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English Language and Literature

Virginia Commonwealth University

Theses and Dissertations

Culture

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Notes Toward A Personal Afrofuturism, Jalen T. Adams Jan 2024

Notes Toward A Personal Afrofuturism, Jalen T. Adams

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is penned by a young adult who is generally confused about a lot of things regarding life, but has one singular focus that is perhaps larger than life—trying to find the bridge between a future already lived, and a past yet to happen. These are his findings so far.


I Am An Author: Performing Authorship In Literary Culture, Justin R. Greene Jan 2018

I Am An Author: Performing Authorship In Literary Culture, Justin R. Greene

Theses and Dissertations

Authorship is not merely an act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard; it is a social identity performance that includes the use of multiple media. Authors must be hyper- visible to cut through the dearth of information, entertainment options, and personae vying for attention in our supersaturated media environment. As they enter the literary world, writers consciously create characters and narratives around themselves, and through the consistent and believable enactment of these features, authors are born. In this dissertation, I analyze the performance of authorship in U.S. literary culture through an interdisciplinary framework. My work pulls from …


Blues Trope As A Cultural Intersection In Alice Walker's The Temple Of My Familiar And Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues, Julia Leuthardt Apr 2012

Blues Trope As A Cultural Intersection In Alice Walker's The Temple Of My Familiar And Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues, Julia Leuthardt

Theses and Dissertations

Though bound historically through hundreds of years, the African-Native American relation has not received much attention by scholars of literature; hence, the emphasis of this thesis is to investigate the literary portrayal of the interethnic relation between African Americans and Native Americans through the blues trope. The blues trope provides an intriguing literary platform for the psychological and physical struggles in finding an identity within such a diverse multiethnic society like the United States. For African American writer Alice Walker and Native American author Sherman Alexie the blues trope is a successful literary device in expressing long lost and rediscovered …


Bridging The Gap: Why Many High School Writers Are Not Successful In College Composition Classes, Amy Stutzman Park Jan 2006

Bridging The Gap: Why Many High School Writers Are Not Successful In College Composition Classes, Amy Stutzman Park

Theses and Dissertations

It may be useful to identify this so-called gap that seems to plague first-year college writers before attempting to discover why it exists. In order to identify the gap, I want to define these writers who are leaving high school and finding difficulty in college composition classes. Patricia Bizzell defines basic writers as "those who are least well prepared for college" (Bizzell "What Happens When Basic Writers Come to College?" 294). I'd like to broaden her definition of basic writers and use the term "inexperienced writers" as the field now defines them. In order to fully understand why most college …