American Literature Commons^™

Fear And (Non) Fiction: Agrarian Anxiety In “The Colour Out Of Space”, Antonio Barroso

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This literary and sociological study examines H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” alongside New England agricultural societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as their members faced socio-political change. Anxieties expressed in the short story reflect fears of communities facing erasure at the hands of a reservoir project. Patterns of historical American rural communities facing destruction in the name of progress as well as modern communities facing similar threats show the endurance of Lovecraft’s specific brand of fear.

The Library In The Mountains And The Writing On The Wall : Fragmented Memories And Cultural Amnesia In Ursula K. Le Guin, Erin Michelle Roll

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Memory, especially its loss, plays a prominent role in the work of Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929). The Telling (2000) and Voices (2006), two of Le Guin’s most recent works, go into great detail on what happens when a memory is lost or destroyed, usually under duress. The former, the last book in Le Guin’s Hainish cycle, deals with a goal to preserve books and learning from a regime that has made it a misguided goal to eradicate all elements of past culture in an effort to modernize the country. In the latter, part of Le Guin’s Annals of …

An American Myth In The (Re)Making: The Timeless Fantasy Appeal Of 'The King And I', Lina Purtscher

Scripps Senior Theses

It is now well-known that The King and I has little claim to truth. Recent research has exposed the inaccuracy of the “biographical” works on which the musical is based: Anna Leonowens invented many things about her personal background and experiences. Much of her life, then, is a contrived fantasy. Yet her life of fantasy has been resurrected in countless adaptations, including the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and its 2015 revival production, that ceaselessly draw audiences. The fascination of American audiences with Anna’s tale lies their belief in the timeless American ideals that her fantasy employs: those of freedom …

Border Ends: Anti-Imperialism, Settler Colonialism, And The Mexican Revolution In U.S. Modernism, Bradley Flis

Wayne State University Dissertations

From 1910-1920, the Mexican Revolution became a source of anxiety, interest, and inspiration to those who paid attention to its political turmoil as reported in the popular press. It would lead to the reinvigorating of a debate about U.S. intervention in the political affairs of Mexico, indeed, for some, the question was one of annexation. Responding to a growing imperialist culture in the U.S., William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, John Reed and Max Eastman of The Masses were among those who looked to modernist aesthetic practice to critique military and economic expansionism in Mexico.

This dissertation explores that discursive interplay …

Haitian Votes Matter: Haitian Immigrants In Florida In Local Politics And Government, Bobb Rousseau

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This qualitative study investigated perceived barriers to the incorporation of Haitian immigrants in Florida into local politics and government. The theoretical framework for this study was Marschall and Mikulska's theory of minority political incorporation to better understand the political ambition of Haitian immigrants to emerge as candidates and voters toward achieving electoral success and a substantive representation. The research question addressed the lived experiences and perceptions of Haitian immigrants related to barriers to their political mobilization at district, state, and federal levels. A phenomenological study design was used with open-ended interviews of 10 Haitian Americans who lived in Florida for …

Writing Indigenous Identity In Herman Melville And Joseph Conrad's Polynesian And Malay Archipelago Novels, Catherine L. Black

Dissertations and Theses

The thesis of this paper is that cross-cultural writing can be done with the right methods of communication, such as engaging narrator and education—or simply sensitive, imaginative writing. Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad’s five books set in the Polynesian and Malay Archipelagos—Typee and Omoo and the Malay Trilogy (Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, and The Rescue)— are used as master models of how to write indigenous characters with rich characterization in pivotal roles, even circa 1846 and 1896. The unique perspective and technique by which they did this is explored, a technique and perspective not …

Reception Claims In Supernatural Horror In Literature And The Course Of Weird Fiction, John Glover

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This chapter explores H. P. Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," considering the ways in which Lovecraft attempted to construct favorable conditions for the reception of his own work. The writing of the essay was a pivotal moment in Lovecraft's career and authorial self-fashioning. Both it and he went on to influence the development of weird fiction in Lovecraft's lifetime and subsequently, lasting well into the current period of reevaluation of the author's legacy and person.

Tracing Writer/Reader Identity In, And In Response To, Queer Latinx Autohistoria-Teorìa, Corrina Wells

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project examines how diverse representation changes the discourse around queer latinx identities. This project extends theories of representation that show how a text changes the imaginary of the reader through a two-part methodology. First, through explicating Spit & Passion and A Cup of Water Under My Bed, this project examines how these texts construct a readers’ imaginary. Then, through a corresponding qualitative assessment on readers’ responses to the texts, this project identifies the extent to which the texts change the beliefs and understandings of a small group of students. Articulating an ecology of identity using the texts under examination, …

Misfitology : Misfit Narratives In Ideology, Kennedy Lyn Coyne

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This hybrid thesis, part critical and part fiction, examines experimental and nontraditional texts that showcase how misfits allow viewers and readers to glimpse ideological structures—particularly interpellation. It argues that the misfit is essential to the visibility of the ideological process because the misfit shows the disconnect between the inverted and the real world. The inverted world seems like the real world but it is masked by ideology. This thesis examines how a pair of films – David Lynch’s films Blue Velvet and Mullholland Drive – and a pair of novels – Eileen Myles’ Chelsea Girls, and Chris Kraus’ I Love …

Dis/Inheritance : Love, Grief, And Genealogy In Faulkner, Daisuke Kiriyama

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is devoted to the close examination of two novels of William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses. I find in them the repression and return of prohibited emotions and a consistent pattern of “the race between the pursuing white man and the fleeing black man.” I explore how these are related to the Faulknerian conception of time and the establishment and disruption of the conventional Southern notions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The white man’s pursuit, performed in various forms, ultimately aims to prove his mastery and masculinity, racial superiority, or everything that whiteness means to …

Before Nature's Nation : Ecological Thought And Early American Poetry, Joshua Bartlett

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This project examines early American encounters with the natural world through the context of contemporary ecocriticism. In readings of Puritan poets Anne Bradstreet and Michael Wigglesworth, African-American poet Phillis Wheatley, and Mohegan minister Samson Occom, it demonstrates how poetic attentions to nature transformed collective antagonism toward the “howling wilderness” into personal feelings of affection and wonder. Likewise, it develops an understanding of the “ecological” that is both methodology, a way of thinking about specific things, such as trees or stones, and epistemology, a kind of thinking that emphasizes relational perception. It then situates these experiences amidst both canonical Americanist scholarship …

Breaking Chains Of Oppression: Popular Culture And The Plundering Of Blackness, Corina Sacajawea Ambrose

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis focuses on the ways in which white supremacy created mass incarceration, specifically mass incarceration of black individuals, and how this continues to perpetuate a racial caste system in the United States. First, I examine contemporary novelist Colson Whitehead‘s The Underground Railroad to provide a historical background of white supremacy and slavery. Then, I argue that pop culture is one area in which artists are focused on the abolition of the prison-industrial complex and ending mass incarceration. Finally, I focus on JAY-Z‘s music video “The Story of O.J.“ and Beyoncé‘s visual album Lemonade and her 2018 Coachella performance to …

"Mirrors Can Only Lie:" The Search For Masked Self-Knowledge In The Work Of James Baldwin, Chloe Zeff Fields

Senior Projects Spring 2018

An analysis of hidden self-knowledge in James Baldwin's writing. James Baldwin is a political psychologist who seeks to understand the self through what it remains "innocent" to. I explore Baldwin's metaphors and concepts of "masked" knowledge, and argue that Baldwin translates psychological tropes into political ones.

The Classical Versus The Grotesque Body In Edith Wharton's Fiction, Joshua T. Temples

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In her landmark works The House of Mirth (1905), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920), Edith Wharton responds to earlier depictions of the classical, pure Victorian and Edwardian woman. Wharton's "inconvenient" women overturn popular stereotypes. Subsequently, they are barred from their social groups, but they are independent, unlike the complicit and obedient women of the classical body, most of whom ascribe to the trope of the "Angel in the House." The grotesque seeks to undercut the unrealistic expectations enforced by the classical through its embodiment of progression and humanity, and Wharton is drawn to …

The Significance Of The Game Of Pool In Ernest Hemingway’S “Soldier’S Home”, Molly J. Donehoo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In his 1929 A Farewell to Arms, American Author Ernest Hemingway provides the thesis for all of American Modernism when he writes, “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places” (216). If the world breaks everyone Hemingway’s focus becomes not in the breaking but in the solutions for becoming strong at the broken places. Throughout his canon Hemingway presents the healing rituals and therapeutic patterns that govern sports and game as a solution to becoming strong at the broken places. While critics have closely analyzed and scrutinized some of his most recognized short-stories, stories …

Review Of John James Audubon: The Nature Of The American Woodsman, By Gregory Nobles, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When we think about American ornithology, John James Audubon is often the first name that comes to mind. As evidence to Audubon’s lasting ability to enrapture readers, it bears repeating that an original Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America sold for an astounding $11.5 million in 2010 (2). Yet, for a man who produced such stunning and memorable visual and literary work on the avifauna of North America, some of the important details of his life and origins have remained highly contested. Even though Gregory Nobles’s new biography is not explicitly tied to the study of the Great Plains, …

Fife (Hilda) Records, 1933-1972, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

Dr. Hilda M. Fife was born in Greenland, N.H., in 1903. She received her B.A. degree from Colby College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University. She also did graduate work at Boston University and the University of Chicago. She became professor of English at the University of Maine from 1946 until retiring as professor emerita in 1969. She founded the Maine Old Cemetery Association and was active in the Kittery Maritime Museum, the Rice Public Library in Kittery, and the Maine League of Historical Societies and Museums. She died in 1990.

The records mainly contain textual information created …

Randel (William Peirce) Papers, 1940-1992, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University Of Maine

Finding Aids

This record group contains the papers of William Peirce Randel, a professor of English at the University of Maine, born on January 7, 1909, in New York City. Papers include manuscripts for various books, articles, and talks authored by Randel. Also, includes correspondence, research materials, drafts of articles, and copies of Maine legislative documents concerning higher education. The correspondence, dates primarily from 1962-1992, and included both incoming letters and copies of outgoing letters involving various Maine politicians, especially William S. Cohen. The correspondence concerns current events of the time including higher education, world affairs, and issues of aging.

Reevaluating Religion: A Case For Inclusivity Of Lgbtq Christians In The Church, Amber Erin Dupree

Honors Theses

This thesis project is focused on understanding the discrimination that is rampant amongst Southern churches regarding their LGBTQ members and offering solutions to this problem that has occurred throughout the many generations of Christianity. In order to understand this discrimination, three books were consulted for the research aspect of this project. The three books include the following: Sweet Tea by E. Patrick Johnson, Don't Be Afraid Anymore by Troy Perry, and Our Tribe by Nancy Wilson. A Questionnaire was also given to people who identified as Southern, Christian, and LGBTQ in order to gain an understanding of the current sentiments …

Haunted Mississippi: Ghosts, Identity, And Collective Identity, Hailey Cooper

Honors Theses

This thesis wrestles with the duality of the terms haunting and ghosts in relation to Mississippi and its collective identity and narrative. Ghostlore and haunted tourism provide insight into shared cultural constructs and indicate an absence of certain perspectives from more generally held ideas of identity. Analyses of ghost stories from around the state explore these hauntings of history and ghosted narratives, so it is ghosts v. ghosted and hauntings v. haunted. I use ghost stories from Natchez, MS to explore postsouthern spaces and performances of southernness and the narratives around female apparitions to study the role of southern womanhood …