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Blues Trope As A Cultural Intersection In Alice Walker's The Temple Of My Familiar And Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues, Julia Leuthardt

Theses and Dissertations

Though bound historically through hundreds of years, the African-Native American relation has not received much attention by scholars of literature; hence, the emphasis of this thesis is to investigate the literary portrayal of the interethnic relation between African Americans and Native Americans through the blues trope. The blues trope provides an intriguing literary platform for the psychological and physical struggles in finding an identity within such a diverse multiethnic society like the United States. For African American writer Alice Walker and Native American author Sherman Alexie the blues trope is a successful literary device in expressing long lost and rediscovered …

The After Effects Of Colonialism In The Postmodern Era: Competing Narratives And Celebrating The Local In Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Priyanthan A. Pillainayagam

ETD Archive

Through the utilization of Jean-Francois Lyotard's views on the Postmodern condition, this paper highlights the failure of metanarratives to accurately convince, as well as convey information and understanding in a postmodern society. This is due in part to what Lyotard believes is an increasing skepticism towards the grand totalizing nature of metanarratives and their reliance on some form of universal truth. In order to reverse the overarching effect of the metanarrative, its all-encompassing nature, and its power to legitimize illegitimate versions of institutionalized truths one must focus on what Lyotard describes as "petit recits" or "little stories". This theoretical framework …

Exiled As The Ship Itself: Liminality And Transnational Identity In Malcolm Lowry's Ultramarine, Under The Volcano, And Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, Spencer Tricker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The themes of empire, nationality, and self-imposed exile constitute underexplored topics in critical discussions of modernist author Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957). Until recently, most academic studies have approached his work from biographical, mythological, and psychoanalytic perspectives. While a few studies have performed historical readings of his novels, such investigations tend, primarily, to focus on his engagement with western literary and theoretical movements of the early twentieth century. Of the few studies that address the cross-cultural reach of his novels, most are limited to discussions of Mexican history and traditions, thus prioritizing a specific geographical region when they might, instead, illuminate the …

"What Shall We Use To Fill The Empty Spaces?": Displacement In Frank Norris's Mcteague, Jennifer Bugna Lambeth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Author's abstract: McTeague, Frank Norris's Naturalistc text written in 1899, depicts the corruption of a California couple due to influences outside of their control. In positioning Trina McTeague as a woman unable to identify with either of the two major feminine ideologies of the day, the Angel in the House and the New Woman, this paper examines her identity as conflicted because of this lack of autonomy. Her failure to identify herself leads to a mental break that is reflected in the domestic spaces she inhabits. The places she lives each become smaller and dirtier reflecting her diminished mental capacity. …

For The Future: An Examination Of Conspiracy And Terror In The Works Of Don Delillo, Ashleigh Whelan

English Theses

This thesis is divided into two chapters, the first being an examination of conspiracy and paranoia in Libra, while the second focuses on the relationship between art and terror in Mao II, “In the Ruins of the Future,” Falling Man, and Point Omega. The study traces how DeLillo’s works have evolved over the years, focusing on the creation of counternarratives. Readers are given a glimpse of American culture and shown the power of narrative, ultimately shedding light on the future of our collective consciousness.

Fractured Identity - The Jagged Path Of Diaspora In Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Mistress Of Spices, Lisa Lamor

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Representation of fractured identity issues is a thematic element powerfully present in the work of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Although identity is a commonly explored theme in general, it is through fragmentation in her novels that struggles are often identified and trauma is illustrated. Complex, fragmenting experiences of persons living in the Indian diaspora are frequently present in novels by Divakaruni along with continual employment of fracturing in terms of structure, imagery, plot, language, and character. In order to illustrate the presence of fracturization in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's literature, in this thesis I do an extensive textual examination of her first …

Snaps Of Eden, Michael J. Hudson

Masters Theses

The following poems are and attempt at reclamation and reconciliation. The first section wades through the delicate subject of personal history and is an attempt to show truth as a means of both self and communal healing. The second is plaintive, a brief effort to interlope into and understand worlds outside (but not foreign) to my own. The third is a poetic essay detailing the journey of a young woman facing the horrors of an undeclared, and seemingly eternal war. The fourth and final sections serve as a means of exploration of the self and place; tackling issues of sex, …

The Burdens Of Body's Beauty: Pre-Raphaelite Representations Of The Body In William Morris's The Defence Of Guenevere And Other Poems (1858) And Algernon Swinburne's Poems, Thomas A. Steffler

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation studies representations of the body in the first two published volumes of Pre-Raphaelite poetry, William Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems (1858) and Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, First Series (1866). These two volumes (along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s 1870 Poems) were disparaged as the work of the “Fleshly School of Poetry” by the critic Robert Buchanan in 1871, and this dissertation seeks to understand through close reading how the depiction of the body in the poetry of Morris and Swinburne so perturbed their contemporaries and why it continues to elude modern readers. Particularly, this …

Visions Of The Future; Notions Of American Identity In James Fenimore Cooper's The Last Of The Mohicans And Catharine Maria Sedgwck's Hope Leslie Or, Early Times In The Massachusetts, Cheryl M. Gioioso

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Taking Eudora Welty's Text Out Of The Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild And The Queering Of Saint George, James R. Wallace

English Theses

Eudora Welty’s characterization of George Fairchild (Delta Wedding) queers the heroic masculine ideal, St George, whose legendary exploits have been popularized in narrative literature, Catholic iconography, and children’s fairy tale. Lauded by the Fairchild women for his “difference,” George’s sexuality offers him an identity apart from the suffocating Fairchild family myth. George Fairchild’s queer sexuality and homoeroticism augments our critical understanding of Delta Wedding, the character, as well as other characters. The author’s subtly politicized construction of the novel’s ostensible hero subverts literary tradition, the gender binary, and patriarchal myth.

Jean Toomer And Carl Van Vechten: Identity, Exploitation, And The Harlem Renaissance, Phil Shaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jean Toomer's Cane is considered one of the literary achievements of the Harlem Renaissance, though the many of his philosophical ideas which inspired it are dismissed. Inversely, Carl Van Vechten's influence as an advocate and patron of African American art is foundational though his Nigger Heaven is dismissed. However, there are commonalities in each authors identity positioning and subsequent exploitation of the black Harlem Renaissance ethos. Further, their utilization of Gurdjieffian principles of objectivity and primitivist images of blacks links and explains, in part, how their identities contributed to the ideas expressed in the novels.

By Her Own Hand: Female Agency Through Self-Castration In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Angela Marie Hall-Godsey

English Dissertations

By Her Own Hand: Female Agency Through Self-Castration in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction explores the intentional methods of self-castration that lead to authorial empowerment. The project relies on the following self-castration formula: the author’s recognition of herself as a being defined by lack. This lack refers to the inability to signify within the phallocentric system of language. In addition to this initial recognition, the female author realizes writing for public consumption emulates the process of castration but, nevertheless, initiates the writing process as a way to resituate the origin of castration—placing it in her own hand. The female writer also recognizes …

Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis proposes a theory of relational identity development in Chicana literature. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera offers an interpretation of Chicana identity that is largely based on historical models and mythology, which many scholars have found useful in interpreting Chicana literature. However, I contend that another text, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, not only illustrates the need for an alternative paradigm for considering identity development, but in fact offers such an alternative. I argue that Cisneros shows a model for relational identity development, wherein the individual develops in the context of her community and is not determined solely …

The Evolution Of Feminine Loyalty Trends In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century Appalachian Literature., Candace Jean Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loyalty to the self, family, and husband create interesting tensions for feminine characters in Appalachian literature. Traditional views of loyalty dictate that the Appalachian woman chooses to be loyal to her husband and family while abandoning her self loyalty. Appalachian women writers define the terms of loyalty and the conflicts these three levels create. Furthermore, studying a progression of novels from 1926 to the present shows that feminine loyalty trends have changed. This argument focuses on examining loyalty trends of feminine Appalachian characters, studying the contentions among those loyalties, specifically showing how loyalty patterns have changed in literature, and offering …

Will Travel : Journey Memoirs, Kelly Renee Broce

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Memoirs and poetry. Concerns the travels of a West Virginian woman, the granddaughter of a first generation Sicilian West Virginian, within the U.S., the Bahamas, Thailand, and China, where she taught English as a second language for two years from 2000-2002. Themes include identity (Appalachian, Persian, African-American, Chinese, and even Uigur), ethnicity and gender in West Virginia, fatalism, religion, poverty, Diaspora, travel, discrimination, the Ugly American/European, Ah Q, Imperialism, Orientalism, otherness, political asylum, victims and survival, substance abuse in West Virginia, feminist narrative, West Virginian authors, mountaintop removal, environmentalism, and protest.

"I Will Learn You Something If You Listen To This Song": Southern Women Writers' Representations Of Music In Fiction, Courtney George

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a rhetorical analysis of the formation of women’s memory, history, and communities in intersections of musical and literary expression in the American South, a region graced with a vital but underexamined tradition of female musicianship. Recent scholars have deconstructed the imagined narrative of southern culture as static, patriarchal, and white to uncover alternative stories and cultures that exist outside of canonical literature. This project significantly expands current understandings of these conflicting narratives by investigating how women writers recall, reclaim, and re-envision women’s roles in southern music to challenge, comply, and/or identify with women’s prescribed place in the …

A Virginia Woolf Of One's Own: Consequences Of Adaptation In Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Brooke Leora Grant

Theses and Dissertations

With a rising interest in visual media in academia, studies have overlapped at literary and film scholars' interest in adaptation. This interest has mainly focused on the examination of issues regarding adaptation of novel to novel or novel to film. Here I discuss both: Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours, which is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and the 2002 film adaptation of Cunningham's novel. However, my thesis also investigates a different kind of adaptation: the adaptation of a literary and historical figure. By including in The Hours a fictionalization of Virginia Woolf, Cunningham entrenches his adaptation with Virginia …

Medias Res, Temporal Double-Consciousness And Resistance In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Roslyn Nicole Smith

English Theses

Dana, the Black female protagonist in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred (1979), finds herself literally and figuratively in medias res as she sporadically travels between her present day life in 1976 and her ancestral plantation of 1815 – two time periods that represent two converse concepts of her identity as a Black woman. As a result, her time travel experiences cause her to revise her racial and gendered identity from a historically fragmented Black woman, who defines herself solely on her contemporary experiences, to a Black woman who defines herself based on her present life and her personal and ancestral history …

An Erratic Performance: Constructing Racial Identity And James Baldwin, Natasha N. Walker

English Theses

This thesis analyzes James Baldwin's essays as a method for understanding racial identity and authenticity. By using Vetta Sanders-Thompson's racial identification parameters, I suggest that Baldwin's struggle with his identity as a black American is crucial to deposing the idea of a monolithic black experience, which opens up new ways of analyzing African American literature.

Rapid Identification: River Guides, Storytelling, And Sharing Identity, Alisha Paxton

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I moved to Moab from another Utah town in the spring of 2005 to train and guide on the Colorado River. Over the course of two summers I rowed or paddled on three Colorado River sections-Fisher Towers, Westwater and Cataract Canyon-as well as Desolation/Gray Canyons on the Green River and the Main Fork of the Salmon River. The next fall, during my first semester of graduate study in folklore, I became interested in studying river guides as a folk group. I wanted to study the formation of "community" based upon both guide and passenger interactions on river trips. However, because …

Sites Of Resistance: Language, Intertextuality, And Subjectivity In The Poetry Of Diane Wakoski, Cordelia Maxwell Hanemann

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interconnectedness of language and related cultural texts and women’s subjectivity. The poststructuralist feminist enterprise of examining and critiquing language and signifying practices for the ways in which they impose social values and of interrogating and undermining the fixity of meanings in cultural texts will serve as my primary frame. Concerned with the individual (gendered) consciousness, poststructuralist feminist theory of subject formation posits that while language, along with ideologically biased texts of the culture, construct subjects, language and the cultural texts also serve as sites of resistance for the deconstruction and reconception of individual and collective subjectivities. …

The Shifting Frontiers Of Belonging In The Fiction Of J. M. Coetzee, Dawn Grieve

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is an examination of the fictional works of J.M. Coetzee to date. There are two aspects to my argument. First I posit that Coetzee adumbrates the prevailing crisis of belonging in the world and the universal yearning for a sense of connectedness. Secondly, I maintain that Coetzee prompts a review of the demarcation lines that divide and alienate in two ways. He installs boundaries that are shifting and. unstable. He also represents numerous frontier transgressions that expose the permeability of these finite conceptual constructions and reveals their potential for revision. It is my contention that Coetzee exploits the …

"A Plea For Color:" The Construction Of A Feminine Identity In African American Women's Novels., Kirsten A. Moffler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writers of slave narratives i n the nineteenth-century manipulated the western sentimental literary tradition to appeal t o a white, predominantly female readership during a time of national ideological division. These writers had their own agendas which often m e t (or were forced to meet ) those of white-run abolitionist movements t o achieve the ultimate goal of abolishing slavery. Northern white-run abolitionist movements were kept warm by the moral fires of mid-nineteenth-century Protestant Christianity; Christian ideals flooded their meetings and publications. Therefore, it is no wonder that the writers of slave narratives are so overt i n discussing …

A Dyke's Life: Sexual Identity And Gender Performance In Radclyffe Hall's The Well Of Loneliness, Erica L. Ellsworth

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis studies sexual and gender identity and gender performance in The Well of Loneliness by utilizing postmodern theory. The protagonist in the novel, Stephen Gordon, is not only one example of the many identities of lesbianism, but she is also an example of a multiplicitous identity. This thesis also questions whether we can find the exact moment or reason why an identity is formed. An exploration of not only The Well of Loneliness but also of a character study of Stephen Gordon is important to this dialogue because both studies validate the contradictory and complimentary relationship between sex and …

Honoring The Farm: Identity And Meaning In Personal Narratives, Jeannie Banks Thomas

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis employs the literary folklorist methodology to explore personal narratives. Personal narratives told by Elizabeth (Beth) Wyatt Winn were analyzed. It was discovered that these narratives provide an eyewitness account of history, reveal world views, and encapsulate experiences into values and personal meanings. The depth of meaning found in Elizabeth (Beth) Wyatt Winn's personal narratives illustrates the importance of personal narratives in historical research and historical re-creation and simulation.

Appendices include several oral interviews containing personal narratives.