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Uneven Ground: Figurations Of The Rural Modern In The U.S. South, 1890-1945, Benjamin S. Child Jan 2014

Uneven Ground: Figurations Of The Rural Modern In The U.S. South, 1890-1945, Benjamin S. Child

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

New modernist studies has opened wide the discussion about what modernism means, when it begins, and, compellingly for the purposes of this project, where it occurs. Exploring intersections between modernization, modernism, labor, and segregation in the agricultural South, this dissertation demonstrates how the effects of nascent industrialization, emergent technologies, and "modern" thought are animated by figures and spaces associated with--or performing--versions of rurality. The project is divided into three major sections. In the first, I suggest that the contradictions of African American life in the post-Reconstruction world are parsed in the period's literature through the presence of a veiled georgic …


Cold War Pulp: Gender And Fiction In The Age Of Liberation, James Lewis Hood Jan 2014

Cold War Pulp: Gender And Fiction In The Age Of Liberation, James Lewis Hood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The early decades of the twentieth century saw incredible changes in both literacy and general publishing. Once literature had been the domain of the elite, but now it was the daily pleasure of compeople. The changes in American culture in the middle of the century, combined with this revolution in publishing and literacy, combined to produce texts frequently referred to as pulp-fiction, works easily and cheaply produced for a mass-market. This market actively catered to diverse interests, perhaps most significantly the sexually alienated. Works of gay and feminist pulp fiction served to show alienated gay men and women, as well …


Silk Road: A Novel, Elizabeth Mckay Mcfadden Jan 2014

Silk Road: A Novel, Elizabeth Mckay Mcfadden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Silk Road: A Novel


Southern Bestsellers In The Twenty-First Century, Jodie Free Jan 2014

Southern Bestsellers In The Twenty-First Century, Jodie Free

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the concept of bestsellers in the twenty-first century, with a particular focus on six novels written by contemporary southern authors. These novels are analyzed through the lens of social consciousness, with attention to how they reflect current social issues, and how they engage with and subvert cultural and literary stereotypes. Bestsellers are books that are widely read, shared and discussed, often because they connect to concerns about identity; this study speculates on the influence of bestsellers on national and regional reader identity, specifically race, gender and class. Chapter I explores feminine roles in Lee Smith's The Last …


The Ghost Of Ravishment That Lingers In The Land: The Beginnings Of Environmentalism In Seraph On The Suwanee And Go Down, Moses, Elisabeth Anne Wagner Jan 2014

The Ghost Of Ravishment That Lingers In The Land: The Beginnings Of Environmentalism In Seraph On The Suwanee And Go Down, Moses, Elisabeth Anne Wagner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner are recognized for their environmental writing. However, few scholars have acknowledged the sophisticated environmentalism present in Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee and Faulkner's fictional depiction of Lafayette County in Go Down, Moses. This thesis seeks to prove that Hurston and Faulkner were keenly aware of the ecological problems of their hometowns through a close reading of each book alongside the environmental history each book was based on, Eatonville, Florida and Lafayette County, Mississippi respectively. Each author's distinct regional environmental knowledge helped Hurston and Faulkner to see larger national and global problems with using land …


Modern(Izing) Burial In Interwar American Literature, Victoria Marie Bryan Jan 2014

Modern(Izing) Burial In Interwar American Literature, Victoria Marie Bryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to study literary representations of interwar American deathways as reflections of modernity. The study of burial in United States history tends to focus on mid- to late-nineteenth century movements that distance the dead from the living. This dissertation argues that these practices left Americans ill-equipped to process the influx of death from the conflict areas of World War I, keen to allow the further development of the funeral industry during the interwar period, and anxious about the certain rise in death tolls that would result from World War II. Interwar literature, therefore, exhibits a difficulty in meaning-making …


Eleven Criminals: Stories, Brendan Steffen Jan 2014

Eleven Criminals: Stories, Brendan Steffen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a work of fiction about criminality and masculinity. It explores all kinds of crimes, both real and imagined.


“For He Contained Within Him A Largenesss Of Spirit:” The Duality Of Billy’S Spirit, The Hope For Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy’S Border Trilogy, Jessica Y. Spearman Jan 2014

“For He Contained Within Him A Largenesss Of Spirit:” The Duality Of Billy’S Spirit, The Hope For Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy’S Border Trilogy, Jessica Y. Spearman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper focuses on the contradictory merging of the differentiating forces that drive the natural world and the people in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, with the most prominent being Billy’s persistent naïve view of the world as he grows from a boy to a man on his journey. The Border Trilogy chronicles the coming of age journey of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. The second installment, The Crossing, focuses on the various dichotomies that construct the natural world—all of which are mirrored in Billy’s relationships with the mystical she-wolf, his brother, Boyd, the various people that he meets on his …


Folklore For A New Generation: Charles Chesnutt's Updated Trickster Figure, Peter Mccollum Jan 2014

Folklore For A New Generation: Charles Chesnutt's Updated Trickster Figure, Peter Mccollum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Amidst a surge of plantation fiction writing during the era of American Realism, Charles Chesnutt was arguably one of the most controversial yet prolific authors to address the recent advent of slavery. The Conjure Woman was a publication of seven frame narratives that employed the traditional style of a former slave telling tales of “the old days,” and though Chesnutt's work may have mirrored such authors as Thomas Nelson Page, the tales broke from tradition with surprisingly stark accounts that are clearly based on Chesnutt's own conversations with former slaves. Much like another contemporary, Joel Chandler Harris, Chesnutt looks backward …