English Language and Literature Commons^™

Gukundana, Lindsay Van Stone

HIM 1990-2015

Twenty years after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Violet Walters makes her way to the tiny village of Murumba to fulfill her dream of becoming a philanthropist. In addition to the shock of a new culture, Violet must now contend with Bret Calloway, a hardened philanthropist whose ten years at Murumba have made him less than happy about the arrival of Violet and her optimistic new perspective. Amid the mounting tension of their relationship, war looms in the background. What ensues is a testament to the transformational nature of a culture and its people. Gukundana seeks to illuminate injustices related to …

The Broadsheet- Issue 1, Merrimack College

The Broadsheet

Merrimack College's English Department newsletter.

This issue features:

• Annual English Career Night
• Honors Convocation
• Senior Reflection
• English Curriculum Reform
• Sigma Tau Delta Induction
• Upcoming Events

Weight Loss Methods And Eating Disorder Risk Factors In Collegiate Wrestlers, Jessica Rea

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate the weight loss of collegiate wrestlers and assess their risk for eating disorders (ED). Methods: Wrestlers were recruited by contacting the athletic trainer (AT) at the institution they wrestled. ATs who agreed to participate were sent an electronic link containing a survey, 143 wrestlers provided usable data. The survey was created from two surveys one allows the athlete to describe his eating behaviors and the ATHLETE questionnaire which measures risk for ED. We analyzed the data using descriptive statistics and frequencies. Results: 76.6% of wrestlers indicated binge eating; eating behaviors are …

Validity Of Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization For Detecting Myofascial Adhesions Through Secondary Diagnostic Ultrasound Analysis, Kaitlyn Silbaugh

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Magical Process, Patrice Loar

Senior Honors Theses

The use of supernatural beings in four of Shakespeare’s plays – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and The Tempest – is examined in order to show the change in Shakespeare’s thinking about magic, and how the mortal and supernatural can co-exist. The shift from properly controlled benevolent female power, to out-of-control malevolent female power, to the eradication of female power and triumph of the male magus is examined; the ideal co-existence of the human and supernatural worlds is assessed.

“In Counterfeit Passion”: Cross-Dressing, Transgression, And Fraud In Shakespeare And Middleton, Anastasia S. Bierman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the way women cross-dressing as men functions as a crime in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl and William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night. While many modern scholars have discussed cross-dressing in these plays, many look to the end of the plays as the foundation for their analysis rather than the play as a whole. Because of this oversight, scholars deem the characters in the plays not transgressive, when, in fact, cross-dressing is transgressive. They ignore the way cross-dressing is often presented in writing in the Renaissance, i.e. as a type …

"Balanced Between Poetry And Practicality": The Agrarian Figure In Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd And Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Rebecca Puelle

Honors Scholar Theses

A surface reading of any of Thomas Hardy's novels of the fictional world of Wessex- the south-England county based on the real-life counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire- invites readers to revel in the silly quandaries of the villagers, farmers, malsterers, and labourers that populate this idyllic, pastoral world with quaint phrases, delectable dialects, and jovial camraderies. Even when Hardy’s vision is deeply tragic, he maintains an interest in a colorful, and sometimes even comic, cast of bucolic people. A closer reading of Hardy, however, challenges readers to chart the changing course of agricultural labour in mid …

The Path Of Lucius Park And Other Stories Of John Valley, Elijah David Carnley

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis comprises a writer’s craft introduction and nine short stories which form a short story cycle. The introduction addresses the issue of perspective in realist and magical realist fiction, with special emphasis on magical realism and belief. The stories are a mix of realism and magical realism, and are unified by characters and the fictional setting of John Valley, FL.

Speed And Stasis: Femininity And Symbolism In John Dos Passos's 1919, Natalie Tara Cope

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

My thesis connects the ideas of speed, movement, symbolism and feminism in Dos Passos’s work 1919, the second book of the U.S.A. trilogy. For the women in the novel―Janey Williams, Eveline Hutchins, Eleanor Stoddard, and Daughter― there is an ever-present tension in their existence as they struggle between the static roles available for women as symbolic figures outside of time and the personal mobility that allows them to participate in history. By using speed as a measure of extreme behavior, I examine the degrees to which women could move outside of their domestic sphere of inequality and the speed at …

On Edifice, Joseph D. Bradbury

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This collection of essays intends to draw out the complex relationship between structure and identity in the American West. Specifically, this collection considers the inherent connection between Mormon meetinghouses and the Salt Lake City Downtown Rising project completed in 2012, and both Mormons and non-Mormons who choose to establish a home and an identity in the West. Although the obvious addressees are Mormon and non-Mormon, the applicable audience is far-reaching in that the identity of a specific region established primarily by one faction of people is, much like all things, subject to change. This change and this identity crisis resemble …

The Soul Of Man Under Capitalism, Joe L. Cantu

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This paper examines the consciousness of three literary characters, divided by space and time, from mid nineteenth century Russia, mid twentieth century Italy, to late twentieth century American society. This paper exposes literature’s rendition of modern man’s varying consciousness as shaped by the changing social conditions around him. This paper recognizes these varying social conditions as different stages in capitalism’s development. Capitalism has a history; the literature this paper examines discloses its negative impact on the consciousness of its characters. In analyzing Notes from the Underground, Contempt, and American Psycho, three novels separated by geography and spanning a timeframe of …

Portrayals Of The Dehumanization Of The American Prisoner In Miguel Piñero's “Short Eyes” And Tom Fontana's “Oz”, Gerardo C. Martinez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis analyzes the way in which Miguel Piñero, through his 1974 play Short Eyes, and Tom Fontana, through his television series Oz, portray the way in which American prisoners are transformed by a racially-defined code of behavior. This code of behavior, defined by Miguel Piñero as “the program” encourages inmates to over-identify themselves in terms of race and leads them to engage in behavior that contributes to their dehumanization. In the first chapter, the introduction, I establish the social, political, and theoretical concepts through which it is possible to analyze the process of prisoner identity transformation in these two …

Translingualism In Post-Secondary Writing And Language Instruction : Negotiating Language Ideologies In Policies And Pedagogical Practices., Nancy Bou Ayash

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on text-oriented data from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, this study examines how writing teachers and students constantly negotiate tensions between translingual sociolinguistic realities on one hand and monolingualist assumptions about language and language relations on another that dominate curricular and pedagogical designs in first year writing courses. The study involves a multiplicity of data sources, such as official institutional documents, individual instructional materials, classroom observations, structured interviews, and a method of "talk around texts." Writing teachers in this study sensitively grappled with tensions between the constant political pressures of generating the status quo and their ideological orientations …

No Greater Love: Recognition, Transformation, And Friendship In The Harry Potter Series, Stephen Parish

Masters Theses

Nobody today doubts the momentous influence the Harry Potter series has had on a generation of readers. Many scholars and critics assume Harry's place amongst other great works of children's literature, and indeed the series has brought about a revival in children's literature scholarship. Despite this popularity, many critics question the series' aesthetics, its attention to moral demeanor. Therefore, what element exists in Harry Potter that could enforce its aesthetic quality? Based on a rhetorical reading of the texts, my thesis upholds the aesthetic nature of the books through an analysis of the trio's friendship and and its impact on …

Life Inside The Spectacle: David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, And Storytelling In The Age Of Entertainment, John Hawkins

Masters Theses

This project explores George Saunders's In Persuasion Nation and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest as interventionary literature. The thesis asserts that the two works confront the problems of isolation and dehumanization created by entertainment-based consumerism; they do so by depicting satirically exaggerated consumer societies and placing well-developed, sympathetic characters in those settings. The thesis includes a consideration of Jameson and deBord's theories of spectacle and Wallace's stated concerns with postmodern irony as an ineffective form of critique.

Putting Down Roots: A Tolkienian Conception Of Place, Kayla Snow

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the way in which J.R.R. Tolkien's develops and expresses his nuanced sense of place through his major literary works--namely, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's sense of place, as expressed through his fiction, encompasses both metaphysical and geographical relational structures that are operative at both the local and global levels. As Tolkien develops his sense of place in his fiction, he draws from the Distributist principles--largely informed by Catholic social policy of the late nineteenth century and popularized by G.K. Chesterton--to build the economy in Middle-earth. The resulting economy resists industrialization …

Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom And Escape Of Women In African American And Indian Literatures, Lovely Koshy

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on women in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and Rabindranath Tagore's three short stories. Hansberry writes during a period in America when racism, segregation, and black migration to the North weighed heavy upon the psyche of black women. Tagore writes during a time when British control, sati system, caste system, and dharma leave Indian women voiceless. Both express their disagreement with entrenched norms and institutions that have been in place for hundreds of years, a task that initially may seem to be an impossible undertaking, and unlikely to bring about expected change. This work reveals …

The Face Of Bedlam: Madness, Gender, And Social Mores In Jacobean Drama, Amelé Welliver

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Spectacular images of madness and villainy characterized the Jacobean stage. Amidst the grief of losing beloved Queen Elizabeth I and the turmoil of James I's early years as king, the spirit of drama shifted so that, as Una Ellis-Fermor explains, Elizabethans' love of life transformed into a Jacobean preoccupation with death. Her book The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation examines this transition, exploring Jacobean playwrights' heightened dramatic presentations as social commentary. During this period, Machiavellian villains became standard on the stage; dramatic plots became overtly violent, even satanic. One of the most striking and well-studied developments during this time was the …

"As Mind To The Body": Prudence And Artificial Memory In The Illustrations And Commentary Of George Sandys' Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished (1632), James Hellman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an analysis of an English verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, published in 1632 by the Englishman George Sandys. This book included a full English commentary and was illustrated by several full-plate engravings. This study examines the edition's elaborate utilization of the rhetorical practices of artificial memory and related concepts of rhetorical invention. It demonstrates that these rhetorical practices were chosen and implemented for their inherent structural appropriateness for the cultivation of prudence, or practical wisdom. It reveals that the lessons in practical wisdom encoded in the work through the techniques of artificial memory were particularly aimed at …

Mossy Bottom Golf And Hunt Club, Andrew Joseph Albertson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is the story of Greg Goforth and Rick Hale, the owner and director of golf, respectively, of the Mossy Bottom Golf and Hunt Club. Greg and Rick work together through many comic mishaps in attempt to bring the 2015 U.S. Open to Mossy Bottom, Mississippi.