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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Race, Place And Young Adulting In Southern And Adolescent Literature, Karly Eaton
Race, Place And Young Adulting In Southern And Adolescent Literature, Karly Eaton
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This thesis applies southern literary theory to contemporary young adult literature (YAL) in order to analyze constructions and representations of the South and adolescence(ts) in the texts discussed. Arguing that Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird acts a master narrative for popular conceptions of southern adolescent identity, this project proposes that Lee’s 2015 novel Go Set a Watchman along with contemporary publications in YAL disrupts the master narrative Mockingbird and Scout Finch present readers. Though analyzing how representations of adolescence(ts) act as a construct used to establish a white-normative narrative about childhood, the second and third chapters discuss how this …
The Spectacle Of Orphanhood: Reimagining Orphans In Postbellum Fiction, Afrin Zeenat
The Spectacle Of Orphanhood: Reimagining Orphans In Postbellum Fiction, Afrin Zeenat
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Orphan iconography has always been deployed in American literature and culture, but nineteenth-century American literature, fiction in particular, abounds in orphans, both real and imaginary. The orphan’s amphibious nature is hailed and demonized as the epitome of individualism and unbridled freedom, and also as the location of society’s anxiety. This complicated and conflicted construction of orphans animates the Social and cultural realm in postbellum America, foregrounding issues of class, race, and gender.
Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese
Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …