Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ambiguous Recognition: Recursion, Cognitive Blending, And The Problem Of Interpretation In Twenty-First-Century Fiction, Christopher David Kilgore

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses theories of cognitive conceptual integration (as outlined by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner) to propose a model of narrative reading that mediates between narratology and theories of reception. I use this model to demonstrate how new experimental narratives achieve a potent balance between a determinate and open story-form. Where the high postmodernists of the 1970s and 80s created ironic, undecidable story-worlds, the novels considered here allow readers to embrace seemingly opposite propositions without retreating into ironic suspension, trading the postmodernist “neither/nor” for a new “both/and.” This technique demands significant revision of both descriptions of radical experimentation in …

The Gendered Soul: Victorian Women Autobiographers And The Novel, Robbie E Spivey

Doctoral Dissertations

This project considers ways mid-Victorian fictional autobiographies created new models for women's spiritual formation, testing Nancy Armstrong's theory that novels are antecedent to the cultural conditions they describe. I pair three mid-Victorian fictional texts Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh, and The Mill on the Floss with three later non-fictional autobiographies written by women near the end of the Victorian Era: Annie Besant (1847- 1933), Mary Anne Hearn (1834-1909) and Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904). These women came to spiritual maturity during the same time period in which the fictional heroines Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh and Maggie Tulliver became prominent in the popular …

Saint Oswald, Christ And The Dream Of The Rood: Mutable Signs At A Cultural Crossroad, Scott Hutcheson Mac Kenzie

Doctoral Dissertations

The first decades following a country’s conversion to Christianity are sometimes marked by experimentation with native expressions of piety. Out of the multicultural environment of early Christian Northumbria such experiments created an insular Germanic version of sanctity. In the mid-seventh century, Oswiu of Northumbria (642-670), the younger brother and successor to King Oswald, constructed an elaborate narrative of God’s plan for England (without consent or guidance from the Roman Church). His narrative would weave his family into the sacred fabric of his nascent, Christian kingdom. Through skillful manipulation of oral tradition, material culture and sacri loci he crafted a unique …

“Holla If You Hear Me”: A Conversation With Black, Inner-City Youth On Career Preparedness Programs, Theressa N. Cooper

Doctoral Dissertations

This research study specifically addressed; how vocational preparedness programs effect the career aspirations of Black youth, within the context of the Middle Tennessee Council Boy Scouts of America’s Exploring program. The goal of this research is to represent Black youth participating in a vocational preparedness program. Interviews, journals, and rich, thick descriptions are utilized in this work.

Using the lens of narrative inquiry and cultural studies, I hoped to further the field of career development through the experiences of some of its key players, African American youth. Within the context of their stories five major themes surfaced around the ideas: …

Beyond The Battlefield: Direct And Prosthetic Memory Of The American War In Viet Nam, Susan L. Eastman

Doctoral Dissertations

“Beyond the Battlefield: Direct and Prosthetic Memory of the American War in Viet Nam” examines shifts in American, Viet Namese, and Philippine memorial, literary, and cinematic remembrance of the war through the cultural lenses of later wars: the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the “War on Terror” that began in 2001. As opposed to earlier portrayals of the American War in Viet Nam (1964-1975), turn-to-the-twenty-first-century representations engage in an ever-broadening collected cultural memory—a compilation of multifaceted, sometimes competing, individual and group memories—of the war. “Beyond the Battlefield” begins with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) because it serves as the impetus for …

On Alvin Plantinga’S Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, Emmett Frank Mashburn

Doctoral Dissertations

Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (EAAN) begins with the following simple idea: the evolutionary process of natural selection selects organisms due to adaptive behaviors, but not necessarily due to true beliefs. If this notion is even possibly true, then it is also possible that some (or many) of our own beliefs are not veridical and that our reasoning processes may not successfully point to truths (but are merely evolutionarily advantageous).

Once the deliverances and processes of our cognitive faculties have been thus called into question, it seems improper to provide an argument that one can trust one’s cognitive faculties …

Orange Alba: The Civil Religion Of Loyalism In The Southwestern Lowlands Of Scotland Since 1798, Ronnie Michael Booker Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

This study introduces the idea that, taken together, the major institutional frameworks of the ultra-Protestant culture of loyalism in the southwestern lowlands of Scotland can be conceived as a civil religion. I argue that loyalist civil religion in lowland Scotland was comprised of a distinct set of institutions including the Orange Order, Glasgow Rangers Football Club, loyalist street gangs and paramilitaries and loyalist flute bands. The elements that informed each of these loyalist groups were not unrelated, but part of a multidimensional and interactive civil religious movement. Each institution appealed to a wide range of viewpoints within the loyalist community …

The Relationship Management Process Of Public Diplomacy: U.S. Public Diplomacy In Romania, Antoneta Vanc

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation looks at U.S. public diplomacy practices in a country that until twenty years ago was controlled by a hard-line Communist regime: Romania. The study investigates the relationship management approach to public diplomacy employed by U.S. diplomats in Romania and it is the first to empirically test the application of relationship management theory of public relations to public diplomacy. Through in-depth interviews with six former U.S. diplomats who served in Romania during 2001-2009, we learn how diplomats must find various ways to build and maintain relationships with the civil society to which they are assigned. The findings reveal that …

Archaism, Or Textual Literalism In The Historical Novel, Linell B Wisner

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the technique of archaism as it has been practiced in the historical novel since that genre’s origins. By “archaism,” I refer to a variation of the strategy that Jerome McGann calls textual “literalism,” whereby literary texts use “thickly materialized” language and bibliographic forms to foreground their own “textuality as such” (Black Riders 74). Archaism is distinguished from Blake’s, Pound’s, or Robert Carlton Brown’s literalism by its imitation of older literary idioms, yet the specifically historical quality of its intertextuality also seems different from primarily formal imitations such as pastiche and parody.

Although archaism appears to have originated …

In Sickness And In Health: Analyzing The Ethical Limits Of The Marriage Between Health Care And The Market In The United States, Thomas D Harter

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to determine what should be the appropriate base ethical limits of health care markets in the United States. I argue that because we do not value health care goods and services as commodities, treating them as commodities available for market sale can only be ethical when health care markets accord with at least the principles of honesty, respect for autonomy, and increased access to essential health care goods and services.

I begin by establishing the theoretical foundation of my argument by expositing three theories of commodification and ethical markets that critically examine the relationship of goods to …

El Tema De La Simulación En El Teatro De Cinco Países Hispanoamericanos Del Siglo Xx, Koji Nishida

Doctoral Dissertations

I have investigated the theme of imposters in three Hispanic American plays and two Caribbean plays from the early twentieth century; I selected each play from a different country so that I can present a broader perspective of Hispanic American and Caribbean themes. In these five plays, the main characters fabricate their own identities for various reasons. My focus is on analyzing those imposters and on presenting how the dramatists present this type of imposters in their works. Identity is one of the most prominent themes in Hispanic American and Caribbean literature because the history of these regions involves a …

Welcome To Boomland, Cebrun Abe Gaustad

Doctoral Dissertations

Abe Gaustad's first collection of stories, Welcome to Boomland, explores the lives of disparate characters longing for some escape. Whether a paraplegic blues aficionado or a boy who finds a strange object in the woods, they are each searching for a way out of their stagnation. Yet each character is trapped by their own unique circumstance: some of them by their mistakes, some by ruthless dictators, some by the very notion of death. As they search for their freedom, they find out new things about themselves and manage to wage quiet rebellions against those that would control them. In the …

I Am Not My Hair...Or Am I?: Exploring The Minority Swimming Gap, Dawn M. Norwood

Doctoral Dissertations

A review of literature has revealed a dearth of research on leisure swimming patterns of Black females. Black youth, both male and female, have a higher rate of drowning than any other racial/ethnic group in the United States (“Water‐related injuries: Fact sheet”, 2005). Two known studies produced by (Irwin et al., 2009; 2010) examining hair as a constraint to swimming for African American youth produced conflicting results. In order to comprehensively examine hair as a constraint to African American female participation in swimming, the current study adopted a qualitative approach which allowed exploration of the cultural background and experiences of …

Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbis, And The Ostjuden Under German Occupation: 1915-1918, Tracey Hayes Norrell

Doctoral Dissertations

“Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbis, and the Ostjuden during Occupation: 1915-1918" addresses the interethnic experience in Poland during the German occupation of 1915-1918. This dissertation demonstrates that the German design for 'modernization' of the East began with the First World War, which envisioned the Jews as a critically vital component, rather than an obstacle to their success. The German military made its connection to the peoples in the East via its own army rabbis and Jewish administrators. This work examines the role of the German Army rabbis, in 1915, in establishing a Jewish press and Jewish schools, along with Jewish relief …

Mongo Béti Ou L’Écriture D’Un Révolté En Exil: Anatomie, Analyse Et Impact De Ses Critiques À Travers Ses Articles Dans « Peuples Noirs, Peuples Africains » (1978 À 1991), Kodjo Adabra

Doctoral Dissertations

Following their independence in the 1960s the new governments of such French-speaking, African nations as Togo, Ivory Coast, Congo and Chad (to name only few), for the most part embraced policies that were authoritarian. A direct upshot socially of the lack of free speech imposed by certain African regimes was the migration of a large number of intellectuals from the black continent, yearning to rediscover their voices in more developed, democratic countries. Many, while living in exile, turned to writing or continued to write in such a way that the painful stories of the Africa they left behind could unfold …

Ambigüedades Éticas Y Estéticas: La Narrativa Peruana Contemporánea Y La Violencia Política, Gabriel T Saxton-Ruiz

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation “Ambigüedades éticas y estéticas: La narrativa peruana contemporánea y la violencia política” explores the complex relationship of literature and the recent history of Peru by analyzing ideological positions expressed in three novels, Alonso Cueto’s La hora azul (2005), Santiago Roncagliolo’s Abril rojo (2006), and Daniel Alarcón’s Radio Ciudad Perdida (2007), and in a collection of short stories, Jorge Eduardo Benavides’ La noche de Morgana (2005). This dissertation discusses how these authors employ different literary discourses (detective fiction, literature of the fantastic and the dystopian novel) to recreate artistically the period of internal conflict, as well as the ethical …

Decoding Charlotte's Prevalence. A Kristevian Approach To The Representation Of Femininity In Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Zsuzsanna Rothne Zadori

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines Goethe’s portrayal of femininity in Die Wahlver-wandtschaften and how his depiction of all three central female characters relates to feminine ideals that were promoted through the theoretical gender debate of the late 1700s in Germany and Western Europe. I analyze Charlotte’s, Luciane’s, and Ottilie’s actions and interactions in various triadic character constellations in order to offer new insights into Goethe’s portrayal of femininity. In so doing, I argue that Goethe’s depiction of Charlotte holds the key to understanding how far Die Wahlverwandtschaften functions as (critical) commentary on the late Enlightenment gender discourse.

I maintain that the actions …

‘[A] Litle Treatyse In Prynte And Euen In The English Tongue’: Appeals To The Public During The Early Years Of The English Reformation, Bradley C. Pardue

Doctoral Dissertations

This project examines the important implications of printed vernacular appeals to a nascent public by exiled reformers such as William Tyndale, by religious conservatives such as Thomas More, and by Henry VIII and his regime in the volatile years of the 1520s and 1530s. This dissertation explores the nature of this public, both materially and as a discursive concept, and the various ways in which Tyndale provoked and justified public discussion of the central religious issues of the period through the production of vernacular Bibles and his polemical works. Tyndale’s writings raised important issues of authority and legitimacy and challenged …

The Consanguinity Of Ideas: Race And Anti-Communism In The U.S. - Australian Relationship, 1933 - 1953, Travis J. Hardy

Doctoral Dissertations

American diplomatic historian’s consideration of the role of ideology in the formation of American foreign policy has only recently begun to receive more attention. Traditional focuses on economics and relations among great nation-states have predominated the historical literature. This work examines the powerful effect that ideology, particularly race and anti-communism, played in developing the U.S.’s relationship with a small power nation-state, Australia, between 1933 and 1953. This work is comparative in nature, relying on archival research in both American and Australian archives and examines the attitudes of both elite policymakers as well as common individuals in shaping the alliance between …

"Not For An Age, But For All Time": Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies On Film, Kelly A. Rivers

Doctoral Dissertations

From Sam Taylor’s 1929 Taming of the Shrew to Kenneth Branagh’s 2000 Love’s Labour’s Lost, nine comedies have been filmed and released for the mainstream film market. Over the course of the twentieth century a filmic cycle developed. By the late 1990s, the films of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies included cinematic allusions to films produced and distributed in the 1930s. This cycle indicates an awareness of and appreciation for the earlier films. Such awareness proves that the contemporary films’ meaning and entertainment value are derived in part from the consciousness of belonging to a larger tradition of Shakespeare comedy on film. …

Into The Attic: A Novel, Laura E. Koons

Doctoral Dissertations

This creative dissertation is a novel titled Into the Attic. The novel tells the story of Sullivan Young, a junior at a small liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania in the mid-2000s, and James Shelley, a young literature professor at the college, with whom Sullivan initiates an affair. The narrative switches between the points of view of these two men, neither of whom is happy with the person he is becoming, and develops around the fears each has about the relationship.

The novel is concerned with character, sexuality, and power; in order to explore these issues fully within Sullivan and …

Becoming A Creatrix: Women’S Religious Roles In W. B. Yeats And Olivia Shakespear, Elaine Kathyryn Childs

Doctoral Dissertations

This project is the biography of a symbol: that of the holy woman motif in William Butler Yeats’s oeuvre. For most of Yeats’s writing life, beautiful women have a place of spurious privilege in his spiritual imagination because they have an intrinsic connection with the divine otherworld. In chapters on Yeats’s beauty-worship in his long fin de siecle, Olivia Shakespear’s critique of that beauty-worship in her fiction, and the role of A Vision in The Winding Stair and Other Poems, I argue that Yeats revised the holy woman motif from a limited and limiting goddess or helpmeet role in …

Too Much Horse: Fiction, Nonfiction, Prose Poetry, Andrew Otis Haschemeyer

Doctoral Dissertations

A collection of fiction, nonfiction, and prose poetry that explores imagination through different shapes in form, content, and genre. Includes award winning nonfiction, “The Storekeeper,” and award winning fiction, “The Fantôme of Fatma.”

“The Last Dear Drop Of Blood”: Revenge In Restoration Tragic Drama, Misty Sabrina Krueger

Doctoral Dissertations

Revenge on the English stage has long been associated with Elizabethan and Renaissance revenge tragedies, and has been all but ignored in Restoration theater history. While the shortage of scholarly work on revenge in Restoration drama might seem to indicate that revenge is not a vital part of Restoration drama, I argue that revenge on stage in the Restoration is connected with important late seventeenth-century anxieties about monarchy and political subjecthood in the period. This dissertation examines how Restoration tragic drama staged during Charles II’s reign (1660-1685) depicts revenge as a representation of an unrestrained passion that contributes to the …

Invisible Mink, Jessie L Janeshek

Doctoral Dissertations

Emily Dickinson, Frances Sargent Osgood, and Sarah Piatt render the nineteenth-century “women’s sphere” ironically Unheimliche while simultaneously conveying it as the “home sweet home” the sentimental tradition prescribes it should be. These American women poets turn the domestic milieu into, as Paula Bennett phrases it, “the gothic mise en scene par excellence…the displacements, doublings, and anxieties characterizing gothic experience are the direct consequence of domestic ideology’s impact on the lives and psyches of ordinary bourgeois women (121-122).”

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath continue to represent the Unheimliche home in their poetry through the middle of the twentieth century, specifically by …

Faith And Field: Christianity, The Environment, And Five Contemporary American Poets, Heather M. Hoover

Doctoral Dissertations

Many poets write about the earth or even about God using the language of nature. And many poets and contemporary authors concern themselves with the state of the environment. However, the poetry of Wendell Berry, James Still, Li-Young Lee, Mary Oliver, and Charles Wright seems to engage different kinds of questions about how humans creatively respond to the earth. Collectively, their responses seem influenced by their connections with Christianity rather than any specific ecological agenda. In all of their poetry lies a sensibility about how humans should interact with the earth. All five of the poets seem to acknowledge humanity’s …

"Rapping About Authenticity": Exploring The Differences In Perceptions Of "Authenticity" In Rap Music By Consumers.", James L. Wright

Doctoral Dissertations

Historically, social scientists have not only marginalized rap music as a viable unit of scholarly analysis, but failed at attempts to understand the thoughts and actions of rap music consumers. This study analyzes the connection between rap music’s (and the artists’) authenticity and how those perceptions of authenticity affect music consumers’ decision making process, thus providing a possible explanation as to why music fans purchase rap music. The goal of this research was to see if the reasons rap music fans provide explaining the rationale behind their purchases match the images and perceptions presumably held by the general public about …