LITERATURE Body Language(s): Pan-African Female Representation Ms. Ogunyemi Ariana Banias x6526 Sex Crazed: Black Women, Madness, and Sexuality in Three Novels. Using Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Gayl Joner's Eva's Man, and Ntozake Shange's Liliane, I will examine how the themes of madness and black women's sexuality are connected. Chie Davis x6592 Hair Dramas: Secret Confessions of Liberation. The examination of hair and how issues of hair types affect the psyches of black women in correlation to their identities. Rachelle Hunt x6909 Ceelebration of Self: Pleasure in Black Women's Literature. What is a woman's paradise? Sex, Ritual, Sorcery? An examination from the orgasm of orality to the magic of beauty. Randa Jarrar 914-237-4815 Fuel for Flight: Coming of Age in Song of Solomon and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The connections of coming of age with ancestry, the issue of flight and real growth. Dresden Jones x6346 Roots: Jazz and Blues in Black Literature. The exploration of black literature rooted in jazz and blues music; the music used as a healing force for the individual and the family and as a communicator of the black experience in North America. Emily Park x6589 Family Recipes: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Nzotake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo. I will discuss the relationships between characters and their parents, both biological and surrogate, which exists in these two novels. How is the past transmitted from 'parent' to child through recipes and food, names, and the presences and absences of parental figures. Amanda Rinear x6507 Mint, Pepper and Twinning in Toni Morrison's Paradise. My conference project looks at heaven, hell, and paradise as they appear in the novel. Also, through exploration of twins and ideas of duality, heaven, hell, and paradise are explored as individual entities and simultaneous parts of wholes. Nelle Sabatino x6375 Constructions and Reconstructions of Family in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved. In this paper I will analyze what happens to the notion of family as a result of slavery in America. I will demonstrate that slavery as an ideology attempted to destroy and pillage all familial ties in African American communities. Caya Schaan x6718 Buried Umbilical Cords, Unearthing Traditions: Birthing Revolution in the Literature of the African Diaspora. Through the texts of Opal Palmer's It Begins with Tears and Beryl Jones' The Healing. I will look at how women of the African Diaspora consciously/unconsciously carried over birthing practices and used these traditions in both silent and wailing revolution against a colony trying to wipe both their people and traditions out. George Zamarripa Black Skin, White Masks: The Passing Figure of Jean Toomer's Cane and James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. This conference project will focus on metaphors of passing in these two novels. Besides racial passing, how do gender and sexuality become forms of passing? Can one form of passing pass for another? Is passing a form of death, as when one "passes away"? The Displaced Imagination in Asian -American Literature Mr. Francia Allison Albino x6522 The Narrative of Displacement: A Character Study Constructing a third-person narrative centered on an overly romantic female immigrant to the US using specific short stories. The narrative will give us insights into her life and family both in the Philippines and the US, and the cost of displacement. Kai Anderson x6857 An Aesthetic in Two Forms. An exploration of Zen Buddhism and the Japanese aesthetic principle of WABI SABI, their influence on specific Japanese-American authors and their application to an original dance piece. Similarities between the choreographpic and writng processes will be examined. Alexandra Greenberg x6614 Amiri Baraka and Carlos Bulkosan: Their Cultural Contexts. These two poets grew to be militant voices in their respective communities. The project examines the causes of their militancy, relating these to the Harlem Renaissance and the Asian-American labor unrest. Issues of class and race will be discussed. Leslieann Hobayan 212-517-8704 Resistance in Carlos Bulosan and Jose Garcia Villa. A comparative study of two major Philippine-American poets, using specific poems. The study will examine how different these two poets approaches were to the promise of America, considering issues of class, race, and sexuality. Akhila Jagdish x6608 Female Desire in Bombay Talkie and Dogeaters. Through a study of female characters in these two novels and through a portrayal of an Asian-American woman, this project aims to create a deeper understanding of female desire in the context of biculturality, biraciality and colonialism. Aaron Kablack x6432 Four Asian-American Poets. The project examines the poetry of Li-Young Lee, Alfred Yuson, A. Salanza, and R. DeUngria, focussing on the interweaving of the personal, the political, and the social. The project will include some of the author's own poems, to reflect how inseparable these three contexts often are. Elizabeth Lapis x6522 Ayako in America. The aim of this project is to construct a short piece of creative biography, depicting a young Japanese woman's assimilation into American society. Using certain class texts as guides, the piece will examine conditions in her family back in Japan to help us understand her American life. Paige McCollum x6753 Female/Feminist Rebellion in Bombay Talkie and A Feather on the Breath of God. The female characters in these two novels - spanning three generation - must contend with the often conflicting demands of tradition and modernity in two cultures. How they conform or rebel is the subject of this project. Kelli Wilson x6786 Returning "Home": A Korean-American Woman's Dilemma. What happens when a second generation Korean-American young woman and her parents return to Korea? What are the emotional and cultural difficulties this decision causes? Using texts like Chang Rae Lee's Native Speaker, this project seeks to tentatively answer these questions. Part of it involves constructing a fictional scenario. English: The History of a Language A. Lauinger Gabriel Bell 914-923-3873 The Value of Meter in Lyrical Ballads. A sociolinguistic analysis of the preface to Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, looking for his basic theory on the social value of poetry and specifically his understanding of poetic meter, its uses, effects, and values. Amanda Byer x6780 Caribbean English. A study based on the origins and present day condition of Caribbean English. Jennifer Engelman x6484 Slang from the SLC Streets. Study of word use and production in social scenes at Sarah Lawrence. Jonathan Seagull x6924 Technical Jargon and Social Power. Through analysis of taped interactions in the SLC computer lab, a paper outlining some of the issues of jargon and heirarchy in such interactions. Exile and Outlandishness: The Fallen Women in Literature Ms. Fox Sierra Black x6976 Fallen Women and Female Authors. This study will examine the fallen woman as seen through the lens of the female literary imagination, and how these portrayals differ from fallen women characters conceived by male authors. Walton Burns. x6540 How Does Life Become Essence? An intensive study of Lukac's theory of the novel, and readings of Jane Eyre and Angels and Insects in light of Lukac's ideas. Sara Folks x6371 Locals vs. Foreigners in Henry James: Problems in Communication. The conflicts brought about by the often subtle, yet ingrained, socio-cultural differences between characters of different geographical backgrounds will be traced in The American and other works. Katrina Harb Nabokov's Lolita and Duras's The Lover. A comparative study of these two novels and the moral and cultural ramifications of the relationships they portray. Erin Hoover x6894 Desire and Illusion in Fiction: Tolstoy and Flaubert. The adulteress and the nature of her longings vs.society's norms, through close examination of the portrayal of Anna in Anna Karenina and Emma in Madame Bovary. Supplemented by critical readings. Benjamin James x6621 Nathaniel West. Through a close study of Miss Lonely Hearts and other works, the following themes will be addressed: the role of the writer in fragemented society, and popular conceptions vs. reality. David Lopresti Multifaceted Levels of the Observer in Literature and Film. Parallels between the writer and the camera as documentor/observer. A study of the "outsider" perspective and alienation in several novels and Noir films. Stacey McKeever x6858 Anna Karenina. Through a close analysis of the novel, and critical and biographical works on Tolstoy, the author's complex relationship to his female character will be explored. Mica McMullen x6638 Edith Wharton. This study will focus on the role of women in the Age of Innocence and other works. The emphasis will be on the presentation of society's almost invisable, yet strict rules concerning feminine behavior, and the fine line for women of being "in" society vs. being cast "out." Max Moore x6965 Extreme Roles: Virtue and Vice. In several films and plays, this study will examine the presentation of the fallen woman as actress vs. the virtuous woman as artless. The thematic implications of the character's "fictional" or artful behavior within a fictional work will also be considered. Liz Rich x6358 Olympias and Medea.This comparative study will trace different representations of these two historical and mythological figures. The figure of the woman in antiquity will be considered in light of her power, madness, and her desire for revenge. Parsley Steinweiss x6609 Fallen Women in Film. Using works we read in class (e.g. Cousine Bette by Balzac, Maupassant's short stories) as thematic guidelines, the representation of the fallen woman in several films will be considered focussing on the following issues: virtue vs.vice, money/power, beauty, and motherhood. Ellen Twaddell x6816 Dashiell Hammet's Heroines. Project will focus on the heroines of Dashiell Hammet's works narrated by the Continental Op. The crux of the study lies in why Hammet chose female characters to play out his perceptions of the world and society. Introduction to Literature Mr. Krupat Nathanael Hill x6455 Thematic Parallel's Between "Good Will Hunting" and Joyce's Ulysses. As Joyce's Ulysses takes many of its themes and situations from the Oddysey, so can Good Will Hunting be said to do so from Ulysses. Joshua Joffee x6920 Studying African American literature and focusing on the theme of overcoming the brainwashing of white America. Katherine Reilly x6811 I am studying what constitutes a great novel or novelists according to F. R. Leavis. To this end, I am reading Leavis' The Great Tradition, as well as Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I may also read Eliot and James. Ben Scharlin x6696 I'm reading Philippino literature dealing with ancient Philippine regions and beliefs. I'm comparing Philippino creation stories with Catholic creation stories, finding parallels to both ancient Philippino and Catholic ideas. Matthew Schwartz x6729 Death, Creation: Father, Son in James Joyce. An exploration of creation in the character of Stephen (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Bloom (Ulysses), as well as death, its opposite. How are these opposites played out in Father/Son relationships? Jessica Shell x6681 D.H. Lawrence's use of sexual domination and submission in three of his novels: The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterly's Lover. How the female characters are portrayed through their submissiveness and the subsequent consequences when they take a dominant role. Thomas Snodgrass x6856 African American Literature. A study of African American literature spanning from slavery to Malcolm X. Featuring Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, etc. Literature of Testimony Ms.Brodzki Yasmine Alwan x6712 Virginia Woolf and Henry James. Elijah Burghur x6441 I will look at the novels of Jean Genet, using Sarte and Foucault with which to look at Genet's use of prison, and the thief, and the traitor. Danisa Colic x2457 I will look at studies of bilingualism and code-switching in Latin Americans, and trace the transference of Spanglish from spoken word to text, looking at the linguistc and political implications of the legitimization of this dialect in literature. Sandeep Das x6561 Saussure, Semiotes and Strudturatasm. Brennan Grayson Reading Henry James. Rachel Ann Mary Kupper Reading Kafka. Studying the works of Kafka and paying special attention to religious symbols. Fiona Lam 914-665-2895 Reading French and critics of French. Role of psychoanalyitc theory in literary criticism. Brooke Lovell x6842 The Bible as Literature. Jenny Robinson Holocaust Accounts. Reading Primo Levi, Saul Friedlander and Jean Amery. Marian St. Laurent Beckett. Reading Samuel Beckett's trilogy of novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable. Darcy Sharon Studying stories of exile-people in different lands-a type of cultural exile. Sheltering Sky, Exile and the Kingdom, In the Penal Colony, Woman Warrior, Passage to India. Rachael Smith x6475 I am examining the Coming Out Narrative as a literary genre. Hannah Vandercook x2265 Narratives of Childhood Survivors of the Holocaust. I am looking at a number of testimonies written by child survivors of the Holocaust. How each of these narratives deal with the traumatic events of their lives and what they reflect in their own self-identity. Maria Vishmidt x6670 Borges. Anna Yovu x6870 Tim O'Brien's Vietnam: Nonfiction and Fiction. O'Brien deals with his Vietnam experience in one non-fiction and two novels. He questions the value of telling stories, explores the survival strategy of dreaming, and discovers that being a soldier is to be a refugee. The Twenties Mr. Krupat Gina Gaglia x6834 An examination of the African American male in literature, with attention to "passing," acceptance by their societies (and lack thereof) and a look at the "good nigger/bad nigger" dichotomy. Susan Pollock x6719 ExploringWomen's Roles. I will be exploring the different roles for women in the 19th Century, in their different social dynamics. Women's Autobiography Ms. Brodzki Herchel-Ann Aflleje x6968 Self-Portraiture: Autobiography and Self Image. A look at the portrayal of feminine self-images through photography. Identify through visual and physical aspects of personhood. Molly Desjardins x6389 Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Feminist theory. A study of Freud and how he is used and abused and improved by theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous and otthers. Samantha Dunn x6863 Marguerite Duras. A study of her writings, how they relate to life and literature. What is the meaning of the gaps in her stories. Julia Kenny x6845 A Study of the "Other" in Women's Autobiography. A study of the "other" in women's autobiography as well as an interest in romantic vs. nonromantic heroines in women's autobiography as affected by the feminist movement of the 1960's and 1970's. Sarah McKeon x6478 Finding the Woman's Place in Theory and Autobiography. A study of classic, post-modern, and feminist theory on autobiography, including a study of Rouseau's Confessions, and a feminist critique of the role of gender in the text. Lucinda Power x6672 The Study of the Autobiographies of Lesbian Nuns. Looks at the autobiography of lesbian nuns-how they were able to cope in a patriarchal institution where the laws the nuns followed conflicted against their own sexuality; what support systems were formed and how society and the Catholic Church reacted to homosexuality amomgst its followers and leaders. Finding her sexual identity in the Catholic Church. Paula Raimondo x6468 Who Is the Woman Philosopher? Looking at the work of Simone de Beauvoir and its relation to contemporary French feminist theory. Lila Sullivan 718-855-8723 Three different autobiographies written from different perspectives, historical contexts. Linsey Warner Relationships in Literature Between Mother and Daughter. In reading a few books, i.e. Housekeeping, Anywhere But Here, Crooked Little Heart, I will explore how certain authors portray a mother/daughter relationship. I will compare and contrast the relationships, and see what conclusions I can draw. Sahra Webster x6872 American/French Feminist Debate. Locating some Feminst questions within this debate based on misreadings, under-readings, over-readings, paying close attention to role of psychoanalysis and differing intellectual traditions. Mary Whichard x2285 Zora Neale Hurston. Study of Zora Neale Hurston's fictional and autobiographical works, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Dust Tracks on a Road. The Non-Fiction Essay N.Mills Joni Ang x2455 Disney's Celebration. A critical look at the politics and architecture of the Disney Corporation's model city. Allyce Bess x6581 Feminists and Monica Lewinsky. A look at the feminist divisions over the Lewinsky case and what they tell us. Christine Gallagher x6370 The End of Heroism. How we have fewer and fewer heroes. What caused this to happen? When did it start? Heather Haebe x6617 Optimism's Comeback. Our insistence on optimism, even when not justified. What is guiding everyone from film makers to advertisers to stress the "rosy." Lee Hammer x6479 The American Loss of Fear. We have come to see ourselves as immune from danger. Using the current Gulf crisis as a base to explore our inability to imagine risk. Jessica Hellings x6652 Chemical Fiction. Drugs and their impact on contemporary writing. Alexandra Pollard x6948 The War on Sex. How we have in our obsession with tabloidism also come to unleash a much broader assault on sex itself. Shannon Sennott Transgender Women. The impact of women who don't fit into conventional lesbian life. What it means to defy "queer expectations." Robert Stoll x6624 Video Art. Bill Viola and the significance of the video art scene. Cedric Tolliver x6610 Fatal Lessons in Black Masculinity. How black on black violence became entertainment and what its impact has been in real life. Jennifer Welles 914-337-6930 Victimhood. How victimhood and identity politics have come to shape contemporary culture. Alexandra Zobel x2680 Spanglish. The significance of merging English and Spanish. Who wins? Who loses? First Year Studies: The Nonfiction Essay N. Mills Mikhal Akram x6809 The Snuff Aesthetic. How violence--and the "art of killing"-- have come to occupy a key place in contemporary culture. Rhia Bucklin x6539 The New Luddites. Anti-technology in contemporary America. Jessica Bucklin x6450 Sactions. The morality of sanctions and a study of their effectiveness. Sarah Gordon x6609 Children of the Sixties. What has politically happened to the children of sixties parents? Why such comparative absence of campus activism. Amity Sewell x6801 The End of Reading. Why do we seem to be reading less? How is this phenomenon connected to the way we teach reading? What are we doing about it? Elizabeth Sinback x6803 Monopolies. What is the status of our view of monopoly today? Is Bill Gates a contemporary Rockefeller with his technological empire? Jean Smith x6810 Paula Jones vs. Anita Hill. A comparison of the coverage of both women! What does it say about contemporary politics and feminism? Brooke Volkery x6675 The High Price of College. How is the expense of college shaping a consumerist vision of education? Melinda Weaver x6550 Shock Art. How shock artists have used an aesthetic of violence as a way of making their art visible. How do they differ from artists whose past work was merely shocking. Sarah Wise x6710 The Action Heroine. How a new kind of physically impressive female heroine is coming to occupy territory once the monopoly of men. Caleb Woods x6726 The Prime Time Cartoon. The impact of Homer Simpson, King of the Hill and South Park on contemporary culture. Catrina Zapata x6603 Sentimentalizing the 80's. How the decade we have left behind has suddenly taken in a golden oldies quality. The Poetics of Eros: Lesbian and Gay Poetry in the United States Ms .Freeman Erich Dietrich Tradition and the Individual Negro. An examiniation of how Countee Cullen alligns himself with/diverges from the Tradition of Modernism (British and White American Tradition), and his role in the Harlem Renaissance Tradition. Gina Gaglia x6834 Anne Sexton and the Female Body. A focus on the poet's reinvention of femininity and female sexuality through the empowerment of "unsexy" body parts, such as the uterus and body fat. Amy Horowitz x6762 Achilleus and Patroklos: A Romance. A queer re-write of books 16-24 of the Iliad that is sensitve to cultural nuances of ancient Greece and the traditions (oral and warrior) influencing the poem. I intend to rewrite and read the Iliad as a romance between Achilleus and Patroklos. Cami Jack x6852 My Green Dragon's Queer!: Gay/Lesbian Characters in Contemporary Science-Fiction. Questions I will pursue include: how do the acknowledged gay/lesbian characters in these novels create separate-but-equal societies for themselves? Why is this necessary? What are the obvious differences between the societies in which these characters move and our own, that allow for openly 'queer' characters in any form? Laura Minor 718-246-8262 Metaphor and Queer Identity. This project will argue the use of metaphor in poetry used specifically in queer identity; the usage of metaphor by queer poets as a vehicle for expressing desire and creating a safe space present a specific, historically significant function of metaphor. Claire Musso x6604 Anne Sexton: Mad Housewife. I'm exploring how the 1950's ideals of women influenced Anne Sexton's madness and then her creativity. Is it merely a coincidence that Sexton only began to write when she dropped out of her housewife role by having the first of many breakdowns? Marisa Schulman Audre Lorde: Voice of a Movement. A study of Audre Lorde's poetry as it relates to her life and essays. The Poetics of Eros: Lesbian and Gay Poetry in the United States Ms. Freeman Kirsten Amann x6515 Women and Gender in the Modernist Canon. This project will explore both the developement of a modernist literary culture, and the roles which women played in that process. I will focus on the themes of feminism and same-sex love in the work of Rebecca West and Renee Vivien. Camilla Bareiss x6862 This project will explore the writings of Frankie Hucklenbroich and the context in which she was writing. Rachel Berks x6494 Frank O'Hara's Family: Biological vs. "Chosen". This project willl explore Frank O'Hara's rejection of his biological family and the "chosen family" that he acquired (comprised of queer/straight poets, musicians, and artists). I will look at a number of his poems: some about his biological family and some about his "chosen" family and examine how this lifestyle affected his work. Susan Hoover x6894 Resistance: Writers' Subversive Use of the Virgin Mary. This project argues that writers appropriate and transform the traditional symbol of Mary, investing it with revolutionary meanings. I plan to use passages form Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye and Bodily Harm, poetry and fiction by Latina and other Lesbians, homosexuals and women in general. Shana Lessing x6661 David Wojnarowicz: Union of Art and Life. Examines the life and work of David Wojnarowicz, from his early years as a hustler in New York to his final years as political artist and AIDS activist. Alexandra Liebegott 718-369-3982 Going to the Poetic Racetrack. A close analysis of Stephen Dobyn's Poem Kentucky Derby, Belfast, Maine. Laila Mohib x6539 Unconscious Anxieties: A Study of the Poetry of Marie Howe. This paper will discuss how Marie Howe, a heterosexual identified writer with a clear associaion to the AIDS epidemic, confounds her personal feelings and how this affects and transforms her poetry. I will use poetry of Howe, Sharon Olds and Margaret Atwood. Sara Oberman x6689 The Expression of Gender in Poetry. I will look closely at the poems of Minnie-Bruce Pratt and examine the role of Femme in poetry. Amanda Plyley 914-668-6585 Food and Desire in the Writing of M.F.K. Fisher. Examining "food writer" M.F.K Fisher's autobiographical essays and memoirs for the implications of her writing on the sensuality of food. Can her writing be read as an alternate path of desire? Jocelyn Samson x6619 Connecting T.S. Eliot to the Lesbian Film I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. T.S. Eliot's questionable sexual orientation and his controversial poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock have influenced Patricia Rozema, lesbian writer/director to title her film with an Eliot line. I will research the connections between the film's content and T.S. Eliot in order to understand the modernist approach to Eliot's ideas and methodology. Julai Tillinghast x6614 Elizabeth Bishop: Sexuality, Gender and Politics. I will explore Bishop's alientation from the gender of womanhood, the title of "woman poet," and the way that she deals with gender in her work. I will also look at sexuality and intimacy in her work. First-Year Studies: The Souls of Black Folk at a Literary Crossroads Ms. Ogunyemi Jess Ankele x6629 Nelson Mandela's Autobiography. Sarah Bellamy x6703 The Psychological Impact/Effect of Colonialism as Seen Through Literature. The psychological impact/effect of colonialsim on the victims and their children. Fragments, Ayi Kwi Armah, Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarambe, The Wretched of the Earth, Faron. Adam Bischoff x6855 The Effect of Colonialism on the People of Nigeria. I am looking at the effects of colonialism on the Nigerian people through novels. Natalie Daniels x6671 Social Dynamics in Chinua Achebe's Works. The paper will be an investigation into the social dynamics in neo-colonial and colonial Nigeria and the conflicts that arise within. Ginger Hagan x6534 Childhood Fears: The influences of Memory in the Writings of Nawal el Saadawi. A discussion of how the experiences in both the author and character's childhoods influence their thoughts and actions in: A Woman at Point Zero, God Dies by the Nile, Two Women in Love, Memoirs From a Women's Prison. Hisae Kato x6678 Women's Role and Representation in West Africa (Nigeria). Relationships among women in the community; mother and daughter, first wife and second wife, sisters, etc. in Efuru by Filora Nwapa and The Joy of Motherhood by Buchi Emechete. Megan Lee-Erikson x6781 Analyzing the "Abiku Child" through Ben Okri's The Famished Road. The importance that an Abiku child, in Nigerian myth, plays within Nigerian culture. Kobi Littlefield x6699 Self-Imposed Exile of African Women Writers. Exploring parallels between the feminist literature of self-imposed exile. Focus will be on Buchi Emecheta (In the Ditch) and Bessie Head (A Question of Power). Jennifer Turner x6893 "Feminist" Novels: Ramza, Slave Girl, God Dies by the Nile. A critique and careful look at the concept of the feminist novel. When a woman uses other women as stepping stones for her own self-advancement, how can she be speaking for her gender as a whole? Also, a look at the difference between the situations of the affluent woman and the peasant woman. Jessie Weissstein x6660 Women at War. The different approaches to writing about war taken by male and female authors. Do women and men have different viewpoints when writing about violence and power? Robin Wu x6817 The Role of Women in Islamic Societies. My intentions are to continue reading a wide range of novels dealing with women and the ways in which they are treated by the dominators of their society, men. I also want to point out the role of religeon and its assistance in maintaing this male dominance.