Dirty Modernism: Ecological Objects In American Poetry, Michael D. Sloane

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines how early-to-mid twentieth century American poetry is preoccupied with objects that unsettle the divide between nature and culture. Given the entanglement of these two domains, I argue that American modernism is “dirty.” This designation leads me to sketch what I call “dirty modernism,” which includes the registers of waste, energy, animality, raciality, and the sensual. Reading these registers, I turn to what I call “ecological objects,” or representations of how nature and culture come together, which includes trash, natural resources, inanimals, and tools. Through an ecocritical mode of analysis, I introduce dirty modernism with the Baroness Elsa …

Media Literacy And The English As A Second Language Curriculum: A Curricular Critique And Dreams For The Future, Clara R. Madrenas

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This thesis investigates whether or not the Ontario English as a Second Language/English Literacy Development (ESL/ELD) curriculum imparts the critical literacy skills necessary for students to deconstruct the multimedia messages with which the contemporary world is saturated, in order to function as informed, agentic citizens of Ontario society. Using foundations of cultural theory, radical critical pedagogy, and critical race theory, particularly the work of James Paul Gee, Henry A. Giroux, Paulo Freire and Michael Apple, this thesis explores the ways in which the current ESL/ELD curriculum can be found lacking due to its enforcement of the banking model of education, …

Nativos Migrantes: Poesía En La Encrucijada, Juan Sanchez

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Aquí ofrezco un encuentro entre saberes a partir de siete autores contemporáneos cuyas obras han sido fraguadas en las cinco direcciones de América: Humberto Ak’abal, Jaime Luis Huenún, Odi Gonzales, David Aniñir, Hugo Jamioy, Vito Apüshana y Rayen Kvyeh. Este corpus responde a dos razones: la conexión entre las migraciones (físicas o literarias) de los poetas y la forma en que sus libros modelan poéticas con un alto grado de experimentación; y la posibilidad de construir con estas obras un diálogo transfronterizo.

En contraposición a la idea de la literatura como objeto de estudio, propongo que la poesía …

Unmasking The Protester: The Meanings And Myths Of Collective Civil Resistance Movements In African American And Polish Postresistance Prose Fiction, Agnieszka Herra

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My contention is that the narrative framework of social movements, especially the ones deemed “successful” such as the American Civil Rights Movement and the Polish Solidarity Movement, reflects unity and collectivity within collective memory. During the period of the movements’ duration, this provides a clear rhetorical purpose: to give the appearance of unity in order to give effective voice to the demands. I argue that the voices that did not fit into the collective movements emerge subsequently to question this monologic language in literary form. This dissertation uses Bakhtin’s notion of dialogic language to argue that novels in the postresistance …