Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of this event, now a highly anticipated Campbell tradition, a decade in the making! More information at: library.campbell.edu/symposium
Sign up or log in to bookmark your favorites and sync them to your phone or calendar.
Critics of J.R.R. Tolkien often reference archetypal races in "The Hobbit" as symbols of ancient mythological figures. While scholars acknowledge these archetypes, I argue that Tolkien economically bridges Middle-Earth and the human world using the races to warn against economic corruption. Tolkien presents Hobbits as his ideal anarchist and 'green' society which embodies an economy based on mutual aid, free will, and natural resources. In contrast, the villains in his story succumb to corruption through mechanization and pride. "The Hobbit" critiques modern economic systems by highlighting the dangers of industrialization and greed, while advocating for a simpler, morally-grounded society.
“The Appalachian Murder Ballad: An American Search for Transcendence” discusses the evolution of the ballad form, inherited by America from Europe. Many Appalachian ballads broke from the European tradition in form and content, essentially creating a subgenre: the lyrical ballad (related but not identical to the form championed by Romantic poets Wordsworth and Coleridge). Still a narrative folksong, the American lyrical ballad features non-objective narrators, non-narrative lyrics, and credited songwriters. The paper shows how these ballads incorporated socioeconomic and religious ideologies, blues influences, and supernatural and grotesque elements to manifest a search for emotional expression and transcendence in Appalachian culture.
Zeke Epps analyzes Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms through various critical frameworks, focusing on power dynamics. Starting with Feminist theory, citing works from Kramare, Orbe, and Wood; and Queer theory, pulling from Ball and Butler, Epps identifies limitations of both, suggesting that a holistic analysis of the novel requires an intersectional framework focused on the complex, overlapping systems of privilege and discrimination created by intersections among social categories such as race, gender, class, and sexuality. Epps compares intersectional theory to specific, identity-oriented theories and argues in favor of rigorous intersectional analysis for Capote's novel and other works of gothic literature.
In the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain is initially presented as the perfect knight, but he then experiences many challenges to his core values and beliefs through tests of honor, purity and courage. The "Nature versus Nurture" theory helps explain how personality is influenced throughout a lifetime. In this poem, "Nurture" - the environment and external challenges - have a significant effect on Sir Gawain's thought processes and actions, influencing his psychology and character development, and revealing his conflict as primarily mental, rather than physical.
This paper discusses how the sublime, defined by Edmund Burke as "delightful terror," informs and shapes American Western literature in relation to the Romantic tradition. From the journals of Lewis and Clark to Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, Western writers used Romantic-inspired language to describe the grandeur and unpredictability of the frontier. In the "Cowboy Sublime" individuals find a source of purpose and awe in danger and difficulty. This essay argues that Western literature is not an isolated genre but a continuation of Romantic ideals. Its depictions of landscapes and characters transform the West into an American extension of the sublime.
Scholars have noted the exclusiveness of organized Christianity as a leading factor in the membership decline of Southern Baptist and similar denominations. However, the theology of medieval anchoress Julian of Norwich offers those ostracized by SBC's restrictive doctrines a perspective centered around God's divine love and care for all creation. Julian's "hazelnut theology" recognizes that while humanity is fallen, we are still made in God’s image. While the SBC employs a theological framework that excludes certain groups, Julian’s Revelations offer an inclusive and optimistic theology focused on God's steadfast love and the redemptive nature of sin—a restorative theology.
Legends of King Arthur have passed through generation after generation, adapting to various cultures. Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century Morte d'Arthur remains one of the most well-known collections of Arthurian legends. Malory makes the adulterous affair between Sir Lancelot and Arthur’s queen, Guenevere, a key element of the plot. Six centuries later, the BBC television series Merlin retells the Arthurian love triangle—this time with a twist. Through their representation of Guenevere and her role in the infamous Lancelot–Guenevere affair, Thomas Malory and the creators of Merlin reveal the specific gender and political concerns of their respective cultures.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show about “one girl in all the world” chosen to fight the vampires, demons and the forces of darkness. In a show with a female hero, “traditional masculinity” is often represented symbolically through the supernatural. In this paper, I give a gendered reading of the vampires Angel, Spike, and Willow to examine vampirism as masculinity through sexuality, gender performance and essentialism. Several critics seem to assume Buffy exclusively explores femininity through the images of strong female characters, I contend however that masculinity is explored symbolically via vampirism through images of sex, gender roles and sexuality.
The dynamic, shape-shifting speaker of Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” takes on the persona of a victimized Jew of the Holocaust and puts on a public performance displaying her transformation from death to resurrection. Scholars tend to see the poem as a sexualized performance that both reverses the gender role of the biblical Lazarus and illustrates Plath’s struggles with mental health disorders as well as her professional challenges. However, this paper argues that some critics misrepresent Plath’s mental struggles while most fail to notice how her use of the Jewish Holocaust and Jewish Phoenix represent a metaphorical way to challenge patriarchy.
At the end of Flannery O'Connor's story "A Good Man is Hard to Find,” a Grandmother calls an escaped fugitive known as the Misfit “one of [her] babies” after his gang has murdered her family while she pleaded to be spared. Some see her gesture as a “moment of grace” while others see it as a final appeal for respect for her Southern ladyhood or a recognition of her own stubbornness in the Misfit. This paper argues that regardless of the author’s theological intentions, the story offers insufficient evidence that the Grandmother has the faith required to receive God’s grace.
