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A Seal Of Living Reality: The Role Of Personal Expression In Latter-Day Saint Discourse, C. Julianne Smith
A Seal Of Living Reality: The Role Of Personal Expression In Latter-Day Saint Discourse, C. Julianne Smith
Theses and Dissertations
A personal mode of discourse is central to Latter-day Saint culture. This mode is both pervasive throughout the culture and significant within it. Two specific genres-the personal experience narrative and the personal testimony-illustrate the importance of this discourse mode in LDS culture. Understanding the LDS personal mode of discourse is essential to properly understanding Mormonism. The personal orientation in LDS discourse mirrors a tendency towards personal expression which has become common throughout Western culture. This tendency has important roots in the Protestant religious movement. In particular, Puritanism represents a significant point of origin for American personal expression. Such expression has …
Man Down South, Joseph B. Plicka
Man Down South, Joseph B. Plicka
Theses and Dissertations
In this novella the main character, David Crumm, is getting older and decides not to wait around and die on his frozen ranch, but to retire to warmer climates. He leaves everything with his daughter, gets in his truck and drives south with his dog. In Florida, he accidentally hits and kills a migrant woman on her bicycle. The woman has a young son who survives the accident and, through a number of converging factors, David is compelled to personally take the boy back to his relatives in Nicaragua. The book then deals with David's experiences as he heads farther …
Versions Of America: Reading American Literature For Identity And Difference, Raj G. Chetty
Versions Of America: Reading American Literature For Identity And Difference, Raj G. Chetty
Theses and Dissertations
My paper examines how American authors of the South Asian Diaspora (Indian-American or South Asian American) can be read 1) as simply American and 2) without regard to ethnicity. I develop this argument using American authors Jhumpa Lahiri, a first generation American of Bengali-Indian descent, and Bharati Mukherjee, an American of Bengali-Indian origin. I borrow from Deepika Bahri's materialist aesthetics in postcolonialism (in turn borrowed from members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory) and include theoretical insights from Rey Chow, Graham Huggan, and R. Radhakrishnan regarding multiculturalism, identity politics, and diaspora studies. Huggan and Radhakrishnan's insights are especially useful …
James Thurber's Little Man And The Battle Of The Sexes: The Humor Of Gender And Conflict, Andrew S. Jorgensen
James Thurber's Little Man And The Battle Of The Sexes: The Humor Of Gender And Conflict, Andrew S. Jorgensen
Theses and Dissertations
James Thurber, along with others who wrote for The New Yorker magazine, developed the 'little man' comic figure. The little man as a central character was a shift from earlier nineteenth-century traditions in humor. This twentieth-century protagonist was a comic antihero whose function was to create sympathy rather than scorn and bring into question the values and behaviors of society rather than affirm them, as earlier comic figures did. The little man was urban, inept, frustrated, childlike, suspicious, and stubborn. His female counterpart was often a foil: confident and controlling enough to highlight his most pitiable and funniest features. Contradictory …
Interrogating History Or Making History? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Delillo's Libra, And The Shaping Of Collective Memory, Mark Spencer Mills
Interrogating History Or Making History? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Delillo's Libra, And The Shaping Of Collective Memory, Mark Spencer Mills
Theses and Dissertations
In the wake of the post-structuralist skepticism of language and language's ability to represent reality, the philosophy of history has likewise been questioned, since we gain our knowledge and understanding of the past primarily through language—through written and spoken testimony, and through subsequent historiography. Various post-structuralist critics have pointed out that history is never entirely recoverable, but accessible only indirectly through what is written and documented about it. What is written and documented is in turn determined by the contents and the nature of the archive. What we know about history is largely mediated and limited by the problems inherent …
The American Way: What Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, And The X-Men Reveal About America, Joseph J. Darowski
The American Way: What Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, And The X-Men Reveal About America, Joseph J. Darowski
Theses and Dissertations
Comic book superheroes have become adopted into American popular culture, and yet few have considered why these characters resonate with Americans. The first comic book superhero premiered in 1938 when Superman appeared on the cover of the first issue of Action Comics. For almost seventy years his adventures and the adventures of other costumed heroes have been continually published. Batman soon joined Superman as a popular costumed crime-fighter, and the early 1960s saw another generation of superheroes created that would be embraced in American culture. Among this new group of heroes were Spider-Man and the X-Men, who have proved as …
"Th' Offense Pardons Itself": Sex And The Church In Othello And Measure For Measure, Jeffrey Wayne Windsor
"Th' Offense Pardons Itself": Sex And The Church In Othello And Measure For Measure, Jeffrey Wayne Windsor
Theses and Dissertations
In 1604, James had newly ascended to the throne and England was now part of Great Britain. The Puritans-largely silenced during Elizabeth's reign-began again to assert political influence and call for reformation to both the state and the church. This is the context in which Shakespeare wrote Othello and Measure for Measure. In both plays, the role of the government in Cyprus or Vienna hinges upon the passions of a single authority figure. Both Angelo and Othello cause political unrest because they mismanage sexuality. In the case of Othello, his unfounded sexual jealousy leads to the death of Desdemona, Emilia, …
The Memory Of The Body And Other Stories, Ryan Craig Shoemaker
The Memory Of The Body And Other Stories, Ryan Craig Shoemaker
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis is a collection of short stories written over the years 2002 to 2006. The short story is a genre that requires brevity. The short story writer, instead of treating the totality of human life, is forever, as Frank O'Connor suggests, selecting the point at which he can approach it. For this reason, unlike the novel, there is very little dallying in the short story. The short story writer, as the form requires, must make his world believable and coherent with only a minimum of words. Based on the experience of the actual author, the short story, like all …
Telling History Through The Stories Of Women: Julia Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies And In The Name Of Salomé, Nicole Marie Carlson
Telling History Through The Stories Of Women: Julia Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies And In The Name Of Salomé, Nicole Marie Carlson
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis discusses the ways in which Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) and In the Name of Salomé (2000) are revolutionary texts contesting traditional, male dominated history and redirecting historical and communal foci to the lives of Dominican women. I employ Walter Benjamin's theories found in his essays "The Storyteller" (1936) and "On the Concept of History" (1940) to assist my exploration of Alvarez's questions concerning the power and effect of storytelling, and the importance of reconstructing various historical voices and images, specifically, the importance of reconstructing female voices in male dominated cultures. I discuss the …
An Awakened Sense Of Place: Thoreauvian Patterns In Willa Cather's Fiction, Breanne Grover
An Awakened Sense Of Place: Thoreauvian Patterns In Willa Cather's Fiction, Breanne Grover
Theses and Dissertations
The recent "greening" of Willa Cather Scholarship has initiated new conversations about Cather's use of and dependence on landscape in her fiction. Scholars have frequently noted Cather's reliance on landscape imagery, but this thesis suggests parallels between Cather's and Henry David Thoreau's use of awakening imagery and examines how such parallels work in Cather's environmental discussion of wilderness and environmental communities. There is little direct evidence linking the development of Cather to Thoreau, although their similar use of awakening imagery suggests they comment on similar environmental discussions through their writing, indicating that Cather deserves further attention as a nature writer. …
The Familiar Foreign Country: Reading Mexico In Cormac Mccarthy, Jack Kerouac, And Katherine Anne Porter, Rachel Mae Ligairi
The Familiar Foreign Country: Reading Mexico In Cormac Mccarthy, Jack Kerouac, And Katherine Anne Porter, Rachel Mae Ligairi
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis examines the discourse of Mexico in the works of three twentieth-century American authors-Cormac McCarthy, Jack Kerouac, and Katherine Anne Porter-in order to analyze representations of Otherness in modernism and postmodernism. I seek to destabilize the dividing line between these periods as well as to show how representation in postmodernity has become more problematic due in large part to the proliferation of consumer culture. Though the Mexico that McCarthy employs in Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) escapes many stereotypes, his Mexico is merely a staging ground that …
Intertextuality In The Fiction Of Cormac Mccarthy, Benjamin J. Burr
Intertextuality In The Fiction Of Cormac Mccarthy, Benjamin J. Burr
Theses and Dissertations
The moral and aesthetic complexity of Cormac McCarthy's fiction demands sophisticated theoretical reading paradigms. Intertextuality informed by poststructuralism is a theoretical approach that enables one to read the moral and aesthetic elements of McCarthy's work in productive ways. McCarthy's work is augmented by its connection to the works of other great artists and writers. As a result, McCarthy's work forces us to read his precedents from a different framework. An examination of the conversation between Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, Jacques Derrida, and Frederic Jameson about Van Gogh's A Pair of Boots creates an intertextual framework for examining the connection between …
Negotiation Through Identification: Elizabeth Tudor's Use Of Sprezzatura In Three Speeches, Alisa Brough
Negotiation Through Identification: Elizabeth Tudor's Use Of Sprezzatura In Three Speeches, Alisa Brough
Theses and Dissertations
Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, weaves the courtier's strategy of sprezzatura throughout her public orations in order to help her identify with her audience of courtiers, scholars, and politicians. Through her use of sprezzatura, Elizabeth woos her audience and transcends the differences of opinion that lead to conflict between the Queen and her audience members. Using Kenneth Burke's theory of rhetoric as identification, this thesis employs rhetorical analysis in order to discover how Queen Elizabeth's use of sprezzatura enables her to portray herself as a humanist scholar, a political servant, and a dedicated defender of her country and thus, identify …
Controversial Politics, Conservative Genre: Rex Stout's Archie-Wolfe Duo And Detective Fiction's Conventional Form, Ammie Cannon
Controversial Politics, Conservative Genre: Rex Stout's Archie-Wolfe Duo And Detective Fiction's Conventional Form, Ammie Cannon
Theses and Dissertations
Rex Stout maintained his popular readership despite the often controversial and radical political content expressed in his detective fiction. His political ideals often made him many enemies. Stances such as his ardent opposition to censorship, racism, Nazism, Germany, Fascism, Communism, McCarthyism, and the unfettered FBI were potentially offensive to colleagues and readers from various political backgrounds. Yet Stout attempted to present radical messages via the content of his detective fiction with subtlety. As a literary traditionalist, he resisted using his fiction as a platform for an often extreme political agenda. Where political messages are apparent in his work, Stout employs …
Digital Storytelling: The Application Of Vichian Theory, Karen Pierotti
Digital Storytelling: The Application Of Vichian Theory, Karen Pierotti
Theses and Dissertations
Storytelling is often looked at as something archaic or something that simpler cultures engage in. However, in our sophisticated and highly technological world storytelling swirls about us though we may not always recognize it. This thesis looks at the phenomenon of digital storytelling that functions to create community on the Internet. In order to ground this phenomenon in theory, I examine the works of Giambattista Vico, the 18th-century Neapolitan philosopher/rhetorician, who lived on the cusp of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. Furthermore, as a teacher of rhetoric to youth, Vico admonished young people to study the arts of …
The Rhetoric Of Persecution: Mormon Crisis Rhetoric From 1838-1871, Zachary L. Largey
The Rhetoric Of Persecution: Mormon Crisis Rhetoric From 1838-1871, Zachary L. Largey
Theses and Dissertations
This study is an attempt to (1) minimize the lack of rhetorical scholarship in Mormon studies, and (2) add to the historical study of rhetoric in nineteenth-century America. Since the Mormon Church's establishment in 1830, sermons have been a vital part of the Church's development into a worldwide institution. From the simple testimonial to the more complex doctrinal explication, early Mormon leaders used the art of preaching to spread their message of God and His glories. But rarely have historians or critics focused on the rhetoric—the persuasive techniques—of these sermons. This, perhaps, stems from early Mormonism's general aversion to the …
The Finest Entertainment: Conscious Observation On Film In Adaptations Of Henry James' The Portrait Of A Lady, The Wings Of The Dove, And Washington Square, Rachael Decker Bailey
The Finest Entertainment: Conscious Observation On Film In Adaptations Of Henry James' The Portrait Of A Lady, The Wings Of The Dove, And Washington Square, Rachael Decker Bailey
Theses and Dissertations
The works of Henry James are renowned for their dense sub-text and the manner in which he leaves his reader to elucidate much of his meaning. In the field of adaptation theory, therefore, James presents somewhat of a problem for the film adaptor: how does one convey on screen James' delicate implications, which are formative to the text without actually existing on the printed page? This project not only works to answer that question, but it also addresses a more serious question: what does adaptation have to offer to the student of literature? In the case of Henry James, the …
Gender And Bilinguals' Creativity, Wendy Baker
Gender And Bilinguals' Creativity, Wendy Baker
Faculty Publications
Research on the influence of gender on language across different cultures has mostly concentrated on qualitive measures of analysis. These measures demonstrate that there are differences in rhetorical and literary style across world Englishes in both the inner and outer circle. Using Biber's multidimensional analysis (1988) to examine a large corpus of world English literatures written in Indian, West African, Britain, Anglo-American and Mexican American varieties of English, this paper examines whether quantitative analyses can also be insightful and useful in the examination of the influence of gender on language and in expanding our understanding of what "bilingual creativity" entails. …
The Benefits Of A For-Credit Course For New Writing Center Staff, Richard Benjamin Crosby
The Benefits Of A For-Credit Course For New Writing Center Staff, Richard Benjamin Crosby
Faculty Publications
Some questions about writing center theory and praxis never seem to change: how do we prepare for our clientele? How do we engage them? What questions should we ask? When should we direct them? And when should we encourage them to direct us? The list goes on. Fortunately, we consider it a virtue that we continue interrogating the same issues. As students of rhetoric, we realize that the answers to these questions often depend on the contexts in which they are asked. Thus, we give ourselves over to principles of adaptability. Instead of establishing rigid, universal rules that do not …