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Articles 31 - 60 of 80
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
“The God Of The Age”: Religion And Servitude In The Works Of Augusta Jane Evans, Jeffrey Warren King
“The God Of The Age”: Religion And Servitude In The Works Of Augusta Jane Evans, Jeffrey Warren King
English Dissertations
Despite her widespread popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, Augusta Jane Evans and her novels went largely unnoticed for most of the twentieth century. It was not until Nina Baym included a chapter on Evans in her 1978 book Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870 that scholars began to turn their attention to the once-popular novelist. Evans’s presentation of intellectual, ambitious women who forsook their careers for marriage became controversial among scholars who argued whether Evans could, in the words of Diane Roberts, “be recovered for feminism” (xvi). Scholars Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Sara S. Frear, …
Strange And Unstable Bodies: Shifting Materialities In Early American Natural History Correspondence Networks, Julie Marie Mccown
Strange And Unstable Bodies: Shifting Materialities In Early American Natural History Correspondence Networks, Julie Marie Mccown
English Dissertations
This dissertation fills a gap in the study of early American natural history literature by investigating the representation of animal bodies within early American natural history writing and attending to the role animal bodies play in shaping natural history knowledge and how natural history in turn shapes animal bodies. It also examines the effect the shifting materiality of animal bodies has on constructions of race and ethnicity in early America, as well as the ways non-white, non-male, and non-human persons exercise agency via natural history correspondence networks. Employing animal studies, posthumanism, and new materialism, I contend that, within natural history’s …
Rethinking Resistance: Race, Gender, And Place In The Fictive And Real Geographies Of The American West, Tracey Daniels Lerberg
Rethinking Resistance: Race, Gender, And Place In The Fictive And Real Geographies Of The American West, Tracey Daniels Lerberg
English Dissertations
This project traces the history of the American West and its inhabitants through its literary, cinematic and cultural landscape, exploring the importance of public and private narratives of resistance, in their many iterations, to the perceived singular trajectory of white masculine progress in the American west. The project takes up the calls by feminist and minority scholars to broaden the literary history of the American West and to unsettle the narrative of conquest that has been taken up to enact a particular kind of imaginary perversely sustained across time and place. That the western heroic vision resonates today is perhaps …
Queering The Aftermath: Rethinking The Queer In Postcolonial And The (Post)Colonial In Queer, Robert Larue
Queering The Aftermath: Rethinking The Queer In Postcolonial And The (Post)Colonial In Queer, Robert Larue
English Dissertations
“Queering the Aftermath: Rethinking the Queer in Postcolonial and the (Post)colonial in Queer,” argues the necessity for a sustained dialogue between the fields of postcolonial studies and queer studies. The paucity of analysis of queerness within postcolonial discourse, along with dearth of analysis of systems of colonialism which undergird much of queer studies impedes both discourses’ aims for challenging the systems of normativity upon which Western hegemony is built. With a focus on sub-Saharan African queer narratives, this work finds that, contrary to common perception, queerness in Africa operates in a myriad of forms that are unrecognized in U.S. notions …
Constructing Mothering Performances: The Motherhood Ideal In Caldecott And Newbery Winners, 1980-2014, Dana Mccullough Brewer
Constructing Mothering Performances: The Motherhood Ideal In Caldecott And Newbery Winners, 1980-2014, Dana Mccullough Brewer
English Dissertations
This project examines representations of motherhood in Caldecott and Newbery winners from 1980-2014 and is informed by feminist literary theory, juvenile literary theory, and motherhood studies. While motherhood studies are evolving to consider egalitarian ideas of motherhood and multiple definitions of motherhood, many Caldecott and Newbery Medal winners present a traditional (and antiquated) motherhood ideal in which maternal figures tend to domestic duties and provide selfless nurturing of children. This objectification depersonalizes, essentializes, and stereotypes motherhood. Diverse mothering characters and practices do materialize in some texts but are often regulated by the motherhood ideal. In Chapter 2, I define the …
The Fecundity Of The Figural: Ethical And Phototextual Di-Vision In Postmodern American Fiction, Brian Scott Carroll
The Fecundity Of The Figural: Ethical And Phototextual Di-Vision In Postmodern American Fiction, Brian Scott Carroll
English Dissertations
This study contends that sites of the phototextual--that is, narrative works that employ as their chief structural basis any photographic disposition, such as, for example, tangible portraiture and/or a literary styling that implements photographic properties or theory--may be the ideal way to encounter, experience, and respect active (meta)physical exchanges between the Self and Other in the temporal spaces of postmodern American fiction and beyond. By engaging with a pluralistic ethical paradigm comprised from the thought of philosophers like Levinas, Barthes, Derrida, Badiou, and Irigaray, this dissertation examines an array of American phototexts ascribed to the postmodern epoch. Thusly, this very …
Removing The Binaries Between Humanity And Nature: The Female Perception Through Science Fiction Utopias, Sarah Gail Farrell
Removing The Binaries Between Humanity And Nature: The Female Perception Through Science Fiction Utopias, Sarah Gail Farrell
English Dissertations
This dissertation examines utopian science fictions by women from the early modern era and the latter half of the 20th century. While the utopian genre shifts in time, the project focuses on comparing two time periods in order to discuss the topic of humanity’s place in nature. By examining these two distinct eras, I am able to argue that ecofeminist debates about ecological concerns often center around the human/nature binary. These ecofeminist views, I argue, rely on analyzing certain texts in order to glean the truth about the human/nature dichotomy and to offer solutions to these problems. Using Margaret Cavendish’s …
Teaching/Writing Workshop: A Critical Memoir Of Training Teacher Candidates In Developmental Composition, Chere Harden Blair
Teaching/Writing Workshop: A Critical Memoir Of Training Teacher Candidates In Developmental Composition, Chere Harden Blair
English Dissertations
I began by attempting to fill a gap I observed in the preparation of the novice teachers whom I supervised. I created a teaching apprenticeship program in order to give preservice teachers opportunities to enact the theories and methods of writing instruction that I had taught them. The more I read and researched, the more I uncovered important gaps in those theories and methods.Through narrative and critical self-study, I explore my own teaching life, my work with both struggling college writers and teachers-in-training, and my attempts to navigate the complex institutional forces that can frustrate innovation. Ultimately, I suggest that …
The Performing Mother: Maternal Ethics Beyond Embodiment, Charles Hicks
The Performing Mother: Maternal Ethics Beyond Embodiment, Charles Hicks
English Dissertations
The rich and diverse history of maternal thought is at once a response to the Western philosophical tradition's relegation of the maternal to the material abject, as well as a renegotiation of the maternal body as a site of empowerment capable of destabilizing the foundations of the symbolic economy. Understanding the material and historical conditions that subject these bodies and work to construct maternity, as well as their mediating position to authentic ethical activity, reveals that maternity offers a salient schemata for, not only viewing the fundamental operations of power, but the possibilities of ethical interaction. This study focuses on, …
Make It Plain, Preacha': African American Rhetorical License, African American Vernacular English (Aave), And A Modern Rendering Of Epideictic Rhetoric, Leslie E. Similly
Make It Plain, Preacha': African American Rhetorical License, African American Vernacular English (Aave), And A Modern Rendering Of Epideictic Rhetoric, Leslie E. Similly
English Dissertations
In this project, I contend that African American rhetoric, namely African American sermonic rhetoric, constitutes a distinct, culturally specialized variety of rhetoric generated out of the distinctive circumstances of the African American Diasporic experience. I present the study of African American homiletics as a lens through which to view the intersections between culture and aural text. In order to examine the rhetorical tools peculiar to the African American religious tradition. I perform a solely rhetorical explication of many of the typical elements of Black Church sermons. To allow for this process, I have conducted archival research in order to generate …
Negotiating The Sacred In Secular Writing Spaces: The Rhetoric Of Religion In American University Composition Textbooks, Myra Lee Salcedo
Negotiating The Sacred In Secular Writing Spaces: The Rhetoric Of Religion In American University Composition Textbooks, Myra Lee Salcedo
English Dissertations
This project demonstrates that religion comes into through the classroom door not only through the embodiment of students and instructors, but via the academy itself through the university composition textbook. Publishers provided lists of top-selling American textbooks that are inventoried and analyzed and mapped along a timeline to indicate the absenting and presenting of religion. A suggested negotiation for the intersections of writing and religion is to view religion as a discourse community as is described by Shannon Carter.
The Tool/Maker: The Bird, The Cage, The Radio, The Sea, The Rock, The Eye, The Space, Johnny A. Stein
The Tool/Maker: The Bird, The Cage, The Radio, The Sea, The Rock, The Eye, The Space, Johnny A. Stein
English Dissertations
As street politics began to operate academically after the civil rights eras, academic turns toward socio-constructive theories dominated critical philosophies of the subsequent eighties and nineties (especially in the West). This paper examines the linguistic turn in light of a New Digital World Millennium that is the continuation of the Rise of Science that emerged in the 17th century. Material voices that were overshadowed by linguistic or terministically-centered philosophies are today more than ever emergent through tool use. The wireless revolution of the late 19th century has today created technological tools at hand that are deeply impressing the human being-in-the-world, …
Confronting The Spectacle Of The Other (Than Human): Posthumanism And The Convergence Of Art, Aesthetics, And Ethics, Matthew Lerberg
Confronting The Spectacle Of The Other (Than Human): Posthumanism And The Convergence Of Art, Aesthetics, And Ethics, Matthew Lerberg
English Dissertations
This project argues that humans should recognize the intersection of aesthetics and ethics in literature, film, and art that use or represent nonhuman animals. Too often, the right of artists to express their "message" trumps the ethical obligations humans should have to nonhumans. In this scenario, the materiality of nonhumans becomes subjugated to their role as semiotic content--as signs not bodies. Generally, this process of signification ignores the rich entanglements of history, biology, semiotics, materiality, and shared places. Also, this process can lead to negative consequences for nonhuman animals. In order to address these issues I posit a theory of …
Positioning First-Year Composition: Hybrid Learning For Student Engagement And Sustainability, Lorie Stagg Jacobs
Positioning First-Year Composition: Hybrid Learning For Student Engagement And Sustainability, Lorie Stagg Jacobs
English Dissertations
This study uses quantitative and qualitative methodology to describe, and analyze the use of social media to create a blended learning environment in the first-year composition classroom. Findings indicate hybrid courses foster retention-minded best practices, increase student engagement in course material, extend concepts and assignments beyond the classroom, and encourage critical analysis of multiple media, thereby supporting the development of a digital literacy. Furthermore, I argue seizing participatory culture as a teaching and learning frontier positions First-Year Composition at the forefront of college retention efforts and provides connections to STEaM endeavors, raising the status of the field generally, and suggesting …
Black Rhetoric: The Art Of Thinking Being, April Leigh Kinkead
Black Rhetoric: The Art Of Thinking Being, April Leigh Kinkead
English Dissertations
This dissertation examines the Black Hermeneutic Situation in order to uncover Black Rhetoric's possibilities for thinking Being. Martin Heidegger's phenomenological hermeneutics and his theories on thinking and Being provide the theoretical framework through which this dissertation unconceals Black Rhetoric's historical and philosophical origins in Ancient Egypt (i.e., Kemet). In order to examinine the Black Hermeneutic Situation and its saying through Black Rhetoric, this examination establishes the benefits of Heidegger's phenomenological hermeneutics to an analysis of Black Rhetoric's lineage from Kemet to the United States via the Egyptian Diaspora and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Investigating the historical and philosophical origins of …
Mapping Men: Toward A Theory Of Material Masculinity, David R. Wallace
Mapping Men: Toward A Theory Of Material Masculinity, David R. Wallace
English Dissertations
This project interrogates the possibilities of material gender theory as an interdisciplinary bridge between critical theory—like gender studies and eco–criticism—and soft–scientific men's studies. The primary theoretical argument of Mapping Men is for a re–theorizing of men's studies' social-constructionist models of masculinity in light of more contemporary critical queer and feminist theories of materiality. I assert that 19th, 20th, and 21st century American literature about rurality and masculinity highlights the unmapped, material middle–spaces (what post-structural feminist Rosi Braidotti calls the "in betweens") between socially–constructed theories of gender and the subjective, embodied experience of being male in rural places. Using an interdisciplinary …
Embodied Climate Change: Materiality, Language, Mediation, And The Legitimation Of The Unintelligible, Justin Lerberg
Embodied Climate Change: Materiality, Language, Mediation, And The Legitimation Of The Unintelligible, Justin Lerberg
English Dissertations
“Embodied Climate Change: Materiality, Language, Mediation and the Legitimation of the Unintelligible” examines the intersections of language, technology, and the human and nonhuman worlds through the example of climate change. I posit that human technology, specifically language and digital media, have codified the human and nonhuman worlds into a “mixed-reality” of virtual, actual, and potential lived experiences. These technologies have, for better or for worse, de-materialized local human embodiment and re-materialized it in the global sphere of a technological/natural-reality. The re-materialization shapes not only how humans locate themselves within the world but also how they approach and understand phenomenon like …
One High Heel On Each Side Of The Border: A Closer Look At Gender And Sexuality In Chicana And Anglo Young Adult Literature, Christi Cook
One High Heel On Each Side Of The Border: A Closer Look At Gender And Sexuality In Chicana And Anglo Young Adult Literature, Christi Cook
English Dissertations
There is currently very little analysis of Chicana young adult literature available, and by extension there is almost nothing at hand that compares Anglo and Chicana young adult literature. These fields need to be examined seriously alongside one another in order to give appropriate academic attention to two areas that have been marginalized in academia (Chicana literature and young adult literature). This project uncovers significant similarities between Chicana and Anglo YA literature: I refer to these comparable points as crossover, apex, or collision moments that make experiences of relatability possible within the literature wherein the instability of adolescence can be …
The Found Object(S) Of Rhetoric, Nathan Gale
The Found Object(S) Of Rhetoric, Nathan Gale
English Dissertations
The following dissertation expands the notion of posthumanism beyond the work in transhumanism, new media studies, animal studies, and material feminism by incorporating speculative realist philosophies into and with the Aristotelian concept of "faculty" or dunamis. Since Aristotle defines rhetoric as a dunamis (or potential to persuade and/or be persuaded), but also uses the term in his Physics and Metaphysics to describe the contingent potentiality found in material objects, I argue for a posthuman rhetoric that recognizes extra-symbolic forms of persuasion. Drawing from the philosophical work of Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, and Ian Bogost coupled with the rhetorical work of …
The Possibilities Of Children's Literature: A Rhetoric-Oriented Approach To Juvenile Texts, Basil Chadwick Chisholm
The Possibilities Of Children's Literature: A Rhetoric-Oriented Approach To Juvenile Texts, Basil Chadwick Chisholm
English Dissertations
This rhetoric-oriented dissertation examines the academic discussion of children's literature, especially the influence of Jacqueline Rose and her landmark book The Case of Peter Pan, or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction (1984). The implications of Rose's claim is that an entire school of interpretation within children's literature scholarship arose that began to (1) question (tacitly or overtly) whether it was possible for adult writers to really compose texts for children and (2) even suggest that the literature is something similar to a subversion and even exploitation of a child reader. This dissertation seeks to reopen the issue that Rose first …
Liquid Assets: The Functions Of Forgetting In Shakespeare's Second Henriad, Jonni Koonce Dunn
Liquid Assets: The Functions Of Forgetting In Shakespeare's Second Henriad, Jonni Koonce Dunn
English Dissertations
This dissertation examines Shakespeare's second historical tetralogy in which the playwright employs forgetfulness despite its pathologized position in early modern culture and its seeming incompatibility with history. In Richard II, the King's forgetfulness attempts self-stabilization while his sustained forgetfulness, in response to the historical sublime, results in tragic poetry. Nietzschean ideas of judicious forgetfulness and plasticity, Langerian concepts of comedy, and the Andersonian notion of a unifying national amnesia inform a comparison of the functions of forgetfulness for Henry IV, Prince Hal, and Falstaff in 1 Henry IV. In 2 Henry IV forgetfulness deploys in the figure of Rumor, who …
Envisioning A Postfeminist Composition Studies, Melissa Miles
Envisioning A Postfeminist Composition Studies, Melissa Miles
English Dissertations
We must look at the changing sociological conditions that challenge many of the foundations of composition studies in order to develop the discipline. Although postfeminism is evident within academic and popular culture, so far postfeminism has been little addressed in composition studies. In the composition classroom, we can see evidence of postfeminism in the student resistance to overt and subvert expressions of feminist pedagogy and/or content. The essentialist and emancipatory elements of both feminism and composition studies not only are limiting pedagogically, but, in my view, also in themselves generate student resistance. I argue that, in order to mediate this …
Bug-Eyed Monsters And The Encounter With The Postcolonial Other: An Analysis Of The Common Postcolonial Themes And Characteristics In Science Fiction, Paul David Lee
English Dissertations
Recently, a number of non-Western postcolonial authors have begun to use science fiction to express some of the common concerns of non-Western cultures such as hybridity, alterity and subalternity, as well as other issues like those concerning the body and community/hybridity, the future of former colonies extrapolated from colonial history, and encounters with the Other. This trend has also been common for Western writers from the beginning of science fiction as a distinct genre, and many Western authors have used it to highlight the superiority of Western empires, while others have used it as a tool to emphasize their negative …
Rhetoric, Composition And Preaching: What Homiletic Pedagogy Can Learn About Imitation From Composition Pedagogies, Calvin Frederick Pearson
Rhetoric, Composition And Preaching: What Homiletic Pedagogy Can Learn About Imitation From Composition Pedagogies, Calvin Frederick Pearson
English Dissertations
Across the centuries there have been thousands of books and articles written about preaching and writing. Homiletics and Composition Studies have this in common. A great difference comes when one looks for information about the teaching of these two closely related fields. Composition Studies has a great abundance of books, articles, journals available to the teacher of composition; Homiletics has only a dozen or so, and those when read yield very little practical guidance as to how to teach preaching. This project seeks to show how the pedagogy of composition can inform the pedagogy of homiletics. Through the study of …
Indi'n Humor, Tricksters, And Stereotype In Selected Works Of Gerald Vizenor, Thomas King, And Sherman Alexie, Corby J. Baxter
Indi'n Humor, Tricksters, And Stereotype In Selected Works Of Gerald Vizenor, Thomas King, And Sherman Alexie, Corby J. Baxter
English Dissertations
Humor in American Indian literature is a popular and important area of study. Yet, to date few full-length studies have compared the role of humor in Gerald Vizenor, Thomas King, and Sherman Alexie. This study offers a comparison of the ways three of the best-known American Indian humorists use humor to talk about contemporary Native American experience. The dissertation explores the way humor--especially trickster humor--is used to re-imagine the Indian stereotype. The dissertation asserts, first, that American Indian stereotypes are created through American, utopian impulses and that the stereotypes are then distributed by colonialism to make both North American identity …
The Destroyer Of Souls: The Rhetoric Of Fear In Old English Literature, Thomas A. Tutt
The Destroyer Of Souls: The Rhetoric Of Fear In Old English Literature, Thomas A. Tutt
English Dissertations
This dissertation explores representations of fear in Old English literature and examines their rhetorical purposes. Although Anglo-Saxon writers were often unconcerned with or even hostile to the use of rhetorical techniques, I argue that Anglo-Saxons, particularly in their vernacular texts, tailor their writing to appeal to their audiences in specific ways. As such, this writing should be read as highly rhetorical. Reference to fear and fearful imagery in these texts play an important rhetorical role. Fear places the Anglo-Saxon subject in a world defined along rigid lines between Christian and Pagan, legal subject and outlaw, human and monster, recorded and …
Language, Order And The Problem Of The Other: Inventing A Postmodern Service-Learning Pedagogy, Dianne Pearman
Language, Order And The Problem Of The Other: Inventing A Postmodern Service-Learning Pedagogy, Dianne Pearman
English Dissertations
My dissertation argues for a different approach to implementing service-learning into composition pedagogy. I argue that because critical pedagogy has long been the primary vehicle for incorporating service-learning initiatives into the composition classroom, and because this pedagogy--despite claims to the contrary-- is still deeply committed to the tenants of modernism, service-learning's potential has also been confined to this narrow world view. I further argue that the confrontational strategies employed by critical educators often work to undermine not only their own pedagogical goals, but also any benefits students might receive from their service experience. In making my argument, I examine closely …
My Child And My Life: Sacrificial Obligation And Chaucer, Gary Scott Montano
My Child And My Life: Sacrificial Obligation And Chaucer, Gary Scott Montano
English Dissertations
Medieval literature demonstrates that Christians of that era took their Bible seriously, particularly the Old Testament account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. For them, the story was both fascinating and perplexing. Not only was Abraham one of the most revered figures, but he was also one of the most frustrating. He was admired for his ability to obey God's directive to sacrifice Isaac, but because he does so without displaying an ounce of emotion, that admiration is often coupled with irritation. How could a father as loving as Abraham remain expressionless and emotionless as he raised the knife to kill …
Korean American Matters And Identity In Korean American Novels, Seung-Won Kim
Korean American Matters And Identity In Korean American Novels, Seung-Won Kim
English Dissertations
My dissertation focuses on the intersection between the maturation of young Korean American protagonists in fiction and the writers' own growing-up of ethnic identity as Korean descendants. I analyze nine Korean American novels written by Sook Nyul Choi, An Na, and Linda Sue Park. I approach my selected texts in two different ways. First, I explore the different exigencies of their writing projects by investigating their biographical backgrounds. Second, I examine how these authors differently represent Korean American matters such as history, community, and culture in order to create stories of Korean or Korean American protagonists' coming-of-age through their writing …
Us Poets Laureate: A Literary And Cultural History, Toni M. Holland
Us Poets Laureate: A Literary And Cultural History, Toni M. Holland
English Dissertations
In 1985 the US Congress changed the title of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, which was created in 1937, to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The significance in the change is a signal to enhance awareness of American poetry to the general reading public. This dissertation is an initial look at these poets who from a government-sponsored platform represent American letters. The high profile of the position allows for a means by which the role of the poet is performed as an ambassador of poetry. Who is selected to represent the nation, how each laureate's work is …