadly. To illustrate the role of feminist technoscience in making agency-aware unlikely comparisons, the dissertation considers the resonances between the paintings of Remedios Varo and the philosophy-physics of Karen Barad. It is then shown that cyberfeminist narratives about Ada Lovelace reveal that networks, time travel, and emergent behaviors are necessary models for understanding the multiple and complex connections between Ada Lovelace and today's digital women, and for understanding the agencies of knowledge work more generally. The dissertation then argues for a more transdisciplinary, comparative, and "polyrhythmic" undergraduate curriculum, providing specific proposals for coursework and pedagogical materials. The sum of these arguments demonstrate that further theorization of "unlikely comparison," directed by the central questions of feminist technoscience, would enable comparative literary studies to more fully engage with the pressures and possibilities of complex and rapidly changing political, ethical, and intellectual connections and responsibilities

Movement: Journey of the Beat

Movement: Journey of the Beat addresses the trajectory and transition of popular culture through the modality of rhythm. It configures fresh narratives and new histories necessary to understand why auditory cultures have become increasingly significant in the digital age. Atomised and mobile technologies, which utilise sonic media through streaming, on-line radio and podcasts, have become ubiquitous in a post-work environment. These sonic media provide not merely the mechanisms of connection but also the contexts for understanding changing formations of both identity and community. This research addresses, through rhythm, how popular music culture, central to changing perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘others’ through patterns of production and consumption, must also be viewed as instrumental in shaping new platforms of communication that have resonance not only through the emergence of new social networks and cultural economies but also in the development of media literacies and pedagogic strategies. The shift to online technologies for cultural production and global consumption, although immersed in leisure practices, more significantly alludes to changing dynamics of power and knowledge. An online ecology represents a significant shift in the role of place and time in creative production and its subsequent access. Popular music invariably provides an entry point and subsequent platform for such shifts and this thesis looks to the rhythms within this popular culture in as much as they encode these transformations. This doctoral research builds on the candidate’s established career as music producer, broadcaster, journalist and teacher to construct an appropriate theoretical framework to indicate how the construction, transmission and consumption of popular music rhythms give an understanding of changing social contexts. The thesis maps the movement of commonly recognised popular rhythms from their places of construction to the spaces of reception within broader political, socio-economic and cultural frameworks. The thesis probes the contribution of place and time in transforming global cultures, via social geography and memory, positioning such changes within readings of mobility, stasis, modernity and technology. By consciously addressing multiple disciplines, from populist to academic, Movement provides evidence of how wider structural changes have become reified within the beat and how in turn rhythm provides an appropriate modality through which change can be negotiated and understood

Beastly Journeys

A critical exploration of travel, animals and shape-changing in fin de siècle literature. Bats, beetles, wolves, butterflies, bulls, panthers, apes, leopards and spiders are among the countless creatures that crowd the pages of literature of the late nineteenth century. Whether in Gothic novels, science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, journalism, political discourse, realism or naturalism, the line between the human and the animal becomes blurred. Beastly Journeys examines these bestial transformations across a range of well-known and less familiar texts and shows how they are provoked not only by the mutations of Darwinism but by social and economic shifts that have been lost in retellings and readings of them

Sonic utopia and social dystopia in the music of Hendrix, Reznor and Deadmau5

Twentieth-century popular music is fundamentally associated with electronics in its creation and recording, consumption, modes of dissemination, and playback. Traditional musical analysis, placing primacy on notated music, generally focuses on harmony, melody, and form, with issues of timbre and postproduction effects remaining largely unstudied. Interdisciplinary methodological practices address these limitations and can help broaden the analytical scope of popular idioms. Grounded in Jacques Attali's critical theories about the political economy of music, this dissertation investigates how the subversive noise of electronic sound challenges a controlling order and predicts broad cultural realignment. This study demonstrates how electronic noise, as an extra-musical element, creates modern soundscapes that require a new mapping of musical form and social intent. I further argue that the use of electronics in popular music signifies a technologically-obsessed postwar American culture moving rapidly towards an online digital revolution. I examine how electronic music technology introduces new sounds concurrent with generational shifts, projects imagined utopian and dystopian futures, and engages the tension between automated modern life and emotionally validating musical communities in real and virtual spaces. Chapter One synthesizes this interdisciplinary American studies project with the growing scholarship of sound studies in order to construct theoretical models for popular music analysis drawn from the fields of musicology, history, and science and technology studies. Chapter Two traces the emergence of the electronic synthesizer as a new sound that facilitated the transition of a technological postwar American culture into the politicized counterculture of the 1960s. The following three chapters provide case studies of individual popular artists' use of electronic music technology to express societal and political discontent: 1) Jimi Hendrix's application of distortion and stereo effects to narrate an Afrofuturist consciousness in the 1960s; 2) Trent Reznor's aggressive industrial rejection of Conservatism in the 1980s; and 3) Deadmau5's mediation of online life through computer-based production and performance in the 2000s. Lastly, this study extends existing discussions within sound studies to consider the cultural implications of music technology, noise politics, electronic timbre, multitrack audio, digital analytical techniques and online communities built through social media