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Lillian Smith's Strange Fruit : An Examination Of The Alterical Dimensions, Racial Consciousness, And Silence Of The Southern Woman, Syrena Bothe

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In the 1944 publication of Strange Fruit. Lillian Smith attempts to identify the contradictions between external racial hierarchy, social class, and female whiteness by identifying them first as internal struggles that affected a southerner’s external existence. This is, instead, mis-read as a catastrophic love story between a white boy, Tracy Deen, and a black girl, Non Anderson.

However, this struggle of racial consciousness is a motif and driving force that heavily weights the intentions and choices of both white and black people in Strange Fruit. It is breath and instinct that lives in each southern inhabitant, it is the air …

Modernist Success In A Postmodern Failure: Jackson Pollock And Abstract Expressionism, The Avant-Garde And The Ascension Of Late Capitalism, Art After 1945, Russell Gullette

Honors Theses

It is hard to imagine the magnitude of the events at the end of World War II. The thought produced in the face of a myriad of deaths is almost unfeasible sixty years after the fact, but the energy was integral to the changing social landscape. Because of the country's prominence in and fortitude after the war, the U.S. was left responsible for reshaping and rejuvenating the international landscape that was destroyed by the years of brutal fighting and vile contestation. The American establishment was granted a major opportunity to establish itself amongst the global leaders. Such a grand responsibility …

“Passions That Were Not My Own”: Critique And Preservation Of True Pastoral Life In Wordsworth’S “Michael”, Katie Homar

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Freud’S “On The Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love” As A Lens For Thomas’S “When, Like A Running Grave”, Christina Braswell

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 8 Fall 2006

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Missing Body–Yoga And Higher Education, Judith Beth Cohen

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Using her own yoga practice as a basis, this author argues for more bodily involvement in learning and offers several exercises she has used to accomplish this.

Victorians And The Underground, Melissa Mcdaniel

Theses and Dissertations

The Victorian Age created a revolution in technology that defined the age and has fostered its social ideologies. In every civilization, the technologies of the time reflect the social issues of the culture. For instance, the development of the printing press in the fifteenth-century revealed desires for higher literacy rates; the invention of the cotton gin incited the social injustices of American slavery; the progress of the Internet embodies this century's attachment to fast-food, fast-money, and fast-information. Likewise, in the Victorian Age, the invention of underground tunnels exposed some important social issues which developed in the period. Just as the …

Cultural Stereotypes: From Dracula's Myth To Contemporary Diasporic Productions, Ileana F. Popa

Theses and Dissertations

This study is focused on a highly topical theme, which belongs to the pluralist practice of cultural studies, and aims at investigating a remarkable phenomenon of identity-shaping and cross-cultural exchange. Starting from an analysis of Dracula as the epitomized image of the Balkans (and of Romania, more specifically) abroad, this paper provides a comprehensive historical and (con)textual analysis of the myth, enlarged to incorporate it into the fictions of exile and to draw the reader's attention to the "demonic" dimension of the Balkan area in general, and the Romanian area in particular. The first chapter provides a theoretical overview meant …

The Abc's Of Hiv: When "Just Say No" Is Not Enough-Queer Critique Of Aids Policy, Lisa Laura Ladwig

LSU Master's Theses

This paper will critique the United States' AIDS policy, both domestic and international. I demonstrate how queer theorists have used Jacques Lacan's concepts of "jouissance" and the "unconscious desire" to suggests ways in which the current policy has dangerous implications for real people, for public health, and human rights. I reveal how the problem of rising HIV infection is not due to the lack of availability of safer-sex information, but rather it is a problem of execution: the Religious Right's ideology inscribed in our public health policy. Finally, I wish to expose how people in this country and others are …

Tracing Virag: Jewish Migration And The Construction Of James Joyce's Ulysses, Barry A. Hudek

Masters Theses

My thesis explores the role of Rudolph Virag, the father of Leopold Bloom, in James Joyce's Ulysses. I compare the migration of Rudolph Virag throughout Europe within that novel to the historical Jewish experience in the same locations Joyce places Virag. Although I detect parallels between Virag's movements and actual patterns of nineteenth-century Jewish migration, I argue that Joyce makes subtle changes in timing to create a literary connection between the exodus of Rudolph Virag and Leopold Bloom, and Ireland's political and cultural struggle as an English colony.

Virag's history is then used to further explore Joyce's literary techniques in …

That ‘Vital Spark Of Genius’: Lady Caroline Lamb’S Writing Before Byron, Paul Douglass, Rosemary March

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

What Happened To Dad: A Portrayal Of Teenage Fathers In Young Adult Literature, Becky R. Schafer Andrews

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to see if authors of realistic fiction accurately portray the characteristics of teenage fathers. Abundant fictional novels on the topic of teenage pregnancy are in print; however, most seemed concerned with teen mothers and neglect teen fathers. How teen fathers react to being told about the conception to accepting responsibility for their actions was evaluated through a checklist. This research demonstrated that a realistic portrayal of teen fathers is absent from much young adult fiction. In sharing this research with others it is in hopes that more authors will give teen fathers a more …

Viewing Novels, Reading Films: Stanley Kubrick And The Art Of Adaptation As Interpretation, Charles Bane

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Greg Jenkins has observed that adaptation "is a presence that is woven into the very fabric of film culture." Although this statement is true, no definitive theory of adaptation exists. Critics and scholars ponder adaptation, yet cannot seem to agree on what makes an adaptation a success or a failure. The problem of adaptation stems from many sources. What, if anything, does a film owe the novel on which it is based? How, if possible, does a film remain faithful to its source? Is a film a version of a story or its own autonomous work of art? Who is …

Reinscribing The Revolution: Genre And The Problem Of National History In Early American Historical Novels, Joseph John Letter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines nine early historical novels of the Revolution that recover an important yet largely forgotten archive of American cultural history. In the years following the War of 1812 writers from the Revolution’s successor generation reinscribed the history of national origins through narratives of the Revolution that address issues left unresolved by the Revolutionary War and subsequent Constitutional debates; thus, the Revolution itself becomes an important and ubiquitous subject area for writers attempting to situate narratives of national history. These national allegories, consciously constructed as patriotic narratives, unconsciously “bring forth” figurations that represent the official nation’s Others, people excluded …

Critical Literacy In A Global Context: Reading Harry Potter, Jill Reading

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Millions of adolescents across the globe eagerly await and read each new Harry Potter fictional novel. As a series, the novels can be assumed to participate influentially in the production of adolescent literacies and subjectivities. Situated in politically conservative times, however, the texts may support readings in simple accord with culturally pervasive conservative views which favour conventionally masculinist, martial views of the individual and of society. Such readings potentially confirm ancient prejudices built out of differences which themselves may be associated with the socio-cultural reproduction of violent conflicts. Nevertheless, contemporary conditions such as planetary climate change and globalised political fear …

The Scent Of A New World Novel: Translating The Olfactory Language Of Faulkner And García Márquez, Terri Smith Ruckel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Both William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez introduce the olfactory as a focal element in their writing, producing works that challenge the singular primacy of sight as the unrivaled means by which the New World might be understood. As they translate experiences of the New World into language, both writers record the power of olfactory perception to reflect memory and history, to shape identity, to mark unmistakably certain crisis moments of ethical action, and to delineate a form of knowledge crucial to their New World poetics of the novel. Observing and analyzing the olfactory language particular to the cultural spaces …

Painful Discourses: Borders, Regions, And Representations Of Female Circumcision From Africa To America, Tameka Latrece Cage

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project considers issues of representation and how literature, personal testimony, popular culture, and African film script a narrative of change and/or participate in change in the female circumcision debate. Texts that currently shape the female circumcision debate are increasingly focused on viable methods of social change and couch issues of change in dynamics of discourse and representation, including Obioma Nnaemeka’s Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf’s Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives, and Oyèrónké Oyewùmi’s African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood, all of which I cite in the …

Place As Metonym And Metaphore In Joyce Carol Oates's "Shopping", Robert Preissle

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Travel Companion, Tim Davis

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Review [Of Reading The Brontë Body: Disease, Desire, And The Constraints Of Culture By Beth Torgerson], Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Theories Of Creativity And The Saga Of Charlotte Brontë, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Teaching Wuthering Heights As Fantasy, Trauma, And Dream Work, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Symmetrical Womanhood: Poetry In The Woman's Building Library, Angela Sorby

English Faculty Research and Publications

Late-nineteenth-century women poets shed midcentury sentimentality unevenly and at some cost, losing a sense of privacy, a (Christian) frame of reference, and an "imagined community" of women who shared their worldview. They also gained more public, secular, and professional sources of identity. The exact nature of this postsentimental self was unclear. Postsentimental poets often wrote in the "genteel tradition," which trumpeted eternal truth and beauty while working from a position of subjective instability. Ultimately, their verses must be seen as powerfully fluid and transitional, registering (like the Woman's Building Library) women's struggle to inhabit more public forms of authority.

Introduction [To Eliza Parson's "The Castle Of Wolfenbach: A German Story"], Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Revolt Revisited: A Study Of Popular 20th-Century American Small-Town Literature, Ted Ray Duitsman

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The subject of small towns has both attracted and made some of the greatest authors in American literature. Through stunning imagery, description, and dialogue they create realistic portrayals of this places that lay them bare for all to see. Generous treatments portray them as generally good places that uphold the myth of small towns as utopian villages. For those with more unfavorable views, however, the literature shows the dullness of the town as well as the provinciality and closed-mindedness of its people. It is unfair to categorize some of the better works into either/or arguments however, for they involve more …

Practical Ecocriticism (Review Essay), Nancy Easterlin

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Benefits Of A For-Credit Course For New Writing Center Staff, Richard Benjamin Crosby

Faculty Publications

Some questions about writing center theory and praxis never seem to change: how do we prepare for our clientele? How do we engage them? What questions should we ask? When should we direct them? And when should we encourage them to direct us? The list goes on. Fortunately, we consider it a virtue that we continue interrogating the same issues. As students of rhetoric, we realize that the answers to these questions often depend on the contexts in which they are asked. Thus, we give ourselves over to principles of adaptability. Instead of establishing rigid, universal rules that do not …

Henry James’S "The Ambassadors": Anatomy Of Silence, Marie Leone Meyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the use of silence in Henry James's novel The Ambassadors. James uses silence rich in meaning to portray the protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether's unfolding consciousness. James creates different types of silences that reflect a shift from the spoken or written word to alternate symbol systems. James's novel perches on the threshold of modernity, as his work reflects the ideas of a line of thinkers extending back from James and his brother, William, to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sampson Reed, and Emanuel Swedenborg. At the same time, the novel draws on the contemporary ideas of Charles Darwin, prefigures …

An Opera In Aid Of The Reading Of History, B. Mcevoy Campbell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis consists of six chapters and a frontispiece/CD recording of a song cycle, Blue Orpheus: Hymns and Lullabies, written and performed by the author. This arrangement responds to currents within queer theory, which view questions concerning its historical and philosophical origins as diversions from its ability to determine present conditions, by reframing these "presentist" (and its close relative, "performative") orientations in terms of "place" and the corresponding laws and freedoms that originate from its cultivation—in politics, the art of memory, and systems theory and design. Generally speaking, to each concept of place I devote two chapters.

Chapter one …

Indefinite Ethnicity In Fact And Fiction: "Invisible Color" Or "Honkified Meanderings"?, Anita Louise Hughes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Passing, both standard and reverse, is the process of changing ethnicity. The methodology of reverse passing varies, but claiming "no color" is ineffective in fact and fiction as can be seen in James McBride's The Color of Water, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip's The Sweeter the Juice, Danzy Senna's Caucasia, and Rosellen Brown's Half a Heart. The characters in these texts attempt indefinite ethnicity by denying color and are prone to restlessness and failure until they accept racial duality.