English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Best Practices For Teaching Writing To Postsecondary Students With Acquired Brain Injuries, Julianne Candio Sekel

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Because the writing abilities of postsecondary students with acquired brain injuries (ABI) are often determined by the student’s age when the injury was acquired, the severity of the injury, the amount of time that has passed since the injury, and the quality of the student’s writing education before the injury, it is impossible to generalize the best strategies to assist students with ABI in writing. However, through a review of existing literature on teaching writing to students with ABI, the relationship between oral and written discourse, expressive writing, educational intervention, and assistive technologies, this study presents a list of recommendations …

W.B. Yeats's Construction Of India, Ashim Dutta

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

William Butler Yeats’s literary career consists of varied passions and interests. He had a life-long interest in the occult mysticism of the East and the West, and Indian philosophy and spiritual tradition cover a considerable space in Yeats’s mysticism. From 1880s to the end of his life, Yeats cherished a profound interest in the spiritual India which was periodically reinforced by his encounters with three Indian personalities: Mohini Mohun Chatteijee in 1886, Rabindranath Tagore in 1912, and Shri Purohit Swami in 1931. Each of these three Indians left a profound impression on his mind and influenced him substantially. Yeats also …

Redefinitions Of Selfhood: Stan Brakhage, Bob Dylan, And Allen Ginsberg As Thoreauvian Counterculturists, James Anthony Galione

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

My master’s thesis lies in examining the appropriation of Henry David Thoreau’s techniques of authorship within the American 1960’s counterculture. My investigation focuses on how Stan Brakhage, Bob Dylan, and Allen Ginsberg engage in Thoreauvian forms of selfhood, self-government, citizenship, and ecological awareness within the context of the 1960’s counterculture. These three artists take on issues of 20th century materialism, nationalism, sexuality, and racial equality, within their respective medium of expression, as participants in what I will define as “Thoreauvian tradition”. Elements of this “Thoreauvian tradition” include subjective vision, ontological identity, undermining myth, and evolving the medium. These are the …

Political Twittoric : The Rhetorical Use Of Twitter By The Obama 2012 Presidential Campaign, Kainat Najmi Abidi

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

With the entrance of the digital age, the Presidential campaign has begun accommodating the growing trend of new technologies. A campaign can reach an audience in person, on the radio, through the newspaper, on television, and on the Internet. In 2008, President Barack Obama broke the limitations of campaigning by going social, which he continued in his run for reelection in 2012. Obama tapped into the popular social network of Twitter to run a portion his 2012 campaign. By utilizing this new network, Obama’s campaign accessed the multimodal quality of Twitter to benefit their goal of winning the 2012 election …

Charles Wright’S Seasonal Poetry : The Inscrutable, Spiritual Landscape And Ars Poetica, Marian Jeanette Kelleher

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis argues that several of Charles Wright’s poems use shifting natural images, fragmented form and metapoetics to comment on the uncertain nature of the metaphysical world. “China Traces” opens the thesis by exploring the adequacy of words to match nature’s completeness. “China Traces” specifically uses the natural image of light, calling on the poetic legacy of Emily Dickinson. Another poem, “Returned to Yaak Cabin, I Overhear an Old Greek Song,” seems to freeze a moment, calling upon mortality and the permanence of art. The final poem in Chapter 1 is “Local Journal,” which, set at the end of November, …

Beneath The Frock And Beyond The Original Plumbing : A Visual Rhetorical Analysis Of Transgender Magazines, Dayna Arcurio

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis studies the rhetoric, visual rhetoric, and visual semiotic potential of the transgender and transsexual community by engaging with its signature rhetorical texts: its print and digital magazines. Designating the transgender/transsexual magazines, Original Plumbing and Frock Magazine as my primary texts for study, I provide three critical lenses through which to view the written and visual expression of the transgender community. The heart of this research seeks to understand how the transgender/transsexual community creates meaning by examining three aspects of its magazines: 1) the trans-rhetorical expression through articles and interviews; 2) each magazine’s aesthetic design through the lens of …

"No Preaching, I Say!" : A Rhetorical Analysis Of E.D.E.N. Southworth's Temperance Motives And Motifs, Janine Marie Butler

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

E.D.E.N. Southworth, while relatively unknown today, was a popular and successful American writer who published over fifty stories throughout the mid- to late nineteenth century, including The Hidden Hand, Cruel as the Grave, The Lost Lady o f Lone, Ishmael, and Self- Raised. This thesis brings together literary, sociocultural, and rhetorical studies to analyze how Southworth instilled her devout Christian morals and temperance messages in a number of sensational stories that were marketed to a general audience of American readers, including many drinkers. This paper primarily utilizes Lloyd Bitzer's rhetorical situation (as detailed in "The Rhetorical Situation," published in Philosophy …

What Is Woman? : Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ladies Almanack, And Woman's Search For Her Identity In The 1920s, Timothy Coyne

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In the introductory chapter of her book, The Gender o f Modernity, Rita Felski writes, “If our sense of the past is inevitably shaped by the explanatory logic of narrative, then the stories that we create in turn reveal the inescapable presence and power of gender symbolism” (1). Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Djuna Barnes’s Ladies Almanack are two such stories; however, they both do more than simply reveal gender’s presence and power. These works of literature question the gender ideologies of the early twentieth century, challenging their power and inescapability by producing other, perhaps unknown, unthought of or …

"You Write Like A Girl" : Analyzing The Rhetoric Of Gender Bias In The Literary Establishment And Implications For Student Writing Development, Julie Robin Dalley

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Using Lloyd Bitzer’s model of the rhetorical situation, I have parsed current rhetorical statements made by prominent female authors, such as Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, and Francine Prose, to examine their claim that the literary establishment practices gender bias against women’s writing. The main speakers argue that literary gatekeepers -such as critical review journals, editors, publishers, awards juries, and academic institutions - marginalize women’s writing through systemic patriarchal institutional mechanisms. Joanna Russ, in her 1985 book How to Suppress Women’s Writing, deconstructs the ways in which women’s writing is biased against by literary institutions: …

The Living Dead Austen : Exploring The Zombie Trope In American Culture, Film, And Literature, Katherine Godin

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis explores the origin, rise, and resonance of the zombie trope in American film and literature, focusing on three cinematic stages and culminating in an analysis of Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 mash-up novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. While many critics have casually dismissed zombies as a trend, this thesis argues that these creatures reflect a variety of Western fears that have surpassed the obvious association with death and decay. Indeed, as this thesis argues, zombies have come to reflect a myriad of anxieties concerning the gendered and racial Others, as well as consumerism, technology, and even, as will be …

Reading War : Modern Warfare In The Age Of Terror And Recent American Literature, Kyle Anthony Kovacs

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

No abstract provided.

The Transformative Power Of Voice In George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Nicole L. Scimone

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is first and foremost a play about voice, particularly about the voice of flower-girl-tumed-lady Liza Doolittle. Though the voice is not Liza’s true self, it is the way the Liza’s identity can be expressed, and thus an important marker of identity transformations in the play. This work explores three different ways in which Shaw discusses voice in the play: as singing instruction, scientific methods for recording voice, and vocalizing automata and dolls.

First, the play is deeply influenced by Shaw’s background in singing instruction from his childhood. Shaw learned voice study from his mother’s beau, a …

Paradox In Shakespeare's Tragicomedies : Pericles, Cymberline, The Winter's Tale, And The Tempest, Seamus Gilson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Paradox in Shakespeare’s four tragicomedies - Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest - is employed to explore the human experience, a journey filled with contradictions that thrive together. Shakespeare’s use of paradox takes on a different dimension in each play and, therefore, this essay will look at the paradox, or paradoxes, specific to individual plays. The value, then, of paradox in Shakespeare’s four tragicomedies is that they forge boundaries and evoke thought.

The essay is divided into the following sections: Introduction; Tragicomedy, discusses the tragicomic form; Paradox, takes a brief look at the subject of paradox; the discussion …

The Liminality Of The Black Female “Freed” Slave In The Novels Of Morrison, Hurston, And Williams, Karen Ingram

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Arnold Van Gennep, a French ethnographer, explored the concept of ceremonies for ritual events in his text, The Rites of Passage. He examined societal processes whereby an individual moves from one socially constructed place to another — for example, a boy to a man with a Bar Mitzvah, or a girl to woman on her wedding night. This “passage” involves three phases: separation, transition, and reincorporation. Victor Turner, a British cultural anthropologist, takes van Gennep’s theory one step further and discusses the transition phase and how an individual can become stuck in the transitional stage: the liminal space. In his …

Don’T Turn That Dial : Advertising, Mass Media, And The God Character In The Novels Of Philip K. Dick, Masha Taborisskaya

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

“Don’t Turn That Dial: Advertising, Mass Media, and the God Character in the Novels of Philip K. Dick” seeks to explore the Science Fiction (SF) novels of Philip K. Dick through two themes: the parity of divinity and reality and the use of advertising and mass media as a divine tool. These themes are reflected through Dick’s god character, which appears throughout his works. This parallel of reality with divinity means that any character that claims to be able to generate reality is worshipped as a religious figure. In Dick’s novels from the 1960s, there are false god characters which …

Dreams Of Prosperity In America Met With Disillusionments And Despair For Eastern & Southern European Immigrants, Mayda C. Bosco

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This paper will explore the challenges experienced by destitute Eastern and Southern Europeans after migrating to New York City during the late nineteenth century and into the earlier part of the twentieth century. Throughout their Americanization process, these newcomers confronted difficulties in reconciling old world norms with newfound liberties in the land of opportunity. Religion further complicated their lives in terms of tensions created between their belief systems - Orthodox Judaism and Roman Catholicism - pitted against the practices of the mainstream White Anglo Saxon Protestants. The backdrop of a thriving and consumerism environment in New York City ironically furthered …

Perceptions Of Writing Center Consultants Towards Online Writing Consultation, Janet Dengel

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study reports on the changing perceptions of writing consultants at one university (Montclair State University's Center for Writing Excellence) who began working synchronously online in a chat format with students starting in Spring 2011. The one-year study was comprised of a survey and interview with 16 writing consultants who, prior to 2011, had only worked with students in a face-to-face environment. After capturing initial reactions, the same survey and interview questions were repeated with 11 consultants who chose to be the first online writing consultants at the university. The gap this research undertook was to provide a measurement for …

The Emergence Of The New Woman In Kate Chopin's The Awakening And Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' The Story Of Avis, Alison Frances Reidy

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The following thesis focuses on two different nineteenth-century American texts: The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Story of Avis by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. The main focus of this thesis is to explore the emerging New Woman figure in both novels. There is also notable consideration given to the traditional role of True Womanhood and its portrayal in both Chopin and Phelps’ novels. The research found in this paper is from close readings of The Awakening and The Story of Avis and the use of secondary sources such as books and literary criticisms pertaining to the topic. This thesis focuses …