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Masters Theses

English Language and Literature

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Keep Moving Forward: A Postcolonial Interpretation Of Narration In Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible", Katherine Pagan May 2017

Keep Moving Forward: A Postcolonial Interpretation Of Narration In Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible", Katherine Pagan

Masters Theses

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel "The Poisonwood Bible" follows the fictional Price family as they embark as missionaries to the Belgian Congo in 1959. With the intent to evangelize to the native people in a remote tribe, the family is shocked at the resistance to their outside culture. Narrated by the four daughters (and occasionally their mother), "The Poisonwood Bible" gives a unique look into the shifting perspectives of the Price women. Thrust into a foreign culture, they quickly learn that in order to survive, they must adapt to the native society. Utilizing Gerard Genette’s theories on narration and perspective as a …


Junot Díaz’S The Brief, Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao And Its Punishment Of Failed Gender Performances, Bruno Yupanqui Tovar Jul 2016

Junot Díaz’S The Brief, Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao And Its Punishment Of Failed Gender Performances, Bruno Yupanqui Tovar

Masters Theses

Junot Díaz’s renowned novel, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Oscar Wao), presents the brief and wondrous life of its main character, Oscar Wao, but also describes the exceptional lives of Lola and Belicia, his sister and mother, respectively. While the story’s title asserts an enthusiastic tone to the lives of Oscar—and the females in his family—the story actually reveals the victimization and demise of these characters. Though Díaz offers the spell of Fukú americanus, a Dominican superstition, Feminist Theorist Judith Butler provides a more advantageous, concrete explanation for the subjugation of these characters. Butler argues that culture dictates …


Paradox Of The Abject: Postcolonial Subjectivity In Jamaica Kincaid’S The Autobiography Of My Mother And Cristina García’S Dreaming In Cuban, Allison Nicole Harris May 2012

Paradox Of The Abject: Postcolonial Subjectivity In Jamaica Kincaid’S The Autobiography Of My Mother And Cristina García’S Dreaming In Cuban, Allison Nicole Harris

Masters Theses

In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva defines abjection as the seductive and destructive remainder of the process of entering the symbolic space of the father and leaving the pre-symbolic space of the mother, resulting in a desire to return to the jouissance of the pre-symbolic space. In this project, I read Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother as an attempt to link Xuela’s psychic abjection with the postcolonial identity. Xuela exists on the boundaries of the colonial dichotomy, embracing the space of the abject because she is haunted by her dead mother. She cannot return to her mother, …


Bharati Mukherjee And The American Immigrant: Reimaging The Nation In A Global Context, Leah Rang May 2010

Bharati Mukherjee And The American Immigrant: Reimaging The Nation In A Global Context, Leah Rang

Masters Theses

With its focus on immigration to the United States and development of American identity, Bharati Mukherjee’s fiction eludes literary categorization. It engages with the various contexts of multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and globalization, yet Mukherjee adamantly positions herself as an American author writing American literature. In this essay, I investigate the intersections between Mukherjee’s focus on the American character, culture, and people and developing theories and critical debates on globalization. Through Mukherjee’s works, we can see American identity in a state of flux, made possible by the immigrant and the relationships established between the transnational individual and America. Mukherjee’s immigrant characters challenge …