Critical Introduction: Responsibility And Representation & Introduction To All My Mother’S Lovers,
2019
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Critical Introduction: Responsibility And Representation & Introduction To All My Mother’S Lovers, Ilana Masad
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This critical component of the creative thesis All My Mother’s Lovers explores the question of fiction writers’ responsibility to themselves, their work, and their readers in the age of social media and easy access of readers to writers and vice versa. Using two examples of recent online controversies, this piece explores the varying ways in which readers respond to writers and writers to readers and rhetorically analyzes the responses of those in positions of power (writers, publishers) as well as the cultural contexts from within which they respond. It then draws conclusions as to the trajectory of these two controversies, …
Dramatizing The Void: Crime Fiction's Journey To Forgetting,
2019
Michigan State University
Dramatizing The Void: Crime Fiction's Journey To Forgetting, Kylene N. Cave
Andrews Research Conference
Scholars often cite the transition from the golden age to the hardboiled tradition in the 1920s and 1930s as the most radical shift in crime fiction. By 1945, crime stories regularly exhibited destabilized language, increased interest in psychology of the mind, and a blatant rejection of conclusive endings as a means of exploring the unreliable nature of memory and eye-witness testimony. Whereas the crime fiction narratives preceding 1945 embodied a clear sense of logic and order, and established hermeneutics and signifying practices as the keys to unlocking the mysteries behind human behavior; post-45 crime fiction not only rejects these notions, …
John Gardner’S Grendel: The Importance Of Community In Making Moral Art,
2019
University of New Orleans
John Gardner’S Grendel: The Importance Of Community In Making Moral Art, Catherine C. Cooper
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
John Gardner’s Grendel examines the ways in which humans make meaning out of their lives. By changing the original Beowulf monster into a creature who constantly questions the conflicting narratives set before him, Gardner encourages us to confront these tensions also. However, his emphasis on Grendel’s alienation helps us realize that community is essential to creating meaning. Most obviously, community creates relationships that foster a sense of moral obligation between its members, even in the face of the type of uncertainty felt by Grendel. Moreover, community cannot exist without dialogue, which perpetually stimulates the imagination to respond to the tensions …
“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods,
2019
University of New Orleans, New Orleans
“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Michelle A. Nicholson
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Kazimierz Dabrowski’s psychological theory of positive disintegration is a lesser known theory of personality development that offers an alternative critical perspective of literature. It provides a framework for the characterization of postmodern protagonists who move beyond heroic indoctrination to construct their own self-organized, autonomous identities. Ezra Pound’s The Cantos captures the speaker-poet’s extensive process of inner conflict, providing a unique opportunity to track the progress of the hero’s transformation into a personality, or a man. American Gods is a more fully realized portrayal of a character who undergoes the complete paradigmatic collapse of positive disintegration and deliberate self-derived self-revision …
Secret Selves: Surveillance And Twentieth-Century African American Literature,
2019
Southern Methodist University
Secret Selves: Surveillance And Twentieth-Century African American Literature, Kelsey Kiser
English Theses and Dissertations
Black writers, thinkers, and artists found themselves on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s watch list for radicalism and sedition as early as 1919. Secret Selves explores how twentieth-century African American writers, namely Claude McKay, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Ishmael Reed, and Gloria Naylor responded to a surveillance state that monitored their lives and works for radicalism and sedition. By recrafting the African American künstlerroman—a genre that birthed the African American literary tradition—these writers embedded codes into their works that concealed personal details from Bureau agents and simultaneously articulated a new narrative: that to be black and to …
Fire To Vellum,
2019
Missouri State University
Fire To Vellum, Jessica L. Warren
Graduate Theses/Dissertations
Oswic’s simple life changed the day his mother died from poison. After finding a strange cache of trinkets and books in the loft of the barn, he begins to question everything and everyone he has known, including reality. Forced from his land and his home, Oswic takes his plough horse, the few fragments of truth from his life, and leaves Hægelfirth in search of the one person he believes can tell him of his past, the storyteller. But, it won’t be his past he needs to worry about when he starts to slip in and out of reality; seeing the …
Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us,
2019
Chapman University
Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us, Allie Harrison Vernon
English (MA) Theses
Looking primarily at two critically acclaimed texts that concern themselves with American citizenship—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Stephanie Powell Watts’ No One is Coming to Save Us—I analyze the claims made about citizenship identities, rights, and consequential access to said rights. I ask, how do these narratives about citizenship sustain, create, or re-envision American myth? Similarly, how do the narratives interact with the dominant culture at large? Do any of these texts achieve oppositional value, and/or modify the complex hegemonic structure? I use Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Forms of Capital” to investigate the ways in which economic, cultural, …
To Speak Ghosts And See Echoes: Longing In Lolita,
2019
University at Albany, State University of New York
To Speak Ghosts And See Echoes: Longing In Lolita, Emily Aucompaugh
CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference
Underneath the plot of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which focuses on the musings of a pedophile and murderer who attempts to “confess” actions and impulses of which he feels no guilt, a secondary motif emerges of a man motivated, guided, and consumed by longing, which he cannot assuage due his fixation of desire on a subject that does not exist. Longing embodies Humbert’s greatest joy and deepest pain, a feeling of anxiety and anticipation which eclipses the necessity of completion. Lolita invokes longing, the desire towards absent things, in two ways. Firstly, Nabokov alludes to a cornucopia of other poetic, …
The Narrative Of Revolution: Socialism And The Masses 1911-1917,
2019
CUNY Hunter College
The Narrative Of Revolution: Socialism And The Masses 1911-1917, Stephen K. Walkiewicz
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis seeks to situate The Masses magazine (1911-1917) within a specific discursive tradition of revolution, revealing a narrative pattern that is linked with discourse that began to emerge during and after the French Revolution. As the term “socialism” begins to resonate again within popular American political discourse (and as a potentially viable course of action rather than a curse for damnable offense), it is worthwhile to trace its significance within American history to better understand its aesthetic dimensions, its radical difference, and its way of devising problems and answers. In short, this thesis poses the question: what ideological structures …
Paper: Investigating The Work Of William Styron: The Perpetuation Of The Fantastic Hegemonic Imagination,
2019
Augustana College, Rock Island Illinois
Paper: Investigating The Work Of William Styron: The Perpetuation Of The Fantastic Hegemonic Imagination, William Sikich
Womanist Ethics
William Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner depicts a fictitious characterization of the historical Nat Turner. Styron, a white southerner, assumes Turner's perspective in order to tell a speculative story about his slave rebellion of 1831. Similarly, he tells the story of a fictional holocaust survivor in his novel, Sophie's Choice. The decision to take on these perspective evinces some arrogance on Styron's part, and the way in which he executes the narrative of each novel delivers their stories with varying levels of respect to their subjects: Styron's indirect telling of Sophie's story allows Styron some freedom to speculate, while …
“Flowing Along The Wall”: Anarcha-Feminist Bioethics And Resistance In Octavia E. Butler’S Dawn 2019.,
2019
SUNY College Cortland
“Flowing Along The Wall”: Anarcha-Feminist Bioethics And Resistance In Octavia E. Butler’S Dawn 2019., Theresa Mendez
Master's Theses
Science fiction (sf) texts conversant with the temporal play between past, present, and future push readers to imagine the extremes of human and environmental existence, interaction, and potential. Simultaneously, despite the sf genre’s tendency to traffic in extremes, these texts provoke readers to consider the ways in which these imagined worlds are grounded in history as well as in the contemporary social moment. As Donna Haraway has argued, “the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion” (306). This illusory boundary must continue to be traversed in order to consider how sf literatures, particularly those which imagine …
Posthuman And Alien Breeding: The Implications Of Cybersex In Octavia Butler’S Dawn 2019.,
2019
SUNY College Cortland
Posthuman And Alien Breeding: The Implications Of Cybersex In Octavia Butler’S Dawn 2019., Elizabeth Rutkowski
Master's Theses
Speculative science fiction affords new ways for authors to represent social problems of the modern day in an apocalyptic manner. Authors such as Octavia Butler use science fiction to analyze social injustices revolving around race, gender, and sexuality. Throughout her novel Dawn, Butler uses the posthuman to represent minority groups in the late twentieth century. The posthuman represents those who have moved from humanity towards a new opportunity that is mixed with the potential for struggle. 1 As demonstrated through Butler’s work posthumanism blurs the lines between binaries such as male / female, straight / gay, and consensual / nonconsensual …
Meeting The Stranger: Closing The Distance In Ernest Hemingway’S A Moveable Feast,
2019
Liberty University
Meeting The Stranger: Closing The Distance In Ernest Hemingway’S A Moveable Feast, Brett Joseph Raszinski
Masters Theses
This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast. The analysis focuses on how AMF functions as a memoir, given its complicated publication history. The thesis uses the 2009 Restored Edition, which is most closely associated with Hemingway’s original manuscripts. He crafts his memories of Paris between 1921-1926, develops interactive scenes for twenty-first century readers to discover his story, and constructs a blended voice that closes the distance between his present and his past by writing about his writing process. This thesis adds to the academic conversation of A Moveable Feast, attempting to present how important …
Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature,
2019
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Matthew Guzman
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Non/human: (Re)seeing the “Animal” in Nineteenth-Century American Literature uses canonical literary texts as specific anchor points for charting the unstable relations between human and nonhuman animals throughout the century. I argue that throughout the nineteenth century, there are distinct shifts in the way(s) humans think about, discuss, and represent nonhuman animals, and understanding these shifts can change the way we interpret the literature and the culture(s). Moreover, I supplement and integrate those literary anchors, when appropriate, with texts from contemporaneous science, law, art, and other primary and secondary source materials. For example, the first chapter, “Cooper’s Animal Movements: Across Land, …
Analysis Of The Effect Of An Ergonomic Improvement Program On Incident Rates In A Forklift Manufacturing/Assembly Plant,
2019
Indiana State University
Analysis Of The Effect Of An Ergonomic Improvement Program On Incident Rates In A Forklift Manufacturing/Assembly Plant, Miriah L. Cherry
All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The company experienced a high volume of recordable injuries and decided it was time to implement an ergonomic program in order to drive down the number of ergonomic related injuries. The ergonomics program was implemented in mid-2016 and positively impacted the company’s incident rate. Due to the high ergonomic related incident rate the company had in 2016, the decision was made to implement an ergonomic improvement program in 2017. The goal is to determine the effectiveness of the ergonomics improvement program. This project consists of the study of data before and after the implementation as well as a review of …
The Implementation Of A Systematic Method For Identifying The Root Causes Of Manufacturing Negative Process Yield In A North American Fastener Manufacturing Facility,
2019
Indiana State University
The Implementation Of A Systematic Method For Identifying The Root Causes Of Manufacturing Negative Process Yield In A North American Fastener Manufacturing Facility, Bradley J. Venable
All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Negative process yield is an unexplained expense that does have a significant impact on profits. As like most other manufacturing processes, there are multiple processing operations that a finished good can be exposed to during the course of the entire process. Negative process yield can occur during these known operations but without accurate reporting and data collection, it becomes a moot point. In order to investigate this unexplainable phenomena properly, understanding of what could possibly cause this from occurring must be achieved. In the case of the North American fastener manufacturing plant, missing pieces that are not accounted for through …
Introspections Into Rational Fanatics And Thoughtful Deceivers: Examining The Use Of Memoirs In The Works Of James Hogg And Charles Brockden Brown,
2019
East Tennessee State University
Introspections Into Rational Fanatics And Thoughtful Deceivers: Examining The Use Of Memoirs In The Works Of James Hogg And Charles Brockden Brown, Tucker Foster
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The memoir as a specific and unique literary genre has only recently been broached for in-depth critical study, with two major, book-length examinations of the genre appearing in the past decade. While the genre has been around in various formats with various conventions for as long as humans have written, only the memoir boom of the late twentieth and early twenty-first-century called for a more sophisticated look at the genre. This thesis will use these recent observations on the memoir as a genre to shed new light on two classics of gothic literature: Charles Brockden Brown’s 1798 novel Wieland and …
North Of Ourselves: Identity And Place In Jim Wayne Miller’S Poetry,
2019
East Tennessee State University
North Of Ourselves: Identity And Place In Jim Wayne Miller’S Poetry, Micah Mccrotty
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Jim Wayne Miller’s poetry examines how human history and topography join to create place. His work often incorporates images of land and ecology; it deliberately questions the delineation between place and self. This thesis explores how Miller presents images of water to describe the relationship between inhabitants and their location, both with the positive image of the spring and the negative image of the flood. Additionally, this thesis examines how the Brier, Miller’s most prominent persona character, grieves his separation from home and ultimately finds healing and reunification of the self through his return to the hills. In his poetry, …
'A Dream Of Completion': The Journey Of American Working-Class Poetry,
2019
East Tennessee State University
'A Dream Of Completion': The Journey Of American Working-Class Poetry, Lacy Snapp
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This survey follows the development of working-class poetry from Whitman to contemporary poets. It begins by considering how the need for working-class poetry emerged. Whitman’s “Song of Myself” sought to democratize poetry both my challenging previous poetic formal conventions and broadening the scope of included subjects. Williams also challenged formal expectations, but both were limited by their historical and socioeconomic position. To combat this, I include the twentieth-century poets Ignatow and Levine who began in the working class so they could speak truths that had not been published before. Ignatow includes the phrase “dream of completion” which encapsulates various feelings …
Coming To Terms With Gonzo Journalism : An Analysis In Russian Formalism.,
2019
University of Louisville
Coming To Terms With Gonzo Journalism : An Analysis In Russian Formalism., Beau Kilpatrick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Gonzo journalism is notoriously difficult to define because of its ambiguous nature. To date, scholarly definitions focus on historical interpretations of Gonzo’s content, its connection to social and political contexts, or the biography of Hunter S. Thompson. These definitional attempts neglect the formal devices of the composition. This thesis aims to redefine Gonzo as its own genre by using the nearly forgotten methods of Russian formalism—specifically the works of Victor Shklovsky, Vladimir Propp, and Boris Tomashevsky—to analyze the formal devices and components of its form. The results are twofold; first, it acts to rejuvenate an unpopular literary theory by illustrating …
