Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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 …

"A Magic Deeper Still": Sacramental Poetics In William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, And C.S. Lewis, Eric Michael Bontempo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A sacramental poetics requires a particular mode of being-in-the-world. Religiously-minded poets, from Dante and Milton to Donne and Herbert, have long considered how the individual becomes attuned with creation and God’s will. But what happens when modernity and secularization challenge long-held assumptions about the universe and how humankind fits into it? A reevaluation is then needed. My thesis begins with an examination of how William Wordsworth, who sort of falls into modernity, seeks to reoccupy the functions of religion in an increasingly secularized landscape. One consequence of the European Enlightenment is the disentangling and distancing that occurs in regards to …

Cultural Reimagining And Literary Voice: Southeastern Tribal Women Negotiate Cultural, Social, And Political Identity Through Literature, Linda Sue Shaffer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines literature written by women who identify with Native tribes that originally inhabited, and in some cases continue to inhabit, the southeastern area of what is now known as the United States. The analysis presented in each chapter applies tribally specific methods used for creating knowledge within the particular discourse community being represented through literature. The project also employs the perspectives of Native literary scholars to consider the ways in which the roles and lives of Native women have been influenced by Euro-American values and to analyze the ways in which these female authors engage literature as a …

Statements In Stone: The Politics Of Architecture In Charlemagne's Aachen, Mary Katherine Tipton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Statements in Stone is an intersectional and preliminary study of the architecture and Social aspects of the palatine complex of Aachen Germany during the reign of Charlemagne approximately spanning from the 790s to 814CE. The interplay between built space and its Social uses inform the larger Social understandings and interpretations of power and authority. Court poetry written by contemporaries and courtiers of Charlemagne allow readers to glimpse the court as it moved through and interacted with the built environment. Architectural precedents inform the connotations associated with the spaces of Aachen, while spatial theory will provide a framework for understanding the …

The Net Of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, And Political Alienation And Nostalgia In Contemporary Latino And South Asian American Literature, Farzana Akhter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Generally thought of as a yearning for recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia is seen as a sentiment that impairs living in the present. And in case of immigrants, nostalgia is thought of as a debilitating form of escapism and an inability to adapt to change and mobility. In this dissertation, contesting against the prevalent concept, I argue that immigrant nostalgia is neither a colored memory (Dyson 117) nor a romance with one’s own fantasy (Boym xiii); rather, immigrant nostalgia has a socio-economic and political underpinning. By exploring the various nuances of immigrant experience delineated in the literary works of South …

The Two-Sided Coin: Madness And Laughter As Subversion In Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland And The Sandman, Tessa Starr Swehla

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mad female characters in Western literature have traditionally represented attempts by dominant patriarchal discourse to subjugate women’s discourse: these characters are usually pathologized in both their dialogue with other characters and in their physical bodies. This subjugation by representation of mad female characters in dominant discourse parallels similar attempts to portray women as lacking in humor. This thesis studies the intersections between madness and humor and the ability of female characters that embody both to challenge and subvert dominant discourse. By examining the characters of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s novel and Delirium from Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel series The Sandman …

The Power Fantastic: How Genre Expectations Mediate Authority, Angela Rose Cox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reconciles academic and popular uses of the term genre, concluding that genre is a transmedial, mutable, associative, recognized system regulated through tacit understandings of prestige and power in a given Social space. The study employs a digital humanities method (dependent on digitally facilitated data analysis), conducting descriptive discourse analysis on collected online discussions from fan spaces concerning the fantasy genre and matters related to fantasy. In this way, I construct an image of the fantasy genre, and genre in general, as a multimodal space in which material freely passes between traditional and new media and participants actively negotiate …

Ecological Approaches To Modernism, The U.S. South, And 20th Century American Literature, Justin Ford Tinsley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to draw from the insights of the emerging scholarly discipline known as ecocritism, study of the relationship between human and nonhuman in all arts and in all diverse forms, and apply them to the study of a specific regional art, that of the U.S. South. As an interrogation of the human / nonhuman binary, ecocriticism is intrinsically intertwined with the concept of place. Southern studies—having long explored the diversity (in terms of both human experience and geographical terrain) characterizing the region—offers ecocriticism a ripe testing ground for theoretical mergers and analytic applications. Both fields celebrate hybridity, multiplicity, …

"The Best Soil Of Their Hearts": Protestant Explorations Of Catholic Spirituality In Cooper, Longfellow, And Hawthorne, Amy Oatis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, focusing upon their explorations of Roman Catholic spirituality, as reflected in their poetry, prose, and personal writings. Despite the anti-Romanism prevalent in nineteenth-century American political and religious culture, these authors engaged deeply with Catholic sacramentality, discovering an appeal in the Catholic faith tradition that provided possible answers to questions about spirituality in an increasingly pluralistic democratic society. The first chapter explores the aesthetic appeal of Roman Catholic sacramentals that attracted the attention of Cooper, Longfellow, and Hawthorne. The second chapter connects Catholic sacramentality to the …

"Good To Think With": Women And Exempla In Four Medieval And Renaissance English Texts, Jennifer Fish Pastoor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines four English texts—Beowulf; Ancrene Wisse; Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ Man of Law’s Tale and Second Nun’s Tale; and Richard Hyrde’s English translation, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, of Juan Luis Vives’ De Institutione Feminae Christianae—in terms of their use of exempla related to women. These texts all find women good “to think with,” to use, from The Body and Society, Peter Brown’s appropriation of Levi-Strauss’s famous wordplay. The ways in which these Old English, Middle English, and modern English texts portray women’s lives and bodies as a gateway into thought about the Christian life are also …

Revision And Re-Writing As Adaptation: Using Adaptation Theory To Encourage Student Recognition Of Rhetorical Situations, Alicia Claire Troby

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many students don’t want to revise their writing, or do so in small, surface-level ways. This has been an issue many composition instructors have faced over the years, and there is a large body of scholarship about revision and the writing process by many in writing studies. From Nancy Sommers, Janet Emig, Donald Murray, and others, to more recent publications “post-process,” composition instructors and writing studies scholars are concerned about revision and the role it plays in students’ learning to write. As a strategy for teaching bigger-level revision, I implemented the use of adaptation theory (reading/watching and doing adaptation) as …

"Everyone Has Thought About Killing Someone - One Way Or Another": Cannibalism And The Question Of Morality In Bryan Fuller's Hannibal, Kristi Michelle Pierse

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Popular criticism insists that violence in the media perpetuates violence in the real world. This is an especially relevant argument today as we witness on a daily basis the violence that is occurring in the United States through mass shootings, police brutality, and countless other forms of aggressive actions. While studies do show a correlation between violent media and real-world violence, there is no absolute conclusion that proves such. My thesis addresses the moral lessons that can be learned through violence on television, particularly through the creative adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter series as reimagined by Bryan Fuller in …

Designing Place-Sensitive Professional Development: A Critical Ethnography Of Teaching And Learning Argumentative Writing, Sarah N. Holland

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the experiences of teachers participating in a two-year professional development program designed by the National Writing Project and funded by a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) grant. Informed by New Literacy Studies’ ideological model of literacy as a Social practice and rural literacies’ notion of pedagogies of sustainability, this study employs critical ethnography and discourse analysis to analyze the discourse of teachers participating in the College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) in order to understand how professional development might be adjusted to re-empower teachers. Data sources included field notes, interviews, lesson …

Selling College: Student Recruitment And Education Reform Rhetoric In The Age Of Privatization, Paige Marie Hermansen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the success of for-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) as a socio-cultural phenomenon that hinges on distinct public discursive strains and neoliberal rhetorics. This project examines the role of language in creating and sustaining particular discourses of higher education and how those discourses are reinforced and reflected in channels of discourse like documentary films and advertisements.

In the context of shifting demands on and representations of higher education, this project critiques the evolving rhetoric of American education and the shift toward a wider acceptance of privatization efforts, as well as the effect this shift has had on prospective …

Dandy As Disease: Gender Hygiene And British Nineteenth-Century Literature, Sharon Louise Fox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Dandy as Disease: Gender Hygiene and British Nineteenth-century Literature” explores the link between the nineteenth-century dandy, ideas of hegemonic masculinity, and Walter Besant’s The Revolt of Man, a dystopian text in which women have usurped all traditionally-masculine roles, while men are the caretakers and manual workers. The first chapter deals with the historical role of the dandy in the nineteenth-century and how he might be viewed as the cause of the fall of Britain. The second chapter revolves around Besant’s novel, exploring how men are shown to be at fault for Britain’s fall in the eyes of the rest of …

Telling New Tales: Modernizations Of Chaucer In The Eighteenth Century, Eric Duane Larson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Any review of medieval culture and literature in the British eighteenth century requires some consideration for the modernizations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Effectively a collaboration that spanned the entire century, this project began with Dryden and Pope and continued in earnest with lesser-known poets like George Ogle and William Lipscomb. The resulting modernization of every Chaucerian tale between 1700 and 1795 revisits medieval themes, but it also displays contemporary anxieties through presentations of language, content, style, and rhetorical intent that are sometimes vastly different from Chaucer’s originals.

The modernization project is worthy of study, in particular because it reflects, across …

Hoc Est Corpus Meum: The Eucharist In Twelfth-Century Literature, Lindsey Zachary Panxhi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In “Hoc Est Corpus Meum: The Eucharist in Twelfth-Century Literature,” I analyze the appearance of the Eucharist as a sacred motif in secular lais, romances, and chronicles. The Eucharist became one of the most controversial intellectual topics of the High Middle Ages. While medieval historians and religious scholars have long recognized that the twelfth century was a critical period in which many eucharistic doctrines were debated and affirmed, literary scholars have given very little attention to the concurrent emergence of eucharistic themes in twelfth-century literature. This is unfortunate, since the Eucharist emerges as an intriguing motif, appearing in fantastic encounters …

The Threat At Court: Subversive Uses Of Translation, Transcription, And Tradition In The Henrician Court, Rebecca Marie Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to consider the use, at the Henrician court, of the strategies of translation, transcription, and tradition to cushion and to code the presentation of dangerous and radical ideas. Each of these strategies allows the authors deniability, while nonetheless allowing them to communicate clearly with their readers. These writers speak in a code that can be interpreted by anyone at court, but use that code to create just enough distance to avoid overt confrontation with the king. This is further complicated, though, by the king’s own deeply influential role in the creation of that code. Each strategy also …

Divining The Southwest: Liminality, Pragmatism, And Regionalism In "Death Comes For The Archbishop", Alex C. Blomstedt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work aims to explore the themes of pragmatism and liminality, particularly as they pertain to spirituality, in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. By taking an interdisciplinary critical approach to the novel, I will synthesize its spiritual affect into a sensibility called “pragmatic liminality.” Finally, I will connect this sensibility to other works in the Southwestern literary canon and elucidate the foundational importance that pragmatic liminality has to the Southwestern “sense of place” and its role in the larger narratives of regionalism in American literature.

Beyond "Main Street": Small Towns In Post-"Revolt" American Literature, Rachael Price

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Beyond Main Street” examines the impact and legacy of the literary movement that Carl Van Doren, in an infamous 1920 article from The Nation, referred to as the “revolt from the village.” This movement, which is widely acknowledged to encompass such writers as Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis, pushed back against the primacy of the heretofore-dominant pastoral tradition when it came to depictions of rural America. These authors sought to create a more accurate portrayal of the small town, one that, while not completely eschewing the pastoral, also exposed the more seedy side of village life. Critics …

Literature As Virtual Reality: An Exploration Of Subjectivity Formation In The Digital Era, Jessica Danielle Schnebelen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project traces a line of developing subjectivity in the history of mediation. Using Jacque Lacan’s mirror stage to emphasize the relationship between Social identification and self formation, I suggest literary virtual realities further our understanding of human-technology relationships. Examining the evolution of eighteenth and nineteenth century sympathetic consciousness reveals a subjectivity intricately bound to both cognitive and physical spaces. The emergence of the virtual body complicates this consciousness by obscuring physicality and mixing man and machine. To trace this consciousness this project looks at the work of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and a contemporary television writer, Charlie Brooker. These …

“Deliberate Voluptuousness”: The Monstrous Women Of Dracula And Carmilla, Judith Bell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vampire women play a culturally significant role in films and literature by revealing the extent to which deviation from Socially accepted behavior is tolerated. In this thesis, I compare the vampire women of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla to their depictions in recent adaptations. In Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire sisters are representative of the shortcomings of 19th century gender roles, especially in regard to women’s communities. In recent adaptations, the vampire sisters’ revealing clothing, promiscuity, and lack of characterization are still closely connected with villainy, and as in Stoker’s novel, the women’s violent deaths in the …

A Watchman On The Walls: Ezekiel And Reaction To Invasion In Anglo-Saxon England, Max K. Brinson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the Viking Age, the Christian Anglo-Saxons in England found warnings and solace in the biblical text of Ezekiel. In this text, the God of Israel delivers a dual warning: first, the sins of the people call upon themselves divine wrath; second, it is incumbent upon God’s messenger to warn the people of their extreme danger, or else find their blood on his hands. This thesis examines how the Anglo-Saxon applied Ezekiel’s warnings to their own cultural crisis. It begins with the early development of this philosophy by the Britons in the 500s, its adoption by the Anglo-Saxons, Irish, and …

The Stories Of Junot Díaz: Genre And Narrative In Drown And This Is How You Lose Her, Luis Fernando Marin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Junot Díaz creates and constructs his literary alter-ego and narrator, Yunior de las Casas, and examines the Social and cultural aspects, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, that condition or influence Yunior’s construction. I argue that Díaz uses the short story as a subversive genre and modernist narrative techniques, such as shifts in space-time and focalization, to reflect Yunior’s diasporic, fragmented subjectivity. My analysis includes narratological and generic readings of Drown and This Is How You Lose Her, with a brief look at The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, paying particular attention to Yunior as …

A Band Of Sisters: Female Detectives, Authority, And Fiction From 1864 To The 1930s, Amanda Renee Schafer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Because mystery and detective fiction have been classified as “popular” genres, the complex ideas and ideologies that the authors work with and within reach a wide and varied audience through formulaic and familiar ways. The perceived conservatism of the genre allows authors to present and pursue distinctly anti-conservative views in disguise. For fictional detectives and, especially female detectives, disguise is an effective tool for solving their cases. Often, these detectives will disguise themselves as someone infinitely more conservative than they are in order to gain access to their quarry. Similarly, mystery and detective fiction wear a cloak of conservatism to …

[Re]Visiting The Rime: A Case Study Of Adaptation As Process And Product With The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Sally Ferguson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis combines adaptation theory with ecology to examine Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and its adaptations; it argues further combinations of adaptation with evolutionary theory and ecological ideas could allow for a better interpretation of many texts. The adaptation Rime of the Modern Mariner (2011) by Nick Hayes and the appropriation Perelandra (1943) by C.S. Lewis will also be present in individual chapters to examine the texts' interactions with each other as they evolve and how each work represents the combined theory.

“Between The Yes And The No”: Alternative Ontologies And Literary Depictions Of Mysticism In Borges And Mahfouz, David Shane Elder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the advent of the modern era and the subsequent age of Enlightenment, the rational tradition has enabled the West to assert command of a large area of the globe and its population. While advancing the conditions of living for many, rational structures have also been used to control and repress others. The theosophy of the medieval Islamic mystic Ibn al-ᶜArabī, with its basis in irrational thought, offers a counterpoint to the rational and empirical traditions, the Social orthodoxies to which these epistemologies contribute, and the ontologies with which these epistemologies and orthodoxies are correlated. Yet mystical expression is very …

Twice Heard, Paradoxically (Un)Seen: Walking The Tightrope Of Invisibility In Palestinian Translated Fiction, Mona Nabeel Malkawi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the translators’ invisibility in postcolonial translated Palestinian fiction. On one hand, this analysis revolves around the ethical stance of translators towards authors in a postcolonial theoretical framework. On the other, it brings postcolonial translation scholars’ approaches into practice and examination. Therefore, this study provides a critical analysis of reading novels in translation as both a channel of decolonization from Oriental and imperial discourses and an aesthetic catalyst for freedom in exile, specifically translated by Trevor LeGassick, Elizabeth Fernea, Salma Jayyusi, Adnan Haydar, and Roger Allen. The intriguing paradox of the translator’s invisibility is inherent in the contradiction …

At Home In Exile: Ezra Pound And The Poetics Of Banishment, Andy Kay Trevathan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ezra Pound is one of the most important poets, critics, and writers of the 20th century. Through his literary efforts, and his work on behalf of many other writers, Pound changed the way we read and write poetry today. His cultivation and support of other writers and poets like T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, etc. created the basis for what we refer to as Imagism, Modernism, and other important literary movements of the early 20th century. Pound’s use of fragmentation, pastiche, and bricolage laid the foundation for post-modern writers of the latter half of the 20th century, …

Dramatizing Power And Resistance: Images Of Women In Pakistani And Indian Alternative Theater, Sobia Mubarak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes Pakistani and Indian plays that illustrate the nexus of power relations that operate in Pakistan and India to disempower women and the way women resist by creating dialogic spaces or fissures in the exploitative system. I have selected plays by Ajoka Theater in Pakistan and plays dealing with the similar thematic concerns by notable Indian playwrights to explore common grounds and points of departure. I have chosen four images of women depicting diverse modes of oppression associated with women’s bodies that are dealt with in these plays.

Chapter 1 examines Barri/The Acquittal by Ajoka theater, and Mother …