Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Print On Demand: Stereotyping And Electrotyping In The United States Printing Trades And Publishing Industry, 1812-1860, Jeffrey Michael Makala

Theses and Dissertations

Print on Demand explores the role and significance of stereotyping and electrotyping in the United States printing trades and publishing industry during the early nineteenth century. Stereotyping—the creation of solid printing plates cast from moveable type—fundamentally changed the ways in which books (and later, periodicals) were printed. The commissioning of plates altered shop practices, distribution methods, and the author/publisher relationship. Because of this new embodiment of capital and texts in the form of printing plates, a secondhand market for stereotyped works prolonged and complicated the production and distribution of material texts. The primary focus of this study is the ways …

Supporting Immersion Teachers: An Autoethnography, Lauren Speece

Theses and Dissertations

Immersion programs face a variety of challenges that are common to the field, such as lack of materials appropriate for students’ language abilities, assessment, teacher recruitment and retention, balancing content and language, and relevant, high quality professional development for teachers. However, within specific micro-contexts, other issues can affect the success of immersion programs. Since the teacher’s role is critical in all aspects of the immersion classroom, more emphasis needs to be placed on talking with teachers about their experiences in order to provide better professional development, and to build a stronger community of support.

This narrative autoethnography examines my journey …

Cross Roads Of The Living And The Dead: Necropolitics And Market Logic In Chris Abani's Graceland, Joshua Dunn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that Chris Abani’s 2004 novel Graceland presents the austerity programs imposed on Nigeria in the 1980s as a form of financialized necropolitics. Through its representation of the entanglement between transnational capital interests and repressive state security forces, Graceland offers new ways of theorizing neoliberal governance and its relationship to the construction of what Achille Mbembe calls “death worlds.” In the novel, the state’s instrumentation and destruction of human bodies (for the accumulation of wealth) becomes an apt metaphor for structural adjustment. But the novel goes further by demonstrating how this logic of accumulation utilizes biopolitical and even …

Judging A Book By Its Cover: The Context Book Covers Provide, Virginia Emily Cranwell

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to prove how the context of books, specifically the book jackets and bindings, are a crucial part to understanding the history and the text of the story. The paper begins with printing history in order to illustrate how the context of books has changed, and how the Twentieth Century saw a use of book jackets to promote the book. The paper then looks at the books of a particular author, Alasdair Gray, as an example of how the context of the book can be used to enhance and reveal aspects of the text. Finally, this paper discusses …

Engendering Ethics Through Practice In The Project-Based Business Communciation Course, Jonathan H. Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Business related degrees perennially make up roughly 20% of all college degrees awarded. At the same time, business ethics continues to be a much-discussed problem. I capitalize on the close connection between communication and ethics in order to offer a partial solution to the problem in the form of a project-based business communication class. After establishing a complementary view of business ethics, I go on to suggest the ethical focus for the project-based communication class. I then argue for the special suitability of business communication for such an approach, after which I go on to discuss the work of Wittgenstein …

We [Still] Have A Moment: Multimodal Values And Curricular Practices In A First-Year Writing Program, Kelly L. Wheeler

Theses and Dissertations

Students today get much of their news and information about the world through their handheld devices. Their phones flash or vibrate with a new message or post, and they are sucked into a conversation or moment beyond the physical space they occupy. In this way, their phone feeds blur the lines between places as politics enters the bathroom, a walk in the forest, or their most private spaces. With opportunities for rhetors to act upon audiences in every imagined physical space, our practices within the classroom should reflect these changes in space, delivery, and ubiquity of multimodality in digital platforms. …

Queer Practices, Queer Rhetoric, Queer Technologies: Studies Of Digital Performativity In Gendered Network Culture, Gerald Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

The question of gender and gender representation has been an issue for STEM fields like computer science and software engineering for decades. This dissertation argues that the impact of labor practices in such fields promotes gender disparity by masking gender, and often sexuality, behind myths of mastery and correctness. In this dissertation, I approach technical objects like computer code and protocol specifications from the BitTorrent and Bitcoin software packages, and argue that gendered forms of labor that have existed since the inception of computer programming as a profession are evident in technical documents like code. Furthermore, I argue that this …

Walter Brut's Utilization Of Profeminine Rhetoric Towards Ecclesiastic Reformation, Ashley Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the means by which Walter Brut, a fourteenth-century gentryman, exerted his rhetorical influence in order to change the fourteenth-century Church. Divided into three chapters, this study translates some of Brut's most controversial statements into five component tenets, through which this argues Brut exerts his said-rhetoric. Further, Brut's rhetoric is corroborated and put into dialogue with the voices of two contemporaneous female writers, thereby evidencing the impact of what this little-known layman did, in his challenge to Church authority.

Toward A Networked Feminist Pedagogy For Composition, Leah Vitello

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to offer a pedagogy that uses methods inspired by fourth-wave feminism, or what I name Networked Feminist Pedagogy, to address both the highlights and challenges we have seen in the multimodal and public turns in the field. First, I provide an overview of the ongoing relationship between feminist composition and digital and multimodal rhetorics in order to locate the spaces in which Networked Feminist Pedagogy can intervene. Then, based on work by fourth wave feminist writers and teachers, I outline what I see as central principles of a fourth wave pedagogy, including daily practices, assignment ideas, and …

Examining The Impact Naming One’S Beliefs Has On One’S Practice: The Journey Of Three English Language Arts Teachers, Jessica Lynn Price

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I sought to understand how naming one’s beliefs about teaching reading and writing impacted reading and writing practices. I used action research design (McNiff & Whitehead, 2010; Mills, 2011) to examine three teachers’ journeys as they gave name to their beliefs. I made audio recordings and transcriptions of small group sessions and interviews, observed teachers, asked for and collected teacher reflections, and kept a researcher’s journal. I used thematic analysis to identify patterns across data points. What I found varied for each participant, influenced by the degree that each participant was present and reflective throughout the process. …

Translingual Conversations: Interrogating Default Whiteness In College Writing, Stephanie Eve Boone Mosher

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how language ideologies influence composition, both in disciplinary approaches to language difference and in individual instructors’ attitudes about language correctness and appropriateness. The dissertation presumes that all natively-spoken varieties of human languages are inherently systematic and valid, and that from a linguistic standpoint, contrary to popular belief, no variety is “better” than another; moreover, beliefs about language correctness intersect with structural racism and therefore contribute to inequality. Popular beliefs about the superiority of Standard English (SE) and academic discourse, both based in white, middle-class communicative practices, still influence composition; so this dissertation is particularly interested in how …

Fugitive Verses & Faded Histories: Recovering The Poetry & Influence Of The British American Loyalists, Michael C. Weisenburg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces the literary history of the British American Loyalists as they spread through the Atlantic and across the North American continent during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in order to reassess our understanding of the origins of cultural nationalism and the early literary history of the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. As a result, it implicitly argues for a reconsideration of American literature as developing in a simultaneously hemispheric and transatlantic response to British Empire. I argue that the Loyalists, through their lived experience of the war, exile, and reincorporation back into the body politic, …

Song Of The Scapegoat: How Silence Augments Kenneth Burke’S Notion Of The Scapegoat In Political Rhetoric, Mary Elizabeth Smith

Theses and Dissertations

President Donald Trump ascended to the US’s highest hall of power through rhetoric that scapegoated marginalized groups, such as Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants, foreigners, and others. This work considers the executive order President Donald Trump released January 27, 2017, and its revision released March 06, 2017, for how it exemplifies Kenneth Burke’s notion of the scapegoat, specifically as outlined in A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives. These executive orders have come to be known as the “Muslim Ban” due to the way they implicate Muslims in charges of terrorism, harm, and danger and affect the lives and movement …

The Nature Of Power And Corruption In Plato And J.R.R. Tolkien, Lily Howard-Hill

Theses and Dissertations

In the collected dialogues of Plato, Plato sets out his arguments on democracy, power, and free-will through Socrates’ interactions with his interlocutors. His understandings of morality and justice suggest that a good and moral person is the foundation for successful societies. In The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and other tales, Tolkien offers a different lens through which to observe philosophical and ethical concepts. Plato’s morality is centered around the organization and the structure of the soul. The soul is ruled by virtues which include justice and knowledge. Here, I present an analysis of key Platonic concepts by offering …

Lillian Smith, Richard Wright, And Walker Percy's Ontological Vision: Gnosticism, Cartesian Dualism, And The Split Of The Southern Self, Thomas R. Cody

Theses and Dissertations

With the advent of the New Southern Studies and its critiques of Southern Exceptionalism, the critic of Southern Literature has felt the necessity to both look within and outside the American South to re-contextualize the parameters of the study in order to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing and whitewashed narratives it is accused of perpetrating. As Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino note in their study The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, such a shift may be accomplished through the consideration of more salient measures of identity and belonging, such as religion, class, and gender. In this paper, I examine how religious …

The Classical And The Christian: Tennyson's Grief And Spiritual Shift From "The Lotos-Eaters" To "Ulysses", Carleen Lara Miller Ratcliffe

Theses and Dissertations

Sacred forms, in the shape of doctrines and creeds, constituted a large part of Tennyson’s childhood religion. This is reflected in “The Lotos-Eaters,” written in 1832, as Tennyson cautions against increasingly popular ideas of secular materialism; Tennyson’s mariners parrot the ideas of Epicureanism, but their arguments mirror that of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene character Despair. In putting Despair’s words in the mariners’ mouths, Tennyson warns against forgetting religious ritual, as this leads to suicide and eternal damnation. However, with the death of Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833, Tennyson’s religion shifted dramatically. In Memoriam gives us the final version of Tennyson’s …

Patient Agency, Terministic Screens, And The Role Of The Public In The Cases Of Karen Ann Quinlan And Terri Schiavo, Ashley Marie Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Humanity has always been fascinated with death, and in recent history, has attempted to delay or suspend death through life-preserving technologies. These advancements in artificial life support, such as ventilators and feeding tubes, have contributed to tenuous and controversial situations in which the dividing line between life and death is unclear. In this thesis, I interrogate two case studies in order to analyze how the various medical, legal, and public discourses have grappled with the ambiguous space between life and death regarding patients in persistent vegetative states. The case of Karen Ann Quinlan from 1975 and the case of Terri …

Cut Purses And Poisoned Paintings: Resisting Gender Objectification, Meredith N. Will

Theses and Dissertations

The early modern English stage often portrays gender as polarized, creating an unwelcoming atmosphere toward characters who act exhibit characteristics from both male and female genders. Moll Cutpurse from Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s The Roaring Girl and Alice of Arden of Faversham resist early modern gender boundaries, conflating masculine and feminine attributes as they use objects to navigate their respective social spaces. Critics often describe Moll as a transvestite due to her fashion choice to wear a codpiece, along with her exaggerated, boisterous masculine behavior; however, she consistently defends her biological sex, implicating herself within her arguments concerning female …

Framing The Spaces Unseen In Mason & Dixon, Gregory W. Deinert

Theses and Dissertations

The treatment of the Conestoga Massacre and the (dis)placement of the subaltern in Mason & Dixon are of utmost importance to the novel’s narrative arc. The relative paucity of indigenous voices in Mason & Dixon is important in at least two seemingly contradictory ways: the author simultaneously avoids appropriation, and performs, as it were, the erasure at the heart of the colonial paradigm. Mason & Dixon’s multiple allusions to native peoples never quite amount to an indigenous presence; indeed, they seem only to rehearse a particular ideological outlook in which colonial racial aggression cannot be acknowledged, or perhaps even seen. …

Remembering Salinger's Franny And Zooey Through Pari And The Royal Tenenbaums, Taraneh Zohadi

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the ways in which Mehrjui’s Pari and Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums borrow from Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. My argument is that Salinger and the concepts he introduced in the book are remembered through both films. Being a product of their historical/cultural contexts, The Royal Tenenbaums embraces the aesthetics of the text and Pari converses with the spiritual aspect of the main text. Anderson’s film captures the United States’ preoccupation consumerism and the hollowness at turn of the twenty-first century, while Pari explores the angst and despair in the post Iran-Iraq war context of the film’s release, feelings …

The Last Gentlemen: Southern Conservative Superfluity And The Work Of William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy, And Peter Taylor, William Matthew Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes that a robust, serious treatment of Southern conservatism can provide readers with effective ways to interpret works of Southern literature. Southern writers have always dealt with issues we might identify as “conservative,” and scholars have shown us three typical ways of Southern writers approaching conservatism. First, some writers have treated conservatism as one of many characteristics of the South; their treatments of conservatism have been part of their descriptive project. Other writers have used conservatism for more didactic, political purposes, whether that be showing the South’s sins or arguing that the South’s conservative character makes it a …

The Civil, Silent, And Savage In Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, Alexander J. Steele

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I argue that the political situation between Britons and Saxons within Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant further articulates Ishiguro’s ongoing critique of Western humanism’s logic of labelling the Other. I also argue for a definition of the figure of the buried giant broadly speaking as the Other par excellence, as an entity of pure alterity, and as a Lèvinasian “infinite other.” As The Buried Giant demonstrates, Ishiguro continues to write against the politics of humanism that have flourished in Western art, science, and political philosophy since the Enlightenment. Though Ishiguro sets The Buried Giant loosely in the …

Metafiction In Mourning: The Intersections Of Gender Performance And Postdictatorial Memory In Novels By Luisa Valenzuela, Clarice Lispector, And Diamela Eltit, Jennifer L. Slobodian

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to build on two major theoretical fields, feminism and postdictatorial memory, in the context of Latin American women’s writing. The development of Latin American feminism has run concurrently with the broader feminist movements of the 20th century, but has been shaped by the particularities and diversity of the region. Specific concerns relating to postcoloniality, religion, and nation have caused theorists like Debra A. Castillo to discuss Latin American feminism on its own, focusing on the inherent privileging of praxis over theory and the necessary pastiche of local and international theories. The development of Latin …

Textile As Intercessor: Understanding Margery Kempe's Sartorial Body, Hannah Lynn Davis

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I will explore Margery Kempe’s late fourteenth, early fifteenth century mystical text. Previously, Margery Kempe has been discussed in reference to her highly erotized language with Christ and her maternal themes that appear throughout her Book. However, I urge other medieval scholars to also look at her usage of textiles and clothing as a means of gaining authority with both Christ and the medieval church. First, I discuss Margery’s gendered situation within the male-centered church and community. Margery uses her position as a woman to build her agency and, as such, uses gendered specific clothing to introduce …

The Poetry Of Wilmer Mills, Rachael Acheson

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to contextualize the work of Wilmer Mills, a late, minor Southeastern American poet, within the complex and frequently misread tradition of New Formalism, as this manifested in the United States shortly after World War II. The analysis places Mills‟s work in conversation with the formalist philosophy of former U.S. Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur, and it suggests that both Mills‟s poetry and his reception amongst fellow academics who adhered to a more progressive philosophy demonstrates the continued relevance of this older, less-often discussed strain of formalism in American poetry. An appendix presents the first checklist of Mills‟s published …

In The Belly Of The Whale: Archive And Access In Melville’S Moby-Dick, Garrett Urban

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Melville’s depiction of archival anxiety as it appears in Moby-Dick. This narrative is fixated on the archive, brimming with motifs that equate whaling with the creation of an archive—and which associates the hunt for the whale with an obsession resembling Derrida’s vision of archive fever. As Melville depicts it, the archive is rooted in a fundamental anxiety concerning inaccessible and unknowable information. Ishmael constantly presents whales as physical repositories of information, attempting to archive the social and historical contexts of every scrap of flesh on them and every substance they produce. Yet his archival mission is perpetually …

Education Through Violence In Modern American Literature, Adam Griffey

Theses and Dissertations

“Education through Violence in Modern American Literature” examines how violence is employed as a pedagogical tool in overseeing the transition of young people into adulthood in twentieth and twenty-first century American literature. Examining texts by Robert Cormier, John Knowles, Suzanne Collins, Orson Scott Card, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, and Cormac McCarthy, this study demonstrates that a pedagogy of violence may be used as a coercive method to further the goals of the powerful, but it is equally interested in the ways that young people are able to rebel against structural systems of power that demand conformity and adherence to social, …

Efficacious Uncertainty In Two Animal Texts: The Lives Of Animals By J. M. Coetzee And "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More To Follow)" By Jacques Derrida, Kristofer Jon Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Jacques Derrida divides all texts into two categories in light of human encounters with animals. On the one hand are texts produced by those who may have devoted thought and attention to animals but have not imagined that animals might have a gaze of their own directed back at humans. On the other hand are texts produced by those whose thought and attention to animals has indeed been troubled, perplexed, and complicated by the recognition of an animal’s reciprocal gaze. Derrida’s own text, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” in which he distinguishes between these two kinds …

A Taste For Things: Sensory Rhetoric Beyond The Human, Justine Beatrice Wells

Theses and Dissertations

Amidst rising agricultural pollution, poor conditions for livestock animals, and disparity between “high” and “low” food cultures, gustatory taste has entered contemporary public rhetoric as a significant modality of intervention. This dissertation considers the environmentalist and social potential of this public embrace of sensory rhetoric. To do so, I build a rhetorical theory of sensation through a sensory re-engagement of the rhetorical tradition. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, I argue, embraced aesthetic taste as a site where rhetoric and ethics mingle, and yet in promoting its cultivation, they fell into elitism. The subsequent, Marxist discourse on sensory emancipation developed rhetoric’s sensory and …

Creating The Self: Women Artists In Twentieth-Century Fiction, Bethany Dailey Tisdale

Theses and Dissertations

In novels of artistic development (or künstlerromane) by women in the early twentieth-century, becoming an artist is intimately tied to becoming recognized as an individual. It would appear that an era of rapid change and expanding opportunities for women would result in affirmative narratives of women’s artistry, but studying texts by Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Dawn Powell shows that stringent gender roles can still keep women from realizing artist success.

In Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart ruins her prospects on the marriage market by striving for freedom and aesthetic pleasure. Those desires cannot be reconciled …