LITR 4232 American Renaissance UHCL 2003 student research proposals

I have been having some difficulty in trying to decide what I want to do. I would like to keep with the research on Poe, since I have been working with the author through most of the semester in preparation for the presentations. So here come the ideas.

The first proposal is an analysis of the Conqueror Worm, found in Ligeia. I would like to compare it with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Since this is a relatively new topic there is not much in the way of outside sources, other than drawing a connection between Sir Francis Bacon (another author thought to be Shakespeare) and the influence that Bacon had in Poe.

I would like to do a journal on women authors of the American Renaissance. The women really fascinate me because they had to struggle so hard to get the recognition they have finally received, especially those that fall into all three categories: classic, representitive and popular. I plan to focus on the lives of Stowe and Dickinson.
I would like to show with this journal how these women not only affected their audiences then, but how they still affect audiences today. I would also like to show how these women were influential in helping other women to become more educated and speak out for what they believed in.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks,

I want to most probably do the essay option this semester because I did the journal option last semester and found it more difficult. My paper (hopefully) will focus on women characters we have studied this semester, maybe a comparison and contrast? Maybe Sojourner Truth (who intrigued me) and Alice or Cora or, well, you see my dilemma. If I did a journal of female characters do you think it would be better than comparing in a paper?

Being born and raised in the south, I have often been taught about slavery and slave narratives. In fact, in the two semesters I have been at UHCL I have had two classes that have focused on slave narratives. But, when the class discussion had ended, I left the narratives and all things having to do with slavery behind.

My proposal then is this: I would like to do a journal focusing on slaves and slave narratives. I want to jump in and work my through both history and literature so that I might make my own judgments and acknowledge my own feelings about the subject.

I would like to focus on the history of slavery in this country, books written by slaves, books written about slavery by non-slaves both pro and con, and possibly a section on my feelings after all research is done.

My question to you is this, how much history can be incorporated without it becoming a history paper? And also, how much of myself can I really put into the paper?

I would rather examine the life and work of Emily Dickinson. I do not know whether this would be a journal or an essay, but some of the ideas and questions that I could possibly address include:

3. Comparing her life and work to other contemporary women writers such as Stowe, Fern, Osgood,and Fuller.

I would like to start with texts such as American Women Writers by Nina Baym and Doing Literary Business by Susan Coultrap-McQuin, both of which are in our library. Can you tell me of other female poets that are Dickinson's contemporaries? If possible, I would like to restict my comparisons to poets. Do you know of any modern American female poets who credit Dickinson as an inspiration for their writing?

I intend to write a formal essay comparing various aspects of both Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. The aspects of their literature that I wish to compare and contrast are their views on love, death, and nature. In relation to this, I also want to evaluate their use of the gothic and sublime. I intend to use some information from previous students’ projects; however, since I recently changed my chosen topic I have no information on this subject. Also, I am having some difficulty locating a variety of sources outside books.

Research Proposal: As I was trying to prepare for the midterm I sketched out a couple of 'ideas' I could go with. I would like to run a little further with my presentation and focus on slaves and education (how did education present itself as freedom, how did they use the power of education to escape slavery, etc...). I have (at this point) Jacobs, Douglass, and Fuller as people of interest for this paper. Where to go from here - we'll see!!!

I am interested in writing a formal essay on the women of the American Renaissance. My focus will be on the rise and popularity of the women authors. I will also focus on how these authors changed women in today's time, such as women's rights and education. I am not sure who my primary focus will be on because I plan on expanding my focus to several women, such as Stanton, Fuller and Stowe. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

My proposal is a research paper that would take an analytical look at the different approaches Thoreau takes in utilizing the element of water to connect Transcendentalism and nature. In several of his writings, particularly in A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, Walden Pond and Cape Cod, water serves as a backdrop to his journals and seems to stimulate the formation of his concepts of the universe and man's place in it. The mirror-like qualities of water, its mercurial nature (transparent or opaque, calm or roily) and its never-ending and self-perpetuating cycle stir his desire to fully understand nature, yet at times its slippery essence eludes his attempts to explicitly classify and categorize his natural surroundings.

Using the books mentioned above, I'd like to go down the river with Thoreau, sit by the pond, and take a long walk on a desolate beach and observe the evolution of his transcendental philosophy as it pertains to these natural expressions of our water planet. I will also use several reference books, one of which will be Henry David Thoreau by Richard J. Schneider. One nice thing about Thoreau is there is plenty of material on him. Perhaps this will be a downside in that I will probably have to wade through a lot of text in order to find exactly what I'm looking for.

Are there any biographies in particular you can recommend? Do you think I'm getting in over my head? I'd hate to go off the deep end! Seriously, and all water related remarks aside (which I promise to keep at a minimum in the paper), I find micro/macro relationships very appealing and am enchanted by this defining element of our planet. There is something about it that remains forever mysterious and familiar at the same time. We cannot live without it and yet we cannot be a part of that water world, only reverent visitors. I am interested in exploring Thoreau's ideas and thoughts on water as a vehicle for spiritual self discovery.

I just ordered a book from Amazon, Thoreau on Water: Reflecting Heaven, by Thoreau. Apparently it is a recently published collection of his essays that pertain to water and spirit. It should be a big help, but I'll still read the original texts so I can place the essays in their proper context.

I would like to explore the overt and latent effects that the American Industrial Revolution had on the American Renaissance movement. The Industrial Revolution forever, and uniquely, altered the social and physical landscape of America; I believe it is worth researching in the form of a journal. New Historicists, “…regard texts not simply as a reflection of the culture that produced them but also as productive of that culture playing an active role…(Meyer).

The planned project will be a traditional essay on Walt Whitman. Its focus will be on Whitman's reflections on democracy and the "common man" through an examination of the poems "I hear America Singing", "One's-Self I Sing" and "Salut Au Monde". The discussion will involve Whitman's belief in the inherent worth and dignity of average people. The paper will discuss some of the biographical and philosophical influences that shaped Whitman's egalitarian beliefs. Whitman's transcendentalism showed itself in his full embrace and universal application of the idea of the oneness of mankind. The paper will develop this idea from both literary and historical perspectives.

The primary research texts are as follows: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman as published by Signet Classic with introduction by Gay Wilson Allen and after word by Peter Davison; Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance by Robert D Richardson, Jr.; At Emerson's Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature by John Carlos Rowe. There will be supplemental information from web materials as well.

The paper should touch on objectives 2 and 3 as cited in the course syllabus. If there are any further suggestions for development of focus, please inform accordingly.

This is my idea: To compare and contrast scenes at the plantation, while tracing the themes of endurance and christianity that pervades the slavery stories. I will also remark on both male and female perspectives on slavery.

Tell me if this sounds about what you want, I have already acquired several slave anthologies, or at least books on several new slave stories.

Given all the possible topics, it is my hope that it will not seem repetitive to you that I again find my greatest interest in the literature generated by the women studied in this survey. I very much enjoyed the freedom allowed by the journal format of the assignment last year, and I plan to approach this project in a similar way as I have not yet synthesized a specific thesis.

I desire to examine the literature produced by Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others in the contexts of their lives and history. I think that it is especially significant to examine their works as representative of their personal positions in society as well as of the social plights that troubled the times. I aim to use as focal points the idea of the woman in the inner and private sphere and the social impact achieved in outer/public sphere, resulting from literary contributions.

While I endeavor to take the journal approach, I would be delighted if in my query I find and synthesize information effectively enough to produce rather a polished formal paper. May the games begin!

I would like to do a journal outlining the course content and the methods that I have had to use as an online student in learning the course content. I would like to discuss the pros and cons of being an online student in a literature course. I also would also like to discuss the use of the course website and the different things I have learned on it by looking at previous presentations and midterms/final exams as a sort of silent discussion since I am not participating in an actual discussion in class.

I would like to research the slave narratives, particularly the women writers who influenced the abolitionist movement. I will use the readings from class and possibly other literary sources. I might even include Frederick Douglass and the effect that his Narrative had on the abolitionist movement.

I have been intrigued by our readings in class and would like learn more about slavery and the abolitionists.

I would like to research the development of the Byronic Hero. I would like my paper to focus on how Poe resembles this hero idea and how the gothic themes have carried into the idea of the Byronic Hero. I would also look at the women who could fit into this roll as well, if the gender term were reversed. I would look into the women Poe wrote about and their physical make up compared to women who are glorified and termed "beautiful" outside of the gothic ideal. I am planning to write a research paper but if my ideas do not seem to flow into one paper I will probably break them up into journal form.

I would like to write an informative essay on the effect American landscapes and nature have on Renaissance literature. I will use Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans to address the gothic and touch on sublime. I also plan on using the slave narratives to further address the sublime and illustrate the universality of a “connection” with nature. For example, the sky that the slaves looked to for direction is the same sky for all humans. I would also like to address the point that, though much of nature is universal, the use of our immaculate landscape makes the literature of the American Renaissance unique. I will make this point by contrasting the texts above with texts from other countries, such as comparing the use of gothic in Europe as opposed to our nature gothic or the differences in landscapes based on location, industrialization, age, etc.

I am working on the fine-tuning of my topic, but I would definitely like to address the use of nature in Renaissance literature. Please let me know if you think I am on the right track.

I am choosing to do Option 1 (essay) for my research paper. I would like to write on aspects of Emily Dickinson and her poetry. I have studied her briefly in a couple of lower level classes. I am interested when I can see how the author relates to his/her writing. She was very interesting and different from many poets. Her lifestyle was unique, as were her beliefs that led to her lifestyle. I wanted to write about how the way she lived contributed to how she wrote. She spent much of her time dressed only in white, she rarely left the home, and she showed signs of being a lesbian, which was way out of line in that time. I also seem to remember her writing letters to her editor (that have now been published) in which she was very graphic and detailed on her sexual desires, along with many other personal thoughts.

What I really find interesting is how she wrote, literally. She rarely rhymed, capitalized words that are normally not capitalized, and she placed dashes in rare spots in her writing. She wrote some from the point of her being dead, she wrote outlandish poems (“Wild Nights, Wild Nights”) of her sexual want. The way she wrote her words was remarkable. She was extremely intelligent, and just interesting from many angles.

I am worried this is too broad right now. Hopefully when I start looking at her poems and critics’ responses, I can just highlight some major points. My focus, though, I want to be on how her poems reflected her and her lifestyle. I have a couple of literature books from previous classes, with short biographies on her, so I will look at those, along with her actual poems, her letters to her editor, and critics’ writings. The bibliography at the end of her intro in our book lists many possible sources to study.

Is my subject too broad? Should I focus more on her style of writing and how it was created and how it was unique?

Kristine Vermillion
LITR 4232: American Renaissance
Student Research Proposal
Topic: Transcendentalism
            The reason that I am choosing this topic is because I am currently in the midst of some other research where it is an important theme, but not the main theme. As a result there are many ideas about it that are floating around in my mind, and I want to take this research opportunity to solidify my knowledge base on this subject and get those floating thoughts down on paper in a comprehensive and working fashion. In effect, I am hoping to make a resource that I can use to reference Transcendentalism in the future.
            I plan on using the Journal Option, because I think that it will best suit the means that I am taking, especially considering that I am currently gathering and harboring information from many different avenues. Another reason that I chose this Journal approach is because I think that it is best fitted to the subject at hand. In reading the 1965, fourth edition of the Oxford Companion to American Literature, by James D. Hart in the section on Transcendentalism, it says that transcendentalism, “was eclectic in nature and had many sources.” Among these sources it lists Jonathan Edwards, Channing, response against the rationalist philosophy of Locke just to name a few. Being eclectic in nature, hopefully the journal style research project will be helpful in combining a larger and less specified amount of information.
            In effect, I understand that I have yet to explain to you what I plan to do with my research. All I plan to do is to answer some basic questions that I have about transcendentalism, which include: What is it? What are its origins/How did it come to be? What are some of the effects of the transcendentalist movement?   (For example, please tell me if this is too far fetched: I want to know what the similarities and differences are between Unitarianism and Taoism. I question this because while reading about Taoism in writings by Lao Tze, I have found what I think is an astonishing similarity between Taoism and some of Emerson’s ideas in his writing, Nature. Whether this information on Taoism would be found in my journal or not is yet to be determined, but something that will help me in all my studies as I make seeming connections such as these is sound knowledge of what Unitarianism is, which would definitely be included in my research journal.)
            For sources, I have been looking at some of the web sites that you led us to in class and a few others that I have found. I have also been researching in the library on transcendentalism, and know that there is ample information to be found there. As mentioned above, for starters I have gone to the Oxford Companion to American Literature, which has been a help so far. I do not have an Annotated Bibliography as of yet, but . . . if you need one, I can and will provide.
            To summarize this project: it is basically my effort to make sense of a lot of information that I have come across by combining it all into a research paper, to try to make sense of it, which I know is possible if I just take the time to do it. I ask for any and all insight that you have on this topic that I have chosen, and I thank you for your time.