Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Unsmiling Lips And Dull Eyes: A Study Of Why We Continue To Read Jane Austen, Kareen Barakat

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to take a closer look at Jane Austen’s work and understand the importance of it in both the academic and cultural sphere. With a specific focus on Pride and Prejudice, this research starts with a focus on feminist readings of the novel. Primarily, this research looks at the novel with a feminist lens in order to better understand the female characters and their involvement in the marriage plot. Secondarily, the research goes on to look at the cultural impact of Pride and Prejudice and attempts to understand the ways in which this novel re-appears …

Reimagining African Authenticity Through Adichie's Imitation Motif, Ivette Rodriguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe indicts Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for exemplifying the kind of purist rhetoric that has long benefited Western ontology while propagating reductive renderings of African experience. Edward Said refers to this dynamic as the way in which societies define themselves contextually against an imagined Other. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fiction exposes how, by occupying cultural dominance, Western, white male values are normalized as universal. Nevertheless, these values are de-naturalized by their inconsistencies in the lived experiences of Adichie’s black, African women. Women who are at once aware of and participant in, the pretentions that underlie …

Reimagining Movements: Towards A Queer Ecology And Trans/Black Feminism, Gabriel Benavente

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to bridge feminist and environmental justice movements through the literature of black women writers. These writers create an archive that contribute towards the liberation of queer, black, and transgender peoples.

In the novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler constructs a world that highlights the pervasive effects of climate change. As climate change expedites poverty, Americans begin to blame others, such as queer people, for the destruction of their country. Butler depicts the dangers of fundamentalism as a response to climate change, highlighting an imperative for a movement that does not romanticize the environment as heteronormative, but …