Literature in English, North America Commons^™

“Between The Dream And Reality”: Divination In The Novels Of Cormac Mccarthy, Robert A. Kottage

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Divination is a trope Cormac McCarthy employs time and again in his work. Augury, haruspicy, cartomancy, voodoo, sortition and oneiromancy all take their places in the texts, overtly or otherwise, as well as divination by bloodshed (a practice so ubiquitous as to have no formal name). But mantic practices which aim at an understanding of the divine mind prove problematic in a universe that often appears godless—or worse.

My thesis uses divination as the starting point for a close reading of each of McCarthy’s novels. Research into Babylonian, Greek, Roman and African soothsaying practices is included, as well as the …

Performative Gender And Pop Fiction Females: "Emancipating" Byronic Heroines Through A Feminist Education, Joy Smith

Masters Theses

"I can be a regular bitch. Just try me." With this phrase emblazoned across her t-shirt, Lisbeth Salander, pierced, tattooed, and bedecked in leather, waltzes from the pages of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This woman who subverts authority, maliciously tattoos and sodomizes a man, and intentionally distances herself from close relationships of any kind has somehow managed to capture both the attention and admiration of the American audience. This disheartening phenomenon stems from a renewed interest in the Byronic heroine, a female possessing those traits traditionally assigned to Byronic heroes and men, and the rise of …

Maps On The Backs Of Our Eyes, Joan Paulette Robinson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A collection of poems related to places in the Mojave Desert and the Las Vegas area or in rural central Michigan. Most poems deal with history and memory and the overlapping nature of experience.

Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …

Structurally Cosmic Apostasy: The Atheist Occult World Of H.P. Lovecraft, Brian J. Reis

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

The conflict between materialism and spiritualism has a long and sordid philosophical history. Both schools of thought attempted to address the problems of the unknown through varying methods. There are two figures, who i their own ways, one subtle ad the other not so subtle rejected both means. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky sought to counter Spiritualist claims by venturing into her own occult philosophy—Theosophy—seeking to uncover spiritual truths, debunking religious traditions as well as seeking to undermine scientific materialism that had begun to sweep the intellectual life of the 19^th century. To do so, she claimed to have translated an …

Zuzu's Petals, Jeffrey James Jarot

Theses and Dissertations

Zuzu's Petals relates the travails of Jules and Julie, a couple whose marriage is in the process of breaking apart. Jules has a "fanboyish" obsession with the 1946 Frank Capra film "It's a Wonderful Life." Furthermore, he is fixated on his own past, and his eccentric behavior has caused his disenchanted wife to seek romantic and emotional solace in David, an old flame from high school. Their child, Zuzu, who was named at Jules' insistence after a key character in the Capra film, has herself sensed that something is amiss in her parents' dealings with each other. The story's narrative …

Mark Twain And Critical Thinking In The Secondary Classroom, Daniel Zehr

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study will explore and evaluate the school literacy practices of high school-aged participants at the freshmen level (grade 9). It will interpret their analysis, comprehension, and critical thinking skills through an examination of confidence, abilities, and fluency through discussion and student-led dialogue. Building on previous research regarding critical thinking skills, the researcher hopes to articulate the ways in which students with varied levels of ability (grades 9-12) may be able to use their literacy learning to demonstrate critical thinking skills that will enhance their reading fluency, comprehension, and analytical skills and to foster an appreciation of literature and …

The Conflict Between Materialism And Idealism, Tina Zhang '16

2013 Fall Semester

In The Sea Wolf by Jack London, Humphrey Van Weyden is an American upper class gentleman on a ferry-steamer, but a collision almost drowns him in the sea. He is rescued by Wolf Larsen, the captain of a seal-hunting schooner named the Ghost. Forced to serve Wolf, Humphrey witnesses how Wolf treats his crew carelessly, for the Captain believes in Materialism, where life is only matter and has no value to others. Humphrey, on the other hand, argues for Idealism, the belief in spiritual values that transcend life such as love and honor. Although Wolf initially dominates the weak …

“A Southern Expendable”: Cultural Patriarchy, Maternal Abandonment, And Narrativization In Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out Of Carolina, Natalie Carter

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Bastard Out of Carolina is a remarkable text for many reasons: Allison’s unsentimental portrayal of profound poverty in the Old South; her unflinching depiction of incest; and the conclusion—devastating for character and reader alike—all contribute to the “flawless” nature of this novel. Perhaps most remarkable, though, is Allison’s ability to seamlessly weave a particularly Southern tradition of masculinity and violence into this heartbreaking tale of a daughter’s trauma and a mother’s abandonment. In this article, I will investigate Allison’s multifaceted portrayals of trauma in Bastard Out of Carolina, which—when combined with an analysis of social and economic traditions in …

Death Of A Salesman In Beijing Revisited, Ou Rong, Zhaoming Qian

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Home And Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

From the Editor's Note by Padraig O'Malley: Shaun O’Connell has lost none of his touch. In “Home and Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America,” O’Connell juxtaposes two novels: Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy (1998) and Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn (2009) and reveals the parallels and contrasts that enrich the discussion of Irish and Irish American identities. Toibin, an Irish writer, would have us see an America, land of the free, as an open, inviting place but exacting in redeeming promises made; McDermott, an American writer, portrays an Ireland that is magical, a little bit of heaven, but finally a closed and bitter place. …

Inheritance Of The Past: Patriarchy, Race And Gender In Faulkner's And Chopin's South, Therese D. Osborne

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The death of the Confederacy sealed in white southern memory a lost world of beauty that denied the cruelty of its “peculiar institution.” Southern writers have seemed haunted by this conflict between the cherished past of their ancestors and the reality of the devastated region, with its legacy in slavery. Through the commentary of women diarists who mourn their crumbling society, and selected works of William Faulkner and Kate Chopin, this paper examines the myth and reality of the southern past. It reveals the enduring impact of the all-powerful white patriarchy that gave order to the antebellum South, destroyed it, …

Critiquing Academic Culture With Satire Through Lady Lazarus, A Fictional Biography, Amber R. Perry

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the tradition of academic satire, Lady Lazarus is the fictional biography of the daughter of American rock musicians. In her late teens she rises to fame as confessional poet, who, despite only publishing one collection of poems during her brief life, becomes an overnight sensation. Author Andrew Altschul is satirizing academia’s need to be a part of popular culture and in doing so, privileges the ability to use controversy and conventional beauty to sell books as opposed to creating quality art. By focusing on how the author uses Hans Robert Jauss’ horizons of expectations, unreliable narrators, anecdotes in biography …

The Effect Of Socioeconomic Status On Student Perceptions Of Instructional Communication Behaviors, Samuel A. Crecelius

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In spite of desegregation and efforts to provide equitable education for all students, minorities and students living in poverty continue to underperform their peers. Education theorists have attributed this achievement gap to a cultural mismatch between students and their teachers and schools. At the same time, instructional communication research has found that cultural differences may influence student perceptions of teacher communication behaviors and that these behaviors have an effect on learning outcomes. Interestingly, while race has received extensive study in the instructional communication literature, little research has examined the role of socioeconomic status on students’ perceptions of instructor communication behaviors. …

From Mutation To Disarticulation: Terror And The Body In Don Delillo’S Falling Man, Sarah A. Mcmichael

English Theses

Don DeLillo’s Falling Man addresses cultural changes within the age of postmodern indifference and global terror, as the reaction to the image of a falling body becomes controversial following the events of 9/11. After being initially removed by the media, Richard Drew’s provocative photo titled “The Falling Man” captures a body falling against the backdrop of the World Trade Center, and is recovered and reexamined in DeLillo’s novel. Several types of bodily disturbances are illuminated in Falling Man as the fictional bodies of both American citizens and foreign terrorists become susceptible to strange mutations and disarticulations. DeLillo uses the bodily …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

Summer Indiana Bat Ecology In The Southern Appalachians: An Investigation Of Thermoregulation Strategies And Landscape Scale Roost Selection, Kristina Hammond

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the southern Appalachians there are few data on the roost ecology of the federally endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis). During 2008-2012, we investigated roosting ecology of the Indiana bat in ~280,000 ha in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee National Forest, and Nantahala National Forest in the southern Appalachians Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. We investigated 2 aspects of the Indiana bat’s roosting ecology: thermoregulation and the extrinsic factors that influence body temperature, and landscape-scale roost selection. To investigate thermoregulation of bats at roost, we used data gathered in 2012 from 6 female Indiana bats (5 adults …

"This World Must Touch The Other": Crossing The U.S.-Mexico Border In American Novels And Television, Guadalupe V. Linares

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation is a literary, cultural, and theoretical analysis of selected twentieth and twenty-first century novels and television in which characters cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The novels considered are: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy, Forgetting the Alamo, or Blood Memory by Emma Pérez, Dancing with Butterflies by Reyna Grande, and Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea. In addition, I also examine the television series Breaking Bad created by Vince Gilligan. I use McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Gilligan’s Breaking Bad to balance Chicana/o perspectives of border crossings found in the other novels …

Just Across Town, Robert Weaver

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Fire-Lookout Literature, Austin Schilling

2013 Projects

The Keck Summer Collaborative Research Program provides opportunities for Linfield College students and faculty to conduct research on issues related to the Pacific Northwest, and to bring the research findings back into the classroom within the subsequent academic year. Students partner with faculty to conduct research and present their work to other students, Linfield staff and faculty, and community members during a series of brown bag lunches. Austin Schilling conducted research with David Sumner and gave this presentation during the summer of 2013.