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Emerging Media In 18th Century Literature: How Jane Austen Invented Facebook, Rebecca Shaver Dec 2012

Emerging Media In 18th Century Literature: How Jane Austen Invented Facebook, Rebecca Shaver

Honors Theses

The focus on the downfalls and misunderstandings of the Austen anthology has allowed critics to ignore her incredible ability to scientifically dissect the intricate workings of social circles and networks comprised of psychologically accurate characters and interactions. For instance, her portrayals of gender roles (heterosocial/sexual and homosocial/sexual) within those circles were so apt that they often still true today. The transcendental human nature of individuals like Emma's Emma Woodhouse and Mansfield Park's Fanny Price causes us to question how Austen amplifies and enlightens our understanding of how modern social networks, like Facebook or Twitter, stem directly from historically complex affective …


The Past And Its Impact On The Present: The Development Of Gender And Ethnic Identity In Kingston's "Woman Warrior", Mukherjee's "Jasmine" And Kincaid's "Lucy", Rachel M. Puckett Dec 2012

The Past And Its Impact On The Present: The Development Of Gender And Ethnic Identity In Kingston's "Woman Warrior", Mukherjee's "Jasmine" And Kincaid's "Lucy", Rachel M. Puckett

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis analyzes three immigrant narratives and exemplifies the impact that the past has on the main character’s cultural and gender development. During the course of each narrative reflections of the past intrude on the present immigrant experience and remind the characters of who they are and where they came from. Kingston’s Woman Warrior revolves around her cultural past and the psychological impression that her mother’s immigrant experience has left on her. In Jasmine Mukherjee’s main character embarks on a self-reflecting journey that highlights the past that influences her ever changing identity. Finally, in Lucy a young woman is determined …


“Bury Your Head Between My Knees And Seek Pardon”: Gender, Sexuality, And National Conflict In John Okada’S No-No Boy, Patricia A. Thomas Aug 2012

“Bury Your Head Between My Knees And Seek Pardon”: Gender, Sexuality, And National Conflict In John Okada’S No-No Boy, Patricia A. Thomas

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In “‘Bury Your Head Between My Knees and Seek Pardon’: Gender, Sexuality, and National Conflict in John Okada’s 1957 novel, No-No Boy,” I analyze the ways in which the complexities of gendered sexuality expressed by protagonist Ichiro Yamada intersect with post-World War II and Internment-era national identifications for American nisei. I demonstrate that this apparent story of one man’s pursuit to resolve his conflict over national identity is, in reality, a tour de force of literary subversion that not only destabilizes the subterfuge that surrounded internment but also—in its deliberate failure to resolve questions of national conflict on the …


The Virgin's Kiss: Gender, Leprosy, And Romance In The Life Of St. Frideswide, Gary Stephen Fuller Jun 2012

The Virgin's Kiss: Gender, Leprosy, And Romance In The Life Of St. Frideswide, Gary Stephen Fuller

Theses and Dissertations

The longer thirteenth-century Middle English verse life of Saint Frideswide found in the collection of saints' lives known as the South English Legendary (SEL) narrates an event unique to medieval hagiography. In the poem, a leper asks the virgin saint to kiss him with her "sweet mouth," which she does in spite of her feelings of considerable shame, and the leper is healed. The erotic nature of the leper's request, Frideswide's reluctance to grant it, and her shame throughout the incident represent a significant departure from the twelfth-century Latin texts on which the SEL version of the saint's …


Gender Politics In The Novels Of Eliza Haywood, Susan Muse Apr 2012

Gender Politics In The Novels Of Eliza Haywood, Susan Muse

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study investigates how Eliza Haywood addressed ideological conflicts about gender produced by modernization in early eighteenth-century England. Expanding Michael McKeon's theory of the novel to include "questions of gender," I address a wide sample of novels in order to show how Haywood's writing developed during her long career. Her first preoccupation was the sexual double standard that defined "fallen women" as society's exiles. Influenced by the "she-tragedy" of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, Haywood wrote novels that elicited pity for fallen women and searched for reasons to explain their condition. Haywood's writing became overtly political with her …


Gender, Class, And The Social Order In Late Elizabethan Drama, Mihoko Suzuki Mar 2012

Gender, Class, And The Social Order In Late Elizabethan Drama, Mihoko Suzuki

Mihoko Suzuki

An abstract for this item is not available.


Transgender Transitions: Sex/Gender Binaries In The Digital Age, Kay Siebler Jan 2012

Transgender Transitions: Sex/Gender Binaries In The Digital Age, Kay Siebler

English Faculty Publications

Contemporary representations of transgendered people often reinforce rigid gender binaries of masculinity and femininity, leading transgendered individuals to feel they must seek out hormones or surgery to “correctly align” their bodies with their gender. Cultural texts (e.g., films, television, Internet, digital texts) reinforce this “pre-op or post-op” ideology for trans identity. The pre-op or post-op MTF or FTM binary mandates an alignment with the heterosexual gender system (feminine female or masculine male). In this article, the author focuses on trans identities and how representations codify the need or desire for surgery and hormones and examines the paradoxical reification of gender …


The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson Jan 2012

The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Atwood's depiction of gender in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In an interview from 1972, Margaret Atwood spoke on survival: "People see two alternatives. You can be part of the machine or you can be something that gets run over by it. And I think there has to be a third thing." I assert that Atwood depicts this "third thing" through her characters who navigate between the binaries of "masculine" and "feminine" in a third realm of gender. As the female characters—regardless of their passive or aggressive behavior—engage in a quest for agency, …


A Law And Literature Approach To Stumped By Debora Threedy, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem Jan 2012

A Law And Literature Approach To Stumped By Debora Threedy, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In this response, I will begin by identifying questions and issues about Stumped that might present themselves from law in literature and law as literature perspectives. This analysis will be followed by a discussion of the play from a particular law and narrative approach, one that ideologically is allied with feminist jurisprudence and critical race studies. Finally, I will conclude by examining the play in connection with scholarship on the cultural study of law, specifically emphasizing ways in which law and literature mutually constitute one another as opposed to being distinct categories of knowledge.


Take A Third Option: Multigender In Middlesex, Cohen M. Edenfield Jan 2012

Take A Third Option: Multigender In Middlesex, Cohen M. Edenfield

The Corinthian

Jeffery Eugenides’ Middlesex presents a protagonist, Calliope, coming to terms with hir gender identity. For some critics, the final stage of this development is Calliope’s return to hir family and decision to live as a man. By this understanding, they mistakenly conflate the end of that narrative with the narrative of the framing device, set in the present. They ignore the fact that Cal’s time as a firmly-defined man is even worse than hir time as a woman, a sad reality that has not changed in the present.


Review Of Monsters, Gender, And Sexuality In Medieval English Literature By Dana Oswald, Jeff Massey Ph.D. Jan 2012

Review Of Monsters, Gender, And Sexuality In Medieval English Literature By Dana Oswald, Jeff Massey Ph.D.

Faculty Works: ENG (1995-2016)

The perceived gender, overt sexuality, and frightening reproductive potential of medieval monsters are placed under the cultural mico- and macro-scope in this revised dissertations, an ambitious and provocative (if sometimes self-limited) addition to the growing field of monster studies. As with most recent explorations in the filed, Dana Oswald's argument (repeated with force and regularity throughout) relives heavily on the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, focusing on monsters as embodiments of cultural anxiety. However, the haunting traces of monstrosity collected by Oswald lead her to proclaim that not only does the monster always escape (as theorized by Cohen), but that …


"I Is An Other": An Exploration Of The Development Of Childhood And Adolescent Self-Concept, Jessica Lebovits Jan 2012

"I Is An Other": An Exploration Of The Development Of Childhood And Adolescent Self-Concept, Jessica Lebovits

Senior Projects Spring 2012

A multidisciplinary project that combines original empirical research with an analysis of two Modernist novels, The Waves by Virginia Woolf and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.


Kathryn Schwarz, What You Will: Gender, Contract, And Shakespearean Social Space, Niamh J. O'Leary Jan 2012

Kathryn Schwarz, What You Will: Gender, Contract, And Shakespearean Social Space, Niamh J. O'Leary

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Subversive Liminality And Ideological Warfare: The Zombie Mash-Up As Resistance To Hypermasculine Revenge Narratives Post-9/11, Veronica L. Cooper Jan 2012

Subversive Liminality And Ideological Warfare: The Zombie Mash-Up As Resistance To Hypermasculine Revenge Narratives Post-9/11, Veronica L. Cooper

Online Theses and Dissertations

This project plots the coincidence of the "zombie renaissance" and system-justifying nationalist rhetoric post-9/11. The project discusses this cultural cross-section with zombie mash-up fiction, using masculinity and trauma theories, in an attempt to illuminate the motives of "us vs. them" rhetoric and hypermasculine revenge narratives in the post-9/11 decade. First, I use Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim (2009) to examine liminality as subversive counter-discourse to the masculine hegemony post-9/11. Second, I use Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) to look at the effects of revenge culture and how non-emphasized femininity and hegemonic (hyper)masculinity co-construct each other.


"What Shall We Use To Fill The Empty Spaces?": Displacement In Frank Norris's Mcteague, Jennifer Bugna Lambeth Jan 2012

"What Shall We Use To Fill The Empty Spaces?": Displacement In Frank Norris's Mcteague, Jennifer Bugna Lambeth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Author's abstract: McTeague, Frank Norris's Naturalistc text written in 1899, depicts the corruption of a California couple due to influences outside of their control. In positioning Trina McTeague as a woman unable to identify with either of the two major feminine ideologies of the day, the Angel in the House and the New Woman, this paper examines her identity as conflicted because of this lack of autonomy. Her failure to identify herself leads to a mental break that is reflected in the domestic spaces she inhabits. The places she lives each become smaller and dirtier reflecting her diminished mental capacity. …