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Purpose: The purpose of this activity is to afford you the opportunity to work on a piece of scholarly research and writing throughout the semester with the goal of producing an 8-10 page, well researched essay documented in MLA format. In the past, students have submitted their essays to the National Undergraduate Research Conference, and many of them have been accepted to present their work at the conference, which hosts students from major American universities and colleges. Radford has provided funding for our students, and we have driven to the conference together. I'd like to invite you to set as your goal for this project the presentation of your scholarly essay at the NURC. You will have completed some of your research for the essay in your bibliographic projects, but as you get deeper into your subject, you may find that you want and need to do more research on additional articles or chapters of books beyond the minimum required number for the bibliographic projects.

It's very important that you try to devise a topic that genuinely interests you. Focus on a question or concern that matters to you personally. Throughout the course, we will be examining Renaissance literature in the context of the very real political, social and economic struggles that marked the early modern period and that remain struggles for us today. In your essay, you can address the same questions that we will be asking in the class, that is, questions about: gender, state authority and the individual, sexuality, social class, race or ethnicity, colonization, religious controversy, empire building, marriage and the family, or the construction of masculinity and femininity, to name only a few.

 Renaissance humanism, education, and the construction of masculinity and/or femininity

 The female body in the lyric poetry of Wyatt and Spenser (or any other poets we read)

 The fashioning of masculinity in Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book 3 (or some other works we read)

 Faerie Queene, Book 3, Female Sexuality and Queen Elizabeth

 Spenser's Shepheardes Calender (or The Faerie Queene, Book 3) and Queen Elizabeth

 Cultural gender anxiety and Book 3 of The Faerie Queene

 Masculine virtue in Book 3 of Spenser's The Faerie Queene

 Just what is chastity for men and for women in Book 3 of The Faerie Queene? How does it differ for each? What do the differences suggest about masculinity and femininity?

 The fashioning of femininity in love lyrics of the Sixteenth Century (or some other works we read)

 Gender and power in Petrarchan poetry

 Queen Elizabeth's self-fashioning as virgin, mother, lover, warrior (any or all of these images)

 Portraits of Elizabeth painted throughout her reign and changes in her self-fashioning or image construction

 Clothing, gender and class in selected pieces of Renaissance literature and/or paintings

 The representation of native peoples as "other" in exploration and discovery narratives (Hakluyt, Raleigh, etc.)

 The representation of native peoples as "other" in Spenser (A View of the Present State of Ireland and/or The Faerie Queene)

 Thomas More's Utopia and British exploration/colonization narratives

 The captive female body in Spenser's Amoretti and/or Epithalamion

 Male sexuality and masculinity in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J. and/or Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveler

 Female sexuality in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J. and/or Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveler

 Narrative Voice in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J. (especially the role of the narrator G.T. and the epistles between characters)

 The female voice in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F.J. in view of Renaissance ideas of female conduct

 Rape in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F.J. and/or The Unfortunate Traveler

 Gender anxiety in Ben Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman

 Same-sex eroticism in Ben Jonson's Epicoene

 The market place, consumer goods, women's clothing and disruption of social classes in Ben Jonson's Epicoene

 Violence in Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveler

 Oral style and audience response in Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller

 Rape in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J and/or Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller

 Land distribution, property, and sexuality in Arden of Faversham

 The dissolution and redistribution of church lands, land-lords, tenants and adultery in Arden of Faversham

  Property, adultery and murder in Arden of Faversham

 Political Sodomy in Marlowe's Edward the Second

 Same-sex eroticism and love in Marlowe's Edward the Second

 Same-sex eroticism and love in Shakespeare's Sonnets

 Same-sex eroticism and love in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Marlowe's Edward the Second

 Rules for female conduct and the struggle of Renaissance women to write (Elizabeth Cary and/or Aemilia Lanyer)

 Ben Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman and Renaissance rules for female conduct (you might want to look at both Epicoene and Elizabeth Cary's Miriam the Faire Queene of Jewry)

 Female silence, speech and subversion in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and Elizabeth Cary's Miriam the Faire Queene of Jewry

 Cultural suspicion of female speech and Elizabeth Cary's Miriam the Faire Queene of Jewry

Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and women's community

Baker's Home Page | 433 Description | 433 Requirements | 433 Syllabus | Course Descriptions and Syllabi