Digital Commons Network^™

Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth, Christopher Maverick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1938 introduction of Superman, superheroes have been ever-present in American popular culture. Indeed, with the modern preponderance of comic book movies dominating the American cinematic box-office, superhero fantasy is arguably the most important genre of fiction being produced in the contemporary moment. Peter Coogan, Kurt Busiek and many other scholars have discussed the prominence and relevance of the superhero fantasy as a genre. Still others, including Umberto Eco and Marco Arnaudo, have asserted that the superhero is not so much a genre and as it is the evolution of mythology. In Sex and the Superman, I argue …

Without Permanence: Mapping Multi-Genre, Cross-Disciplinary Frameworks For Trans* Studies, Jesse Jack

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project takes a cross-disciplinary and multi-genre approach to Transgender (Trans*) Studies to proliferate diverse and ambiguously-gendered representations of trans* experiences across time. It identifies the emergence of rhetorical intertextuality in recent trans* literatures as a discursive response to the biopolitical regulation and erasure of ambiguously-gendered, trans* experiences. It identifies the intersecting influences of twentieth- and twenty-first-century medical paradigms, surveillance apparatuses, popular trans* autobiographies, and archives in representing and exceptionalizing certain trans* experiences over others. In contrast, this project engages in a close reading of Pajtim Statovci’s Crossing (2016) and Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl …

Cultural Trauma Fiction: Political Violence, Rampage Violence, And Structural Violence In Contemporary American Literature, Courtney Mullis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation identifies and proposes a new subgenre of American literature, Cultural Trauma Fiction, that has arisen since the late 20^th century in response to numerous large-scale traumatic events and their representation in the media. Cultural trauma occurs when a shocking, shared event fractures collective identity and initiates a discursive process to understand what took place, why it happened, and how the affected culture can heal. Cultural traumas differ from individual trauma because cultural traumas affect a culture, rather than an individual, and because they are mediated; many members of the culture experience the trauma of these events secondhand …

Posthumanism In The Early Modern Period: Jonson, Marlowe, And Shakespeare, Kayli Compton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the existence of posthumanism in the dramas of Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare – the three most prominent playwrights of the early modern period. Posthumanist theory, which gives scholars the opportunity to look at past works in a new and unique way, attempts to re-locate the human in the diverse creatures and objects in the world we inhabit. By applying posthumanist theory to older works, we can better understand the early modern period and its writers as well as their relevance to the present. Their plays’ messages serve as warnings that work to guide humanity …

Accepting Or Opposing The Status Quo: A Look At The Women Characters In Mariama Bâ’S So Long A Letter (1981) And Chimamanda Adichie’S Purple Hibiscus (2003), Omolola Giwa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What exactly is the status quo of women in Africa? Women’s selfhood has been systematically subordinated or outright denied by law, customary practices, and cultural stereotypes. Scholars like Judith Bennet suggest that religious practices and colonial rule subjugate African women. Patriarchal ideologies guide the society’s discrimination against women and this has influenced the status of women, especially married women and the way they respond in times of affliction.

Authors like Chimamanda Adichie and Mariama Ba in their fictional novels The Purple Hibiscus and So Long a Letter focus on capturing the struggles and conditions of women in the Western African …

The Glass Coffin: Gothic Adaptations And The Formation Of Sexual Subjectivity., Colton T. Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is now an almost foregone conclusion that classic depictions of vampirism resonate with contemporary queer audiences. A sympathetic response to the monster’s persecution is often the key factor in these arguments, yet little attention is paid to the textual details that prompt such a process of identification. This study posits that the iconography used to establish a connection between monstrosity and non-normative sexuality has its origins in Victorian Gothic fiction, whose descriptions of vampirism were assimilated into the discourse of the fin-de-siècle medical field known as sexology. Theories that defined homosexuality as an illness with physical and psychological symptoms …

A Shift In Perspective: Temptress Witch To Realistic Woman, Caroline Conroy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In mid-20th century Anglo-American translations of The Odyssey, Odysseus is painted as a courageous, clever king while the briefly-featured Circe is portrayed as a temptress witch. This dichotomy changes, however, by the time these characters are featured in early 21st-century adaptations of Homer’s work; both released in 2018, Madeline Miller’s Circe and Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing reclaim Circe’s depiction by portraying a Circe-like character as a powerful protagonist, aware of her strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing the archetype of the witch and how it is reflective of patriarchal society’s efforts to reduce and isolate women’s power, I argue …

Regardless, ‘I’ And ‘You’: Lessons From Black Feminist Literature, Jasmine Veronica Sauceda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple from a Black feminist perspective to demonstrate oneness as capacious being. This project explores an I-You dialogue that works toward future-making through the notion of regardless, an idea from Walker’s definition of Womanist, deployed through sustained engagement with Kevin Quashie’s notion of oneness. Thus, this work extrapolates lessons found in the selected texts to demonstrate what it means to embody a capaciousness of being and how this then fosters healing in the face of trauma. In so doing, …

The Tragedy Of Caspian: C. S. Lewis And His Trauma, Chandler Hanton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reconsiders C.S.Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia as a type of scriptotherapy that enabled Lewis to process and come to terms with a life full of serious and significant traumatic events. Trauma theory offers a vehicle for us to consider the alignments and connections between Lewis himself and his fictional creation, Caspian. In the specifics of both characterization and incident, Lewis mirrors the events and relationships that instilled and healed the trauma in his own life. In situating Caspian as his alter-ego, Lewis allowed his writing to function as a gender-specific therapeutic process for addressing the effects of his …

Crippling Stagnation: Disability Imagery And The Handicapped South, Amber L. Stickney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern literature is well-known for its disabled characters due to the proliferation of the Southern Gothic genre. Many scholars have identified these disabled characters as metaphors for the failure of the Lost Cause, but less attention has been placed on how the internalization of the Lost Cause mythology has caused Southerners to become disabled. Hence, this study aims at understanding the relationship between grand narratives and Southerners through a cultural studies approach. This thesis focuses on short stories, specifically Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” (1955), Breece D’J Pancake’s “Time and Again” (1983), and Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh” (1982). The research …

The Terrors Of Everyday Life: The Gothic Novel As A Woman's Conduct Guide To Survival, 1791-1817, Jessica Berg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Gothic is often associated with the fantastical, with people and events that only take place within our darkest nightmares. In my thesis, I explore how, in the hands of Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen, the Gothic exposes the hidden dangers of reality perpetuated by conduct literature. Within conduct manuals, thousands of regulations direct women’s behaviors and identify the perfect woman as one who exists passively within the safety of the domestic sphere. Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791) and Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1817) engage in subterfuge against eighteenth-century conduct literature and expose the realities of the domestic sphere: …

Deforming The Knight: Gawain's Descent Into Monstrosity In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Hannah Held

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sir Gawain has always been marked as a victim in the well-known poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but he is much more than that. Standing with the knights of the Round Table, he seems to be the perfect example of what chivalry should look like, especially with an adherence to the common religious beliefs. However, when put into the context of the manuscript in which it was found, Gawain seems to stand as an allegorical figure of the do-not’s of feudal and religious chivalry. Using the lens of Monster Theory via Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and David Williams, I …

Femininity Reclaiming Chivalry In The Harry Potter Series, Ashley M. Watson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper focuses on the reclaiming of chivalric values by female characters in the Harry Potter series by comparing them to Arthurian characters. Scholars have extensively compared the narrative of the Knights of the Round Table to the global phenomenon of the Harry Potter series, but in this paper I explore, through a feminist lens, a character comparison of the Harry Potter novels and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. I will show how female characters in modern literature reclaim chivalry. This is important because it exemplifies a shift in the position of women into a more active role. I …

A Form Of Our Own: An Examination Of Black Sonnet-Samplers, Lavonna D. Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study responds to the need for understanding and terminology regarding Black poets’ engagement with the sonnet form. Referring to sampling strategies in Hip-Hop to analyze Black sonnets, this study disputes limiting ideas about sonnets as ineffective mediums to portray Black narratives and honors strategies maintained in Hip-Hop culture that define Black narrative expression, resistance to assimilation, and social reflection. Black sonnets are an ever-evolving vehicle of resistance to elitist ideas about traditional forms, Black aesthetics, and the ways that poetic strategies can be defined. This study names past and present Black sonneteers’ adherence to, remixing in, and rejection of …