Digital Commons Network^™

Scouting For A Tomboy: Gender-Bending Behaviors In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, Laura Hakala

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch challenges gender stereotypes in her determination to remain a tomboy. Scout interacts with five parental characters (Atticus, Calpurnia, Aunt Alexandra, Miss Maudie, and Boo Radley), who offer models for Scout's behaviors. Though primarily unconventional in terms of gender, these parental figures fluctuate between ideals, demonstrating that gender is an unstable standard that alters according to each individual. Lee depicts characters who resist conforming to the paradigms of masculinity and femininity and instead fill middle positions between the stereotypes, as Scout's tomboyism exemplifies. After encountering different models, Scout consistently exhibits these genderbending …

That Glorious Fire It Kindled: Extremes Of (Un)Righteous Sexuality In Books I And Iii Of Spenser's Faerie Queene, S. Erin Mclean

Honors Theses

Edmund Spenser's epic romance, The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), claims to glorify Queen Elizabeth I, but the author hides an underlying critique of the queen throughout the poem. At the same time that Spenser openly praises the English monarch, he also reveals the faults and contradictions present in her image through how he presents the main characters in the story. In Faerie Queene, Spenser establishes a sexuality spectrum that features the lechery of Redcrosse Knight and the hypersensitive purity of Britomart; this demonstrates the various extremes of immoral sexuality. Studying both these characters reveals that the success of each knight's …

Transgressive Tendencies Or The Case For "The Wrong Man": Narrative Strategies And Scenes Of Passing In Nella Larsen's Allen Semi Short Fiction, Yolanda M. Manora

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Ecology & Ideology: An Introduction, Gerry Canavan, Lisa Klarr, Ryan Vu

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Person Of The Year: Barack Obama, The Joker, Capitalism, And Schizophrenia, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Bathsheba's Dilemma: Defining, Discovering, And Defending Anglo-American Feminist Theories Of Rhetoric(S), Krista Ratcliffe

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries, Krista Ratcliffe

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Declamation And Character In The Fletcher-Massinger Plays, John E. Curran Jr.

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Importance Of Reader's Advisory Interview In Graphic Novel Promotion, Lori Petersen

Graduate Research Papers

Web sites, magazine articles, books, and even summer library programs are promoting graphic novels as an almost magic cure for those children who struggle with the written word or who may be simply lack interest in reading. Much of the appeal of the graphic novel for teachers and librarians is based on the pictures, and it is easy to assume this makes reading easier.

This research sought to explore the graphic novel reading experiences for young readers to ascertain (1) the nature of their understanding of the graphic novel; (2) their tendency to draw inference and interpretation from text and …

The Manifold Operations Of The Gothic Double, Brian Demars

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The gothic novel’s emergence as a dominant genre in the 19th century is illustrative of a shift in popular ideology taking place in Western Europe during this period. Competing viewpoints, particularly between opposing classes, directly reflect the uncertainties, anxieties, and aspirations of a continent undergoing a significant transition. Because the gothic draws upon the tension between contending attitudes—spiritualism and secularism, realism and romanticism, nationalism and imperialism, and aristocratic and bourgeois—it exposes how ideology embedded in these concepts either adds to or detracts from the greater good of the community.

The technique of doubling is utilized to locate divergent ideologies and …

The Bachelor Narrator Motif In The Sketches Of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Carol L. Anderson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis examines the bachelor narrator motif in seven of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sketches, published between 1831 and 1843. Hawthorne’s narrators are artists, alienated from society in general, and from women in particular. Moreover, they are modeled upon the figure of the European flaneur, the idle ‘man about town’ who believes he can read the character of the stranger in the crowd. In these first person narrations, Hawthorne explores the problems of subjectivity (involving self-concept, including the split between the conscious and the unconscious, and the gap between the mind and the material world) and the problem of knowledge (involving the …

Gendered Spaces In James Joyce’S Dubliners, Cynthia J. Hacker

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis paper, entitled Gendered Spaces in James Joyce’s Dubliners, will explore Joyce’s use of the special environment, both public and private. Joyce designed the built spaces in his stories to reflect the way space was gendered in his time. Each space, whether it was the home, the street, the pub, or a church, was indicative of a pattern of power relationships between men and women. Within these gendered spaces, power relationships were constructed, individual consciousness formed, and national identity debated.

In Joyce’s stories, women occupy the space of the home in a way that suggests it is their expected …

Se7en: Medieval Justice, Modern Justice, Valerie Allen

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Witnessing From A Distance: Postwar Literary Representations Of The Holocaust, Miriam Carolin Raethel

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis concerns itself with the possibilities and limits of witnessing the Holocaust from a distance. It analyzes the ways in which the notion of distance—temporal, geographical, linguistic, and aesthetic—influences, shapes, and alters the act of bearing witness to a remote historical event, which, because of its enormity, seemingly defies the act ofwitnessing and thus ofrepresentation. This study investigates the long-lasting impact ofthe Holocaust on subsequent generations, particularly on third-generation descendants ofvictims and perpetrators, and explores how the traumatic legacy ofthe Holocaust locates new forms of representation within the context ofpostmodernism, which, because of its emphasis on fragmentation, on the …

Invisible Links, Abject Chains: Habit In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Daniel R. Mangiavellano

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Invisible Links, Abject Chains: Habit in Nineteenth-Century British Literature” argues that habit is a central characteristic of both Romantic and Victorian theories of imagination, originality, literary production, and subjectivity. Certainly, nineteenth-century culture often treats habit with suspicion, invoking language of bondage, slavery, and dangerous unconscious imitation to apply to everything from reading habits to opium use. However, by tracing a discourse of habit from association theory to pragmatism and drawing from philosophical, educational, medical, and psychological texts, I foreground how Romantic and Victorian texts redeploy habit as a paradoxical form of imaginative agency. In nineteenth-century culture, habit makes possible what …

Monstrous Bodies: Femininity And Agency In Young Adult Horror Fiction, June Pulliam

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Young Adult horror fiction with female protagonists presents sympathetically the untenable situation of adolescent girls within society whereby they are increasingly pressured to embody a doll-like feminine ideal that deprives them of voice and agency. In Young Adult horror fiction, the monstrous Other problematizes what is presented to girls as “normal” and “natural” feminine behavior. As a double with a difference, the monstrous Other is an iteration of femininity whose similarity to the original implies the possibility of resisting restrictive gender roles. Because in Young Adult horror fiction the monstrous Other is nearly always a sympathetic character, it is fairly …

Parallel Lives And Literary Legacies: Crusoe's Elder Brother And Defoe's Cavalier, Andrea Walkden

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

In The Cold, Quiet Dark, Chris Ludwig

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

It's Not Catharsis, It's Cognition: A New Approach To Emotion In Composition, Caronia (Nia) Klein

Masters Theses

Therapeutic writing, or writing as a method of emotional healing, seeks to facilitate psychological healing through self-discovery as a result of analyzing, interpreting, and making conclusions about challenging life experiences. Likewise, in composition theory, expressivist, feminist, and collaborative pedagogies advocate the empowerment of students through discovery and articulation of voice as a way to make meaning and develop as persons and students. Both approaches to writing foreground the use of personal experience as a way to process the external world through the emotional landscape of the writer, yet critics ofemotionally expressive writing decry its usefulness to composition pedagogy because of …

An Economic Model Of Literary Studies, Devin Charles Black

Masters Theses

While much scholarly discussion exists on the future of literary studies and its value to society at large, much of this discussion revolves around economic terminology, such as value, without discussing the issues and concerns of literary studies in a larger economic framework. In this project, I look at the advent ofliterary theory as the catalyst that transformed literary studies into a capitalist economic system. This project aims to look at the complexity of value systems operating within the discipline without championing one theory over another or, indeed, championing or arguing against theory itself. Instead, an economic model allows us …

Genre Awareness In The Writing Center, Ashok Bhusal

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how genre theory is represented in writing center scholarship and practice by analyzing tutor training textbooks and also doing a case study of the EIU Writing Center to examine how genre awareness is perceived by writing consultants. This study concludes that increased awareness of genre features should influence the practice of writing consultants and writing centers. Based on the two surveys from my case study, the EIU Writing Center consultants did not appear to have a strong understanding of genre theory since their practicum course (English 5500) and tutor training textbooks have not explicitly provided them with …

Marketing Campaign For Soup Stop, Nfp, Inc., Chelsea M. Mcbride

Masters Theses

For the applied thesis in professional communication, I created marketing documents for Soup Stop, NFP, INC., a non-profit organization located in Charleston that provides free lunch Monday through Friday to anyone who asks for a meal. Soup Stop does not require its clients to provide any information in order to receive service. It is one of Charleston's longest running mission projects and has operated out of the First Presbyterian Church for ten years, serving over 30,000 meals. Because Soup Stop is funded entirely through donations and volunteer efforts, board members have found it challenging to keep documents up-to-date and to …

Repressive Bodies, Transgressive Bodies : Dracula And The Feminine, Sharon Kostopoulos

Theses : Honours

Dracula has long been associated with the repressive qualities of Victorian society and the oppression of the emerging New Woman. However, taking into account that the novel is part of the gothic genre, a genre which endeavours to infringe the social boundaries in any given era, this thesis will demonstrate an equally visible and potent transgressive feminine element playing out in Dracula. Using Michel Foucault's idea of discourse to show how subjects are generated, the novel can be seen as facilitating both productive and repressive ideas of femininity. Power, as it operates through discourse, tends to produce its own resistance, …

Solitary Hero Verus Social Man In Jeffers's Dear Judas And Yeats's Calvary, Deborah Fleming

Jeffers Studies

W. B. Yeats’s play Calvary (1920) may have inspired or influenced Jeffers’s Dear Judas (1928). Both use the Easter story to explore not only with betrayal and redemption, but also archetypes of betrayer and savior, solitary hero and communal man. Both examine the psychology of the participants in order to evoke the meaning of the events and their importance in western culture. Yeats conceived of his play as an illustration of the distinction in his visionary psychology between objective men who exist in relation to others and subjective men who exist for themselves. For Jeffers, conversely, communal man, absorbed in …

Feathers: A Creative Thesis, M. Shayne Clarke

Theses and Dissertations

Feathers is a young adult novel about two knucklehead boys and a summer of mischief they share. Boots and Gopher, the two principal characters in Feathers, are twelve-year old boys who are fascinated by a loft of racing pigeons kept by a peculiar man living on the edge of their small town. The fascination leads them to steal a few pairs of pigeons in hopes of generating their own loft. Their plan is to release the adult pigeons back to the man's loft while Boots and Gopher keep the babies. In stealing the pigeons, they discover the man also houses …

Everything Is Permitted: Three Essays In The Spirit Of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Underground, Gina Nichole Caprari

English

No abstract provided.

Seeds Of Truth: The Importance Of C. S. Lewis's Interactions With Child Readers In The Chronicles Of Narnia, Joseph Thouvenel

Seminary Masters Theses

This paper explores the ways in which C.S. Lewis's interactions with child readers in The Chronicles of Narnia provide important insight for communicating theological and spiritual truths to children. Through a brief examination of Lewis's own childhood as well as a concise analysis of his writings to and about children, important insights regarding the place of imagination and wonder within The Chronicles of Narnia will be revealed. This paper also inspects the seven books that comprise The Chronicles of Narnia, paying specific attention to Lewis's use of first- and second-person narrative within this series as a means of demonstrating his …

A Drama Of Discourse: Competing Narratives In The Book Of Job, Hannah Louise Coffey

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study engages the biblical Book of Job, subsequent medieval commentaries, and literary sources from the 15 through 20 centuries that use the language and motifs canonized in the Book of Job. This thesis is primarily concerned with the multiple stylistic elements used in the work and how they constitute a discourse of their own, or as has been sometimes asserted by critics, “competing narratives.” This discourse then finds voice in the usage of the Joban motif by other authors in works of ambiguous genre, lending credence to the complicated and multifaceted nature of the Book of Job’s genre and …

"Like An Old Song They Carried In Their Memory": Eudora Welty's Transformation Of Folklore In The Wide Net And Other Stories, Leigh Anna Pendergrass

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

No abstract

Optimal Experience In Relationships, Activities, And Beyond: Connecting Flow With Self-Expansion, Brandy M. Dean

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Flow is a state of optimal experience characterized by complete immersion in an enjoyable activity and has been associated with positive experience in activities. Self-expansion is a state of increase in the diversity and complexity of the self and has been linked with positive experience in relationships. Despite phenomenological similarities, the connection between these two states has not been examined. The current study used a correlational design to explore the degrees of overlap between these states by comparing them in general, situation-specific, and predictive contexts. It was expected that flow and self-expansion would occur at similar frequencies, be produced by …