PLSC 494 - Senior SeminarSince this was my last year, I took a step away from the traditional paper that would be written for a political science senior seminar. Instead of looking at the political effects of the 2016 election and running data on voter reactions, I instead looked at the interplay of Southern literature and Southern politics. In this, I compared the political "thesis" of three eras against each respective literary "antithesis" to show the split between politics and popular culture in the American South. The paper I completed will be presented at several conferences in the Spring semester, from Washington DC to right here at home. This paper was fun to write and incredibly interesting to me personally. I will be continuing the same idea into the Spring semester, but I will be focusing on the modern Southern Epic.
ENGL 390 - Ind Study Southern LiteratureI took this class as an independent study because it was not offered on Drury's campus. With the incredible generosity of Dr. Henderson, I was able to take this class in tandem with my senior seminar class, and kill two birds with one stone. I was able to take the works and the research from his class and work it into my senior thesis. This class was an incredible opportunity for me and I look forward to working with Dr. Henderson in the Spring with Honors 495.
ENGL 302 - Women WritersWith the guidance of Dr. Gilbert, I looked at the evolution of the feminine struggle against societal pressures through the Second- and Third waves of American Feminism. I looked at Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique as a starting point, moving to Terry Tempest Williams' journey of growth and acceptance of her mother's death in When Women Were Birds, to finally looking at an "answer" to Second wave American Feminism in Ada Calhoun's Why We Can't Sleep. This evolution in literature highlighted the fact that while women now have the basic legal protections and support that they would need to be equal to men, there are still inadequate social support mechanisms that can hinder the advancement of women.
HNRS 495 - Advanced ResearchThough my advanced research I looked into American Southern literature not only as a barometer of public opinion on national political thought, but also as a tool for authors to reconcile the South's past with it's present. I was able to finish this paper while in quarantine during the COVID-19 virus in the spring of 2020 with the guidance of Drs. Schur, Henderson, and Paddock. I used previous elements of my PLSC 494 paper to guide my research in this paper. I focused more on the literary element of Southern literature, and not as much on the politics, though I did dive into an analysis of The Vine that Ate the South by J. D. Wilkes and its pointed apolitical message. Identifying the apolitical message in this Southern Epic made a statement about the deeply divided politics of the current era and how the American South can exist outside of it's politics both from the past and the present.
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Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Dylan Thomas // "Do not go gentle into that good night"
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