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Articles 1 - 27 of 27
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Human-Computer Interface Design For Online Tutoring: Visual Rhetoric, Pedagogy, And Writing Center Websites, Alice J. Myatt
Human-Computer Interface Design For Online Tutoring: Visual Rhetoric, Pedagogy, And Writing Center Websites, Alice J. Myatt
English Dissertations
This dissertation examines the theory and praxis of taking an expanded concept of the human-computer interface (HCI) and working with the resulting concept to design a writing center website that facilitates online tutoring while fostering a conversational approach for online tutoring sessions. In order to foster a conversational approach, I explore the ways in which interactive digital technologies support the collaborative and communicative nature of online tutoring. I posit that my research will yield a deeper understanding of the visual rhetoric of human-designed computer interfaces in general and writing center online tutoring websites in particular, and will, at the same …
Initiation In The Novellas Of Henry James, Collyn E. Milsted
Initiation In The Novellas Of Henry James, Collyn E. Milsted
English Theses
This Master’s Thesis seeks to explain the process of initiation undergone by Henry James’s characters. Characters are chosen for initiation into forbidden knowledge, and, like the Biblical Adam and Eve, are exiled as a result. Though initiation is erotic, it is not sexual, and society falsely perceives a sexually charged relationship between the initiator and the initiate, also called the complementary pair. The initiate faces exile and death because of his forbidden knowledge. He no longer has a place in his society, which leads to his social death and eventually physical death. James’s reader is initiated along with the characters, …
The Fashioning Of Fanny Fern: A Study Of Sara Willis Parton's Early Career, 1851-1854, Amy S. Porche
The Fashioning Of Fanny Fern: A Study Of Sara Willis Parton's Early Career, 1851-1854, Amy S. Porche
English Dissertations
The purpose of this study is to trace how Sara Willis Parton achieved unprecedented literary celebrity status as Fanny Fern during the first three years of her professional career, 1851-1853. While most critics point to her famously lucrative contract with the most popular newspaper of the 1850s, the New York Ledger, in 1854 as the beginning of her fame, I argue that she had already fully achieved that fame and had done so by writing for small Boston newspapers and publishing a highly successful collection of her articles by 1853. Further, Fern was able to achieve such a high level …
Writing And Wellness, Emotion And Women: Highlighting The Contemporary Uses Of Expressive Writing In The Service Of Students, Cantice G. Greene
Writing And Wellness, Emotion And Women: Highlighting The Contemporary Uses Of Expressive Writing In The Service Of Students, Cantice G. Greene
English Dissertations
In an effort to connect women’s spiritual development to the general call for professors to reconnect significantly with their students, this dissertation argues that expressive writing should remain a staple of the composition curriculum. It suggests that the uses of expressive writing should be expanded and explored by students and professors of composition and that each should become familiar with the link between writing and emotional wellness. In cancer centers, schools of medicine, and pregnancy care centers, writing is being used as a tool of therapy. More than just a technique for helping people cope with the stresses of loss, …
The Southern Gentleman And The Idea Of Masculinity: Figures And Aspects Of The Southern Beau In The Literary Tradition Of The American South, Emmeline Gros
English Dissertations
The American planter has mostly been presented as the epitome of the romantic cavalier legend that could be found in the fiction of John Pendleton Kennedy to Thomas Nelson Page: a man of chivalric manners and good breeding; a man of good social position; a man of wealth and leisure (Concise Oxford Dictionary). A closer scrutiny of the cavalier and genteel ethos of the time, however, reveals the inherent ideological inconsistencies with the idea of the gentleman itself, as the ideal came to be more and more perceived as an illusion and as challenges to traditional gender stereotypes came to …
Early Medieval Rhetoric: Epideictic Underpinnings In Old English Homilies, Jennifer M. Randall
Early Medieval Rhetoric: Epideictic Underpinnings In Old English Homilies, Jennifer M. Randall
English Dissertations
Medieval rhetoric, as a field and as a subject, has largely been under-developed and under-emphasized within medieval and rhetorical studies for several reasons: the disconnect between Germanic, Anglo-Saxon society and the Greco-Roman tradition that defined rhetoric as an art; the problems associated with translating the Old and Middle English vernacular in light of rhetorical and, thereby, Greco-Latin precepts; and the complexities of the medieval period itself with the lack of surviving manuscripts, often indistinct and inconsistent political and legal structure, and widespread interspersion and interpolation of Christian doctrine. However, it was Christianity and its governance of medieval culture that preserved …
Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections In My Story, Vidheyan, And The God Of Small Things, Priya Menon
Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections In My Story, Vidheyan, And The God Of Small Things, Priya Menon
English Dissertations
This project investigates various ways in which resistance is explored by Kamala Das, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Arundhati Roy in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things respec-tively. “Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things” aims to examine the workings and creative subversions of hegemonic discourses of caste, class, gender and color within the local milieu of Kerala, India. By exploring the theoreti-cal apparatuses employed in three diverse texts set in Kerala, this project identifies: firstly, Das’s subversion of Nair Kerala’s sense of gendered and casted normativity in My Story; secondly, Adoor’s …
Turning Back Time: Duration, Simultaneity, And The Timeless In Fitzgerald And Fincher's Benjamin Button, Nathan Wagner
Turning Back Time: Duration, Simultaneity, And The Timeless In Fitzgerald And Fincher's Benjamin Button, Nathan Wagner
English Theses
This MA thesis seeks to apply Henri Bergson’s theory of time to a reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and David Fincher’s film adaptation of the text, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. By applying Bergson’s notions of durée and simultaneity, timeless moments will be seen to emerge in the text and the film. I place Fitzgerald’s text in context with other seminal modernist works in order to provide a study of the importance of the story within its time period. Through Deleuze’s application of Bergson to cinema, I analyze the evolution of the time-image …
Memory, Ancestors, And Activism/Resistance In Charles Chesnutt’S Uncle Julius, Elizabeth J. West
Memory, Ancestors, And Activism/Resistance In Charles Chesnutt’S Uncle Julius, Elizabeth J. West
English Faculty Publications
Presents literary criticism of the book "The Conjure Woman," a collection of short stories by Charles Chesnutt, in which the author examines the figure of Uncle Julius as a depiction of a revered African American folk hero and trickster. The author comments on the role of collective memory and ancestors in African cosmology, the black folk life of pre- and post-Civil War, and the short story "The Goophered Grapevine" in the book.
Fish From Deep Water, Monica R. Burchfield
Fish From Deep Water, Monica R. Burchfield
English Theses
These poems are lyrical narratives dealing primarily with the joys and sufferings of familial relationships in present and past generations, and how one is influenced and haunted by these interactions. There is a particular emphasis placed on the relationship between parent and child. Other poems deal with passion, both in the tangible and spiritual realms. The poems aim to use vivid figurative language to explore complex and sometimes distressing situations and emotions.
"How Silence Best Can Speak": The Distrust Of Speech In George Meredith's Modern Love, Ellen J. Murray
"How Silence Best Can Speak": The Distrust Of Speech In George Meredith's Modern Love, Ellen J. Murray
English Theses
The scarcity of speech in George Meredith’s Modern Love creates a deeply psychological narrative, reflecting a distrust of speech and the effectiveness of language in general. The narrator of the poem exists in a space of ambiguity, both blaming and yearning for speech; in his confusion, he remains largely silent. His silence does not only emphasize the distance between husband and wife but also between language and meaning. Furthermore, the narrator’s distrust of language ultimately exposes a breakdown in his certainty of self and truth.
Opening The Window To Edward Whittemore: Systems That Govern Human Experience, Joseph L. Winland Jr.
Opening The Window To Edward Whittemore: Systems That Govern Human Experience, Joseph L. Winland Jr.
English Theses
Edward Whittemore (1933-1995) is a now almost unknown American writer. This project seeks to bring Edward Whittemore to light. Though he has a simple voice and a subtle but vast knowledge of history, he writes with a fantastic imagination and dramatizes a timely but tragic message. In “Part One” of Sinai Tapestry, Whittemore explores the complex relationship between Chaos and Order through the extravagant lives of his major characters, Plantagenet Strongbow and Skanderbeg Wallenstein. Through a biography of Whittemore’s life and a close analysis of Strongbow’s and Wallenstein’s relationship, I will highlight Whittemore’s depth as an author and thinker, make …
The Visual Rhetoric Of Craftsmanship, Amalia K. Gonzales
The Visual Rhetoric Of Craftsmanship, Amalia K. Gonzales
English Theses
Within the existing research about communicative devices within visual rhetoric, most published research exists regarding two-dimensional design such as documents and media graphics. In this paper, I discuss the rhetorical value of handmade items and specifically speak to the ethos that three-dimensional, tangible handmade products inherently possess based upon their visual aesthetic.
"Sugarman Done Fly Away": Kindred Threads Of Female Madness And Male Flight In The Novels Of Toni Morrison And Classical Greek Myth, Ebony O. Mcneal
"Sugarman Done Fly Away": Kindred Threads Of Female Madness And Male Flight In The Novels Of Toni Morrison And Classical Greek Myth, Ebony O. Mcneal
English Theses
Madness in women exists as a trope within the literature from the earliest of civilizations. This theme is evident and appears to possess a link with male dysfunction in several of Toni Morrison’s texts. Lack of maternal accountability has long served as a symptom of female mental instability as imposed by patriarchal thought. Mothers who have neglected or harmed their young across cultures and time periods have been forcibly branded with the mark of madness. Female characters in five of Morrison’s novels bear a striking resemblance to the female archetypes of ancient Greece. This paper will demonstrate the kindred strands …
William Shakespeare's Parable Of "Is" And "Seems": Ironies Of God's Providence In Hamlet And Measure For Measure, Joseph L. Kelly
William Shakespeare's Parable Of "Is" And "Seems": Ironies Of God's Providence In Hamlet And Measure For Measure, Joseph L. Kelly
English Theses
This thesis examines Hamlet and Measure for Measure as related “problem plays.” In these plays, Shakespeare uniquely combines the genre of parable and the literary device of irony as a means to involve his audience in the experience of ordeal and deliverance that both reorients the protagonists’ personal, political, and ultimately theological assumptions and prompts spiritual insight in the spectator. As in a parable, a spiritual dimension opens subtly alongside each story to inform the play’s action and engage the spectator in the underlying theological discourse. Irony invites the audience to see the disparity between pretended or mistaken reality and …
Un-Fairytales: Realism And Black Feminist Rhetoric In The Works Of Jessie Fauset, Danielle L. Tillman
Un-Fairytales: Realism And Black Feminist Rhetoric In The Works Of Jessie Fauset, Danielle L. Tillman
English Theses
I am baffled each time someone asks me, “Who is Jessie Fauset?” As I delved into critical work written on Fauset, I found her critics dismissed her work because they read them as bad fairytales that showcase the lives of middle-class Blacks. I respectfully disagree. It is true that her novels concentrate on the Black middle-class; they also focus on the realities of Black women, at a time when they were branching out of their homes and starting careers, not out of financial necessity but arising from their desire for working. They establish the start of what Patricia Hill Collins …
William Apess And Sherman Alexie: Imagining Indianness In (Non)Fiction, Gabriel M. Andrews
William Apess And Sherman Alexie: Imagining Indianness In (Non)Fiction, Gabriel M. Andrews
English Theses
This paper proposes the notion that early Native American autobiographical writings from such authors as William Apess provide rich sources for understanding syncretic authors and their engagement with dominant Anglo-Christian culture. Authors like William Apess construct an understanding of what constitutes Indianness in similar and different ways to the master narratives produced for Native peoples. By studying this nonfiction, critics can gain a broader understanding of contemporary Indian fiction like that of Sherman Alexie. The similarities and differences between the strategies of these two authors reveal entrenched stereotypes lasting centuries as well as instances of bold re-signification, a re-definition of …
Guyon's Sensitive Appetite, Matthew J. Davis
Guyon's Sensitive Appetite, Matthew J. Davis
English Theses
This Master’s Thesis seeks to explain the internal conflicts faced by Guyon, the titular hero of Book II of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Starting with Thomas Aquinas’ designations of the sensitive versus the intellectual appetite, I show that Guyon struggles to maintain the dominance of his intellectual appetite as he puts his vaunted temperance to a series of tests. The hero manages to appease his sensitive appetite through the vice of curiositas, yet the power of his sensitive appetite demands dramatic and violent acts of repression to quash it in Mammon’s Cave and in the Bower of Bliss. Guyon’s intellectual …
From Rivers To Gardens: The Ambivalent Role Of Nature In My ?Ntonia, O Pioneers!, And Death Comes To The Archbishop, Graham Kirkland
From Rivers To Gardens: The Ambivalent Role Of Nature In My ?Ntonia, O Pioneers!, And Death Comes To The Archbishop, Graham Kirkland
English Theses
Though her early writing owes much to nineteenth-century American Realism, Willa Cather experiments with male and female literary traditions while finding her own modern literary voice. In the process Cather gives nature an ambivalent role in My Ántonia, O Pioneers!, and Death Comes to the Archbishop. She produces a tension between rivers and gardens, places where nature and culture converge. Like Mary Austin and Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather confronts the boundaries between humans and nature.
The Pleiadic Age Of Stuart Poesie: Restoration Uranography, Dryden's Judicial Astrology, And The Fate Of Anne Killigrew, Morgan Alexander Brown
The Pleiadic Age Of Stuart Poesie: Restoration Uranography, Dryden's Judicial Astrology, And The Fate Of Anne Killigrew, Morgan Alexander Brown
English Theses
The following Thesis is a survey of seventeenth-century uranography, with specific focus on the use of the Pleiades and Charles's Wain by English poets and pageant writers as astrological ciphers for the Stuart dynasty (1603-1649; 1660-1688). I then use that survey to address the problem of irony in John Dryden's 1685 Pindaric elegy, "To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew," since the longstanding notion of what the Pleiades signify in Dryden's ode is problematic from an astronomical and astrological perspective. In his elegiac ode, Dryden translates a young female artist to the Pleiades to actuate her apotheosis, not for …
The Presence Of Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage And Gaze In Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde And In Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 Film, Enoch Shane Smith
The Presence Of Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage And Gaze In Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde And In Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 Film, Enoch Shane Smith
English Theses
For many years, theorists have turned to popular movies and books to help interpret the difficult principles of Jacques Lacan. However, one story that has gotten very little attention is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and its derivative body of film adaptations. Both the novella and Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 film are a small part of an intertextual body of work which contains scenes that play out the Lacanian principles of the mirror stage and the gaze very well. Since art imitates life, an in depth exploration of the way that these scenes play out …
A Woman's Touch In F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night: Pulling The Women Out Of The Background, Merry B. Luong
A Woman's Touch In F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night: Pulling The Women Out Of The Background, Merry B. Luong
English Theses
This is a critical study of F. Scott Fitzgerald‟s Tender Is the Night focusing primarily on the lack of examination and criticism surrounding the women characters. Included are reviews of Fitzgerald‟s personal and professional life from the publication of his critically acclaimed The Great Gatsby until the publication of his last complete novel, Tender Is the Night, discussion of the contemporary and current criticism of the novel, and a feminist reading of the novel in order to focus more significant critical attention upon the women characters in order to create a fuller understanding of Fitzgerald‟s novel.
J. R. R. Tolkien, War, And Nationalism, Amanda J. Johnston
J. R. R. Tolkien, War, And Nationalism, Amanda J. Johnston
English Dissertations
Tolkien may not have intentionally created his fictive nations to mirror real nations, but his world certainly bears the scars of his experiences of war. The World Wars heightened his fear of losing everything that he loved about his local culture through literal obliteration or assimilation into another culture in the event of England’s losing. Tolkien saw the nation as a social construct that potentially could minimize losses, if not wholly protect local culture from the forces that threatened to destroy it. Yet he also perceived the nation’s limitations in its ability to protect culture. A nation could grow too …
Persistent Pasts: Historical Palimpsests In Nineteenth-Century British Prose, Tamara Gosta
Persistent Pasts: Historical Palimpsests In Nineteenth-Century British Prose, Tamara Gosta
English Dissertations
Persistent Pasts: Historical Palimpsests in Nineteenth-Century Prose traces Victorian historical discourse with specific attention to the works of Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot and their relation to historicism in earlier works by Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg. I argue that the Victorian response to the tense relation between the materialist Enlightenment and the idealist rhetoric of Romanticism marks a decidedly ethical turn in Victorian historical discourse. The writers introduce the dialectic of enlightened empiricism and romantic idealism to invoke the historical imagination as an ethical response to the call of the past. I read the dialectic and its invitation …
Ford Madox Ford's Good Soldier In A Modern World, Constance Hinds
Ford Madox Ford's Good Soldier In A Modern World, Constance Hinds
English Theses
Ford often wrote about virtuous gentlemen ruined by the modern society he saw developing around him. While Ford Madox Ford was writing The Good Soldier, ther was a sense of displacement in England and the class system was starting to crumble. Edward Ashburnham, one of the two male protagonists in The Good Soldier, is described as a Chevalier Bayard and there are definitely some similarities between Ashburnham and Bayard. For instance, both men lived during periods of great societal change and both faithfully served their countries. However, the feudal lifestyle that was appropriate for Bayard in the fifteenth-century is unavailable …
The Ministry Of Passion And Meditation: Robert Southwell's Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares And The Adaptation Of Continental Influences, Mark Russell Benedict
The Ministry Of Passion And Meditation: Robert Southwell's Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares And The Adaptation Of Continental Influences, Mark Russell Benedict
English Theses
In his most popular prose work, Mary Magdalens Funeral Teares (1591), English Jesuit Robert Southwell adapts the Mary Magdalene tradition by incorporating the meditative practices of St. Ignatius Loyola coupled with the Petrarchan language of poetry. Thus, he creates a prose work that ministered to Catholic souls, appealed to Protestant audiences, and initiated the literature of tears in England. Southwell readapts the traditional image of Mary Magdalene for a Catholic Early Modern audience by utilizing the techniques of Jesuit meditation, which later flourished in the weeper texts of Richard Crashaw and George Herbert. His vividly imagined scenes also employ the …
The 'To Be, Or Not To Be' Speech: Evidence, Conventional Wisdom, And The Editing Of Hamlet, James Hirsh
The 'To Be, Or Not To Be' Speech: Evidence, Conventional Wisdom, And The Editing Of Hamlet, James Hirsh
English Faculty Publications
Substantial, conspicuous, and varied pieces of evidence demonstrate that Shakespeare designed the 'To be, or not to be' speech to be perceived by experienced playgoers of his time as a feigned soliloquy. Plentiful evidence within the play implies that Hamlet pretends to speak to himself but actually intends the speech itself or an account of it to reach the ears of Claudius in order to mislead his enemy about his state of mind. External evidence demonstrates that experienced playgoers of the period did indeed make the inference intended by Shakespeare. I pointed out much of this evidence in a 1981 …