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The Transformation Of Edgar Huntly: An American Awakening, Willie C. Sosa

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since Charles Brockden Brown published his first novels in the late eighteenth century, he has subsequently shifted back and forth, in importance, from the center to the periphery of the American literary canon. In recent years however, a dramatic increase in scholarship on Brown shows his significance is once again trending back toward the center of importance in this field. Scholarship has tended to coalesce around four topics which can be categorized as postcolonial expansion, the wild city, the distinction between the city and wildness, and identity. Looking closely at identity, although the discourse has done a thorough job of …

Asian Male Stereotypes: An Investigation Of Current Beliefs About Asian Males And Stereotypes Perpetuated By U.S. Modern Cinema, Noelle Knopp

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a triangulated two-part study with a quasi-experiment design. Study Part 1 performed a textual analysis supported by the theory of framing on the films Crazy Rich Asians, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Always Be My Maybe, and To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You to find commonalities among portrayals of prominent East Asian male characters. Using Wong et. al’s findings of common perceived stereotypes by Asian American males, the author used the six traits defined by Wong et. al as a base to see if the films corresponded to or deviated from the stereotypes …

The Implications Of The American Symphonic Heritage In Contemporary Orchestral Modeling, Mathew Lee Ward

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Disparate priorities between composers, performers, audiences, and institutions have created systemic issues in the sustainability and relevance of symphonic music in modern society. The purpose of this study is to explore the history of the symphonic heritage in the United States with the goal of forming solutions to contemporary issues in the sphere of classical symphonic music. With consideration for the breadth of repertoire, the genre of the symphony is the primary focus, with special attention given to under-represented and under-performed composers. The American symphony orchestra, nonexistent during the founding of the country, has become one of the greatest conduits …

Anger, Genre Bending, And Space In Kincaid, Ferré, And Vilar, Suzanne M. Uzzilia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how women’s anger sparks the bending of genre, which ultimately leads to the development of space in the work of three Caribbean-American authors: Jamaica Kincaid, Rosario Ferré, and Irene Vilar. Women often occupy subject positions that restrict them, and women writers harness the anger provoked by such limitations to test the traditional borders of genre and create new forms that better reflect their realities.

These three writers represent Anglophone and Hispanophone Caribbean literary traditions and are united by their interest in addressing feminist issues in their work. Accordingly, my research is guided by the feminist theoretical frameworks …

Pecking The Hands That Feed Them: How Society And Government Have Allowed The Poultry Industry To Exploit Labor And The Environment In The American South, Sophie M. Kline

Honors Theses

Americans eat an average of ninety pounds of chicken in one year, but where does that chicken come from? Immigrants and African Americans are the majority of the labor population in poultry processing plants located in the American South. In an effort to highlight the racism, sexism, insecurity, and environmental degradation in the poultry industry, I analyze a variety of ethnographies, articles, and science journals as well as U.S Supreme Court decisions and policies enacted by the U.S federal government in this thesis. Upon examination, I answer why society is pecking the hands that feed them. The analysis concludes that …

The Agrarian Gentleman: Elkanah Watson And The Birth Of The Agricultural Society In Early National New England, John Ginder

History Honors Program

Elkanah Watson is an overlooked figure in the early national period of the United States. A direct descendent of the Mayflower Pilgrims, Watson was a well-connected, well-traveled businessman who was receptive to any idea that he thought would benefit the new nation. This paper argues that Watson played an important role in forging a new American definition of progress, one that built on his experience in the American Revolution, borrowed heavily from Europe, and was inextricably tied to the American landscape. During the age of Enlightenment, he believed that one could improve oneself as well as society. That was evident …

“No Popery! No French Laws!”: Anti-Catholicism During The American Revolution, Nicholas Dorthe

History Honors Program

This paper analyzes how widespread anti-Catholic sentiment unified the colonies against the British Crown during the early stages of the American Revolution. Also, this paper explores how loyalists utilized fear of Catholicism in order to undermine the Revolution, showing that anti-Catholic fearmongering played a vital role to both causes. Overtime, historians have placed varying emphasis on certain reasons behind the American Revolution. Since the Progressive Era, there has been a shift from economic reasons, like class conflict and the Crown’s restrictive trade policies, to a more ideological stance, one that emphasizes philosophical influence and constitutional interpretations. Instead, this essay asserts …

Requisitioned: American War Art Of The Second World War, Spenser Carroll-Johnson

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

The United States requisitioned artists to assist with military objectives and servicemen requisitioned art as a form of rhetoric. This research reexamines the role of “official artists” and thereby extends its definition to include the multitude of art they produced during the Second World War. The underpinnings of this thesis reside during the economic crises of the 1930s that brought about American emergency relief initiatives for artists under the direction of Holger Cahill and, by extension, Edward Bruce. For the first time in history, the American public engaged with state-sponsored art. Due to a symbiotic relationship that formed between the …

International Marriages: Culture, Identity Formation, Social And Historical Context, Alec Bryan Schaer

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research is to examine how changes in sociopolitical and cultural landscapes affect the cultural and personal identities of individuals engaged in mixed heritage relationships. I examine relationships between Japanese women and American men to illustrate that the wider socio-political contexts of these individuals play key roles in how they view and portray themselves in relation to others; as Japanese, American, both, or neither.

This research is divided into two distinct periods, one before WWII and a second after WWII. For each of these periods, I examined the relevant socio-political and cultural circumstances which affected Japanese and …

Raphael Soyer And His Responses To The Ascension Of Abstract Art, Eric Matthew Friendly

Theses and Dissertations

During the 1930s, Russian-American artist Raphael Soyer (December 25, 1899 – November 4, 1987), a committed realist, was one of the preeminent artists working in the United States. However, with Abstract Expressionism superseding American Scene Painting as the dominant mode of expression during the 1940s and 1950s, Soyer and his contemporaries went from enjoying the esteem of the New York art world, to being outmoded by abstract artists. Reacting to the ascendancy of abstract art, Soyer sought to restore himself and his fellow representational artists to preeminence, attempted to dismiss abstract art as being antihuman while asserting the humanism of …

Emerson's Idealist Poetics: Emerson, Rödl, And The Life Of Nature, Robert Darren Hutchinson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I articulate a hermeneutics for reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s seminal text Nature through drawing on the insights of the contemporary philosopher Sebastian Rödl. Particularly, the performative, literary characteristics of Rödl’s quite conceptual work resonate with the poetic strategies that Emerson employs in Nature. In the section on the work of Rödl, I make the performative aspects of his philosophy explicit through a close reading of the way self-consciousness happens in his texts through the language he employs. Rödl refers to his elucidation of self-consciousness as idealism. In the section on Emerson, I show how Emerson’s project …

One Nation Invisible: U.S. Veterans Of Color And The Authoring Of Cultural Citizenship Through Asymmetrical Authorship, Sheeba W. Varkey

Theses and Dissertations

The national story of America is one of a country that has managed the contradictory: many bodies coming together, “out of many, one.” However, such a mythos naturally evades the problematic erasure of many cultural and minority bodies and stories, in the proposition that unity demands such an erasure. As an extension of American civil society, the U.S. military has operated as a part of this system of whiteness, while its military operations have been celebrated as victory for progress and democratic ideals, particularly in WWII. Bodies of color, recruited into the national agenda through military service, while historically denied …

A Pinch More Diversity: Langston Hughes And The Literary Canon, Olivia Hart Berlin

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Throughout high school and college, I found myself studying white authors in my literature classes much more often then I studied African American authors which means that most people know almost nothing about African American authors. It seems to me that the reason for that might be that up until the mid-twentieth century very few African American authors were included in the literary canon. More African-American authors and other minority authors have been more included in the general literary canon over the last few decades, but the literary canon is still mostly white.

Langston Hughes is one of the most …

Eyes Shut : Stories, Danielle Epting

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This story collection focuses on a range of characters and explores themes/ideas such as loss, self-awareness, and abuse. These ideas are explored through the use of specific literary elements to help heighten the themes. These elements include point of view, characterization, and plot. Other elements, such as speculative or more fantastical aspects, are also used in several stories. These stories and themes hope to highlight the complex dynamics of both human relationships and our own inner struggles that we all must navigate throughout our journey.

Selling Students Short: How Market Driven School Reforms Undermine Student Learning And Our Shared Democratic Ideals., Andrew Malkasian

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Outside influence in education is nothing new, but over the last half-century, these influences have coalesced around a single point of interest: infusing American education with principles of free-market economics. As a result, teachers are now instructing students in a fast-paced, hyper-competitive, data-driven environment where performance and quantitative outcomes are paramount. Consequently, students are no longer taught, nor encouraged, to be active participants in a democratic society but rather workers in an ever- expanding capitalist market that mandates winners and losers - a notion wholly contradictory to the spirit of education.

The purpose of this research is to indicate how …

Maladaptive Grief: Irish And American Experiences Of Loss, Mourning, And Trauma, Abby Hey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Literature that responds to loss and expresses mourning, a genre referred to as the elegy, traditionally follows an adaptive pattern in which a mourner reaches consolation and comfort. In the modern period, however, mourning transformed into destructive experiences that were notably private. With this phenomenon of greater social and emotional isolation, writers like Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett, and Elizabeth Bishop expressed rumination and irresolution. In contrast, before the twentieth century, elegies were not only more consolatory, but there was a greater emphasis on shared feeling, and this communal type of mourning is more often adaptive. By grieving together in the …