Digital Commons Network^™

"Their Past In My Blood": Paule Marshall, Gayl Jones, And Octavia Butler's Response To The Black Aesthetic, Williamenia Miranda Walker Freeman

Dissertations

Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969), Gayl Jones’ Corregidora (1975), and Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) enhance our conceptualization of black aestheticism and black nationalism as cultural and political movements. The writers use the novel as genre to question the ideological paradigm of a black nationalist aesthetic by providing alternative definitions of community, black women’s sexuality, and race relations. Because of the ways in which these writers respond to black aestheticism and black nationalism, they transform our understanding of movements often perceived as sexist, racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic. An examination of their works reveals the need for additional …

The Secret Identity Of Race: Exploring Ethnic And Racial Portrayals In Superhero Comic Books, Lowery Anderson Woodall Iii

Dissertations

Does race exist in comics? And if so, what do those characters tell us about how one of the largest fiction producing industries in the country has explained minority relationships to its millions of readers? This study took a close look at three of the most successful comic book characters of all time (Batman, Superman, and The Black Panther) and examines how each exemplifies a position that the comic book industry has taken on race over the years. Using a counter-narrative analysis informed by the strategies of Critical Race Theory and post-modernist thought, the racial messages lying beneath the surface …

Recasting Genre In Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays, Christina Ilona Hunter

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates Tennessee Williams’s earliest full-length plays, also known as the apprentice plays—Candles to the Sun, Fugitive Kind, Not About Nightingales, Spring Storm, and Stairs to the Roof—by comparing, contrasting and contextualizing them in relation to Daniel Chandler’s generic criteria of drama; namely, narrative, characterization, setting, topics, iconography, and staging techniques. The present study also draws upon an extensive body of scholarship pertaining to genre theory, Williams’s cultural contemporaries, and the historical and psychological backdrop of Depression-era America. In these early plays, Williams diverged sharply from the dramatic generic conventions of his day, manipulating them in new …

"I Unsex'd My Dress": Lord Byron's Seduction Of Gender In "The Corsair", "Lara", And "Don Juan", Alexis Spiceland Lee

Dissertations

The goal of this project is to posit a theory of how Byron’s texts, specifically through the development of his hero, construct gender and sexuality as styles of seduction that resist easy classification by binary systems. I propose that Byron’s works characterize gender through ironic performances of seduction that, because they reveal that binary structures lack a stable core, dissolve systemic differentiation and thus fatally complicate any attempt to force the individual into rigid categories of gender or sexual identity. Byron’s works deploy seduction as a tactic of ironic representation of both gender and sexual practice that is necessarily multiplicitous …

An Analysis Of The Career And Solo Style Of Jazz Trombonist Carl Fontana, John Wesley Parker

Dissertations

Carl Fontana’s ability and creativity as a jazz trombonist is held in high regard by his contemporaries, as well as by those who followed him. The significant aspects of his career were highlighted in a brief biography with historical and anecdotal information provided by jazz trombonists who new him and were influenced by him. Fontana’s solo style was analyzed and compared through transcriptions of three improvisations performed during contrasting points in his career: “Intermission Riff” from 1956, “Just Friends” from 1978, and “It Might As Well Be Spring” from 1985. His influence on the jazz trombone community was discussed through …

Long-Term Relationships Between Religiousness And Posttraumatic Stress Response Following Resource Loss From Hurricane Katrina, Amy Katherine Chamberlain

Dissertations

The experience of living through Hurricane Katrina and the resulting losses incurred from the storm have had lasting effects on residents of the United States Gulf Coast. One way in which survivors of Hurricane Katrina have attempted to cope with the resulting stress of such loss is through religious means. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of resource loss on the resulting stress reactions for survivors, particularly in light of the impact religiosity, religious social support, and religious coping have on long-term stress responses to the disaster. Literature shows that these religious factors have been found …

Grown Men, Daniel Charles Crocker

Dissertations

Grown Men is a collection of short fiction that articulates the themes of poverty, adulthood, alcoholism and faith. Some of the stories use the same characters in order to further explore place and economic and social status. Set in small towns in Missouri and Mississippi, Grown Men seeks to examine the way men deal with their changing roles when they lose their jobs, relationships and families. The collection is accompanied by a critical introduction. ii

Daimon, Miranda Foster Merklein

Dissertations

The following creative dissertation is a book of 57 poems.

The Holiness And Other Stories, Leslie Michelle Nichols

Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of an introductory essay and ten original short stories written and submitted to fiction workshops in the PhD program at The University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers.

Monticello Rising, Charles Edward Campbell

Dissertations

Monticello Rising is a compilation of fiction accompanied by a critical preface. The pieces within were all composed during my studies at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers between the years of 2008-2010. The collection is about aspects of growth, initiation, and loss in human relationships.

Disappearing Children, Beth Lynn Couture

Dissertations

This collection of short stories is primarily concerned with the dynamic between adults and children—parents and their own children, teachers and their students, and other adult/child relationships. In each of the stories, children present a psychological or emotional challenge to the adults, one with which they are not always equipped to cope. They are a problem which cannot be solved easily, if it can be solved at all. On a formal level, the stories in this collection seek to blur the line between the mundane and the magical. Though the collection is riddled with the fantastic, at its center is …

Technical Writing Redesign And Assessment: A Pilot Study, Gaye Bush Winter

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare scores on writing assignments from traditional, fully online courses in technical writing to pilot, hybrid courses at a southern university. A total of 232 students’ assignments were compared in this study. All writing assignments were scored by six trained instructors of English using the same five point rubric.

The pilot, hybrid classes had a total of 97 writing assignments. The students were divided into three disciplines including business, humanities, and sciences. In the pilot, hybrid classes, there were 18 students (or 19%) enrolled in a business major. Five students were enrolled in …

Classifications And Designations Of Metric Modulation In The Music Of Elliott Carter, Jason Adam Hobert

Master's Theses

Since the first use of metric modulation in 1948, this technique has become a staple in Elliott Carter's rhythmic language and compositional process, being found in most of his compositions thereafter. Though most scholars share a general understanding of metric modulation, the different processes that achieve it and its functions are not documented. This thesis will compare and contrast some definitions of metric modulation, formulate a new definition, identify four different types of metric modulation, and explore four ways in which a metric modulation may function in a composition. At the end of said thesis, the usefulness of these types …

Scopophilia And Spectacle: Fashion And Femininity In The Novels Of Frances Burney, Cheryl Denise Clark

Dissertations

My dissertation investigates how the relationship between looking and being seen, or the interaction between scopophilia and spectacle, intersects with the rise of consumer culture and the ascendance of eighteenth-century fashion and fashionable places. By using Frances Burney’s novels as a lens through which to examine the eighteenth century’s fascination with looking, I consider the ways in which attracting “the look” or gaining attention through the visibility of stylish apparel and goods becomes a pathway to social agency in Burney’s novels. Fashion for Burney, I argue, emerges as a multifaceted system that manifests as a means of as social power …

Libel In Mississippi, 1798-1832, Muriel Ann Everton

Dissertations

The Mississippi Territory officially became part of the United States in 1798. The territory was to be governed under the rules of the Northwest Ordinance, but those who went to govern the area found a culture that required the use of common law to settle the disputes arising from prior governments under other nations. With no precedents on which to rely, disputes led, at first, to dueling and then to libel cases. Both common law and common sense prevailed while many of the disagreements were aired publicly in newspapers. Mississippi’s first printer, Andrew Marschalk, using his First Amendment rights, wrote …

Disappointing Shades, Ann Shivers Mcnair

Master's Theses

Disappointing Shades is a collection of poems written at The University of Southern Mississippi. It is accompanied by a critical preface.

The Italian Emigration Of Modern Times: Relations Between Italy And The United States Concerning Emigration Policy, Diplomacy, And Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, 1870-1927, Patrizia Fama Stahle

Dissertations

In the late 1800s, the United States was the great destination of Italian emigrants. In North America, employers considered Italians industrious individuals, but held them in low esteem. Italian immigrants were seen as dangerous subversives, anarchists, cheap laborers who were always ready to accept jobs for lower wages. Indeed, numerous episodes of violence and even lynching of Italians occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States. In most cases, the violence went unpunished by the local authorities. Such episodes of violence provoked a diplomatic controversy between Italy and the United States concerning treaty-guaranteed protection of …

The Son's Return, Gary Charles Wilkens

Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of poems accompanied by a critical preface.

A History Of The American Film Institute, Deborah Jae Alexander

Dissertations

The American Film Institute (AFI) is a highly politicized, powerful organization. To date, most historical documentation and recording of AFI events and activities has been disseminated to the mass media from within the organization through its own publications or in other historical documentation as incidental history in relation to another topic. This dissertation, written as an overview, is the first comprehensive, independent historical examination of the AFI. The examination begins with an exploration of the development, activities and decline of the American Council on Education‟s original AFI and other film organizations that existed prior to the present day AFI. It …

Upstate Roadkill Memorial Service, Scott Christian Fynboe

Dissertations

Upstate Roadkill Memorial Service is a collection of poems that examines death and mortality and includes a critical preface.

Cryptid, Phillip Jarett Underwood

Dissertations

Cryptid is a term from the field of cryptozoology, which ostensibly presents itself as the study of creatures that may or may not exist, such as – but not limited to – Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Jersey Devil. The term itself, cryptid, refers to one of these unknown creatures. The novella presented here concerns a half-Native American man and his struggle to know not only his dead parents, but himself and his place in the world. While cryptids play a minor role within the boundaries of the narrative itself, the novella concerns itself more with the ways …

Frederick Douglass: An American Adult Educator, Jerry Paul Ross

Dissertations

Throughout his I ife, Frederick Douglass struggled to be something extraordinary. He rose from a life in slavery to become the most prominent African-American of his day and a leading figure in the abolitionist movement. Lost in the discussion of his life are the adult education roles that he played throughout his life and career. Beginning while he was still a slave and extending until his death, he worked to educate adults in order to transfonn individual lives and society as a whole. Douglass was primarily engaged in adult education in the fields of religious adult education, social movements, popular …

The Nightingale Of Austerlitz, Lindsay Marianna Walker

Dissertations

The Nightingale of Austerlitz employs poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to articulate the theme of (mis)communication. A pliable, multi-genre approach was necessary to convey the urgency of two central characters’ desire to connect despite the impossibility of doing so. Prose interrupts and challenges the set precision of poetry in order to embody the stops and starts—the literal and figurative breakdowns—of communication. The juxtaposition of genres dramatizes dialogue, silence, affective distance, and desire. Song, sound, repetition (using lullaby, referencing music, thematizing the ear) further assert the power of language as performance and aesthetics as consolation, and provoke a particular kind of attention …

The Catastrophic Position Of The Judenräte: Self-Serving Collaborators Or Honorable Martyrs?, Meghan Kerry Waldow

Master's Theses

During the Holocaust, the Nazis appointed a select group of Jewish leaders to carry out their demands and orders throughout the ghettos of Eastern Europe. These influential men made up the Judenrate. From the beginning of the ghettos until their tragic demise, these Jewish leaders were responsible for executing difficult, and at times immoral, orders from the Nazis. With little time, money, and resources, somehow these Jews were to establish a system of government within the small boundaries of their quarantine. Put in an unfathomable position, these specially chosen men received power and influence during a time that removed both …