English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Dangerous Women Of The Long Eighteenth Century: Exploring The Female Characters In Love In Excess, Roxana, And A Simple Story, Jillian Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Long Eighteenth Century was a period in which change was constant and proceeding the Restoration Era; this sense of change continued throughout the era. Charles II created an era in which women were allowed on the theatre stage, and his mistresses accompanied him to court; Charles II set the stage for the proto-feminist ideas of the eighteenth century that would manifest themselves in Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess, Daniel Defoe’s Roxana, and Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story. These novels showcase the enlightenment of women and some of their male contemporaries and the beginning struggles of female …

'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 …

“The Fight Starts Here:” Appalachian Mountaintop Removal In Three Contemporary Young Adult Novels, Sarah Mawhinney

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Mountaintop removal is an issue that has plagued Appalachia as companies harvest coal from the mountains and cause consequent environmental and community effects. By focusing on three contemporary young adult novels that feature mountaintop removal, correlations between the novels and the real environmental and community effects can be drawn. The novels examined include: Saving Wonder by Mary Knight (2016), Dig Too Deep by Amy Allgeyer (2016), and The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton (2015). Mountaintop removal is a devastating and invasive process, and the costs on the land and people are irreversible as landscapes are drastically altered, …

"A Complicated Story, An Unsolved Mystery": An Experiment In Poetry And The Ethics Of Representation, Darren Wood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The New York Juvenile Asylum, founded in 1851, was one of New York’s first institutional responses to the problems associated with the poor. It, and the theories of asylum that undergird the institution, still exist today in the form of Children’s Village. The location of Children’s Village, located just a few hundred yards from my home, prompted me to consider the distance between my family and the children who reside at Children’s Village; between my historical context and that of the children who resided at the New York Juvenile Asylum - and their parents who surrendered them there; and between …

Transfer In The Writing Center: Tutors Facilitating Students' Understanding Of Transfer, Shannon Nicole Tuttle

Theses and Dissertations

Transfer, a highly researched topic in composition studies, is a topic of increasing interest to those in writing center studies. Writing centers are an ideal location for the application of transfer because tutors can provide more opportunities for guided practice, application, reflection, and metacognition in a one-on-one setting; thus, students may learn more effectively, through application, the writing skills they may receive via instruction in their classrooms. Previous writing center studies have implemented transfer-focused curricula to help tutors better facilitate transfer in their tutorials. These curricula have focused on training tutors to understand and apply transfer to their tutorials, but …

Maternal Criticism: Reading Two Middle Eastern Women Writers As Nonviolent Peace Activism, Charlyn Marie Ingwerson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advocates for reading the literatures of two Middle Eastern women writers through a Maternal Critical lens that recognizes the demands of universal vulnerability in characters who resist violence, and responds in Maternal communities of Readers that connect readers to characters, readers to writers, and readers to other readers, carrying the struggle for equity forward. My unfolding argument, centered on Maternal Critical activity in the novels of Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh and Israeli writer Ronit Matalon, demonstrates how literature by these Middle Eastern women is part of a narrative context of women’s peacemaking and resistance to violence, a part …

Breaking The Fourth Wall, Esther Elizabeth Karram

Masters Theses

This creative, non-fiction thesis is written in memoir form and analyzes how a person perceives reality, how that perception is broken, and how a person copes with the limitations of a new reality. In examining my life, I came to realize that many of my performative tendencies stemmed from a desire to be loved and the belief that love was contingent upon perfection. What follows is my struggle to try to maintain that perfection, the failure to do so, and the slow acceptance of being an imperfect person in an imperfect world.

Monstrous Mobility In Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde And Dracula, Autumn Danielle Weese

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Late Victorian Gothic texts that are central to theories on monstrosity in terms of mobility by examining Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula. The goal of this project is to survey the ways in which two exemplary monsters, Mr. Hyde and Count Dracula, promote mobility for others and themselves as an inherent part of their monstrosity. The variety of this mobility is demonstrated by examples showing how monsters move and encourage movement in ways that are social and transformative as well as physical. Because social mobility is essential to these movements, this study also considers the …

Losing Faith: Emily Brontë'S Revolutionized Religion, Emily Renee Holmes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Losing Faith: Emily Brontë’s Revolutionized Religion” discusses the role of religion in her novel Wuthering Heights and her poems set in the mythical world of Gondal. Through close readings of both her prose and poetry, this paper seeks to understand the relationship between the dark, vindictive nature of Brontë’s characters and their hopeful ending. The first chapter, Here’s The Situation, discusses the situation as set up by the novel, focusing specifically on Catherine and Heathcliff. I discuss the violence and codependence of their relationship, their Gondal predecessors, their fascination with each other as well as their torment when apart, and …

Modeling Construction Management Dynamics: A Proxy Estimation Of Percent Planned Complete, Kathleen H. Mccauley

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The chaotic and complex nature of the construction industry and construction projects hinders maximization of productivity. Certain aspects of lean manufacturing are adaptable to construction with the goal of improving work flow reliability; for example, measuring work flow reliability by Percent Planned Complete (PPC). As more construction projects are being built with lean methodologies, it is important to bring this knowledge into the undergraduate Construction Management (CM) programs so that new graduates have relevant knowledge of emerging trends and can serve as change agents in industry. The purpose of this study was to construct a mathematical estimation of project dynamics …

"'The Grittiness Of Being Human' : Individualizing Sexual Expectations In Adichie's Novels", Madison Behrend Vaughn

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Critics of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels identify her as a nationalist author, as representing the voices on the periphery, and as advocating for multiple voices and perspectives. Critics have also largely dismissed sexual experience as a factor in her representations and have regarded her graphic descriptions of intimacy as mere entertainment or as a means to provoke criticism. I will argue that Adichie does include many instances of sexual intimacy in her novels, not as an escape from the tough subjects that she details, but to express the effects of public problems on individuals. Ultimately, the complexity of sexual experience …

N: A Sea Monster Of A Research Project, Adrian Jay Thomson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Ever since time and the world began, dwarves have always fought cranes. Ever since ships set out on the northern sea, great sea monsters have risen to prey upon them. Such are the basics of life in medieval and Renaissance Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland and Greenland, as detailed by Olaus Magnus' Description of the Northern Peoples (1555), its sea monster-heavy map, the Carta Marina (1539), and Abraham Ortelius' later map of Iceland, Islandia (1590).

I first learned of Olaus and Ortelius in the summer of 2013, and while drawing my own version of their sea monster maps a thought hit me: …

Examining The Usability Of Content In Canvas: Html Vs. Pdf, Danni Noyes

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The mission statement of Utah State University (USU) includes “serving the public through learning, discovery and engagement.” In order to engage the diverse 27,932 students (Fall 2018 headcount including regional campuses), USU produces accessible content. Although accessible content is available to USU’s students, it is presented as an alternative to the original product rather than as a product itself. Thus, students must seek out this alternative, accessible content in order to engage with it. This pilot study indicates that content in Canvas should be made accessible from the beginning of its creation as is specified by the Theories of Universal …

Madwomen And Resistance: Gender And Self-Harm In Romantic And Victorian Literature, Emily V. Rasch

Honors Theses

Literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was concerned with madness. However, relatively little research has been done to indicate how supposed “madwomen” escaped patriarchal control. This thesis will analyze madwomen from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries and will argue that suicide appears in literature as the sole way that “mad” characters can resist patriarchal control. I examine the impact of self-harm and suicide in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria or the Wrongs of Woman; John Keats’s “Isabella and the Pot of Basil”; and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I connect self-harm to the desire to escape patriarchal …

"I Wanted Her Dead More Than Voldemort": Examining People's Hatred Of Dolores Umbridge, Jessica Griffeth

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This Plan B thesis explores the question: Why do audience members detest Dolores Umbridge so much? Dolores Umbridge is an incredibly hated woman in the Harry Potter series who has attracted attention from audiences, but Umbridge has not been studied fully by scholarship. When scholars do discuss Umbridge, they typically focus on her cruelty while ignoring her other characteristics. Looking at popular internet audience reactions to Umbridge, however, shows the complexities of Umbridge’s character by revealing what Louise Rosenblatt calls the “transaction” between the audience and the texts, and scholarship has ignored that “transaction.” Using quantitative and qualitative methods to …

Radical Empowerment And Evolution In Fay Weldon’S Menippean Satire: The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil (1983), Jackson A. Rivera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This master’s thesis explores Fay Weldon’s implementation of Menippean satire in her 1983 novel, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. The present discussion argues Weldon utilizes this specific satiric mode within her novel in order to convey a story of radical female empowerment and evolution that critiques gendered stereotypes of marriage and female roles in society. To make this argument, this thesis applies satire theory, most prominently Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas about Menippean satire, as well as marriage and family psychology, to Weldon’s characterization of wives, husbands, and mistresses throughout the novel. Through this discussion, Rivera demonstrates the effectiveness of …

Place-Soul: The Sensory Perception Of Modern Travel Writing, Pilar Dipietro

Graduate Theses

Place is theorized through many lenses: geographical, sociological, political, and architectural, to name a few, and travel theorists study the economics and production of place. Yet sensory perception of places travelled are understudied. My thesis offers the determination of “place-soul” as an experiment in sensory perception of place, and the accompanying South Carolina travelogues exemplify case studies of place-soul’s revealing. By successfully ascertaining the essence of place by marrying objective and subjective lenses, and accurately describing the belongingness and connections uncovered, the reader will identify with me through words, and travel may be inspired by a shared sense of belonging. …

Comments On Etymology, May 2019: Kibosh Update #4 (Compilation), Gerald Leonard Cohen, Stephen Goranson, Matthew Little

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

It has been ten years since Matthew Little sent me his suggestion that ‘kibosh’ in ‘put the kibosh on’ derives from the fearsome Mideastern whip known as the kurbash; Stephen Goranson soon thereafter independently made the same suggestion in messages to the American Dialect Society, gradually adding the important initial discoveries to buttress that proposal.

The three of us wound up collaborating on ‘kibosh,’ first in Comments on Etymology and then in our 2017 book Origin of Kibosh. Updates continued to appear in COE as various scholars weighed in and some new material appeared. It is time now to …

Visions Of Hell, John Wilson

Honors Program Theses and Projects

This creative thesis addresses paintings and other visual representations of different Buddhist Hells and responds to them through written poetry. Visions of Hell is a compilation of eight poems inspired by several of the many Buddhist Naraka, or Hells. These “ are not the traditional “Hells” one might imagine today, if anything, they were closer to our notion of Purgatories. Each hell is reserved for specific types of sinners —the type or crime dictating the appropriate hell to inhabit. However, this causal relation, typically present in works of Buddhist art, is not used in the poems. This compilation narrates the …

Folklore-In-The-Making: Analyzing Shakespeare's The Tempest And Adaptations As Folklore, Heather Talbot

Student Works

This paper explores the similarities between folklore and Shakespeare's play,The Tempest. Not only is The Tempest an example of a folkloric story, this paper looks at how this play calls to attention the importance of story and the need for story to adapt in order to survive. Folklore is an oral tradition that is living, or continually adapting. Shakespeare's plays, while written are also performances which can be adapted through interpretations and by adapting to new genres. It is this adaptability which allows Shakespeare's works to continue to thrive and it is this adaptability which will determine how …