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Recognizing Possibility: Reflections On The Messianic Dimensions Of Being, Language, And Space, Khalif M. Vernon

English Theses - Archive

This thesis seeks to reveal the messianic potentialities that inhere in the fundamental categories of experience. I analyze diverse sources in western intellectual history, from the classical period to our contemporary epoch, to discern techniques to think through our collective malaise, that is to both identify the dynamics that have produced our malaise and how to use thought and recognition as acts of generative resistance. I will argue throughout that the common modalities of experience: language, space, and historicity, even if they reveal themselves as lack, through their (dis)concealment gesture at messianic forms of life, and I will try to …

An Investigation Of Trauma Cycles And The Omnipresent Parent In A.S. King's Please Ignore Vera Dietz, Emily Orlando

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In 2010 A.S. King published her young adult novel Please Ignore Vera Dietz. The novel focuses on several characters who are navigating both intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts while also coping with various traumas. While Young Adult Literature does not usually prominently feature parental figures, King chooses to include several parents in the text, and even gives one parent a first-person narrative. Due to King’s unusual choice she is able to illustrate the manner in which trauma can move from one generation to the next. These depictions of complete “trauma cycles” allows for a more comprehensive and empathetic understanding of how …

Season Of The Chanterelles And Other Stories, Kirsten Ferguson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This collection of short literary fiction springs loosely from a contemplation of the enduring influence of Washington Irving’s Gothic in the Hudson Valley. The first story, “Life Is Good,” centers on a fictionalized account of a morbidly obese bear named Allen and a resilient child, Henny, who forms an unlikely bond with the captive animal, reflecting on themes of nature, independence, and abandonment. The second story, “Recipes for Radicals,” delves into the COVID-19 pandemic with a diary-like structure and an underlying theme of confronting moral injustices and the complexities of justice and revenge. In “The Wild Thing,” the protagonist, Meredith, …

Masks And Mirrors: The Authorial Selfhood Of J.M. Coetzee’S Elizabeth Costello And Susan Barton, Emily R. Peters

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis examines the authorial characters of Elizabeth Costello, from the novel of thesame name, and Susan Barton, the protagonist of the novel “Foe,” both authored by South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee, through the ontological concept of the Heideggerian Dasein. Both fictional characters contend with the issues of alienation of Self and the struggle for reciprocal Othering imposed upon them by the social constructs of their authorhood and struggle for an authentic self, specifically in view of the performative nature of their gendered roles and the issue of Coetzee’s male authorhood.

Investigation Of Chinese Students’ Writing Perceptions At An English Young Writers Camp, Jingshu Chen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores how a young writers camp that catered to 40 Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, ranging from students entering the fourth grade to seventh grade, mediated the students’ writing perceptions. More specifically, the main objective of this research was to investigate the impact of the camp on the students' perceptions of writing and their self-identification as writers. The study employed the theoretical framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory to guide the analysis. Various types of data were collected from the 40 participating students, including pre- and post-camp survey questions, classroom observations, and open-ended interviews. By …

Long In The Tooth: The Commodification Of Teeth, Land, And Character; Resistance To British Oral Culture In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, And The Americas 1770-1900, Emma B. Mincks

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation is about teeth- rather, how they are portrayed in British colonial discourses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and their development as a commodified material object associated with purity, lands, and visceral emotionality. What do teeth specifically, and orality more generally, mean to eighteenth and nineteenth-century readers in relation to the logics of white possession? How did objectified subjects react to and respond to the affective tension created by this objectification? Teeth are represented in relation to feminine purity throughout British writing from at least the 1600’s. However, between 1770-1900, teeth gain additional cultural meanings, most …

Sociolinguistics Of Saudi Vision 2030: Paradigm Shift Through English Faculty’S Perspectives Of Translanguaging At A Saudi University., Naif Masrahi

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Many educational systems around the world insist on applying an English Only Policy (EOP) when teaching the English language at universities without addressing their contextual needs. In Saudi Arabia, this problem leads to reduced satisfaction among faculty regarding students’ English level (Alharbi & Alqefari, 2022; Alkhairy, 2013; Alqahtani, 2020; Alsaawi, 2019; Alshammari, 2022; Altale & Alta’ani, 2019; Alzahrani, 2019; Elyas & Picard, 2010). However, the new educational transformation promised by Saudi Vision 2030 (2016) supports the Arabic language as a mother tongue for Saudis, English as an important language, and the teaching of critical thinking to respond to current global …

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling Of Transnational Insurgencies In 1960-70s Us And Mexico, Tania Libertad Balderas

English Language and Literature ETDs

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Insurgencies in 1960-70s US and Mexico emphasizes how the narratives from the Mexican Insurgency, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the leftist faction of the Chicana/o Movement in the 1960s and 1970s articulate intersecting notions of resistance, liberation, and transnational solidarity. The comparative analysis of the testimonial novel Las mujeres del alba (2019) by Chihuahuan novelist Carlos Montemayor, the autobiographies Lakota Woman (1991) and Ohitika Woman (1993) by Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta writer and AIM militant Mary Brave Bird (formerly Crow Dog), and the memoirs and plays by the San Diego-based group Teatro de las Chicanas, collected …

Digitally Rural: Identifying How Technological Inequity Impacts Rural Students In First-Year Writing Courses, Jo Anna M. Nevada

English Language and Literature ETDs

To teach composition in this era means to engage students with technology; it is all but an unspoken requirement at the majority of universities. This dissertation theorizes, however, that the imbricated use of technology in first-year writing (FYW) classrooms places rural students at an inherent disadvantage, with issues of inadequate technological proficiency and inconsistent access causing a substantial learning disparity between this student population and their urban peers. Through mixed-methods data analysis of student survey responses and final FYW course portfolios, this study reveals that the expectation of technological access and presumption of digital literacy is detrimental to rural student …

More Than Fiction: Representations Of Youth In Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy Fiction And Its Importance, Daman Mcconnell

University Honors Theses

This article takes on a comparative analysis between Young Adult Dystopian literature like Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, focusing on how adolescents are represented in the discussion of Dystopian Fiction. Though mainly focusing on Six of Crows, these novels can be considered places where society and the world these characters live in are unforgiving and restrictive, forcing the growth of these adolescents to accelerate toward adulthood. Within Six of Crows lies the representations of antagonists going against the youth as adults with twisted senses of morality. In addition, this article also discusses …

Breaking Bridges: A Latina's Role In Familismo And Higher Education, Desiree Trejo

Theses and Dissertations

This research and collective experiences have been recorded to bring together an autoethnography that demonstrates my personal experiences of being the eldest daughter in a Latino family and how these experiences situate within a social context. The primary purpose of this autoethnography is to provide insight on Latino culture expectations placed upon first born daughters. My own experiences connect to my research covering Latino culture and gender expectations to further understand social meanings and understandings of this culture. This autoethnography presents qualitive research that allows me to self-reflect and apply these findings to my personal experiences within my family to …

Gerontology In Bryony Lavery’S A Wedding Story (2000) And Sebastian Barry’S Hinterland (2002), Rania M Rafik Khalil

English Language and Literature

Old age is perceived as a narrative of decline, recently, an alternative perspective was introduced known as positive aging or Gerotranscendance. This paper examines ageing in Bryony Lavery’s A Wedding Story (2000) and Sebastian Barry’s Hinterland (2002) through the theory of gerontology. Gerontology in British and Irish modern theatre, according to Giovanna Tallone (2020) and Heather Ingman (2018), is a new category in literary studies and theory. The paper aims to examine the challenges of retaining agency in old age in comparison to the notion of aging as a process of inner harmony further proving that despite the process of …

The Texture Of Everyday Life: Carceral Realism And Abolitionist Speculation, Shea Hennum

English Theses and Dissertations

Exploring the ways in which prisons shape the subjectivity of free-world thinkers, and the ways that subjectivity is expressed in literary texts, this dissertation develops the concept of carceral realism: a cognitive and literary mode that represents prisons and police as the only possible response to social disorder. As this dissertation illustrates, this form of consciousness is experienced as racial paranoia, and it is expressed literary texts, which reflect and help to reify it. Through this process of cultural reification, carceral realism increasingly insists on itself as the only possible mode of thinking. As I argue, however, carceral realism actually …

Alanda Macmaster & The Realm Of The Faes, Allana Lynn Walker

Masters Theses

Though there are exceptions to this rule, today’s bestselling Young Adult (YA) fantasy novels tend to be riddled with gratuitous sex and violence—material far too mature for developing minds. While this kind of content is hardly new to adult fiction, it has, over the last few years, crept steadily and insidiously into books for younger readers. Reading today’s fiction, one would think these were essential elements of a good story. The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of The Rings clearly prove otherwise. Through The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien demonstrated …

Vol. 5 No. 5, Glen Goodknight

Mythprint

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Vol. 5 No. 3, Glen Goodknight

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Finding The Why: Trauma's Origins And Effects In Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Hope Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the effects of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, on its readers and the public discourse surrounding the central issue of systemic racism and incest. The central focus of the analysis is trauma in the novel: how Morrison captures that trauma in writing, how the reader encounters and interprets that trauma, and the effects of that trauma on the narrative and the reader. To construct this argument, I apply the lenses of reader response criticism, psychoanalysis, and trauma studies to the novel.

Morrison expressed concern that readers would miss the crucial message of why the …

Perspective, Invention, And Metatheater In Renaissance Literature, William Roudabush

English Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation challenges the misconception of post-Reformation England as iconophobic. On the contrary, it argues that early modern English poets and playwrights adapt Continental theories and techniques from painting, translating them into their own poetic and dramatic forms. It explores how allusions to contemporary perspectival images serve as governing metaphors and structural devices for the works in which they appear. Particularly in the genre of the Elizabethan epyllion and in works by Shakespeare, it suggests that texts are designed to be read “perspectively,” to borrow Shakespeare’s coinage, so that they are open to ambiguity and multiplicity, and capable of being …

Teaching About Transfer: Making The Invisible Visible Through Explicit Instruction, Brittany Morgan Capps

Theses and Dissertations

Transfer of learning—or the act of adapting previously learned knowledge to new contexts—is an inherently complex process made even more mystifying by its often unconscious and therefore “invisible” occurrence. Writing, too, is a complicated activity that depends on and responds to a number of internal and external factors. Transferring writing knowledge, then, is a challenging task for writers of all experience levels. Researchers in writing studies have designed curricula intended to help college students transfer writing skills, knowledge, and practices from the writing classroom to other disciplinary and workplace contexts. Those teaching for transfer (TFT) and writing about writing (WAW) …

Mythprint Vol. 3 No. 4, Glen Goodknight

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Mythprint Vol. 3 No. 3, Glen Goodknight

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Fragments Of A Writer’S Mind: Virginia Woolf In Her Own Words, Baheya Zeitoun

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a thematic reading of select autobiographical and theoretical works by Virginia Woolf. It utilizes Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of the rhizome as a methodological framework. The rhizome does not have a hierarchal structure but is rather interconnected. In the same way, the chapters interweave the multi-disciplinary theoretical approaches to connect the disparate factions of the modernist writer’s mind and life.

The early twentieth century saw the rise of post-suffrage writers with narratives that diverged from male-centric values. Woolf is one of the writers who makes a clear distinction between male and female values by championing women’s experiences …

Tolkien And Diversity (2023), Edited By Will Sherwood, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Kristine Larsen, of Tolkien and Diversity (2023) edited by Will Sherwood

Mary Prince’S Undisciplining Lessons: Counter-Narrative And Testimonio In The History, Kerry Sinanan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay discusses teaching The History of Mary Prince at a Hispanic Serving Institution via Ethnic Studies praxis. It develops Nicole Aljoe’s definition of Prince’s narrative as counter-story and testimonio and explores the undisciplining effects of reading Prince’s history as relevant to the lives of Borderlands students. To understand the multiple meanings of “undisciplining’ this essay draws on the theory of Sylvia Wynter and shows how Prince’s testimonio offers an alternative to Western epistemologies via communal resistance and resurgence. Several pedagogic tools are explored for teaching Prince in this way.

The Black Wanderer: Reading The Black Diaspora, Resistance, And Becoming In The History Of Mary Prince In The Classroom, Nicole Carr

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This paper examines The History of Mary Prince as a pedagogical tool for exploring complexities within the Black Diaspora. As Paul Gilroy’s articulations of the Black Atlantic inform my approach, Prince’s circuitous journey through the West Indies and England situates her process of becoming as one mired in longing and loss. Encouraging students to consider Prince as a wandering soul in search of not only freedom, but also solid familiar connections lays the foundation for merging her narrative with other enslaved Black people traversing countries and regions on ships against their will. Ample research material available on the survivors of …

“Before I Am Quite Forgot": Women’S Critical Literary Biography And The Future, Susan Carlile

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

“‘Before I am Quite Forgot’: Women’s Critical Literary Biography and the Future” extends the conversation about literary “worth” in the twenty-first century as it still judges and ignores women authors of the past. Specifically, this essay explores the role of women’s literary historical biography as a primary marker of worth and as a means of shaping legacy. I also discuss my (perhaps more non-traditional) experience—both my personal circumstances and particular material conditions—writing the critical biography Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind. Without a substantial biography that shows the scope of Lennox’s mind, her significant corpus, and her interventions in literary history …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

The Impact Of Slavery And Colonialism On The Black Consciousness: Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, The Confessions Of Nat Turner, And Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl, Mariam Badawi

Theses and Dissertations

According to the German author, essayist, and empirical psychologist Karl Philipp Moritz, to be able to analyze someone psychologically, we have to be able to analyze ourselves as one would know oneself better than one would know anyone else. Therefore, he proposed the study of autobiographies to be able to delve into a writer's "innermost soul"; through their knowledge of themselves" (qtd. in Schlumbohm 32). Moreover, "the psychological effect that the ideology of white supremacy and European imperialism, in the form of slavery and colonialism, has had on Africa and her people has never been fully addressed and understood" (Nobles …

Ecologies Of Madness: Reading Virginia Woolf’S Life And Work Through Deleuze And Guattari, Kimberly Jackson

Virginia Woolf: Selected Papers

No abstract provided.

Woolfs, Shaws, Webbs: The Political Ecology Of International Government And Heartbreak House, 1916–1919, Wayne K. Chapman

Virginia Woolf: Selected Papers

No abstract provided.