Don’T Bow Down,
2014
University of New Orleans
Don’T Bow Down, Andrew B. Gibbs
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Perpetuating African ancestral customs, Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans avoid the African American identity crises illuminated by the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. The poetry of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Waring Cuney incorporate W.E.B. DuBois’ double-consciousness theory to reveal the identity issues and ancestral alienation plaguing African Americans at the turn of the twentieth-century. In comparison, unique political and social circumstances in New Orleans allowed enslaved Africans to practice their ancestral customs weekly. The preservation of this heritage fostered a black community in New Orleans rich in traditions, pride and self-conviction. The development of Mardi Gras Indian culture …
In Between The Dots And Dashes: Telegrams And The Mediation Of Intimacy In The Golden Bowl,
2014
University of New Orleans
In Between The Dots And Dashes: Telegrams And The Mediation Of Intimacy In The Golden Bowl, Sean Jemison
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Using a poststructural and reader-response theoretical framework, the author explores competing ideas of interpretation, epistemology, and the problematic nature of truth and meaning in Henry James’s novel, The Golden Bowl. The author analyzes the ways in which emergent nineteenth century communication technologies, specifically how telegraphy both mediates and facilitates intimacy in a modern landscape. James anticipates modern forms of social media by exploring the nuances and the potential erotic nature of mediated communication and knowledge.
Gender And Self-Representation In Maya Angelou's Autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings 2014,
2014
SUNY College Cortland
Gender And Self-Representation In Maya Angelou's Autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings 2014, Jay-Nel Steitz
Master's Theses
A voice that has been silenced for so long has much to say. Whether still confined or set free, the statement applies equally to both. The silenced voice wants not only to tell his or her story, but to share the life experiences which in turn reveal the identities of these individuals. These silenced voices then are not those of the oppressors, but the oppressed; and when an oppressor wants to share his or her story, the oppressed wants to tell their side of it as well. How can those labeled the marginalized outcasts of society express their feelings and …
Ron Rash’S Serena: A Novel (2008): Dramatizing The Industrial Logging Of The Appalachian Forest, And The Continuing Debate Between Laissez Faire Capitalists And Proponents Of Government,
2014
East Tennessee State University
Ron Rash’S Serena: A Novel (2008): Dramatizing The Industrial Logging Of The Appalachian Forest, And The Continuing Debate Between Laissez Faire Capitalists And Proponents Of Government, Michael Deel
Undergraduate Honors Theses
In this thesis, the author gives a summary of Ron Rash’s 2008 novel, Serena, and discusses the history behind the novel and the time period that the novel was set in. This thesis discusses the socioeconomic struggles of the Gilded Age, and the role of government intervention in the economy and everyday life during the Reformation Era under Theodore Roosevelt, and the implementation of the National Park Service. The thesis goes on to mention why the Smoky Mountain National Park is especially important, for its natural uniqueness and the important precedent the formation of the park represents in the history …
Night's End,
2014
Clemson University
Night's End, Michael Whiteside
All Theses
The following work has two chapters; the first is a short story entitled 'Night's End,' and the second is a short essay entitled 'The Dilemma of Evil in Donald Ray Pollock's 'Dynamite Hole.'' 'Night's End' is loosely based on a true story. To respect the parties involved, I will not mention their names. The events are fictional, and deal with people's potential for corrosive, immoral action. The story depicts an evening in the life of Jennie Weston, a woman whose husband has cheated on her and left home. Her daughter, Becky, runs away soon thereafter to live with her boyfriend, …
The Orphan Train Adventures Series: The Kelly Siblings’ Trek To Responsibility,
2014
University of Southern Mississippi
The Orphan Train Adventures Series: The Kelly Siblings’ Trek To Responsibility, Ashten T. Redell
Honors Theses
The Orphan Train Adventures, a series of historical novels by Joan Lowery Nixon (1927-2003), is concerned with the responsibility exercised by its child characters during the antebellum and Civil War periods. This thesis examines how Nixon, by illustrating the positive effects of responsibility through her child characters, suggests the value of cultivating responsibility in children of the contemporary period. Nixon’s use of the mid-nineteenth-century setting and the rearing practices associated with this time allows her to demonstrate positive acts of responsibility in her main characters—six siblings sent west from New York City on …
‘My Freedom Is A Privilege Which Nothing Else Can Equal’: The Life And Writings Of Venture Smith And Phillis Wheatley, American Slaves,
2014
University of Southern Mississippi
‘My Freedom Is A Privilege Which Nothing Else Can Equal’: The Life And Writings Of Venture Smith And Phillis Wheatley, American Slaves, Donald Holmes Ii
Honors Theses
Slavery in the United States was an evolving institution that lasted nearly 400 years. To understand the colonial era of slavery within the United States, I examine the life and times of Venture Smith, as documented in his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa (1798), and that of Phillis Wheatley using The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley (1988). Both Smith and Wheatley were African-born slaves brought to America during the eighteenth century. In Smith’s narrative, he concludes by proclaiming “my freedom is a privilege which nothing else can equal” (31). This statement …
Advertising "In These Times:" How Historical Context Influenced Advertisements For Willa Cather's Fiction,
2014
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Advertising "In These Times:" How Historical Context Influenced Advertisements For Willa Cather's Fiction, Erika K. Hamilton
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Willa Cather's novels were published during a time of upheaval. In the three decades between Alexander's Bridge and Sapphira and the Slave Girl, America's optimism, social mores, culture, literature and advertising trends were shaken and changed by World War One, the "Roaring Twenties," and the Great Depression. This dissertation examines how Cather's fiction was advertised in periodicals during this time, how literary and historical context influenced advertisements, and how publicity for Cather conversed with and diverged from advertising trends. Each chapter explores Cather's opinions on publicity strategies such as author photos, reviews, gossip, prizes, speaking engagements and endorsements, while …
Morning's Porch,
2014
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Morning's Porch, Colby Gillette
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Morning's Porch continues and follows the walking, waiting, watching that begins and ends off the page. It begins "underway," with two already on the road, and ends in an eye wanting light. In between, childhood, Easter, Winter, Spring, Venice, asphalt, Summer, Fall, sunsets, moorhens, grackles, billboards, dogwoods and cottonwoods walk along the poems. They walk through the poems as they continue to walk in the world. In a similar way, the poems of René Char, George Herbert, Paul Celan, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams and Pierre Reverdy walk through the pages of …
Gaines's Preachers And Their People: Personalism, Community, And Social Action In A Lesson Before Dying, In My Father's House, And A Gathering Of Old Men,
2014
Liberty University
Gaines's Preachers And Their People: Personalism, Community, And Social Action In A Lesson Before Dying, In My Father's House, And A Gathering Of Old Men, Brooke Light
Masters Theses
Personalist theology, along with Ernest J. Gaines's fiction, resists the idea of isolation and instead highlights the importance of the communal good, criticizing social and religious institutions that fail to uphold the value of human dignity and community. In "Personalism and Traditional Afrikan Thought," Burrow argues that "the church exists for the person and not the other way around" (347) and that churches should be judged and evaluated on the extent to which they meet the needs of the community. Representing their churches, the preachers in three of Gaines's novels (A Lesson Before Dying, In My Father's House, and A …
Dead Dad Project,
2014
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Dead Dad Project, Adrian Mcbride
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
A creative work of fiction centered around two friends. The work takes place during their senior year of high school, and investigates how their friendship is changed during the course of that year.
Cascadia Don't Fall Apart,
2014
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Cascadia Don't Fall Apart, John Lewis Englehardt
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This short story collection explores the tenuousness of relationships--both romantic and familial--against the backdrop of Washington State's regional identity. These stories feature tsunami debris washing up on the peninsula, a biologist combating wetland violations in Olympia, a funerary artist in Seattle, young lovers attempting to be sexually explorative, a young man so befuddled by college graduation that he joins the infantry, and an adult son attempting to comfort his sick father.
Shape-Note Singing,
2014
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Shape-Note Singing, Traci Rae Letellier
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Shape-Note Singing is a collection of poems about what is loved, lost, and being lost. Placed in the landscape of the Ozark foothills in the northwest corner of the state of Arkansas, the collection explores the poet’s connection to kin, land, and lore. Shape-Note Singing is the story of plain-spoken folks of simple origins telling the truth as they see it and as best they know how.
You Can't Get There From Here: Movement Sf And The Picaresque,
2014
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
You Can't Get There From Here: Movement Sf And The Picaresque, Robert Glen Wilson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the …
Queer Tastes: An Exploration Of Food And Sexuality In Southern Lesbian Literature,
2014
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Queer Tastes: An Exploration Of Food And Sexuality In Southern Lesbian Literature, Jacqueline Kristine Lawrence
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Southern identities are undoubtedly influenced by the region's foodways. However, the South tends to neglect and even to negate certain peoples and their identities. Women, especially lesbians, are often silenced within southern literature. Where Tennessee Williams used literature to bridge gaps between gay men and the South, southern lesbian literature severely lacks a traceable history of such connections. The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the ways in which southern lesbians manipulate food metaphors to describe their sexual desires and identities. This thesis only begins to lay out a history of southern lesbian literature as many lesbian writers …
Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear,
2014
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, Jean Ho
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
The short stories in this collection move between two women, Fiona and Jane, who were close friends as teenagers but drift apart in their twenties. The women find each other again, later in life, and ease into an unsettled truce. As a writer I am interested in questions of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity; in these stories, I have tried to explore the intersections of these identities through Fiona and Jane's lives in Los Angeles and New York, and the histories of their families in Taiwan.
The Dakini Project,
2014
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
The Dakini Project, Kimberley Harris Idol
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
This dissertation merges creative writing with scholarship using the novel, The Dakini Project, to provide the subject matter to which the criticism applies. It will focus on the source of mystery format as that codified by Edgar Allan Poe that is later taken in hand by his fellows Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (as novelists), authors of the hard-boiled American style, and it will use Chaos theory to assess to idea of catastrophe in terms of emergence rather than disintegration. Though the format comes from American beginnings, the scope of the stories discussed here are tangled around …
Behind His Father's Saying: Robert Frost's Wisdom Tradition,
2014
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Behind His Father's Saying: Robert Frost's Wisdom Tradition, James H. Altman
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
It is no coincidence that Robert Frost draws on the European/American aphoristic wisdom tradition. From the fables of Aesop, to the esotericism of pre-Socratic Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras and Empedocles, to the works of moralists like Blaise Pascal and Michel De Montaigne, to Erasmus, Frederick Nietzsche and others, Robert Frost weaves diverse wisdom into his work. He does not, however, as much take verbatim the words or sentiments of those who inspire him. Rather he adapts the spirit of their thoughts for his own purposes. Why and how does he do this? What are those purposes, and their subsequent …
Tapestry Of Space: Domestic Architecture And Underground Communities In Margaret Morton’S Photography Of A Forgotten New York,
2014
Illinois State University
Tapestry Of Space: Domestic Architecture And Underground Communities In Margaret Morton’S Photography Of A Forgotten New York, Irina Nersessova
disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory
This article addresses the impact urban space has on individuals through the use of Situationist International theory and psychogeography. Representations of homelessness in New York in Margaret Morton's photography are used to demonstrate the interconnectedness among space, people, and social issues. Social issues manifest themselves in urban decay, and the inhabitants react to this phenomenon emotionally and artistically. Some inhabitants demonstrate their relationship with space by responding with material production of housing and art, which they accomplish by building without exploiting the environment the way the manufacturing of commodities often does.
Rice, Alice Caldwell (Hegan), 1870-1942 (Sc 2817),
2014
Western Kentucky University
Rice, Alice Caldwell (Hegan), 1870-1942 (Sc 2817), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Manuscript Collection Finding Aids
Finding aid and full-text of letter (Click on "Additional Files") for Manuscripts Small Collection 2817. Letter, 28 October 1905, of author Alice (Hegan) Rice, Louisville, Kentucky, to Helen Keller. She praises Keller’s recent autobiography and reports on its popularity with the girls at a Japanese boarding school Rice visited the past summer. Rice encloses a composition of one of the students (not included in this collection) in which she writes that “the eyes of [Keller’s] heart are open.”
