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James Fenimore Cooper, Professional Authorship, And The American Literary Marketplace, 1838-1851, Steven P. Harthorn

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a primary-source-intensive literary history that makes use of publishers' records, correspondence, manuscript evidence, and literary works to study how James Fenimore Cooper refashioned his career as a professional author during its last major phase, approximately 1838 to 1851, to adapt to changing conditions he faced in the literary marketplace and to confront challenges-both externally- and self-imposed-to his status and reputation.

Chapter One, "The Tortured Profession of Authorship: Novelist Again," narrates Cooper's return to fiction in 1837-38, considering the professional issues confronting him at the time, such as economic uncertainties, constraints of the typical two-volume format, and alienation …

A Price On Freedom: The Problems And Promise Of The Vietnam Era G.I. Bills, Mark Boulton

Doctoral Dissertations

At the end of World War II, the federal government bestowed one of the richest rewards ever given a mass mobilized army in the form of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the OJ. Bill of Rights. The OJ. Bill offered veterans generous loans, education benefits, and unemployment insurance to help them readjust to civilian life. The bill is widely lauded as one of the most important federal acts of the twentieth century. Further 0.1. Bills followed for veterans of the Cold War including those who served in Korea and Vietnam. Despite their continued impact on the …

Black Children And Northern Missionaries, Freedmen's Bureau Agents, And Southern Whites In Reconstruction Tennessee, 1865 -1869, Troy Lee Kickler

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores one of the forgotten characters of Reconstruction and African American history: the black child. It begins with the experiences of young black Tennesseans during slavery and the Civil War. then examines their lives after freedom within and outside the family and schools, and ends with an account of their memory of Reconstruction.

During Reconstruction, black children's lives were affected daily by the ideological conflict among freedmen, white Southerners, Bureau agents, and Northern missionaries. By and large slave children had experienced a childhood-thanks to the efforts of slave parents in sustaining family bonds. Yet after the tumultuous change …

From Social Improvement To Scientific Racism: The Effects Of World War I On The Definition Of Racial Hygiene In Germany, Robyn Lee Hendrick

Masters Theses

During the First World War, there was a decisive change in the focus of the racial hygiene movement in Germany. Prior to the war, the terms "racial hygiene" and "eugenics" were synonymous. In contrast, during and after World War I while eugenics continued to be recognized as a "science" in Germany, as well as in other Western European countries and the United States, the racial hygiene movement was becoming increasingly racist. Although, as the term implies, racial hygiene included racial components, the radically racist overtones did not become prevalent until the Nazis' rise to power. Racial hygienists separated themselves from …

Atomic Childhood: An Analysis Of The Impact Of The Manhattan Project On The Children Of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, John David Prince

Masters Theses

The city of Oak Ridge was one of three major project sites built by the US Army during the Manhattan Project – the top-secret mission started in June 1942 in order to develop an atomic bomb within a three year period. The Oak Ridge site, chosen in September 1942, was responsible for the production of the uranium that armed the world’s first atomic bomb. Prior to the dropping of the atomic bomb, however, the real mission of Oak Ridge was known to only a few select individuals. Indeed, most of the residents and workers at the production plants in Oak …

Paul's Integrated Use Of Apocalyptic And Gnostic Imagery In First Thessalonians, Steven Mack Trotter

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine and characterize Paul’s integrated use of apocalyptic and gnostic imagery as found in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-10 as well as compare and contrast conclusions based on the analysis with long standing theories regarding: (1) the rise of gnosticism as a result of the delay of the Parousia, and (2) the mutual exlusivity of apocalypticism and gnosticism.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:1-10, Paul integrates use of apocalyptic and gnostic imagery. He uses the same apocalyptic imagery as found in Amos and Zechariah, as well as the same gnostic imagery as found in The Apocryphon of …

Climate Change And International Justice, Sarah Brigid Kenehan

Masters Theses

The effects that are predicted to occur as a result of global climate change have the potential to be devastating, effecting food and water security, threatening sensitive ecosystems and species, and forcing the relocation of thousands of people. However, little has been done to effectively combat this problem for two primary reasons: there are uncertainties surrounding climate change projections and many countries are unwilling to accept their fair share of the burden. This project will attempt to reframe these problems. Specifically, I will argue that it is rational for policymakers to act on the model-generated predictions of climate change, and …

Race, Women, And The South: Faulkner’S Connection To And Separation From The Fugitive-Agrarian Tradition, Brandi Stearns

Masters Theses

“Race, Women, and the South: Faulkner’s Connection to and Separation from the Fugitive-Agrarians” examines the similarities of circumstance, thought, and literature that existed between William Faulkner and the members of the Fugitive-Agrarian group despite the lack of communication between them. The initial chapter elucidates the biographical similarities between Faulkner and the Nashville group. The information in that chapter was chiefly drawn from biographies, William Faulkner: His Life and Work by David Minter, The Southern Agrarians by Paul Conkin, and The Fugitive Group: A Literary History by Louise Cowan.

The second chapter explains Quentin Compson, a character in Faulkner’s novels Absalom, …

Footnotes (2005), Department Of History

Footnotes

No abstract provided.

The Making Of James Agee, Hugh Rollin Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

When James Agee died in 1955, all of his major works were out of print or not yet published. The posthumous 1957 publication of Death in the Family, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1958, began a twelve-year period that saw editions of Agee's collected film reviews, screenplays, letters, short prose, and poetry, as well as re-issues of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and The Morning Watch. As these works came into or back into print, establishing a de facto Agee canon, an Agee myth also emerged. Agee came to be seen as the epitome of the …

Recuperando A Los Peron: Posmodemidad E Intertextualidad En Dos Obras De Tomas Eloy Martinez, Jose D. Minay

Doctoral Dissertations

Recent history has been the central theme of Argentinean writer Tomas Eloy Martinez. In his two most recognized novels, La novela de Peron (1985) and Santa Evita (1995), he revisits the Peronist period in Argentinean history and attempts to re-write and re-signify traditional accounts of that history while presenting what he hopes is a more balanced interpretation of the Perons and their place in the nation's history.

The present dissertation analyses how Martinez uses numerous postmodern narrative strategies such as metafiction, parody, and intertextuality to carry out his revisionist project in the above-mentioned novels. As a point of departure, the …

Embodying Nature: Medicine, Law, And The Female Gothic, Mercy Cannon

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I analyze eight novels from the tumultuous decade ofthe 1790s: Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1793) and The Italian (1798); Eliza Parsons' The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and Eleanor Sleath's The Orphan of the Rhine (1798); Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the Abbey (1796) and Clermont (1798); Eliza Fenwick's Secresy; or, the Ruin on the Rock (1796) and Mary Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria (1798). The novels I examine are unified not only by the decade in which they were written, but also by the discursive fields that shape their presentation of the …

Science And The Spirit Of The Age: Blake, Wordsworth, And The Romantic Scientific Paradigm, Thomas C. Call

Doctoral Dissertations

The reaction of the first wave of English Romantic poets to the Enlightenment scientific establishment is by this point well understood. As Blake once noted, "All that is Valuable in Knowledge is / Superior to Demonstrative Science such as is Weighed or Measured," a view subsequently echoed by Wordsworth: "How insecure, how baseless in itself, / Is the Philosophy whose sway depends / On mere material instruments." Not quite so clear, however, is the relation between these pre-eminent Romantic poets and the Romantic scientific paradigm emerging at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Both in its mainstream version, which would …

'Black Atlantic' Cultural Politics As Reflected In Panamanian Literature, Sonja Stephenson Watson

Doctoral Dissertations

The diaspora experience is characterized by hybridity, diversity and above all, difference. The nature of the diaspora experience therefore precludes an exclusive articulation of identity. Black identity in Panama is one characterized by this same multiplicity. My dissertation examines race, culture, and ethnicity in the development of Panamanian national identity and is informed by the critical theories of Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, and Frantz Fanon. The articulation of Afro-Panamanian identity is both intriguing and complex because there are two groups of blacks on the Isthmus: Spanish speaking blacks who arrived as a result of slavery (15th -18th centuries) and English …

Renaissance Woman: The Works And Critical Reception Of Dorothy West, Tamara Jenelle Williamson

Masters Theses

Dorothy West’s literary career spanned seven decades, beginning with the publication of "The Typewriter" in 1926. West published her second novel,

The Wedding, in 1995. The following year, the author published a collection of short stories and non-fiction, entitled The Richer, the Poorer. However, in discussions of American modernism and African-American women’s literature, Dorothy West is excluded.

The focus of this project will be to explore the themes in West’s two novels,

The Living Is Easy and The Wedding. I also analyze several of her short stories and a non-fiction piece. In the last chapter of this …

Wo Liegt Die Grenze? Aspekt, Aktionsart Und Verwandte Phanomene In Der Erforschung Der Deutschen Sprache, Maria Gallmeier

Doctoral Dissertations

In 1824, Jacob Grimm first used the terms perfective and imperfective to describe the German verbal system and initiated the discussion of the aspecto-actional meaning in such pairs as jagen : erjagen. Since then, German research has frequently failed to define aspectological terms and categories unambiguously.

This study examines the status of German aspectological research, with special reference to the boundary between the categories Aspekt and Aktionsart. For background, this dissertation successively examines early German aspectological research (1824 to 1930), landmark German grammars, German aspectological research since 1970, cross-linguistic aspectological research in the Slavic and Anglo-American traditions with …

Discovering Spanish Through Poetry, Meghan Shelby Stuthard

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Piety And Politics: John Capgrave's The Life Of Saint Katherine As Yorkist Propaganda, Michael M. Baker

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the political undertones of John Capgrave's The Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria. In recent years, various scholars have regarded the Life as political propaganda for either the House of Lancaster or the House of York. I have attempted to reach my own conclusion regarding Capgrave's political beliefs by navigating some of the primary arguments purported by those scholars and adding some observations of my own.

I have considered not only the text itself, but also some of the aspects of Capgrave's life that were most likely to have influenced him: …

Human Rights, Exploitation, And Genetic Use Restriction Technology: Sowing The Seeds Of Reason In The Field Of The Terminator Debate., Keith A. Bustos

Masters Theses

The current debate concerning genetically modified (GM) crops is primarily focused on the negative consequences that the production and consumption of GM foods could have on people and the environment. Adding to the list of concerns is the multinational agrochemical corporations' plan to implement GURTs (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies) to prohibit the unauthorized use of certain genetically modified plant varieties. Several activist groups perceive the potential implementation of GURTs to be a threat to resource-poor farmers since this technology (which the activists call Terminator Technology) may be used to wrongfully exploit resource-poor farmers in the name of economic gain. In …

The Crisis Of The Marital Institution In Henry James: An Analysis Of James's Experiments In Marriage In The Bostonians, The Portrait Of A Lady, And The Golden Bowl, Amy Sloan

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine Henry James’s novels The Bostonians, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Golden Bowl in an effort to create a wider picture of the threats that James perceived were closing in on the institution of marriage at the end of the nineteenth century. The paper begins by attempting to place James’s narrative style in a suitable context by comparing it to that of other American realists and to the popular genre of domestic fiction. Then it translates the more generic discussion of his narrative stylings into a more honed focus …

Bins Of Plums, Erin Elizabeth Mulert

Masters Theses

This collection of poems represents work revised and completed during my tenure in the M.A. program in English. The pieces deal with themes of identity, family, and love, and the nature of poetry itself. An introduction is included that identifies my major influences and my purpose in writing poetry.

Medical Autonomy In Crisis: The Destruction Of The Right To Privacy, David A. Lufkin Sr.

Masters Theses

This thesis is presented for a Master of Arts and Science Degree at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, from the College of Liberal Arts, Department of Philosophy, with a concentration in medical ethics.

The thesis's argument assumes that rules of ethics or morality should be rules and guidelines of uniformity and therefore universal in nature and scope. In that assumption, the thesis adheres to the present problematic state of ethics, and in particular, medical ethics. In response to that state it asks: without imprint from religious morality, upon what foundation can we design a system for medical ethics? In particular, …

Crossing Over In The 21st Century: New Perspectives On Classical Music Through The Work Of Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, And Béla Fleck, Louanne Marie Iannaccone

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effect that the crossover music of Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, and Béla Fleck has on current societal perceptions of classical music. In the past, society has seen classical music as a highbrow cultural activity, inaccessible to the majority of American people. In the course of this research, I explore the music of these artists from several perspectives.

Through a technocultural examination of the violin, fiddle, double bass, and banjo, I determine that these instruments are used prominently in many styles of music and therefore facilitate crossover. I identify how different musical …

Appointing Stability In An Age Of Crisis: Lord Charles Cornwallis And The British Imperial Revival, 1780-1801, Bradley S. Benefield

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the ideological impetus to the founding of the second British Empire. The loss of the thirteen North American colonies left the British Empire in a state of crisis. Yet, by the early nineteenth century, the British Empire was once again in a position of global dominance. Many historians have theorized over how Britain united to face and overcome this period of crisis. One historian, C.A. Bayly, has argued that British elites rallied behind a progressive conservative ideology, which became the prerequisite to the founding of the second British Empire. To test this …

American Media Perspectives On Post-War Germany: The New York Times And The Wall Street Journal, May 1 - June 30, 1949, Ryan Charles Edens

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A River For War, A Watershed To Change: The Tennessee Valley Authority During World War Ii, William Wade Drumright

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how the Tennessee Valley Authority responded to, and was affected by, the demands placed upon this agency by America’s participation in the Second World War. Established by Congress in May 1993 at the behest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Authority was charged with physical alteration and rehabilitation, and the economic revitalization of the Tennessee River basin and watershed. These tasks included making the river suitable for ship and barge navigation; achieving flood control through a system of dams on the main river and its tributaries; and producing, transmitting, and selling electric power. During the period covered …

Le Role De L'Odeur Et De La Perception Olfactive Dans 'Combray' De Marcel Proust, Veronika Passovets

Masters Theses

The present study examines the problem of the olfactory perception and the sense of smell in Marcel Proust’s “Combray”, first part of the novel A la recherché du temps perdu. After a brief historical introduction to the position of the sense of smell in French literature, the first part of this study focuses on a detailed grammatical and lexical analysis of all the manifestations of the olfactory perception in “Combray”. A close examination of the main nouns, adjectives and verbs that form the lexico-semantic field of the sense of smell leads to preliminary conclusions about the significance of the role …

Mobius Strip, Tory Killian Niemann

Masters Theses

This collection of short stories explores the moments of change in a variety of human experiences. Change is embodied in the stories not only in the literal action of the characters and through the expressions of prose, but also in the uses of certain formal devices, such as point of view, narrative control, and genre. Through unexpected redirection of these formal devices, the impact of change is given a different significance in order to better reach the reading audience. Each of the seven stories looks at the different experiences of change, for good and for ill, in human life, showing …

To Disturb The People As Little As Possible: The Desegregation Of Memphis City Schools, Kira Virginia Duke

Masters Theses

This study will look at how school desegregation in Memphis unfolded according to the phases of desegregation as argued by J. Harvie Wilkinson in From Brown to Bakke and in relation to the evolution of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Brown’s meaning. This study will also examine how mob violence was avoided as desegregation took place in the city. Evidence for this study was gathered from the oral histories of Judge Robert McRae and Maxine Smith, executive secretary of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP, newspaper coverage, NAACP records, and John Egerton’s report to the Southern Regional Council as …

Wladimir Kaminer's Public Persona And Writings Within The Discourse On German National Identity, Diana Stanislavovna Gortinskaya

Masters Theses

The purpose of the following thesis is to examine the concept of German national literature as part of the discourse on German national identity after unification. I concentrate on one representative of post-Wende German literature--Wladimir Kaminer, a Russian émigré of Jewish descent who immigrated to Germany in 1990 and in the course of ten years became a best-selling German writer. This study is the first scholarly analysis of both Kaminer’s public persona and his writings. On the basis of Kaminer’s interviews with various Russian- and German-speaking media, I focus on his positioning within the discourse on German national identity …