In this essay, I set out to explore and analyze how Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the character of Eleanor Vance in particular, disrupts and redefines the traditional conventions of the Female Gothic within the context of the 20th century. I utilize Tania Modleski's gendering of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in her exploration of the ‘Female Uncanny,’ arguing that the source of the Uncanny in the Female Gothic can be found in the "fear of being lost in the mother." I argue that Jackson's complex personal life, including her fraught relationship with her mother and her difficult marriage with literary critic Edgar Hyman, color her fiction and the primary motivations of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance. I also outline the traditional structure of the Gothic novel and the heroine's journey. With the necessary context provided, I then explain how Eleanor Vance’s character rejects these Gothic traditions and ushers in a new era of Female Gothic fiction.

This paper explores the intersection of female madness and Gothic space in four pieces of Gothic media: Jane Eyre written By Charlotte Brontë, "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Carrie (1976) directed by Brian De Palma, and Midsommar (2016) directed by Ari Aster. In these texts, female characters find themselves driven “mad,” either by their own design or from outside influences. While the madness presents itself differently in each text, they all share common elements, especially in terms of Gothic space. Each text sees its madwoman affected by the environment around them whether it is explicitly stated in-text or not. Gothic space acts as both a metanarrative on the characters’ lives and emotions, and as literal, physical spaces that the characters inhabit and interact with. Oftentimes, what the character cannot express is told through the environment around her. Feelings of suffocation, misery, entrapment, and repression are represented in and through haunted homes, quasi-asylums, closets, schools, attics, and sun-lit fields. In analyzing all four texts individually and in relation to one another, this paper also argues for the presence of a paradox inherent in the cultural formation of female madness. In each text, all written/created across 200+ years, a common theme emerges. Though the expression of madness for the women in each text is a freeing and liberating experience, they also meet tragic and often violent ends. The madness exhibited in each text is both a response to and an expression of trauma - resulting in either victimization or villainization for the women who succumb to it. The end result depicts women who have been physically, mentally, and emotionally destroyed from their own madness. In freeing themselves, they unknowingly and unintentionally subject themselves to further pain and misery.

For my project, I delve into the relationships of Victor and the Monster as well as the relationships Victor shares with other characters that were underdeveloped within the original novel by Mary Shelley in the novel Franeknstein. I examine their relationships in two components. The first through my own interpretation of Victor and the Monster’s relationship within a creative writing piece that extends the novel as if Victor had lived rather than died in the arctic in order to explore the possibilities of a more complex set of relationships between Victor and the Monster than simply creator-creation. My writing focuses on the development of their relationship once all they have left is each other. The second part of my project focuses on an analytical component. I analyze and cite the reasoning for my creative take on Victor and the Monster as well as their relationship within the novel and Mary Shelley’s intentions.

This thesis reviewed variables of baseball mechanics and performance as discussed in current literature. This included investigating factors of biomechanics, the health of players, and comparisons across demographics. At the biomechanical level, components of the kinetic chain were observed as the energy transferred from the lower body to the upper body. Additionally, the upper body appeared to compensate for deficits in the rotation of the trunk. Injuries to the abdominal and low back were correlated with trunk rotation, while arm injuries were traced back to overuse and fatigue. When considering experience level, variation tended to decrease. Youth players demonstrated different patterns of fatigue and different injury correlates compared to adults. At a geographic level, American pitchers may be associated with an increased risk of elbow injuries, with Japanese and Korean pitchers to shoulder injuries; these differences are thought to be due to differences in instruction. Applying this research and findings to current baseball players may help guide training and performance or continue research.

Modern media meant for light consumption tends to lean heavily on tropes and assumptions that don't really exist in literary fiction. Authors writing today are aware of this manner of reading and often tailor their messages to it. However, the framework doesn't really work for older novels. They were not written for this modern lens, and therefore, make their criticisms in ways that modern readers might not understand. So what does this mean for modern readings of these books, modern adaptations of these stories, or even modern original stories set in these time periods? This thesis explores these questions through perusing Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jane Austen's Persuasion and the 2022 Netflix adaptation of such, and the first season of Netflix's Bridgerton.

This project focuses on the changes in levels of violence from original fairy tales to their Disney counterparts, specifically Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” and The Brothers Grimm’s “Cinderella”. It uses Sigmund Freud’s theories on the pleasure and reality principles and the life and death drives to analyze why the levels of violence in the original fairy tales became less acceptable over time. The analysis concludes that the original stories embodied Freud’s life drive and reality principle, whereas Disney’s counterparts emphasize his death drive and pleasure principle, and ultimately, modern consumers place more value on the latter. Research is provided to support the assertion that the numerous traumatic events that occurred in the first half of the 20th century caused consumers to make this switch in value. Further speculations are made on the impact this project has on the interpretation of Freudian theory, and how this paper interconnects with current research on disability representation in Andersen’s and Grimm’s stories. The project concludes that the shift in valuing the pleasure principle and death drive over the reality principle and life drive indicates that modern consumers would rather be pacified with pleasurable thoughts that taught important but stark morals about life, society, and themselves.

American Sign Language (ASL) is a manual language that communicates through gestures, facial expressions, and body language. In the United States, there are over six million sign language users (Mitchell & Young, 2022). At Arizona State University, there is a limited offering of classes for undergraduate students to take sign language; they can take up to four levels, which is satisfactory for degrees’ foreign language requirements. If students wish to proceed with their ASL education, they must transfer to a different university. The purpose of this study and subsequent research is to propose an ASL minor that can be established at ASU so that students can receive an in-depth education. Survey data was collected with the intention of determining how students felt about ASL and the addition of a potential minor. The survey findings, coupled with the secondary literature review, lead to the conclusion that establishing an American Sign Language minor is in the best interests of both the students and the University.