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ENGL E-599 Past Capstone Titles and Examples

Spring 2020 - Instructor: Peter Becker, PhD
Course Title: English Literature in a Critical Context Capstone

 
  • “Black Box of History: The Poetry of Maus”
  • “Creating the Human I through Animal Imagery in Toni Morrison's Beloved”
  • “‘Like the Baptized in Its Wash’: Reading Trauma through Baptismal Imagery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”
  • “Remapping the Known: Maps, Slavery and Modernity in The Known World”

Spring 2019 - Instructor: Peter Becker, PhD
Course Title: English Literature in a Critical Context Capstone

 
  • “Between Testimony & Midrash in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated."
  • "From Conquest to ‘Culocracy’ to Diaspora: Physical Intimacy in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” Paper
  • “The Food of Suffering and Redemption: Gustatory Imagery as a Vehicle for Physical and Spiritual Renewal in Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl” Paper
  • “Just What it Was, Exactly, that Jonathan Safran Foer Did: Why Origins are Obscured in Everything Is Illuminated
 

Pre-capstone essay written in Engl E-597 in the fall of 2018

“Tangled Roots, a Bloody Forest: Trees, Trauma, and Black Female Bodies in Beloved” Paper (linked journal article)

Spring 2021 - Instructor: Peter Becker, PhD
Course Title: English Literature in a Critical Context Capstone

 
  • Animalization, Trauma and the Possibility of Healing: Animal Imagery in Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl
  • Dangerous Words: Written Language as a Tool of Oppression in Edward P. Jones’ The Known World
  • “Do Not Dub Me That”
    Inherited Names and Inherited Guilt in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated
  • Metaphor and Metamorphosis: Zoharic Imagery of Winged Beings as Midrash in Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl
  • ‘The Perfect Acorn’: Walking Sticks, Literacy, and Commodification in The Known World and All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones
  • STRINGING PEOPLE ALONG: MEMORY TRANSFER AND MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY THROUGH STRINGS IN JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER’S EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED
  • White Writing and Black Justice in The Known World
    Representations of Writing in the Old South
  • "You Might Not Remember the Island but It Remembers You”: Liminal Spaces in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz