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"Where Sex Is Directly Concerned" Agatha Christie And The Feminization Of Detective Fiction, Barbara Javori
"Where Sex Is Directly Concerned" Agatha Christie And The Feminization Of Detective Fiction, Barbara Javori
Theses and Dissertations
Agatha Christie’s name is synonymous with the Whodunit. She is without a doubt one the most popular and best selling authors of all time. Christie’s work built upon the first examples of detective fiction, including Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. However, Christie’s embrace of the traditionally female spaces, her subversion of expectations, and her unlikely detectives set her apart from her predecessors with their focus on male intellect, patriarchal superiority, and absent female characters. Christie’s novels established recognizable patterns still used today in books, television and movies. This project examines the arc of detective fiction …
Narrative Side-Stepping: Disability Beyond The Narratology Of Normalcy, Christian Lewis
Narrative Side-Stepping: Disability Beyond The Narratology Of Normalcy, Christian Lewis
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation theorizes a new mode of reading, narrative side-stepping, that reveals how disabled characters provide a unique opportunity for non-normative narratives. In insisting on the narratological innovations that disability affords, I revise both Lennard Davis’s notion that the novel form valorizes normalcy and David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder’s theory of narrative prosthesis, which claims that disability is a crutch, and that disabled characters are merely metaphors and/or plot devices. I move beyond these theories to focus instead on the more complicated ways that authors represented disability and used disabled characters to critique societal and narrative norms. I think about …
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Examining The Power And Privilege Of Escapism In Young Adult Literature And Its Culture, Stacey Watson
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Examining The Power And Privilege Of Escapism In Young Adult Literature And Its Culture, Stacey Watson
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis will explore the systematic biases embedded within this genre, highlighting the ongoing battle between tokenism and inclusive storytelling. Thesis will also emphasize the importance of this genre, its tight grasp on popular culture, and showcase positive representations introduced by new creators over the years.
The Act Of Seeing And Being Seen: Visual Explorations Of Queerness And Memory In Alison Bechdel’S Fun Home, Vanessa Lopez
The Act Of Seeing And Being Seen: Visual Explorations Of Queerness And Memory In Alison Bechdel’S Fun Home, Vanessa Lopez
Theses and Dissertations
In the autobiographical illustrated novel Fun Home, Alison Bechdel uses various art styles and comic techniques to examine her father’s life as a closeted gay man and his tragic suicide, as well as her own childhood and experience with homosexuality. This thesis explores how Bechdel uses the medium of the graphic novel to showcase different visual perspectives and ways of bearing witness to the past, memory, trauma, and interpersonal relationships, showing how they converge to create the story of how one generation’s model of queer identity can impact and shape the next. Bechdel presents multiple points-of-view in her exploration …
Describing The Dress Of Women: Author’S Notes On The Development Of Gender, Cassandra B. Tan
Describing The Dress Of Women: Author’S Notes On The Development Of Gender, Cassandra B. Tan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis is an examination of how authors of the late Victorian and early Twentieth Century describe the embodied and mental effects of the nature of women’s clothing through works of fiction and nonfiction. Through this analysis, I argue that clothing serves as a mechanism to oppress women by eliminating concrete and philosophical access to wealth and necessities as well as by instigating acts of violence upon a developing body through stricture and hygiene. I examine the ways that feminine dress, from youth through adulthood, shapes the way women view themselves, and in turn has a reciprocal effect on how …
Imagining The Archive: Speculation As A Tool Of Archival Reconstruction, Marieclaire Graham
Imagining The Archive: Speculation As A Tool Of Archival Reconstruction, Marieclaire Graham
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis examines a speculative methodological approach towards restoring silenced Black voices in the archive. First, I will discuss the reasons why this work is necessary, exploring the various patterns of muting, distortion, erasure, and disenfranchisement that Black communities experience within the United States in both physical and written forms. The use of speculation specifically addresses the dehumanization that has followed the Black experience in the United States from the earliest violent incarnation of slavery, and creating the foundation of this kind of silencing allows us to understand why speculation, as opposed to other methodological models for archive restoration, is …
Suffering And The Black Female Narrative In The Twentieth Century, Aquilah Jourdain
Suffering And The Black Female Narrative In The Twentieth Century, Aquilah Jourdain
Dissertations and Theses
Adventure, romance, and happiness are not large parts of the stories Black women tell. If we had to name ten mainstream literary novels released in the last 50 years that featured Black women central to the plot — and included the aforementioned themes — we would be hard-pressed to find them. Though there are real life accounts of love, joy, and adventure in the lives of Black women, why do we see these life experiences documented sparingly? In the stories written by andforBlack women, where can Black female readers find joy in their history and culture without elements of grave …
Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari
Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari
Theses and Dissertations
In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.
The Ties That Bind: Gender, Race, And Empire In Caribbean Indenture Narratives, Alison Joan Klein
The Ties That Bind: Gender, Race, And Empire In Caribbean Indenture Narratives, Alison Joan Klein
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation traces the ways that oppressive gender roles and racial tensions in the Caribbean today developed out of the British imperial system of indentured labor. Between 1837 and 1920, after slavery was abolished in the British colonies and before most colonies achieved independence, approximately 750,000 laborers, primarily from India and China, traveled to the Caribbean under indenture. This is a critical but under-explored aspect of colonial history, as this immigration dramatically altered the ethnic make up of the Caribbean, the cultural norms and traditions of those who migrated, and the structure of British imperialism. I focus on depictions of …
The Impact Of Colonialism In Moll Flanders And The Belle’S Stratagem, Tamara Kathwari
The Impact Of Colonialism In Moll Flanders And The Belle’S Stratagem, Tamara Kathwari
Dissertations and Theses
No abstract provided.
Precarious Wife: Narratives Of Marital Instability In Medieval And Early Modern Literature, Emily G. Sherwood
Precarious Wife: Narratives Of Marital Instability In Medieval And Early Modern Literature, Emily G. Sherwood
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Precarious Wife intervenes in the propagation of the binary--of privilege and marginalization--inherent in discussions of the institutional identity of wife in the medieval and early modern periods by exposing the vulnerability and malleability of the category often ignored or minimized in discussions of pre-modern women. Drawing on Judith Butler's work on vulnerability, this dissertation questions the normative trajectory of daughter, wife, widow for medieval and early modern women that excludes people with alternate narratives or identities. While men's subjectivity spanned multiple identities based on their class, rank, career, religious practices, community, and networks of kinship, women were almost exclusively defined …