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Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America
The Burdens And Blessings Of Responsibility: Duty And Community In Nineteenth- Century America, Leslie Leonard
The Burdens And Blessings Of Responsibility: Duty And Community In Nineteenth- Century America, Leslie Leonard
Doctoral Dissertations
The Burdens of Responsibility traces the emergence of moral responsibility as both a concept and problem in the nineteenth-century United States. Drawing on a range of sources –works of literature, philosophy, domestic manuals, newspaper archives – I show how many Americans began to conceive of moral responsibility as distinct from both duty and rules of behavior prescribed by traditional social roles. Although ethicists today take this distinction for granted, it was an emergent and problematic space in the nineteenth-century United States, brought into being by historical forces, including the rise of market capitalism, abolition, changing women’s roles, and increasing concern …
Conjuring New Worlds: Black Women’S Speculative Fiction And The Restructuring Of Blackness, Chloe Hunt
Conjuring New Worlds: Black Women’S Speculative Fiction And The Restructuring Of Blackness, Chloe Hunt
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation, Conjuring New Worlds: Black Women’s Speculative Fiction and the Restructuring of Blackness, examines Black speculative fiction as a site of theorization within worlds where Black existence has not already been pre-determined by the forces of slavery and ideologies of race and culture in a white supremacist world. In this sense, my dissertation models ways of reading Black literature that demonstrates how Blackness can disturb, rather than reproduce, notions of racial meaning and the Human. I argue that writers of Black speculative fiction go beyond the creation of alternative realities to produce sites that allow for nearly limitless …
Affective Histories Of Southern Trauma: Shame, Healing, And Vulnerability In Us Southern Women’S Writing, 1975–2006, Faune Albert
Affective Histories Of Southern Trauma: Shame, Healing, And Vulnerability In Us Southern Women’S Writing, 1975–2006, Faune Albert
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation explores the affective impacts of historical trauma around slavery and segregation in the US South, arguing for the importance of understanding US Southern history through the ways in which it has lived and continues to live in and on the bodies of Southerners marked by race and gender and class and within emotional life in the South. The texts in this study—Gayl Jones’ Corregidora (1975), Dorothy Allison’s Trash (1988), Ellen Gilchrist’s Net of Jewels (1992), and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard (2006)—engage the affective impacts of intergenerational and insidious trauma through portrayals of Southern women struggling to give voice …
Writing Against History: Feminist Baroque Narratives In Interwar Atlantic Modernism, Annaliese Hoehling
Writing Against History: Feminist Baroque Narratives In Interwar Atlantic Modernism, Annaliese Hoehling
Doctoral Dissertations
In the decades following the end of the Great War, paranoia and panic about survival and sovereign control were driven by unprecedented death tolls from war, disease, and economic disaster as well as by revolutionary agitation around the globe. This fear was channeled into policing gender, sexuality, and race; and the parameters of white, middle-class womanhood were weaponized for social control in the transatlantic imaginary. In this study, I identify two rhetorical-political figures that helped to shape this imagination: Surplus Women and Trafficked Women. In my analysis of the literature, these figures help to contrast domestic scenes, on one hand, …
Angels Who Stepped Outside Their Houses: “American True Womanhood” And Nineteenth-Century (Trans)Nationalisms, Gayathri M. Hewagama
Angels Who Stepped Outside Their Houses: “American True Womanhood” And Nineteenth-Century (Trans)Nationalisms, Gayathri M. Hewagama
Doctoral Dissertations
“Angels who Stepped Outside their Houses” examines the fashioning of a gendered white American middle-class Protestant subject called the “American true woman” as a fitting representation of the emerging new American nation, as reflected in the writings of white American women authors from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Locating the formation of this identity on a transnational plane, this work argues that in their myriad texts, these women authors reveal the significant role that imperial Britain and the non-national/not-yet-national colonial Orient played in the (de/)construction/(de/)centering of American true womanhood. For, in the face of a particular Englishness and …
“The Worlding Game”: Queer Ecological Perspectives In Modern Fiction, Sarah D'Stair
“The Worlding Game”: Queer Ecological Perspectives In Modern Fiction, Sarah D'Stair
Doctoral Dissertations
Cultural and literary theorists have been increasingly advocating for a posthuman ethic that challenges oppressive binaries of all kinds. In turn, the field of queer ecology, which investigates discourses of sex and nature for implicit heterosexism and androcentrism, has come to the fore. This dissertation, rooted firmly in this newer branch of ecocriticism, focuses on various inter-species environments imagined by early twentieth-century queer women writers. Each of their works, in different ways, challenges the naturalization of social hierarchies based on gender, sexuality, race, class, and species being reinforced in the burgeoning fields of sexology, psychology, and evolutionary biology. Their novels …
Black Men Who Betray Their Race: 20th Century Literary Representations Of The Black Male Race Traitor, Gregory Coleman
Black Men Who Betray Their Race: 20th Century Literary Representations Of The Black Male Race Traitor, Gregory Coleman
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation, Black Men Who Betray Their Race, gathers a literary archive in order to identify and introduce the “race traitor” as a heretofore unrecognized yet important trope within 20th century African-American Literature. In addition to coping with the burden of racism, African Americans have had to put considerable energy toward negotiating the possibility of being perceived as race traitors by others within the African American community. This study tracks the possibilities and perils of black group identity in literary representations of black men, neither privileging opposition to the white world, nor celebrating black unity beyond it. Focusing …
Bodies Under Siege: Intersections Of Warfare And Hiv/Aids, Daniel Nevarez Araujo
Bodies Under Siege: Intersections Of Warfare And Hiv/Aids, Daniel Nevarez Araujo
Doctoral Dissertations
Analyzing works by Juan Goytisolo, Rabih Alameddine, and Derek Jarman, this dissertation studies the similarities of war and AIDS as sensorial experiences socially located and complexly embodied. This study looks at the ways bodies engage with, are affected by, and respond to both war and AIDS, specifically within the AIDS/War Narrative; that is, narrative spaces that foreground both experiences simultaneously. Influenced by Mark Paterson’s notion of felt phenomenology and positioned at the nexus of Comparative Literature, Disability Studies, and Husserlian phenomenology, this dissertation studies texts that exhibit an awareness of the phenomenal characteristics governing the experiences of AIDS and war, …
Kiskeyanas Valientes En Este Espacio: Dominican Women Writers And The Spaces Of Contemporary American Literature, Isabel R. Espinal
Kiskeyanas Valientes En Este Espacio: Dominican Women Writers And The Spaces Of Contemporary American Literature, Isabel R. Espinal
Doctoral Dissertations
We can learn and gain a lot by putting Dominican women writers at the center of our attention. Yet they rarely have that place. This dissertation looks at Dominican women authors who have lived and written in the United States —Josefina Báez, Marianela Medrano, Yrene Santos, Aurora Arias, Nelly Rosario, Annecy Báez, Ana Maurine Lara, Raquel Cepeda— and how they fit within the spaces of contemporary American society, and more broadly within world flows of peoples and cultural productions. I draw on the theories and methodologies of Gloria Anzaldúa and her generation of feminists of color, as well as subsequent …
We See Things With Our Eyes And We Want Them, Ann Ward
We See Things With Our Eyes And We Want Them, Ann Ward
MFA Program for Poets & Writers Masters Theses Collection
WE SEE THINGS WITH OUR EYES AND WE WANT THEM is a novel is stories following a female narrator, Janine, through adolescence and adulthood. Whether inspired by a spark of sexual tension over snack cakes, a broken down purple ‘96 Saturn named Lydia, a child’s pool party, or an ill-advised journey through a hospital air-vent system, Janine finds herself obsessed with trying to understand those she loves, and attempts to share the deeper parts of herself in the process.
Dialogue And "Dialect": Character Speech In American Fiction, Carly Overfelt
Dialogue And "Dialect": Character Speech In American Fiction, Carly Overfelt
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the linguistic construction of race and place in turn-of-the-century American novels and short stories. Literary analyses of character speech continue to reinforce the old dichotomy of Standard versus nonstandard/dialectal English. I challenge the ideology of Standard English in my readings of works by Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Sarah Orne Jewett, and little-known Cherokee author, Ora V. Eddleman Reed, among others. I argue that these texts create their own standards that interact with (and sometimes resist) the language ideology of their time. By analyzing all variation, rather than only what has been traditionally viewed as “dialect,” I reveal …
‘Woman Thou Art Loosed’: Black Female Sexuality Unhinged In The Fiction Of Frances Harper And Pauline Hopkins, Crystal Donkor
‘Woman Thou Art Loosed’: Black Female Sexuality Unhinged In The Fiction Of Frances Harper And Pauline Hopkins, Crystal Donkor
Doctoral Dissertations
Race-sex narratives that dominated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries permeated the political, scientific, and social fabric of the nation, but did not solely center on black bodies. These narratives demeaned and degraded a race of black citizens, characterizing them as sexually deviant social pariahs. Consequently, these same notions elevated whites to the highest rungs of society, marking them as moral and desirable. This crafting of racial identity acted as just one way to justify racial subordination through the creation of notions that proved detrimental to black life and worthiness. Writer-activists penning their tales of fiction after the Civil War …
Symptoms Of A Cosmic Fluke, Shane Dupuy
Symptoms Of A Cosmic Fluke, Shane Dupuy
MFA Program for Poets & Writers Masters Theses Collection
Symptoms of a Cosmic Fluke is a book of poems.
Race Patriots: Black Poets, Transnational Identity, And Diasporic Versification In The United States Before The New Negro, Jason T. Hendrickson
Race Patriots: Black Poets, Transnational Identity, And Diasporic Versification In The United States Before The New Negro, Jason T. Hendrickson
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation explores the contributions of black poets in the United States before the New Negro / Harlem Renaissance Movement. Specifically, it focuses on their role in creating and maintaining a tradition of regional transnationalism in their verses that celebrates their African ancestry. I contend that these poets are best understood as “race patriots”; that is, they at once sought inclusion within the nation-state in the form of full citizenship, yet recognized allegiances beyond the nation-state on account of race through a recognition of shared African ancestry across borders. Their verses point to a shared kinship – be it through …
Who Do You Think You Are?: Recovering The Self In The Working Class Escape Narrative, Christine M. Maksimowicz
Who Do You Think You Are?: Recovering The Self In The Working Class Escape Narrative, Christine M. Maksimowicz
Doctoral Dissertations
This project considers how socioeconomic impoverishment and society's failure to recognize working class women as valued subjects impinge upon a mother's ability to afford recognition to her daughter's selfhood. Situated within the larger North American literary tradition of fiction animated by flight in search of freedom, the texts here explored constitutes a subgenre that I term the “working class escape narrative.” Combining close readings of fiction by Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, and Sigrid Nunez with sociological research and psychoanalytic theory, I explore a relationship between mother and daughter characterized not by mirroring and bonding but rather the absence of intimacy …
The (Dis)Ability Of Color; Or, That Middle World: Toward A New Understanding Of 19th And 20th Century Passing Narratives, Julia S. Charles
The (Dis)Ability Of Color; Or, That Middle World: Toward A New Understanding Of 19th And 20th Century Passing Narratives, Julia S. Charles
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation mines the intersection of racial performance and the history of the so-called “tragic mulatto” figure in American fiction. I propose that while many white writers depicted the “mulatto” character as inherently flawed because of some tainted “black blood,” many black writers’ depictions of mixed-race characters imagine solutions to the race problem. Many black writers critiqued some of America’s most egregious sins by demonstrating linkages between major shifts in American history and the mixed-race figure. Landmark legislation such as, Fugitive Slave Act 1850 and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) are often plotlines in African American passing literature, thus demonstrating the …
Mapping The Terrain Of Black Writing During The Early New Negro Era, A Yęmisi Jimoh
Mapping The Terrain Of Black Writing During The Early New Negro Era, A Yęmisi Jimoh
Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series
No abstract provided.
Here, There, And In Between: Travel As Metaphor In Mixed Race Narratives Of The Harlem Renaissance, Colin Enriquez
Here, There, And In Between: Travel As Metaphor In Mixed Race Narratives Of The Harlem Renaissance, Colin Enriquez
Doctoral Dissertations
Created to comment on Antebellum and Reconstruction literature, the tragic mulatto concept is habitually applied to eras beyond the 19th century. The tragic mulatto has become an end rather than a means to questioning racist and abolitionist agendas. Rejecting the pathetic and self-destructive traits inscribed by the tragic label, this dissertation uses geographic, cultural, and racial boundary crossing to theorize a rereading of mixed race characters in Harlem Renaissance literature. Focusing on train, automobile, and boat travel, the study analyzes the relationship between the character, transportation, and technology whereby the notion of race is questioned. Furthermore, the dissertation divides …
Henry Thoreau's Debt To Society: A Micro Literary History, Laura J. Dwiggins
Henry Thoreau's Debt To Society: A Micro Literary History, Laura J. Dwiggins
Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014
This thesis examines Henry David Thoreau’s relationships with New England-based authors, publishers, and natural scientists, and their influences on his composition and professional development. The study highlights Thoreau’s collaboration with figures such as John Thoreau, Jr., William Ellery Channing II, Horace Greeley, and a number of correspondents and natural scientists. The study contends that Thoreau was a sociable and professionally competent author who relied not only on other major Transcendentalists, but on members from an array of intellectual communities at all stages of his career.
A 'Living Art': Working-Class, Transcultural, And Feminist Aesthetics In The United States, Mexico, And Algeria, 1930s, Tabitha Adams Morgan
A 'Living Art': Working-Class, Transcultural, And Feminist Aesthetics In The United States, Mexico, And Algeria, 1930s, Tabitha Adams Morgan
Open Access Dissertations
The cultural productions of Katherine Anne Porter, Anita Brenner, Tina Modotti, Maria Izquierdo, and Juanita Guccione represent a distinctive interweaving of gender and class consciousness, national identification and political resistance, as represented in their artistic work. These five women became transnational carriers of a radical realist and modernist thought, culture, and ideology that became transported through their art when their gendered and classed bodies were left otherwise silenced and boundaried. These women, their cultural productions, and the ways in which their art generates a counter discourse to the dominant and institutionalized conceptions of transculturalism, aesthetics, and re-production, are vital to …
The Transparent Mask: American Women's Satire 1900-1933, Julia Boissoneau Hans
The Transparent Mask: American Women's Satire 1900-1933, Julia Boissoneau Hans
Open Access Dissertations
An interdisciplinary study of women satirists of the Progressive and Jazz eras, the dissertation investigates the ways in which early modernist writers use the satiric mode either as an elitist mask or as a site of resistance, confronts the theoretical limitations that have marginalized women satirists in the academic arena, and points to the destabilizing, democratic potential inherent in satiric discourse. In the first chapter, I introduce the concept of signifying caricature, an exaggerated characterization that carries with it broad social, political, and cultural critique. Edith Wharton uses a signifying caricature in The Custom of the Country where the popular …
Mama's Boy, Jamie T. Berger
Mama's Boy, Jamie T. Berger
Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014
"Mama's Boy" is a book of fiction and nonfiction by Jamie Berger. It deals with mothers and sons and feminism and pornography and poker and love and New York and San Francisco and Western Massachusetts.
"Silly Creations Of An Imagination That Is Not Conscious Of Its Freaks": Multiple Selves, Wordless Communication, And The Psychology Of Mark Twain's No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, Randall Knoper
Randall Knoper
No abstract provided.
Trauma And Sexual Inversion, Circa 1885: Oliver Wendell Holmes's A Mortal Antipathy And Maladies Of Representation, Randall Knoper
Trauma And Sexual Inversion, Circa 1885: Oliver Wendell Holmes's A Mortal Antipathy And Maladies Of Representation, Randall Knoper
Randall Knoper
No abstract provided.
American Literary Realism And Nervous "Reflexion", Randall Knoper
American Literary Realism And Nervous "Reflexion", Randall Knoper
Randall Knoper
No abstract provided.