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Literature in English, North America

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

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Planet Superman: An Ecocritical Analysis Of The Man Of Steel From 1938-2017, Justin Hart Crary Jan 2017

Planet Superman: An Ecocritical Analysis Of The Man Of Steel From 1938-2017, Justin Hart Crary

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Planet Superman is a critical examination of the DC comic book superhero Superman as analyzed through an ecocritical lens. The primary argument is that, within the world of DC Comics, Superman is single-handedly capable of ending all of the Earth’s various ecological crises using his very existence as a solar battery or using his superhuman power to become a totalitarian despot that enforces the law through superior firepower. I calculate Superman’s greatest feat of energy output to prove how much solar energy is actively dormant within the Man of Steel. Using the several “versions” of Superman throughout his 79 year …


Gi Jive: Us Soldiers' Writings And Post-World War Ii America, Amanda Lee Stevens Jan 2015

Gi Jive: Us Soldiers' Writings And Post-World War Ii America, Amanda Lee Stevens

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This work is a comprehensive study of American soldiers‘ writings during World War II as they related to personal and national postwar aims. The paper uses military and domestic publications along with a selection of memoirs and diaries published during and immediately after the war to create an overview of soldiers' ideological and material desires of postwar America.


Travel Sized: A Collection Of Essays, Wendi L. Kozma Jan 2014

Travel Sized: A Collection Of Essays, Wendi L. Kozma

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Travel Sized: A Collection of Essays investigates the importance of memory and understanding the self in relation to one’s experiences with travel and food. It is the author’s contribution to the genre of creative nonfiction and explores themes of body, self-awareness and self-realization through events that shaped who she is, both personally and professionally. The collection houses eight essays—each focusing on space, the body, and exploration of memory to better understand one’s self. Subjects range from coming to terms with one’s size to appreciating one’s experiences both stateside and abroad. At the center of the collection is the need, no, …


Impossible Storyworlds And The (Unnatural) Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym, Mitchell C. Lilly Jan 2013

Impossible Storyworlds And The (Unnatural) Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym, Mitchell C. Lilly

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The following thesis defends reading Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as an early example of an “unnatural narrative” in American literature. Adapting unnatural narrative theory, a recent area of study in narratology developed to analyze the existence of unnatural storyworlds, minds, and acts of narration prevalent in postmodern fiction, this thesis analyzes the unnatural dynamics at play in Pym’s storyworld and storytelling that do not comply with what the reader knows is otherwise physically, logically, or humanly impossible in the physical world. Legitimating Poe’s novel as a work of unnatural narrative coincides with arguing how the …


The Present Giver And Other Stories On Human Connections, Erin B. Waggoner Jan 2009

The Present Giver And Other Stories On Human Connections, Erin B. Waggoner

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The Present Giver and Other Stories on Human Connections is a collection of seven short stories dealing with individuals that struggle to connect to another person. However, the stories also explore that these characters still feel the need to connect, stories very indicative of my own struggles with apathy and relationships. The critical analysis takes on a creative non-fiction approach as a way to show my development as a writer and how these stories relate to what I've learned through the years from my love of reading.


"A Long Wonder The World Can Bear & Be" : Narrative Strategies In The Dream Songs, Cooper Childers Jan 2009

"A Long Wonder The World Can Bear & Be" : Narrative Strategies In The Dream Songs, Cooper Childers

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis examines the narrative development of The Dream Songs while viewing Henry as the locus and the impetus of the various narrative strategies deployed therein. Through the abundance of generic and literary allusions present in The Dream Songs, Berryman's sequence functions both to engage and to interact with the Western literary canon. The first chapter of this thesis locates The Dream Songs within Petrarchan sequences. The second chapter treats Henry's and the unnamed speaker's local language and shows how their competing speech genres inform the sequence's modes. The third chapter examines the role of epic codes in creating the …


Will Travel : Journey Memoirs, Kelly Renee Broce Jan 2008

Will Travel : Journey Memoirs, Kelly Renee Broce

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Memoirs and poetry. Concerns the travels of a West Virginian woman, the granddaughter of a first generation Sicilian West Virginian, within the U.S., the Bahamas, Thailand, and China, where she taught English as a second language for two years from 2000-2002. Themes include identity (Appalachian, Persian, African-American, Chinese, and even Uigur), ethnicity and gender in West Virginia, fatalism, religion, poverty, Diaspora, travel, discrimination, the Ugly American/European, Ah Q, Imperialism, Orientalism, otherness, political asylum, victims and survival, substance abuse in West Virginia, feminist narrative, West Virginian authors, mountaintop removal, environmentalism, and protest.


From Man To Meteor: Nineteenth Century American Writers And The Figure Of John Brown, Amanda Benigni Jan 2007

From Man To Meteor: Nineteenth Century American Writers And The Figure Of John Brown, Amanda Benigni

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

On November 2, 1859, John Brown laid siege to the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, then Virginia, in an effort to seize weaponry which he planned to employ in a full scale slave insurrection. From the moment he entered the public eye during his brief trial and execution, John Brown and his legacy were figured and refigured by prominent writers and thinkers of the time. The result of this refiguring was an image under constant metamorphosis. As the image of John Brown cycled through the Civil War, it moved further and further from the actual man and became a metaphor …


Appalachian Literature And The "Red-Headed Stepchild Of Publishing:" The Writings Of Victor Depta And The Cultural Work Of Independent Presses, Kristopher Clifford Jan 2007

Appalachian Literature And The "Red-Headed Stepchild Of Publishing:" The Writings Of Victor Depta And The Cultural Work Of Independent Presses, Kristopher Clifford

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Over the past couple of decades, Appalachian literature has developed a strong and close relationship with independent publishing, showing the latter to be an important medium for the expression for Appalachian voice. As the attempted consolidation of the book trade into a corporate, bottom-line oriented, high-profit industry minimizes the publication of books with mere "regional" appeal at the same time that the cultural products of Appalachia, as a region, continue to be marginalized through the continued deployment of stereotypes and attitudes of inferiority, Appalachian writers find it difficult to have their books published and distributed by major publishing houses. As …


I Am Prosper, I Am Ariel, I Am Caliban: A Metatheatrical Approach To Neil Gaiman’S The Sandman, Leah E. Haydu Jan 2007

I Am Prosper, I Am Ariel, I Am Caliban: A Metatheatrical Approach To Neil Gaiman’S The Sandman, Leah E. Haydu

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In this paper, I use a primarily close-reading approach to examine the metatheatrical elements of William Shakespeare’s representation in Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman. This involves examinations of individual panels throughout three different issues of the series in order to uncover how Shakespeare is presented, as well as how he, in turn, affects the presentation of other characters, and how these both affect the view which the reader might form of not only Shakespeare, but of Gaiman himself. In doing so, I establish the existence of a new, related genre: metacomics. Similar to metatheatrics, this approach relates …


Isolated But Not Oblivious: A Re-Evaluation Of Emily Dickinson’S Relationship To The Civil War, Peggy Henderson Murphy Jan 2006

Isolated But Not Oblivious: A Re-Evaluation Of Emily Dickinson’S Relationship To The Civil War, Peggy Henderson Murphy

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Emily Dickinson’s physical isolation and her disinterest in publishing have led scholars to conclude that Dickinson had no interest in the outside world. Although Dickinson’s poems do contain war imagery, scholars have argued that these images are used by Dickinson to deal with her own inner struggles and are not directly related to the Civil War. However, Karen Dandurand’s discovery of poems published by Dickinson in a Civil War fund-raising magazine compels us to reconsider Dickinson’s supposed disinterest. It is evident by Dickinson’s letters and her poems that the war energizes and inspires her by providing questions about life, death, …


Woman At War: How I Won My Battle With Domestic Violence, But Continue To Fight The War, Krista R. Holcomb Jan 2005

Woman At War: How I Won My Battle With Domestic Violence, But Continue To Fight The War, Krista R. Holcomb

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Woman at War: How I Won My Battle Against Domestic Violence But Continue to Fight the War, is a depiction of my experience in an abusive relationship. The project presents the initial experiences that draw the victim to her future abuser, the forming of a bond between the couple, the feelings of fear and desperation that overwhelm and often paralyze the victim in the midst of abuse, and the final escape and eventual advocacy for other victims. While most of the project is presented as personal narrative, letters, journal entries, and lists appear in order to show the mindset of …


Journeys: A Critical Analysis Of The Diary Of Sarah L. Wadley, Regina C. Davis Jan 2002

Journeys: A Critical Analysis Of The Diary Of Sarah L. Wadley, Regina C. Davis

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

As a young woman living in Louisiana during the Civil War, Sarah Lois Wadley documented in her diary the fractured, conflicted perspective that was her experience as a woman living in the war ravaged South. Her writing is evidence of the confusion she felt as a result of the discrepancy between the expectations of Southern patriarchal society and her own needs as a woman. Wadley’s diary is a complex text similar to a novel in that it relates events through a construct that reflects her response to her reader’s/society’s expectations. From a deconstructionist perspective, the power of Wadley’s text lies …