Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Must Pay Now, David C. Perkins

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

These poems attempt to stand amidst the towering shadows of Enlightenment. One of these pillars involves the newfound land from a collective western European vantage and these lands are called the Americas. This space is where these poems are located. They suckle at the monolithic breasts of Enlightened Romance as did Romulus and Remus to the She-Wolf. The poems in their own originality engage with writers such as Jonathan Edwards, Alice Notley, Susan Howe, Frank O’Hara, William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, Christina Rossetti, William Blake, and John Cage. If there ever was such a thread in tradition, these people might …

"Writing 6 Days Out Of 7": The Publishing History Of Mrs. E. Burke Collins, Deidre A. Johnson

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Recasting Genre In Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays, Christina Ilona Hunter

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates Tennessee Williams’s earliest full-length plays, also known as the apprentice plays—Candles to the Sun, Fugitive Kind, Not About Nightingales, Spring Storm, and Stairs to the Roof—by comparing, contrasting and contextualizing them in relation to Daniel Chandler’s generic criteria of drama; namely, narrative, characterization, setting, topics, iconography, and staging techniques. The present study also draws upon an extensive body of scholarship pertaining to genre theory, Williams’s cultural contemporaries, and the historical and psychological backdrop of Depression-era America. In these early plays, Williams diverged sharply from the dramatic generic conventions of his day, manipulating them in new …

History And Transnational Identities In Junot Díaz’S The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Brian Joseph Flores

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of my thesis is to analyze Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and evaluate the role literature plays within the larger context of the relationship among the different countries and cultures in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the place historical events play within this understanding. In Díaz’s novel, there is an understanding of the presence of multiple cultural identities. This awareness of multiple cultural identities leads to the difficulty the characters encounter when trying understanding themselves as individuals. On a much larger scale, the characters also try to understand their cultural, social, and historical …

The Young Adult Addiction Novel: A Modern Tragedy, Carrie Rosson Hicks

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis defines tragedy and introduces the young adult addiction novel as a form of modern tragedy. The tragedy genre has altered drastically throughout the ages. The new brands of tragedy reflects the vastly different society in which modern readers live, whereas, original tragedies focused on royalty or political leaders and were often written in verse until the eighteenth. This thesis examines Ellen Hopkins’ Crank (2004) and Melvin Burgess’ Smack (1996). The examination found that Crank is written in free verse, not as a tribute to the great poets of old, but as a way to add emphasis to words, …

Boxed Up, Alicia Raymond

Theses & Honors Papers

The purpose of this thesis is to conduct an examination through creative nonfiction of the definition of home and how I personally define and apply this definition to my own life. In the nine essays serving as my thesis, collectively entitled "Boxed Up," I have delved into the definitions of home and how it applies to my family, my experiences and encounters with people around me, and the twelve times that I have moved. The sense and definition of a home has a strong tie to where someone grew up and to what culture one acclimates oneself. There is also …

How The World Turns Quietly, Dana N. Boyer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis is composed of original poems written while studying both writing and literature at the University of Nebraska. The introduction partially discusses the role that women have played in writing in the past century. It discusses the poetry of Elizabeth Spires, and the prose of Virginia Woolf and Tillie Olsen. More specifically, it focuses on the work that these authors have done on the subject of silence, focusing on whom and what have conspired to work against authors, specifically female ones. These obstacles include economic standing, gender, and emotional issues. The introduction then branches out to discuss the specific …

Wordsworth's Decline: Self-Editing And Editing The Self, Kenneth E. Morrison

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In critical discourse surrounding the poetry of William Wordsworth, it has become generally acceptable to describe the course of the poet’s career by means of a theory of “decline.” In its most common form, this theory argues that Wordsworth’s best poetry was written during one “Great Decade” (1798-1807)—an isolated epoch of prolificacy and genius. His subsequent works, it is argued, neither surpass nor equal his initial efforts; the course of his career after 1808 may be best described in terms of declivity, ebb, and decline.

Due to its ideological complicity with the very texts it engages, and due to its …

Composing Ourselves: Utilizing Literacy Narratives To Promote Knowledge And Reflection In Preservice Secondary English Teachers, Cheryl Henderson Almeda

Dissertations

My research entails examining and interrogating the literacy narratives written by six preservice secondary English teachers before their first semester of teaching. After writing their literacy narratives, these teachers worked together in two focus groups to consider, celebrate, and interrogate their memories they recorded in their narratives. They shared conversations which focused on their reflections, their teaching strategies, and the ideas they embraced as newly forming teachers.

This study considers claims made by Dewey (1933), Lortie (1975), Schulman (1986), and others, who emphasize the importance of learning through observation and the intuitive nature of reflective learning and teaching. It emphasizes …

And When I Die And Other Prose, Ralph Brandon Buckner Iii

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis consists of the first chapter of my novel, two short stories, and two nonfiction essays. These pieces explore the tensions of family, love, and sexual orientation. The most prominent theme that connects each work is the main character’s search for control in his life. In the introduction to this thesis, I critically analyze three novels that focus on characters trying to regain stability in their lives after the death of someone close to them, and then I have discussed how these novels shaped my thesis in terms of theme, mood, and conflict.

The Conservative Conversation, Heather Hall

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The conservative movement is defined by its ideology as well as its rhetoric. Richard Weaver’s conversion to the Right offers an opportunity to define conservatism and conservative rhetoric through his hierarchy of argumentation, and his examination of Plato’s Phaedrus allows an examination of the speaker’s nature and the nature of rhetoric. Glenn Beck, one of today’s most controversial conservative representatives, also deserves examination for his ideology and rhetoric. Both Richard Weaver and Glenn Beck bear scrutiny as influential members of the conservative movement and the role their rhetoric has in the conservative conversation today.

Implicit And Explicit: Sexual Awakening In Summer And Forever, Katie Fredrickson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Edith Wharton’s Summer and Judy Blume’s Forever, although written more than fifty years apart, are strikingly similar in that both feature young, female characters who come of age during the novel. Both girls have important experiences as they mature, including their initiation into sex. As the two characters come of age, their experiences with sexuality and the consequences that follow shape them and the rest of their lives. It is also significant to look at how the authors portray the different awakenings, Wharton only implicitly hinting at what Blume quite clearly spells out. Ultimately, each girl’s sexual awakening and the …

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 …

Beloved, Thou Hast Brought Me Many Flowers And Sifting Through The Ruins: An Analysis Of Two Chamber Song Cycles By Libby Larsen, Juline Erika Barol-Gilmore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

American composer Libby Larsen is one of the most active, prolific composers living today. Although she is known for composing in many musical genres, her vocal works are among her most recognized compositions. When selecting song texts, Libby Larsen carefully chooses poems that speak to her personally, both in the rhythm of the language and in the text’s depth of meaning and spirit. In addition, a large number of her vocal works are based on texts by or about women.

In sum, authors and poets have profoundly influenced Larsen, specifically in her chamber song cycles Beloved, Thou Hast Brought Me …

Murder Will Out: James Hogg's Use Of The Bier-Right In His Minor Works And Confessions, Tanya Ann Terry

Theses and Dissertations

In The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), James Hogg uses the uncanny trope of the bier-right, a medieval superstitious belief of Christian origin that a murdered corpse will bleed in the presence or at the touch of the actual murderer, to negotiate his struggle with fading belief in local superstitions and religious faith in the Scottish Borders. Examining the origins of the bier-right, court cases involving the bier-right, and Hogg's minor works using the bier-right I offer a comparison of how Hogg manipulates and morphs this trope in Confessions. I also argue that the main …

Review Of Bohemia In America, 1858-1920 By Joanna Levin, Sarah Wadsworth

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Crooked Median, Monica Zarazua

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Words search. There are specific points designated by written language, where one might stand for just a little while until the satisfaction of a pattern is revealed. In this collection of stories, one of the forces that serves as a catalyst for this search is the outside gaze. The gaze exerts itself onto characters. The characters may or may not be conscious of it, may or may not welcome it, but they must grapple with it. The gaze projects its needs and desires onto the characters. It seeks to control them, and it desires to be viewed with admiration, lowered …

Review Of Periodicals And Publishers: The Newspaper And Journal Trade 1750-1914, Barbara Fitzpatrick

Barbara L. Fitzpatrick

No abstract provided.

Challenges And Strategies Of Mobile Advertising In India, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Advertising is paid communication through a medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, the Internet and today’s growing mobile advertising. Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, on the sides of buses, heard in telephone hold messages and instore PA systems but get paid for reading SMS on our mobile phones .It is the new way of marketing strategy for reaching subscribers. Mobile advertising is the business of encouraging …

Changing Mutual Perception Of Television News Viewers And Program Makers In India- A Case Study Of Cnn-Ibn And Its Unique Initiative Of Citizen Journalism, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The Indian television system is one of the most extensive systems in the world. Terrestrial broadcasting, which has been the sole preserve of the government, provides television coverage to over 90% of India's 900 million people. By the end of 1996 nearly 50 million households had television sets. International satellite broadcasting, introduced in 1991, has swept across the country because of the rapid proliferation of small scale cable systems. By the end of 1996, Indians could view dozens of foreign and local channels and the competition for audiences and advertising revenues was one of the hottest in the world. In …

Merit Beyond Any Already Published: Austen And Authorship In The Romantic Age, Rebecca Lee Jensen Ogden

Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades there have been many attempts to pull Austen into the fold of high Romantic literature. On one level, these thematic comparisons are useful, for Austen has long been anachronistically treated as separate from the Romantic tradition. In the past, her writings have essentially straddled Romantic classification, labeled either as hangers-on in the satiric eighteenth-century literary tradition or as early artifacts of a kind of proto-Victorianism. To a large extent, scholars have described Austen as a writer departing from, rather than embracing, the literary trends of the Romantic era. Yet, while recent publications depicting a “Romantic Austen” yield …

Anonymous Pseudo-Autobiographies: Passing The New Southern Studies In The Southerner And The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man, Matthew S. Dinger

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to understand the South as a space through which the contested bodies of two literary characters and the men who authored them can be more fully explored: the Ex- Colored Man in James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Nicholas Worth in Walter Hines Page's The Southerner; each appearing within an early twentieth-century novel masquerading as an autobiography. These bodies serve to help us understand how the regional Other of the South has inflicted itself on individuals living in the South and caused an irreparable fracture to the characters' identities forcing them into …

Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, And The Changing Romantic, Marianne Lind Baker

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid to late 1700s, men of letters became more and more interested in the natural world. From studies in astronomy to biology, chemistry, and medicine, these "philosophers" pioneered what would become our current scientific categories. While the significance of their contributions to these fields has been widely appreciated historically, the interconnection between these men and their literary counterparts has not. A study of the "Romantic man of science" reveals how much that figure has in common with the traditional "Romantic" literary figure embodied by poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This thesis interrogates connections between Romantic …

Pierced Through The Ear: Poetic Villainy In Othello, Kathleen Emerald Somers

Theses and Dissertations

The paper examines Othello as metapoetry. Throughout the play, key points of comparison between Iago and Shakespeare's methodologies for employing allegory, symbolism, and mimetic plot and character construction shed light upon Shakespeare's self-reflexive use of poetry as an art of imitation. More specifically, the contrast between Shakespeare and Iago's poetry delineates between dynamic and reductive uses of allegory, emphasizes an Aristotelian model of mimesis that makes reason integral to plot and character formation, and underscores an ethical function to poetry generally. In consequence of the division between Iago and Shakespeare as unethical and ethical poets respectively, critical contention concerning the …

Combining The Arts And Literacy, Bruce Robbins, Isaac Larison

Bruce Robbins

No abstract provided.

"Who Would Keep An Ancient Form?": In Memoriam And The Metrical Ghost Of Horace, Ryan D. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Although Alfred Tennyson's 1850 elegy, In Memoriam, has long been regarded for the quality of its grief and its doubt, the deepened sense of struggle and doubt produced by his allusions to Horace in both the matter and the meter of the poem have not been considered. Attending to both syntactical/tonal allusions and metrical allusions to Horace's Odes in In Memoriam, I will examine Horace's role in creating meaning in Tennyson's poem. Drawing on various critics and Tennyson's own works, I argue that Tennyson was uncommonly familiar with Horace's Odes and Horatian Alcaic (the most common meter of …

Graphomania: Composing Subjects In Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction And Technology, Gregory D. Brophy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the varied phenomena of “automatic writing” in Victorian Gothic fiction, reading the genre’s fascination with the irrepressible signifying practices of the body in light of the medical, criminological and scientific discourses that underwrite the “scriptural economy” of the late nineteenth century with their own arsenal of automatic writing machines. I have titled the project "Graphomania," and I consider the term a keyword of late-Victorian culture—one that names a distinctly Victorian pathology of compulsive writing, but that alludes also to the widespread epistemic hope that writing could render objectively the internal and subjective experiences of individuals.

In a …

The Enduring Austen Heroine: Self-Awareness And Moral Maturity In Jane Austen's Emma And In Modern Austen Fan-Fiction, Brittany A. Meng

Masters Theses

Jane Austen's novels continue to be popular in the twenty-first century because her heroines are both delightful and instructive; they can be viewed as role models of personal growth due to their honest self-examination and commitment to high moral standards. Chapter one establishes the patterns of personal growth that uniquely characterizes Austen's heroines in each of her six novels. Chapter two tests these conclusions by carefully examining the character of Emma Woodhouse. Though Emma is a unique heroine due to her wealth and social privileges, she follows the principles of personal growth possessed by Austen's other heroines. Chapter three further …

Reading Holiness: Agnes Grey, Ælfric, And The Augustinian Hermeneutic, Jessica Caroline Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Although Anne Brontë's first novel, Agnes Grey, presents itself as a didactic treatise, Brontë's work departs from many accepted Evangelical tropes in the portrayal of its moral protagonist. These departures create an exemplary figure whose flaws potentially subvert the novel's didactic purposes. The character of Agnes is not necessarily meant to be directly emulated, yet Brontë's governess is presented as a tool of moral instruction. The conflict between the novel's self-proclaimed didactic purpose and the form in which it presents that purpose raises a number of interpretive questions. I argue that many of these questions can be answered through …

Leaving Little Havana, Cecilia Fernandez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Leaving Little Havana is the story of a young girl who leaves her comfortable middle-class home in La Habana just after the Cuban Revolution and, fighting to overcome cultural and language barriers, forges a new life in Miami. Dealing with a torn identity and discovering her voice are at the center of the narrative. After an endless string of escapades, she finally pulls herself together, learns the value of her inner strength by rising above bleak circumstances and gets accepted to journalism school in California. The book examines the devastating effects of immigration on a family and the struggle of …