English Language and Literature Commons^™

Speaking Subjects: Beckett’S Not I, Rushdie’S The Satanic Verses, And Coetzee’S Foe, Jake Khoury

Theses and Dissertations

In repositioning Beckett’s Not I in relation to Rushdie and Coetzee, I show that The Satanic Verses and Foe suggest approaches to language similar to Beckett’s play, insofar as each text interrogates the ability of the marginalized speaking subject to maintain control of his or her voice, finding that the speaking subject’s voice is constantly infused with the voices of others. Additionally, I demonstrate Beckett’s relevance to the postcolonial environment and delineate convergences and divergences in how Rushdie and Coetzee formulate the voices, bodies, and identities of marginalized and postcolonial speaking subjects.

Judging The Rational And The Dead: Ann Radcliffe And Feminist Theology, Garland Beasley

Theses and Dissertations

“Judging the Rational and the Dead: Ann Radcliffe and Feminist Theology” argues Radcliffe’s first three novels, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), A Sicilian Romance (1790), and The Romance of the Forest (1791), show a progression of feminist theology informed by the late eighteenth-century British religious movement of Rational Dissent. The thesis attempts to complicate and extend Radcliffe scholarship by moving away from fractured critical discourses and into more cohesive readings of Radcliffe that include feminist and theological interpretations of her work. Of particular interest to the project are Radcliffe’s views on the circumscribed nature of women’s existence within …

Darwin, Victorian Literature, And The Great Web: Analyzing And Dismantling The Human Superiority Complex, Farhad R. Anwarzai

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In my essay, I will argue that the discrimination and cruelty humans project towards other humans mirrors the discrimination and cruelty humans project towards other species. A moral justification exists behind the need to discriminate against another human or animal. Therefore, the concept of “morality,” which has long been thought to be the root of man‟s “higher” mental capabilities, and which is, I will propose, the cause of racism, sexism, classism, and speciesism, is not an advantageous, or “higher,” trait. Instead, “morality,” if we classify it in Darwinian terms, is a disadvantageous trait that could potentially lead to our devolution …

Shakespeare And Cervantes Are Dead: The Construction Of Fiction And Reality In Hamlet And Don Quixote, Joanna Parypinski

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The reason that Hamlet and Don Quixote can be studied so thoroughly on the poststructuralist notion of a false or constructed reality is because they were both works far ahead of their time, often reflecting extremely postmodernist ideas. Don Quixote is generally considered the first modern novel, and Hamlet is also identified with the beginning of the modern age (Oort 319). Yet beyond this, these authors play games with the reader and with the structure of the fiction itself, which would fit sensibly in a 20th or 21st century novel rather than an early 17th century work. These new methods …

Using Textual Features To Predict Popular Content On Digg, Paul H. Miller

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Over the past few years, collaborative rating sites, such as Netflix, Digg and Stumble, have become increasingly prevalent sites for users to find trending content.  I used various data mining techniques to study Digg, a social news site, to examine the influence of content on popularity.  What influence does content have on popularity, and what influence does content have on users’ decisions?  Overwhelmingly, prior studies have consistently shown that predicting popularity based on content is difficult and maybe even inherently impossible.  The same submission can have multiple outcomes and content neither determines popularity, nor individual user decisions.  My results show …

Rethinking Success: A Person-Based Approach To Service Learning, Ryan Cales

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the nature of service learning projects that are structured to make interventions in rhetorical spheres and seek to achieve social change on a smaller scale rather striving for grander, or even systemic, change. In structuring community projects that include inherently limited interventions and equally limited goals, I argue that such projects should be open to immediate adjustments within themselves –to abandon any particular form or goal—to satisfy the immediate needs of the individuals served. I draw upon my work with a reintegration program for ex-offenders in Richmond, Virginia called Working with Conviction to help demonstrate that service …

Weights, Measures, And Meaning, Monir Feezor

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Monir Feezor on April 21, 2010.

The Rhetoric Of Second Chance: The Invention Of Ethos For An Ex-Offender, Modu Fofana-Kamara

Theses and Dissertations

For many, literacy is reading and writing- a critical tool for ethos construction. But for a marginalized group of ex-offenders, former prison inmates, who were not accustomed to reading and writing as an agent for character invention, the ability to employ literacy and to construct ethos was a challenging and almost unsuccessful attempt. I discuss in this thesis a community-writing project I designed as a graduate student and my partnership with Boaz & Ruth, a local faith-based non-profit organization working with ex-offenders. Through the collaboration I facilitated writing skills workshop, which objective was to have the ex-offenders to write personal …

Signifying Ruins: The Wreck And Rebirth Of Modernity, Language, And Representation, Audrey Farley

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores formal and thematic representations of ruins in twentieth century literary texts, including James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck.” Analyzing these texts and concepts of ruins in the theoretical work of Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, and Julia Kristeva, I argue that ruins underscore the arbitrariness—and, thus, the fragility—of symbolic systems of signification. Ruins, by virtue of their fragmentation, invite nostalgic projections of totality only to betray totality as an illusion. Thus, the imagination of wholeness that the ruin incites allows—only to disallow—meaning. Modernity and …

Novels In The Internet Age: “House Of Leaves” And New Media’S Influence In Contemporary Fictional Literature, Tyler Gegg

Symposium on Research and Creative Expression (SORCE)

The now-ubiquitous nature of the Internet has changed the way we see the world, and these changes must be reflected in how we experience other media forms. Postmodern works such as Harry Mathew's "The Journalist" have challenged the way we read and electronic literature like Steve Tomasula's "Toc" have stretched the use of the digital to produce stories; but contemporary literature combines the medium and techniques of postmodern literature with the character of the digital. This project explores the influences of the characteristics and attitudes of the Internet medium as they are partially realized in Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud …

Terror, Performance And Post 9/11 Literature, Elise Christine Silva

Theses and Dissertations

This project explores 9/11 as a performative act that is re-represented in post 9/11 fiction. Although many scholars have engaged spectacle theory to understand the event, this project asserts that performance theory gives a more dynamic and ethical reading of post 9/11 literatures like Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Don DeLillo's Falling Man. The aforementioned post 9/11 texts showcase narrative performances and also give formal performances for an audience of readers. Theatricality in these texts promotes dialogue and healing through interactive communication.

Louisa May Alcott In Her Own Time: An Introduction Through Her Printed Works, Maggie Kopp

Faculty Publications

Text and slides of presentation given at Orem Public Library, 19 April 2011.

“That I Should Always Listen To My Body And Love It”: Finding The Mind-Body Connection In Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Slave Texts, Emily Stuart Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the presence of the movement theories of Irmgard Bartenieff, Peggy Hackney, and Rudolf Von Laban in the following texts: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself (1845), The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave (1831), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Linda Brent (1861), Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose (1986) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). The terms and phrases of movement theory will be introduced to the contemporary critical discussion already surrounding the texts, both furthering and challenging existing arguments.

Reviews, Gregory Bassham, David Bratman, Joe R. Christopher, Charles A. Huttar, Douglas C. Kane, Harley Sims, Donna A. White

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A Sword between the Sexes?: C.S. Lewis and the Gender Debates. Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Reviewed by Joe R. Christopher.

The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. Edited by Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward. Reviewed by Gregory Bassham.

The Law and Harry Potter. Jeffrey E. Thomas and Franklin G. Snyder, eds. Reviewed by Douglas C. Kane.

Merlin: Knowledge and Power through the Ages. Stephen Knight. Reviewed by Harley J. Sims.

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration. Ed. by Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger. Reviewed by Charles A. Huttar.

One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of …

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

A Bibliography Of Glen Goodknight's Articles, Reviews, And Major Editorials In Mythlore, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Describes Mythopoeic Society founder GoodKnight’s influence on Inklings scholarship. Lists his scholarly articles, book and media reviews, and selected editorials in Mythlore, Tolkien Journal, and the published Mythopoeic Conference proceedings.

Narrative Dualism In C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, Sadie H. Bullard

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Introduces the concept of “narrative dualism” to understand both Lewis’s technique and his authorial purpose in creating opposing but parallel experiences, motifs, and motivations for Jane and Mark Studdock in That Hideous Strength.

A Matter Of Time: C.S. Lewis's Dark Tower Manuscript And Composition Process, Jonathan B. Himes

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Explores Lewis’s writing process in the unfinished Dark Tower, leading us through his examination of the manuscript and explaining his conclusions about the order of composition and Lewis’s writing methods.

Dialogic War: From The Battle Of Maldon To The War Of The Ring, Peter Grybauskas

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Examines Tolkien’s ability to hold two conflicting ways of thinking in creative tension, representing them through equally sympathetic characters each fairly having their own say, as he does in “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.” Grybauskas finds a parallel to this in the way Battle of Maldon balances its praise of Northern courage with its censure of the Earl of Maldon’s Ofermod.

Art According To Romantic Theology: Charles Williams's Analysis Of Dante Reapplied To J.R.R. Tolkien's "Leaf By Niggle", Michael Milburn

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Provides a grounding in Charles Williams’s “romantic theology,” which was heavily indebted to his reading of Dante, and the application of romantic theology to art, which Milburn demonstrates by examining Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle” through this lens. Winner of the Alexei Kondratiev Award at Mythcon 41.