皇冠体育大学 students in the humanities have opportunities to apply for and conduct 暑期本科生研究项目. Below are recent projects completed by students in the 英语系.
《小王子的黑暗面
William Baird-Smith ’20; Advisor: Kevin Dettmar
This essay is a philosophical comparison of two twentieth-century works of art: Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, 主要关注前者. The introduction presents both of these works and establishes the main problematic that they attempt to resolve: the impossibility of being able to understand others. With this established, two philosophical themes that play prominent roles in both are analyzed. 第一种是荒谬的. 《小王子》, the absurd is expressed through the mechanical lives of the people the Prince meets on earth and the different planets he travels to. 在黑暗中, the absurd is represented through the passing of time and the inescapability of our human condition. 第二个主题是异化. 这些作品都有相似的段落，讨论了仇恨的方式, 贪婪, 还有一些恶习会损害我们的人际关系，使我们与他人疏远. 通过分析这些主题, I display the ways in which both of the works present their answer to the central problem in different manners. 最终，这两件作品展示了截然不同的观点. The Little Prince has a hopeful vision: that through love and friendship we can escape the despair of our insignificant lives. 与此形成鲜明对比的是, The Dark Side of the Moon concludes that we must forever remain in the frustration experienced through our desire to understand and empathize, 而我们却无能为力.
“综合真实”:跨性别与性别酷儿思辨小说
Olive Maurstad ’20; In partnership with the Humanities Studio
I researched trans and genderqueer speculative fiction for my senior thesis. As I am writing my thesis as part of a fellowship with the Humanities Studio, I was specifically interested in trans speculative fiction’s relationship with “post/truth”, 今年工作室的主题. How does trans speculative fiction interrogate and look beyond concepts we think of as “truths”? 我主要在UCR的Tomás Rivera图书馆进行研究, 使用的材料来自伊顿科幻与幻想作品集. 我读过跨性别和性别酷儿作家的作品, 以及cis作者处理性别不一致的作品. 我也研究了非文学媒介的作品, 包括电影, 电子游戏, 音乐, 和YouTube视频. Some specific works I’ve studied are the short story collection Meanwhile, 在其他地方, Anna Anthropy的电子游戏《皇冠体育》. 因为我还在写论文的早期阶段, I have not yet fully defined my conclusions about the works I am studying. 然而, 在这些作品中，我一直在追踪几个主题, such as the achievement of realness and authenticity through artificial means, 以及资本主义对变性人的医疗控制. I am also studying how trans femme authors often use trans masc characters to represent privileged, 墨守成规酷儿, 并将其与跨性别作者对自己的描述进行比较.
他闻起来像薰衣草和男孩:探索温柔, 亲密, 成年小说中的异化
Nina Potischman ’21; Advisor: Jonathan Lethem
For my SURP, I completed the first draft of an illustrated coming-of-age novel. Over the duration of SURP, I wrote around 100,000 words, and created over 70 illustrations. My advisor, Professor Jonathan Lethem, was invaluable throughout this process. 他在整个写作过程中提供指导, 帮我组织了这个项目, 并创建了一个阅读清单，这对我的写作有很大的启发. 在我和勒瑟姆教授谈过之后, 我强烈地意识到我需要做出的改变. I intend to work on the project throughout the year until I’ve fully actualized my vision. 这部小说, 薰衣草与男孩, 是通过查理·夏皮罗的视角来讲述的, a viciously competitive 14-year-old primarily interested in winning and creating absurdist cartoons. 在辩论营, 查理遇见彼得, 一个聪明的, 冷漠, 也是一位非常成功的辩手,千里之外. 在初吻的骚动中, 性, 慢性疾病, 以及全国辩论锦标赛, 查理努力区分自己的欲望和期望, 最终找到自己. 通过这件作品, 我的目标是创造一些严肃对待主角的东西, paying tribute to the discomfort and uncertainty of growing up and falling in love for the first time. I want to bear witness to both the gravity and the beauty of being that age. 这件作品最终成为对侵略的沉思, 脆弱性, 亲密, 渴望被人看到.
小说写作与小说写作研究
Eileen Mahler ’20; Advisor: Jonathan Lethem
今年夏天，我开始了我的高年级小说写作计划, 我将在导师的指导下继续整个学年的学习, 英语教授乔纳森·勒瑟姆. I developed a daily fiction writing habit with the goal of building a collection of short stories.
除了每天练习写小说之外, I studied literature analyzing the process of fiction writing in order to improve my theoretical basis for the craft. 这些文本包括塞缪尔·R. 德莱尼, 《皇冠体育》查尔斯·巴克斯特著, 雷蒙德·卡弗的《皇冠体育》, 等.
到目前为止，我的生活, a lack of time and urgency have been the largest inhibitors to my practice of writing. This summer gave me the unmatchable opportunity to write with time and a goal. This structure alone helped guide me with the wrought practice of writing each day. 它教会了我挫败感, 怀疑, 和失望, as much as it taught me to work to improve the writing with which I have become frustrated, 怀疑, 和/或失望. 就理论文献而言, 我身上带着许多教训, my favorites being: 1) the goal is to write so that the reader always wants to know what happens next, 2)在句子的层次上, 好的写作可以挑战语言的传统.
墨丘利斯的灵魂:让·热内的炼金术/花之圣母
Layla Elqutami ’22; Advisor: Jordan Kirk
This project examines the impacts of alchemical tradition within the text of Jean Genet’s 1943 novel /Our Lady of the Flowers/ through a multi-layered study of divinatory poetics and incantatory histories of religious mysticism from ancient practices of sacrilege to modern interpretations of alchemical processes. By exploring the way alchemy shapes the moral society that Genet strangely molds, I am able to more clearly show the trick-mirror-like process by which the characters of the novel transcend zones of Earth/Heaven/Hell to thus transcend their own barriers of morality. I read upon primary alchemical texts of spells and poetry to gain a clearer basis on the complex ideals of the divine, as well as contemporary interpretations of alchemy within literature and modern practice to offer supplemented ideology on the idea of the transmutated character and setting. In a more abstract sense, I also read alchemical poetry and studying the divination of words/phrases. 最后, it was found that Genet’s /Our Lady/ was unto itself a transfiguration: Genet’s interjectionary narration allowed for a certain spell-casting, flipping on its head the normal Christian principles that Divine and others so heavily rely on for their own ascension to the Absolute Everything—instead, 他们是通过下到地狱而上升的, 三个炼金术世界的水银混合物. 通过探索这种宗教-文学的转变, 探索这些交叉点也开辟了其他途径.