Digital Commons Network^™

Remembering And Recording The Vietnam War, Margaret Brunk

English Honors Projects

In this project I consider the process of narrative construction in Vietnam War memoirs and oral histories, with special emphasis on Michael Herr’s Dispatches, and I examine the interaction between traditional narrative norms and the irregularities of the Vietnam War. Beginning with an exploration of the unique nature of war stories, I discuss the difficulty of communicating the war experience. I then explore the interplay of public accusation with authorial confession and justification, arguing that the desire to explain the particular conditions of the war informs not only the content but also the language and structure of the texts.

Thirdspace Professional Development As Effective Response To The Contested Spaces Of Computers And Writing, Jason L. Mcintosh

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In the physical spaces of writing classrooms and the conceptual spaces of writing practice and pedagogy, knowledge about computers is constructed by many individuals, groups, and institutions. Each has a stake in defining what computers mean for education and the role computers should play in the everyday life schools. Some of these stakeholders are immediate members of our school communities, such as students, teachers, administrators, and technology support staff. Some are not, such as politicians, researchers, and computer manufacturers. The effect of these often competing stakeholders is one of contested space. Writing teachers encounter contested space when we decide to …

The Cultural Consciousness Of John Updike: Rhetorical Spaces As Representations Of Americana Through The “Rabbit” Series, Michael Bonifacio

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a scholarly examination of John Updike’s first two novels of the Rabbit saga: Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux. The discussion is centered on the cultural artifacts and geographic spaces that populate the novels and how they are a reflection of popular cultural and contemporary sociological, economic, and political climates. These items are also closely considered with respect to their rhetorical significance and how Updike makes use of rhetorical spaces to influence his readers. What may seem like ordinary places are, through Updike’s writing, imbued with rhetorical significance that sheds light on his contemporary culture and that of …

And Then, He Folds His Patterned Rug: Repressive Reality And The Eternal Soul In Vladimir Nabokov, Elizabeth Cook

Masters Theses

While Vladimir Nabokov has deservedly earned fame as a stylist of the strange, most critics who study his novels approach his absurd and beautiful characters as little more than fractured victims of a wholly subjective reality. Compounding the misunderstanding is the tired debate over whether or not Lolita is literary, pornographic, or some cruel game of cat-and-mouse in which Nabokov seizes control of his readers' sense of morality. However, critics who read Nabokov as nothing more than a manipulative stylist neglect to realize that his characters suffer such absurd distortions of spirit and mind because their environment--the "average" reality of …

Power By Possession: Cuban-American Types And Collecting In The Agüero Sisters, Ashley Noelle Walton

Theses and Dissertations

Although many other ethnic and cultural studies have moved beyond essentialist labels and categories, Cuban-American studies persists in categorizing the people belonging to the cultural group in terms of how much time they have spent in Cuba, thus creating a hierarchy of "authentic" Cuban-ness. Isabel Alvarez Borland gives a comprehensive overview of Cuban-American literary categories, and through her description we can see how these categories may lend themselves to stratification. These categories include: the first generation, the second generation, the one-and-a-halfer, and the ethnic writer. To say that one generation of Cuban exiles is more or less authentically Cuban discounts …

Tales Of Empire: Orientalism In Nineteenth-Century Children's Literature, Brittany Renee Griffin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children's literature often does not hold the same weight in the studies of a culture as its big brother, the novel. However, as children's literature is written by adults, to convey information which is important for a child to learn in order to be a functioning member of that society, it can be analyzed in the same way novels are, to provide insight into the broad sweeping issues that concerned the adults of that era. Nineteenth-century British children's literature in particular reveals the deep-seated preoccupation the British Empire had with its eastern colonies, and shows how England's relationship to those …

Eng 4300-4390-001-099: Transatlantic Literature, Christopher Hanlon

Spring 2012

No abstract provided.

How Do The Absurd And The Realistic Blend In Comic Strips?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

One of my favorite webcomics is Wondermark, by David Malki !. What fascinates me about the strip is how mundane, ordinary elements get combined with unexpected elements to create a strong sense of the absurd, the fantastic(al), and the unreal. Generally, the physical setting of the strip is Dickensian, often involving not much more than two or three characters in a library, parlor, or dining room. Occasionally, the characters will interact in a scientific laboratory or public place, like on a street corner. Often it’s the language of the strip that creates the absurd. The characters broach topics that …

Challenging The Racial Dichotomy In Nella Larsen’S Passing, Samantha Davis

English Senior Seminar Papers

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

Nella Larsen’s Passing introduces two African American women on a quest for an integrated identity. Irene and Clare are two pale-skinned, childhood friends who are light enough to pass for white. Passing is a work concerned with the representation and construction of race. Clare Kendry passes for white and she “whitens” her lifestyle by adjusting her clothes, behavior, gestures, and etiquette while resisting and denying any existence of her black culture. Irene on the other hand, lives as a black woman but remains a part of the black community …

Hybrid Species And Literatures: Ibrahim Al-Koni’S ‘Composite Apparition’, Susan Mchugh

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Picturing The Wake: Arcimboldo, Joyce And His ‘Monster,’, Václav Paris

Publications and Research

This essay considers Finnegans Wake through the lens of Arcimboldo's art. Drawing on surrealism, French theory, and close readings of parts of Joyce's most difficult book, it shows the work to be visually richer and stranger than we imagined.

Lesson Plan: Civil Rights/Mount Pleasant/Union-Miles - Yesterday Meets Today (Grades 9-12), Lisa Moorer, Felicia Calloway

Project Documents

No abstract provided.

Novel/Cinema/Photo: Intertextual Readings Of The Namesake, Bakirathi Mani

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Decolonizing The Modernist Mind, Alpana Sharma

English Language and Literatures Faculty Publications

Cataclysmic changes in the world require new accommodations to it, new ways of articulating the strangeness that abounds. Literary modernism of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries- the main period under study in this special issue-sought precisely to capture that sense of strangeness, matching it and expressing it with new aesthetic forms, styles, and subject matter. But these early forms of expression which delineated the contours of a startling new reality-the technologies of photography and cinema, scientific discoveries, new modes of transportation, global war, postwar trauma, new class and gender formations, the birth of the unconscious, the erosion of an …

Book Review: A Brief History Of The Soul, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

A Brief History of a Soul is the story of a lively debate whose arguments, vocabulary, and even subject have evolved over millennia. In this historical narrative cum apologia, Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro champion “substance dualism,” a philosophical position that asserts the ontologically distinct reality of matter and soul (or body and mind in post-Cartesian terms). They largely succeed in their efforts to be “fair and balanced” (4) and succeed in presenting a sophisticated and nuanced yet readable account of the controversy in its philosophical and, to some extent, theological and scientific dimensions. As entailed by the “Brief …

Coming In From The Margins: Reappraising And Recentering Katherine Mansfield, Lee Garver

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Review essay of three volumes pertaining to the works of Katherine Mansfield.

Class In Thomas Hardy's Late Short Stories (1890-1900): "For Conscience' Sake" And "The Winters And The Palmleys", Nada Al-Ajmi

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Word Ways: Revisiting Ancient Greco-Latin Myths To Build Vocabulary, Jacqueline S. Thursby

The Utah English Journal

I recently assigned an old children’s tale to my senior undergraduate students called “!e Story of the Cruel Giant Barbarico, the Good Giant Benefico, and the Little Pretty Dwarf, Mignon,” written by Sarah Fielding, who lived from 1710 to1768. It was an unfamiliar story to them and written in the archaic style of 18th century English. The primary characters in the story were the giants, Barbarico and Benefico, and the sweethearts, Fidus and Amata. The names clearly reflect characteristics of the players in the story. By using root Latinate forms, Sarah Fielding foreshadowed the characters’ primary personality attributes: Barbarico (barbarous: …

The Anglicization Of Ælfric's "Passio Sancti Eadmundi Regis Et Martyris", Benjamin W. Potmesil

Masters Theses

While depicting Christian saints is certainly not unique to Old English literature, the presence of a hagiographic tradition within its corpus offers a variety of possibilities for academic investigation by editors of Old English texts. Of particular interest is JElfric's "Passio Sancti Eadmundi Regis et Martyris." This hagiography, which focuses upon an Anglo-Saxon king of the ninth century, is acknowledged by JElfric to be a translation of Abbo of Fleury' s Latin account of Edmund's death. Fortunate! y, copies of both JElfric's Old English version and Abbo's Latin original have survived to the modern day. As a result, the modern …

Writing In The Preschool Classroom : The Emergent Writer, Lisa Walsh

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis is an exploration of how preschoolers write, what preschool writing looks like, and how teachers can better position themselves to create strong and engaged writers. Intended to provide busy preschool teachers with real-world solutions, this thesis will focus on the research that points to best practices in the classroom and discuss what works and what doesn’t. While discussing the common challenges in preschool literacy, this thesis will discuss how home involvement greatly affects writing literacy and will therefore suggest ways in which to better engage and train parents. Current theories of literacy development are also explored through the …

A Review Of "The Reformation Of The Landscape: Religion, Identity, & Memory In Early Modern Britain And Ireland" By Alexandra Walsham, Nicolle M. Jordan

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intelligence And The Technological Sublime: How Virtual Characters Influence The Landscape Of Modern Sublimity, Kyle Craft-Jenkins

Theses and Dissertations--English

The principle objective of this thesis is to expand the term “technological sublime” to include technologies of artificial intelligence. In defining new realms of the technological sublime, we must not only consider the ecological integration of technology within natural surroundings, but also appreciate modern technological objects that instigate sublime experiences. This work examines science fictional portrayals of interactions with sentient artificial intelligence in I, Robot, 2001: A Space Odyssey and other major works of science fiction. In each of these works, characters who encounter technologies possessing artificial intelligence share sublime experiences. This thesis considers various levels of embodiment associated with …

Taking Liberties, Jim Hart

Bryant Literary Review

Geography

is melting

Glaciers

"And The Light Flood Over The Land": Reading Region In Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Joshua Davidson

Honors Papers

An interdisciplinary analysis of Marilynne Robinson's second novel Gilead. Investigates the novel's interactions with various figurations of the Middle West, specifically the production of an affective reality in this supposedly affectless region. Uses the contributions of New Regionalist social historians to frame Robinson's work.

Setting A Stoot Hert Tae A Stey Brae: Fifty Years Of The Study Of Scottish Literature, 1962-2012, Murray Pittock

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.

Scottish Literature And "Engl. Lit.", Leith Davis

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Cultural Gap: Using Commonwealth Young Adult Literature In American Secondary Schools, Jennifer Hrejsa-Hudson

Masters Theses

Commonwealth Young Adult Literature (CYAL), or Y AL written in English speaking countries other than America, can help American secondary students become more globally aware while fulfilling many of the Common Core Standards. CY AL offers a variety of literary and multicultural/intercultural opportunities not always available in Ameri-centric YA. In this thesis, prize winning examples of CY AL and intercultural CY AL are analyzed for what cultural knowledge students can gain from reading them. Also included is a discussion about what is lost when American publishers "translate" CYAL into American vernacular. Finally, specific examples are given of how American secondary …

Book Production In The Medieval West Midlands: The Case For Organized Bookmaking, Rashelle Spear

Masters Theses

My thesis project, Book Production in the West Midlands: The Case for Organized Bookmaking, takes into consideration the geographical factors of the medieval manuscripts of the West Midlands in England from the mid-fourteenth to the early fifteenth centuries. The medieval manuscript is an artifact: it is a piece of the past that, if examined carefully, will present a narrative about bookmen, bookmaking practices, and the reading public of a specific period and, in this case, a geographical area.

To discover a more coherent picture of bookmaking and the way books were prepared and received in the West Midlands, I closely …

Diesen Kufl Der Ganzen Welt!: Locating German Enlightenment Through The Idea Of Tolerance, Paul E. Kerry

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Where does one find the German Enlightenment? General surveys and otherwise highly serviceable scholarly readers on the Enlightenment tend to neglect it. A recent book on the German Enlightenment by T. J. Reed observes that for many outside Germany, including scholars, the connection Aufklarung und deutsch (Enlightenment and German) is almost paradoxical. Why should this be so? One explanation is that the German Enlightenment is overshadowed by the French Enlightenment. A second explanation is that late-nineteenth-century Germany is associated with a turn away from Enlightenment ideas, in part a countervailing reaction to the terror of the Napoleonic Wars and French …

Religion, Evolution, And Sensibility: Vico And Hume On The History Of Religion, Horace L. Fairlamb

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

Whereas Eastern religions are typically defined by their practices, Western religions are identified by their theological histories, beginning with the covenant between God and Abraham. These theological histories chart a cultural progress marked by divine intrusions or revelations. In contrast, modern secular histories suggest that nature, humanity, and knowledge are progressing without the need for supernatural intervention. Moreover, while traditional religions typically claimed that ultimate truth had already been revealed, Enlightenment progressivism holds that truth is not yet absolutely known, that knowledge is still evolving, and that further progress in truth depends only on natural reason. With the coming of …