{"title":"Who’s to Blame?: Chivalric Projection and the Gender of Guilt","authors":"Dana McCarthy","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1140","url":null,"abstract":"To what extent did chivalry promote a power difference between the sexes? In romantic works of medieval English literature, knights are commonly seen to project their values onto a female counterpart, which consequently leads them to pin their narrative successes or failures onto that person. This article examines “Le Roman de Tristan” and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” under the framework Stephen Ahern presents in “Listening to Guinevere”. The chivalric Tristan idolizes his beloved Ysolt to the point of delusion, causing him to condemn her when she fails to meet his unrealistic expectations, and thus to illustrate the temperamental nature of the relationship between knight and lady. “Sir Gawain” complicates the issue, as Gawain lacks the expected devotion to a lady. Using Amy S. Kaufman and Michelle Sweeney’s models of the configuration of power as lenses, I analyze Lady Bertilack’s manipulation of Sir Gawain’s chivalric values, and his resulting display of frustration towards himself, as a critique of gendered morals. By comparing these knights and their respective treatments of failure, I argue that the chivalric code’s inconstant values ultimately encourage its followers to see any female-encoded morals, whether external or internal, as the cause of knightly failure. Faculty Sponsor: Elizabeth Tavares","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129510974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“She had snatched their trophy”: “Lanval,” “Beowulf,” and the Weaver-cum-Warrior","authors":"M. McFarlane","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1137","url":null,"abstract":"How was masculinity defined, and for whom, in medieval English epic? Employing Marie de France’s “Lanval” and the anonymous “Beowulf ” as example cases, when examining the social role of gender rather than focus on sexuality as defined by genitalia, these poems flip the script. Wherein titular male-identifying characters swap social responsibilities with female-identifying foils; Beowulf and Lanval become “weaving” humans, while Lanval's lover and Grendel’s Mother take on the “weaponed” roles in order to protect the material existence of their communities. By examining these exchanges, as well as characters that embody the gender role that is expected of them, I argue that early medieval English epic consistently presented a vision of society where a critical part of maintaining healthy communities necessitated the inversion of gender roles. Faculty Sponsor: Elizabeth E. Tavares","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131233068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Beard Conceals and Reveals: Covert Hair in Fourteenth-Century Chivalric Romance","authors":"Kelsi Roth","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1134","url":null,"abstract":"What do beards indicate beyond physical aspects of sex? What do literary representations of beards and hair suggest in terms of masculinity? In the character portraits from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, male hair and beards are used by the characters to keep their secrets and portray who they want other characters to see while the author uses beards and hair to reveal the hypocrisy of this to the reader. Inversely, in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” hair is used for concealment; in this poem it is used to conceal Bertilak de Hautdesert’s true identity as the Green Knight. In this essay I argue the beards and hair of male characters in both The Canterbury Tales and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” are a synecdoche, standing in for both the key attributes of the figure and revealing his hypocrisy. Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Elizabeth E. Tavares","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131865861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Them’s Flyting Words: The Boundaries of Acceptable Affronts in Medieval Poetry","authors":"Kyle Riper","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1141","url":null,"abstract":"The boundaries between verbal arguments and physical retribution are complicated and difficult to directly identify. This paper examines the points at which verbal sparring, conventionally dubbed “flyting,” turns to physical altercations. In identifying these points in \"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight\" and \"The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,\" I find that rhetoric turns to violence after affronts to particular morality-based identities. In my reading of \"Sir Gawain,\" I posit that the eponyms’ flyte and subsequent fight in the fourth fitt represent an attack on both the institution of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table and on Sir Gawain’s personhood. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath,” I suggest a reading wherein the violence between Allison and Janekin represents a fight against the rhetoric of oppression. Throughout the essay, I show how physical retribution is, in these texts, an excusable method of defense against language, particularly when personal and political senses of honor are verbally attacked. Faculty Sponsor: Elizabeth E. Tavares","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134087818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Original Scarlet Letter: Flyting, Green Girdles, and Medieval Order in England","authors":"Riley S. Stewart","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1132","url":null,"abstract":"In focusing on the gendered perceptions of shame in “Beowulf” and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” I argue that shame is used as a tool to maintain the social order with male characters, while female characters are used in tandem with feelings of humiliation to maintain this order, often severely limiting their agency. In both texts feelings of humiliation and shame were emotions to be utilized in displays of dominance, primarily through the act of flyting; as one man worked tirelessly to belittle the other, his own social power was increased. Shame-based tactics, like the flyte work when maintaining the social order for male characters. Queen Modthryth of “Beowulf,” however, fails at properly fulfilling her role in Anglo-Saxon society, but is not provided with a flyte to acknowledge her behavior. In contrast Lady Bertilak from “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is used to test Sir Gawain’s dedication to the chivalric code, while Morgan le Fay inevitably maintains the social order in her orchestration of the Green Knight’s challenge; shame and its literary representations do not operate in the same ways for women as they do for men. Faculty Sponsor: Elizabeth E. Tavares","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124979484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“The Sweetest Savor”: Active Male Penetrators and Societal Anxieties in Arthurian Legend","authors":"Kymberlin Bush","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1138","url":null,"abstract":"The expected gender dichotomy of medieval European heterosexual relationships was simple. There was an active male penetrator and a passive female acceptor. This dichotomy is supported by court records from late medieval France, analyzed by Joseph Roelens, in which two women are put on trial for female sodomy and much importance is placed on the masculine character of one woman and the submissiveness of the other. In this paper, I examine two different stories from Arthurian Legend, Sir Thomas Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur” and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife’s Prologue and Tale” from The Canterbury Tales, that depict sexual relationships between the main male and female characters that function within the social norm of the gender dichotomy. In doing so, I argue that these stories use this active and passive gender dichotomy in an attempt to police men’s actions in their sexual relationships with women. I chose to examine these stories because they demonstrate the societal importance placed on this gender dichotomy in a very concrete way. The men in these stories who refuse to become passive, Sir Lancelot being the most prominent among them, are willing to sacrifice not only their life, but the life of the women they love (whether or not the women agree with this decision), in order to avoid breaking the gender dichotomy. Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Elizabeth E. Tavares","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"135 12","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120851147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“We’ll Cook Him Up in a Stew”: Stepmothers and Primogeniture in the Brothers Grimm’s The Juniper Tree","authors":"Kymberlin Bush","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1118","url":null,"abstract":"What larger social concern could the continued popularity of the nineteenth-century cannibal stepmother narrative in twenty-first century crime and news reporting be indicating? In this paper, I compare a fictional episode of cannibalism in the non-canonical Brothers Grimms’ tale, “The Juniper Tree,” with the true story of the 2010 murder and subsequent dismemberment of Zahra Baker in Hickory, North Carolina to consider the larger cultural implications of cannibalistic stepmothers. In doing so I argue that, despite the half-hearted attempt by mainstream animation studios to try to create semi-Feminist adaptations of the canonical fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Perrault, narratives similar to “The Juniper Tree” in fact reinforce a pro-male model of inheritance at the sacrifice of both wives and their girl children. These adaptations also communicate modern social anxieties surrounding blended families, especially regarding heteronormative visions of childhood, savior narratives around adoption, and easy answers about inheritance.","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"194 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126129709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What's at Stake: Is it a Vampire or a Virus?","authors":"K. M. Schneider","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1131","url":null,"abstract":"Vampires have been discussed for millennia, appearing in folklore throughout various cultures. From the Egyptians and the Chinese to the Slavs, there have been numerous iterations of these bloodsucking fiends, but do their characteristics have any basis in fact, perhaps predicated upon misunderstandings of certain diseases? Using medical journals to discern plausible diseases for obscure and typical vampire traits, this paper functions on two levels. On one hand, it offers a repository of medical information for researchers who may want to delve further into the interdisciplinary field of pathology and folklore, especially where vampires of Western culture are concerned. On the other hand, it offers visual popular culture sources to serve as examples for each trait/disease, seeing as pop culture is where many people, myself included, get their ideas and renderings of vampires. Technology and medicine have advanced considerably since bloody, bloated corpses were mistaken as vampires, but some traits—eye color, charisma, allure, and fangs, among others—of certain, often diseased individuals could still be traced back to a vampiric condition.","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134474942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corpus Callosum","authors":"Shelby E. Utz","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1122","url":null,"abstract":"This fiction short story parallels the function of the corpus callosum in the brain with the daily life of humans. It was inspired by the work of Ursula Le Guin, namely her piece \"Schrödinger's Cat.\"","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121725679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Andrea M. Bonetto, Sheiny Tjia-Fleck, Ethan Zeller, B. Wheeler, S. H. Stonedahl
{"title":"Analyzing and Designing an Arduino Controlled System to Study the Effect of Changing Water Levels on Water Flow Through Sediments","authors":"Andrea M. Bonetto, Sheiny Tjia-Fleck, Ethan Zeller, B. Wheeler, S. H. Stonedahl","doi":"10.7710/2168-0620.1113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7710/2168-0620.1113","url":null,"abstract":"The hyporheic zone is the region of sediment under a stream where water from the stream flows before returning to the stream itself. Many studies focus on steady water flow through this region, however, in natural systems, water levels and water flow rates change due to storms, tides, dams, or melting snow. To investigate flow under unsteady conditions, we built a system that allows us to control the water level and thus the flow rates. We used a pressure sensor that is connected to an Arduino board to measure the water level. The Arduino board uses the measured pressure value to control a water pump. When the water level is lower than desired, the pump will turn on and when it is higher than desired, it will turn off. This allowed us to hold the water level constant or tell it to oscillate. We then evaluated our system by comparing our desired water level functions to those measured with our pressure sensor, those measured by a pressure transducer connected to a separate Arduino, and those we extracted from videos of our system. Faculty Sponsor: Susa H. Stonedahl","PeriodicalId":167127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129293815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}