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“Too Good To Kill”: Literary Gerontology And Late Style In Margaret Atwood’S Gilead Novels, Serina Item May 2023

“Too Good To Kill”: Literary Gerontology And Late Style In Margaret Atwood’S Gilead Novels, Serina Item

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid's Tale, and her 2019 sequel, The Testaments, illuminate the author’s continued interest in the connection between a woman’s age and the notion of her usefulness and complicity within a hegemonically masculine society. Focusing on literary gerontology and the author’s late style, this essay highlights Atwood’s persistent rejection of patriarchal representations of older women in literature. I analyze the ways in which Atwood’s “ustopian” (Atwood’s literary genre invention, combining “dystopia” and “utopia”) novels develop older women characters beyond “old age as motif and metaphor” by removing age and gender as significant barriers to …


The American Dream, The American Lie: An Examination Of Queerness, Disability And American Identity In Miss Lonelyhearts, Vivian Arias May 2023

The American Dream, The American Lie: An Examination Of Queerness, Disability And American Identity In Miss Lonelyhearts, Vivian Arias

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project, informed primarily by queer theory and disability studies, examines the ways in which queerness, disability, and marginality are central to Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, and his critique of the American Dream. Nathanael West, Jewish American novelist and screenwriter, is remembered for his work critiquing the American Dream; however, one aspect that has remained understudied is how his novels feature non-normative outsiders, past and present. The primary analysis of this project is focused on the 1933 novella Miss Lonelyhearts. Other works by West are also referenced. From West’s perspective, the American Dream was the American nightmare for …


Image, Text, And Sound Through The Arabesque In Thoreau's Walden, Lupina Farhana May 2022

Image, Text, And Sound Through The Arabesque In Thoreau's Walden, Lupina Farhana

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This essay looks at Thoreau’s Walden through the lens of the motif of the Arabic arabesque. It first considers the arabesque in a playful paradigm, that interrupts, crosses, and breaks boundaries through a Derridean parergon. However, this event results in an overturning of the binary that had, for centuries, deemed merely the center to hold the highest of importance. Art historian Cordula Grewe utilizes Derrida’s parergon to analyze the poems of Goethe in the context of an arabesque frame which gives the sensation of sound by imitating the repeatedly playful consonants of the text written in the center. Thus, text, …


Exploring The Rhetorical Power Of Speculative Fiction Through Jewelle Gomez’S The Gilda Stories And Octavia Butler’S Fledgling, Monique Dixon Dec 2020

Exploring The Rhetorical Power Of Speculative Fiction Through Jewelle Gomez’S The Gilda Stories And Octavia Butler’S Fledgling, Monique Dixon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

There are apparent similarities between Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. However, this thesis will demonstrate that they share more than similar subject matter and yet differ in substantial ways. Utilizing Black feminist theory and alternative rhetoric this thesis examines how Gomez and Butler harness the potential of speculative fiction to critique the world around them and imagine an alternative world for those who are intersectionally marginalized.


Course Syllabus For English 1120 - Speculative Fiction, Chad Luck Apr 2020

Course Syllabus For English 1120 - Speculative Fiction, Chad Luck

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This document contains a syllabus for a new version of the large-lecture course English 1120: Speculative Fiction. This version of the class focuses on horror fiction, in particular, and structures the course according to a series of discursive contexts crucial to that genre. So, the course is organized around five thematic units including: psychology, religion, gender, race, and science. Each of these units presents key texts in that given area and asks students to think critically about the relationship of fiction to that particular cultural context. The course, in general, cultivates in students the ability to analyze cultural objects—in this …


Reacting To The Future: An Immersive Experience With The Hunger Games, Amanda Taylor Jan 2020

Reacting To The Future: An Immersive Experience With The Hunger Games, Amanda Taylor

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

Description of an immersive, role-play based assignment centered on The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Designed for a ENG 1120 Speculative Fiction course focused on dystopian literature. The assignments adapts elements of Reacting to the Past pedagogy and was developed as part of a Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy Faculty Learning Community focused on large lecture literature courses.


Nystagmic Poetics In Lorine Niedecker’S Postwar Poetry, Edward Ferrari Sep 2019

Nystagmic Poetics In Lorine Niedecker’S Postwar Poetry, Edward Ferrari

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In this article I explore the work of Lorine Niedecker, a poet not conventionally associated with disability studies, in order to flesh out an account of the function of visual disability in midcentury poetics and praxis. To do this I read Niedecker’s formative sequence “For Paul,” the late long poem “Wintergreen Ridge,” and other poems, through deformative practices in the belief that such an engagement shows how Niedecker’s hybrid objectivist praxis can be integrated with critical models of disability studies. Such an integration is then bodied forth in what I’m calling a “nystagmic poetics.” In such a poetics, the physical …


Visualizing Hate: Maus As Holocaust Literature, Geoffrey Daniel Curran Jan 2013

Visualizing Hate: Maus As Holocaust Literature, Geoffrey Daniel Curran

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus affected traditional classifications of Holocaust writings, specifically literary memoir. Genre studies use Holocaust writings especially those classified as "literary memoirs", to define a narrow group to exclusion of texts like Maus. If Maus was not 'allowed' to be defined as memoir then was it solely cast as fiction? To view it as fictional would have denied that Maus was a graphic novel which interlaces both received testimonial 'truth' and receptive 'truth'.


The Captivity Narrative In Octavia E. Butler's Adulthood Rites, Stacy Magedanz Apr 2012

The Captivity Narrative In Octavia E. Butler's Adulthood Rites, Stacy Magedanz

Library Faculty Publications & Presentations

Octavia E. Butler’s novel Adulthood Rites incorporates an enduring genre of American literature, the captivity narrative. By drawing on the familiar tale of a civilized protagonist held captive by brutal savages, Butler echoes traditional themes of spiritual growth and identity formation. Manipulating the trope of “going native” allows her to hold several opposed values in tension: oppression and protection, appreciation for a native culture and betrayal of it, difference and identification. A hybrid creature, Akin must bridge a variety of opposites as he matures, a theme Butler reinforces by making a hybrid structure of the captivity narrative itself.


Sources Of Fear In American Society: Representations In Short Horror Fiction, 1950s-Present, Mona Moin Syed Jan 2010

Sources Of Fear In American Society: Representations In Short Horror Fiction, 1950s-Present, Mona Moin Syed

Theses Digitization Project

This study examines the ways in which short American horror fiction has always revolved around fundamental fears of mortality, and how these fears have shifted across the span of three specific timeframes. Using a historical lens, this study also explores what the specific nature of mortality fears, as reflected in particular instances of short horror fiction, historically reveal about contemporaneous cultural attitudes toward end of life issues, loss, doubt, and grief. This study also traces how the perceptions of mortality have dynamically changed in American society from 1950s to present times in accordance with powerful historical events, varying cultural contexts, …


Ballads As "Poetic" Rhetoric In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Norma Jeanne Peterson Jan 2009

Ballads As "Poetic" Rhetoric In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Norma Jeanne Peterson

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis explores the rhetorical effect ballads have had as a medium of argument for those who were "free of literary influences and fairly homogeneous in character." The ballad, speaks to us poetically and by tradition reveals human interests emerging from distress and frustration. Three men (John Lomax, Alan Lomax and Harry Smith) were instrumental in collecting and recording early ballads before they were lost; this effect has lingered from an early period in time to the 1960s, and beyond when the value of ballads was rediscovered.


Whitman, Elegy, And The Nineteenth Century Culture Of Death And Mourning, Susan Renee Nylander Jan 2009

Whitman, Elegy, And The Nineteenth Century Culture Of Death And Mourning, Susan Renee Nylander

Theses Digitization Project

In this thesis, the author offers a close reading and analysis of several of Walt Whitman's elegies and poems about death and mourning through the nineteenth century practices of mourning and death.


The Rhetoric Of Dean Koontz's Intensity, Krista Michelle Wagner Jan 2008

The Rhetoric Of Dean Koontz's Intensity, Krista Michelle Wagner

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines the revision of eighteenth century gothic fiction by Dean Koontz's twentieth century horror novel, Intensity. In particular, the novel invites Aristotelian rhetorical analysis through the competing appeals staged by its antagonist, Vess, and its protagonist, Chyna.


Pipe Dream: Eugene O'Neill's Rhetoric Of Tragedy, Ryan Francis Murphy Jan 2008

Pipe Dream: Eugene O'Neill's Rhetoric Of Tragedy, Ryan Francis Murphy

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis applies a rhetorical lens to the work of Eugene O'Neill, specifically, those plays written between the years 1939 and 1942-the height of his dramatic genius. This thesis works to reimagine Eugene O'Neill, often looked upon as "lacking rhetorical exuberance," as a distinctive and successful rhetor, in addition to installing the "pipe dream" as his foremost rhetorical device.


The Rhetoric Of Nonfiction: An Examination Of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, Lashawn Jon Janice Cole Jan 2008

The Rhetoric Of Nonfiction: An Examination Of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, Lashawn Jon Janice Cole

Theses Digitization Project

The thesis begins with a brief description and analysis of various genres Junger blends in his text. What follows is a look at the challenges of interpretation in historical writing and theoretical framing of the genre distinctions regarding new journalism and nonfiction narrative.


Exploring Sara Paretsky's Detective Fiction From The Perspective Of Ecofeminism, Maureen Frances Mccarthy Jan 2007

Exploring Sara Paretsky's Detective Fiction From The Perspective Of Ecofeminism, Maureen Frances Mccarthy

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis analyzes Paretsky's works and how the dominant members of society use their power to exploit the weaker members, and how that exploitation impacts society. It shows how the author connects the abuse that stems from the power of patriarchy to the abuse of nature.


Charles Brockden Brown's Place Within The Gothic And The Influence Of Early America's Social Issues On Brown's Writing, Shirley Ann Regis Jan 2007

Charles Brockden Brown's Place Within The Gothic And The Influence Of Early America's Social Issues On Brown's Writing, Shirley Ann Regis

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this thesis is to show that Charles Brockden Brown was influenced by the American Revolution and the incidents that come after it. It is suggested that Brown created a gothic fiction that was intended to be a critique on the American Revolution by using murder narrratives present during the time to create his characters. Gothic fiction consists of many elements such as setting arechetypal characters, terror, emotion, psychological turmoil and language use.


The Beaded Web: Metaphor And Association In John Edgar Wideman's Sent For You Yesterday, Joel Wesley Kilpatrick Jan 2007

The Beaded Web: Metaphor And Association In John Edgar Wideman's Sent For You Yesterday, Joel Wesley Kilpatrick

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis looks at how Wideman takes advantage of the associative function of metaphor, creating a vast network, or web, or interconnected images. In deviating from linguistic norms, and growing steadily from page to page, this web causes the novel to appear symbolic. It also appears to have a symbolic meaning of its own, possibly representing the intricate social and spiritual connections that comprise the novel's fictional community of Homewood.


"What Now?": Willa Cather's Successful Male Professionals At Middle Age, Deena Michelle Baker Jan 2006

"What Now?": Willa Cather's Successful Male Professionals At Middle Age, Deena Michelle Baker

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines three male characters from Willa Cather's writing that epitomize the American Dream of professional and material success but they find no contentment once they achieve it. This disillusionment is particularly so with Cather's driven male professionals, Bartley Alexander (an architectural scholar), and Clement Sebastian (a critically acclaimed, international opera singer). Cather situates these characters at middle age and at the peak of their professional careers, which makes the examination of them an interesting study as to the effects of the encroaching modern age on successful men. This thesis begins with a brief overview of Cather's work, including …


Facing Tough Realities And Inspiring Change: The Comic Satire Of Sherman Alexie, Jill Alison Henry Jan 2005

Facing Tough Realities And Inspiring Change: The Comic Satire Of Sherman Alexie, Jill Alison Henry

Theses Digitization Project

Examines the comic modes Sherman Alexie uses, the purposes behind his critical, yet humorous, commentary, the multiple audiences toward which his satire is aimed, and the desired outcomes of his satire. Explores the theme of alcoholism in Alexie's writings that plays a role in the degradation of Native American lives in modern times and why alcoholism has become a problem for the Native American community. Also, examines why Native Americans have become so dependent on White handouts and how this passivity and acceptance has created problems in Indian society. Finally, offers insights into Alexie's use of humor as a means …


The Old Man And The Sea: Hemingway, Heteroglossia, And The Hero's Voice, Carole Sue Spitler Jan 2002

The Old Man And The Sea: Hemingway, Heteroglossia, And The Hero's Voice, Carole Sue Spitler

Theses Digitization Project

In this subjective hero concept lies an intriguing aspect of Bakhtin's paradigm: A hero is not necessarily a living entity; a hero can be ideas, objects and locations. When viewed through the lens of traditional western rhetorical theory, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea appears as a monologue wherein Santiago seemingly speaks for the author about the subject of doom and man's relationship to the world.


The Rise Of Mass Culture Theory And Its Effect On Golden Age Detective Fiction, Sarah Jean Trainin Jan 2002

The Rise Of Mass Culture Theory And Its Effect On Golden Age Detective Fiction, Sarah Jean Trainin

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis will explore the segregation of detective fiction from the general fiction market between 1920 and 1940.


Forces Within And Without: Lily Bart's Movement Towards Epiphany In The House Of Mirth, Seta Ghazarian Jan 2001

Forces Within And Without: Lily Bart's Movement Towards Epiphany In The House Of Mirth, Seta Ghazarian

Theses Digitization Project

The House of Mirth's main character, Lily Bart, is charaterized a fated character, incapable of exerting free will. With the help of Lawrence Selden and Gerty Farish, she realizes that, for the most part, she has lived and acted according to what others expect of her.


The California Dream Denied: Narrative Strategy And The California Labor Dilemma, Joseph Notarangelo Jan 2001

The California Dream Denied: Narrative Strategy And The California Labor Dilemma, Joseph Notarangelo

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis explores the relationship between differing interpretation of the California Dream and the narrative strategies through while [sic] they are expressed in three California labor novels during three different decades of California literature.


Allegory As Rhetoric: Faulkner's Trilogy, Sally Louise Schroeder Jan 1997

Allegory As Rhetoric: Faulkner's Trilogy, Sally Louise Schroeder

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.


From Thought To Style: Emerson's Interplay Of Ideas And Language, Sandra Joyce Lansing Jan 1997

From Thought To Style: Emerson's Interplay Of Ideas And Language, Sandra Joyce Lansing

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.


A Rhetorical Aspect Of Edgar Allan Poe's Short Fiction: A Reader Response Approach, James Philip Lehan Jan 1995

A Rhetorical Aspect Of Edgar Allan Poe's Short Fiction: A Reader Response Approach, James Philip Lehan

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.


Rhetorical Tropes From The Black English Oral Tradition In The Works Of Toni Morrison, Yvonne Kay Atkinson Jan 1995

Rhetorical Tropes From The Black English Oral Tradition In The Works Of Toni Morrison, Yvonne Kay Atkinson

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.


The Trials Of Creativity: A Rhetorical Analysis Of A View From The Bridge And The Crucible By Arthur Miller, Edward Hal Garnett Jan 1993

The Trials Of Creativity: A Rhetorical Analysis Of A View From The Bridge And The Crucible By Arthur Miller, Edward Hal Garnett

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.


The Role Of Language In Constructing Consciousness In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Tamra Elizabeth Dibenedetto Jan 1992

The Role Of Language In Constructing Consciousness In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Tamra Elizabeth Dibenedetto

Theses Digitization Project

Relationship between thought and language -- Whorf's hypothesis of linguistic determinism -- Linguistic relativism -- Sociopolitics, oppression, and language.