English Language and Literature Commons^™

Après Nous, Le Déluge, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Life Without Hope? Huntington's Disease And Genetic Futurity, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Rhetorical Pragmatism And Histories Of New Media: Rorty On Kierkegaard On The Internet, Steven J. Mailloux

English Faculty Works

This essay begins with Hubert Dreyfus's Kierkegaardian critique of the Internet and then turns to Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatist response, an unpublished text found in the Richard Rorty Papers. After considering these contrasting perspectives, the author proposes a third view, arguing that a rhetorical pragmatist should borrow from both Dreyfus's critique and Rorty's defense. The Internet does enable media users who are unthinkingly complacent in their passionate commitments as well as those who are complacently unthinking in their detached, everyday busyness. But the Internet also provides its own unique opportunities for thinking critically and for challenging complacency. After proposing this more …

"Visibility Is A Trap": Analyzing The Levels Of The Foucauldian Panoptic Gaze In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series, Sarah Marie Bullwinkel

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The structures of power in the Potter universe are both evident and insidious. Whether one considers the disciplinary influences enforced by Headmaster and mentor Albus Dumbledore; The Ministry of Magic's Fudge, Umbridge, and Scrimgeour; or, the power watching over them all: Voldemort, J.K. Rowling presents a world marked by surveillance and self-policing in her Harry Potter novels. These three levels of the Panoptic Gaze discipline Harry in various ways that ultimately result in producing him as a self-sacrificing hero at the series' close. Rowling depicts an individual completely shaped by the authoritative gazes that inhabit his world; even the freedom …

Batwoman And Catwoman: Treatment Of Women In Dc Comics, Kristen Coppess Race

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

DC Comics has existed through the first, second, and third waves of feminism, publishing popular female characters who appeal to a mass market. By focusing on depictions of Batwoman and Catwoman, this paper examines the contrast between the social and political progress forms of feminism promised for women and the increasingly violent treatment of female characters in DC Comics, focusing on Batwoman and Catwoman. M. Thomas Inge maintains that male "comic book heroes [...] tend to fit most of the classic patterns of heroism in Western culture" (142). These heroes are designated by their completion of quests or missions, their …

The Wild Child: Children Are Freaks In Antebellum Novels, Heathe Bernadette Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the spectacle of antebellum freak shows and focuses on how Phineas Taylor Barnum's influence permeates five antebellum novels. The study concerns itself with wild children staged as freaks in Margaret by Sylvester Judd, City Crimes by George Thompson, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Our Nig by Harriet Wilson. Barnum's influence was pervasive. The novels I investigate span a period of fourteen years before the Civil War, and offer a view of the kid show presented by the freaks in each text. Touching into spectacle, authors construct narratives …

"The Hollow Men": Divorce And Manhood In The Novels Of Howells, James, And Wharton, Melissa Pluta Parker

Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the relationship between divorce and masculinity as presented in several realist novels written around the turn of the century, including A Modern Instance by William Dean Howells, What Maisie Knew by Henry James, and The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. It looks closely at how divorce, which saw a dramatic rise between the years 1880 and 1920, seemingly threatened an elite version of manhood that was already on the decline at this time, a version of manhood increasingly viewed within society as weak and effeminate and one represented in each of these novels by a …

Going Into The Word-Hoard: The Writing Process, Language, And Its Implications In The Poetry Of Medbh Mcguckian And Paul Muldoon, Elizabeth Peele

Theses and Dissertations

As two prominent figures of Northern Irish poetry, Medbh McGuckian and Paul Muldoon are often discussed as being "difficult" and "oblique." However, I argue that this categorization of their poetry is too simplistic and overlooks the dissimilarities in their writing process and view of language, and ultimately, in their poetry itself. By going back to the fundamentals of their works, I claim that the basis for this dissimilarity is, in fact, a differing view of the founding blocks of poetic language. McGuckian sees syntax as being the important factor while Muldoon focuses on the individual lexical meaning of words. These …

Heirlooms, Candace Gayle Wiley

Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis is a collection of poems and an essay that explores the concept of defining the self through the influence of personal and cultural heirlooms. It is particularly concerned with the inheritances that children receive, whether they are a pair of stockings or a political atmosphere. This collection consists of five sections, submitted in partial fulfillment of University of South Carolina's Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing.

School Culture, Struggling Adolescent Readers, And The Dialogical Self, Dawan Coombs

Faculty Publications

Sociocultural perspectives of literacy emphasize the role of the larger environment in the shaping of literacy practices. As a result, some researchers theorize students don’t fail in school, but that schools fail students by denying them opportunities to practice literacy in personally meaningful ways. Evidence of such is manifest in the narrative identities of struggling adolescent readers. Identities result from the selective emplotment of events, signs, and symbols into narratives that help the individual make sense of the world and the self’s role in it. Narratives, and the identities that result, represent the coming together of the stories individuals tell, …

Chthonic Powers: T.S. Eliot And H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Elliott

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Music And Instrument In Chaucer, Philip Feller

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Frankenstein; From A Psycho-Political Perspective, Arif Kamal Babar

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Solitude, Daniel Mendez

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Gothic Cosmos: Instances And Implications Of Medieval, Sameeah Muhammad

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Ball Don’T Lie: Connecting Adolescents, Sports, And Literature, Alan Brown, Chris Crowe

Faculty Publications

A few months ago, a group of middle and high school media specialists invited me to help them consider approaches for engaging reluctant male readers. I thought long and hard about my own experiences, both as a reluctant male reader and as a teacher of reluctant readers. To begin to respond to such a query, I suggested, meant that we must first ponder several equally important questions:

• What are students doing instead of reading?
• In what literary practices are they already engaged outside of school? 
• How can educators connect current extracurricular interests with ongoing curricular activities? 
• How can books further …

Kings And Knighthood; The Military And Political Realities Behind Hartmann Von Aue's Arthurian Romances, Brian Brice

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Give Them Something To Talk About: The Role Of Dialogue In Mentoring Relationships, Dawan Coombs, Kate Goodwin

Faculty Publications

An effective mentor/protégé relationship is essentially dialogical. Given that the mentor learns as the beginner learns, the mentor needs to take a dialogical stance to promote open conversations and investigation. Journals, blogs, observations, and subsequent debriefings help both the mentor and the beginner to learn much about teaching and learning.

Haunted By Passion: Supernaturalism And Feminism In Jane Eyre And Villette, Laurel Lorber

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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California Grotesques: Torture, Fiction, And Ethnic Identity In John Fante's Ask The Dusk, Elizabeth Bracey

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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