Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Community-Based Organizing For Educational Justice: A Case Study Of The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Jessica Kannam

American Studies Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Their Confederate Kinfolk: African Americans' Interracial Family Histories, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

The interracial mixing of American families dates back to colonial times, but the history of slavery and racism in the American South made public discussion of the subject taboo—so shameful for whites that they long repressed facts that challenged their fantasies of racial purity, so painful or politically incorrect for African Americans that they suppressed the details of their mixed ancestry. In the 1970s the popularity of Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), and the television miniseries that followed, sparked an interest in genealogy among many African Americans, who had long given up hope of tracing African roots severed by the middle …

Economic Enchantment In Eudora Welty's A Curtain Of Green, Elizabeth Moore

Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes Eudora Welty's short story collection, A Curtain of Green, and the interactions between its characters and the Mississippi economy. The paper takes into account Eudora Welty's work with the WPA during the Great Depression and her experiences photographing Mississippians throughout the state. Additionally, this thesis uses Welty's terminology when describing her experience of shopping as a child, specifically the enchantment of goods. This material is used to argue that Eudora Welty does address economic elements in her early short stories. Furthermore, this collection demonstrates a difference between gender participation in the economy, particularly among salesmen and female …

The Mockingjay Phenomena: A Study On The Position Of Young Adult Women In Dystopia, Hannah Hultman

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to explore the messages and impact of three young adult dystopian trilogies, The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Uglies. In particular, the role of the American female teenager in political, economic and social spheres is discussed through examining the three female teenaged protagonists of these novels. For comparative purposes, George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World function as counterpoints to the young adult novels; the analysis of these different novels will prove that young adult dystopian novels show young adult women that their choices and actions can be integral to their societies …

Read Me: The Emergence Of Female Voice In American Epistolary Fiction, Allison Melissa Ramsey

Honors Theses

The objective of the thesis was to study how the letter, as a narrative device provided by the epistolary genre, supplies unheard female characters with an avenue to speak when their worlds do not allow it. In the novels, the letters not only permit a female character to practice building a voice, but also provide a self-reflection and identification experience, which enables the woman to see where she is, rewrite her role, and control where she wants to go. Through reading Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, and Maria Semple's …

Arts: Fiction And Fiction Writers: The Americas, Rachel Norman

Faculty Publications

This essay by Rachel Norman, which originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, discusses contemporary Muslim fiction published in the United States with a particular focus on three novels: Mojha Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, Laila Halaby's Once in a Promised Land, and Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home.

Music As Narrative In American College Football, John M. Mccluskey

Theses and Dissertations--Music

American college football features an enormous amount of music woven into the fabric of the event, with selections accompanying approximately two-thirds of a game’s plays. Musical selections are controlled by a number of forces, including audio and video technicians, university marketing departments, financial sponsors, and wind bands. These blend together in a complex design that offers audible and visual stimulation to the audience during the game’s pauses. The music chosen for performance in these moments frequently communicates meaning beyond entertainment value. Selections reinforce the game’s emotional drive, cue celebrations, direct specific audience actions, and prompt behaviors that can directly impact …

Front Matter, Douglas Higbee

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

No abstract provided.

Gender And Power In Waiting For Godot, Ryan Wright

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

No abstract provided.

Blind With Superstition, Cursed With Illusions: Masculinity And War In Bierce’S “Chickamauga”, Salina Patterson

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

No abstract provided.

The Game Debate: Video Games As Innovative Storytelling, Melissa Somerdin

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

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Douglas Higbee

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

No abstract provided.

Contents, Douglas Higbee

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

No abstract provided.

James Joyce’S Gnomon Of Pain In “Grace” And “The Dead”, Bari K. Boyd

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

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 18 Fall 2016

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

No abstract provided.

Time In American High Modernism: Reading Fitzgerald, Hemingway, And Faulkner, Masahiko Seki

Wayne State University Dissertations

There were important changes about understanding of time in the early 20th century. Newtonian view of time that supports linearity and irreversibility of time was challenged in various fields. This trend promoted high modernists to seek new representations of time.

On the whole, high modernists denied Newtonian view of time and tried to describe merging of the past, the present, and the future. They often envisioned a romantic moment, in which this merging is perfectly achieved. But unlike European high modernists, American high modernists were more attracted to a traditional understanding of time that emphasizes a decisive difference between the …

The Radical South: Grassroots Activism, Ethnicity, And Literary Form, 1960-1980, Elizabeth Fielder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“The Radical South” examines the art and writings of Civil-Rights-era social movements and locates U.S. based political structures in a hemispheric and global network. I reveal that the Civil Rights Movement, ethnic nationalism, and second-wave feminism were not separate entities; rather, the cultural work of activists was an intersectional effort that defied national strategies, such as non-violent protest and race-based separatism, that were often determined by their urban counterparts. Thus, I argue that new political aesthetics emerged from grassroots activism and set in motion ethnic and racial cultural expressions that embraced multiple, even conflicting, identities. As much as this art …

Maternal Melodrama And Modern Horror: Genre Hybridity In Southern Film, Sara Marcella Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation establishes the groundwork for a new genre of Southern film – a hybrid genre that I call Southern maternal horror. By integrating key elements from the genres of maternal melodrama and modern horror into Southern narratives, Southern maternal horror uses the central ambivalence found in both genres – manifesting as a desire to both return to and escape from one’s maternal origins – to challenge Southern nostalgia. Specifically, within its distinctly Southern framework, this hybrid genre frequently disrupts the romanticized notions of the Old South typically found in classic Southern films such as Gone With the Wind: idealizations …

Southern Sound And Space: An Exploration Of The Sonic Manifestation Of Place, Christopher James Colbeck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationships between sound and space, sound and time, and the influence of “place,” particularly southern places, on the creative process of contemporary musicians. The work also investigates the possibility of a comsouthern sound or auditory essence which may be embedded within all of the musical genres popularly thought to owe their lineage to the American South. The project is documentary in nature with the written component explaining the scholarship and methodology guiding the accompanying film. At the heart of the work are interviews with eleven contemporary musicians and three scholars of southern culture and history. While …

Toward An Ontology Of Exhaustion: On The Affective Structures Of Masculinity In The American Oilfield, John W. Jepsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What is the significance of the oil encounter in the lives of men living and working in the modern oilfields of the United States? Engaging with both literary examples of the lives of men in the Interior West and the personal experiences and reflections of the author, this essay seeks to examine the connections between ideology and place as it works to shape the identity and affect of men in America's oilfields, ultimately ending in them identifying with the very resources their activities seek to exploit and exhaust. Utilizing Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia as its moral touchstone, this essay works …

Latina Principals In Southern California: A Phenomenological Look Into Their Journey Towards Leadership, Fabiola Bagula

Dissertations

California is home to almost 15 million Latinos, however, according to the 2015 State of Higher Education Report for California, only 12% of the Latino population between the ages of 25 and 64 has a baccalaureate degree or higher, compared with 42% of the White population. Latina students have some of the lowest levels of educational attainment at every point in their K-12 journey and in general, very low occupational attainment. Given these troubling findings, this research sought to understand and tell the stories of Latinas in k-12 leadership positions in Southern California. In this study, Latinas describe how they …

The Cultural And Rhetorical Elements Of American Picaresque, Cory James Dahlstrom

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The picaresque is a literary genre with a long and rich history. Although protean in nature, it is essentially the fictional autobiography of a likeable delinquent or rogue, who survives a series of adventures and a life of hardships by his or her wits and affinity for trickery. Stemming from a long line of tropes dating back to Greek mythology, the picaresque comes into its own fruition towards the end of the Spanish Golden Age with the anonymous publication of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). Since then, the antihero of the picaresque, the picaro, has become a literary figure across a …

No More Mind Games: Content Analysis Of In-Game Commentary Of The National Football League’S Concussion Problem, Jeffrey Parker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

American (gridiron) football played at the professional level in the National Football League (NFL) is an inherently physical spectator sport, in which players frequently engage in significant contact to the head and upper body. Until recently, the long-term health consequences associated with on the field head trauma were not fully disclosed to players or the public, potentially misrepresenting the dangers involved in gameplay. Crucial to the dissemination of this information to the public are in-game televised commentators of NFL games, regarded as the primary conduits for mediating in-game narratives to the viewing audience. Using a social constructionist theoretical lens, this …

The Body And Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison’S Novel In Twenty-First Century Performance And Public Spaces, Patrice Rankine

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

Patrice Rankine’s “The Body and Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison’s Novel in Twenty-First-Century Performance and Public Spaces,” contrasts the artistic uses of physicality in Invisible Man the novel with its 2012 play adaptation. Rankine argues that the stage version’s “focus on the corporeal reality of race” complements what the novel can do to facilitate social or political progress: in short, “there is therapeutic value in ‘staging’ or reliving such experiences.” Staging Invisible Man extends Ellison’s relevance in an age where, though the United States had a black president, the very novelty of the black body illustrates how infrequently that body …

Burnt Offerings: How The City Of Angels Engulfed Any And All Involved In The Rodney King Affair And Los Angeles Riots, Michael P. Mcnamara

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This thesis analyses the first modern case of police brutality and race relations - the beating of Rodney King and the 1992 Riots that followed. The roots of the gravity of this situation can be found in the the leadership of the city during that time. The thesis tells the story of the juxtaposition of the black, Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles (Tom Bradley) and the white, Republican Los Angeles Police Chief (Daryl Gates). Though both have a very mixed legacy, both men were highly effective in their respective fields and goals. It is their inability to work together and …

From Tulsa To Ferguson: Redefining Race Riots And Racialized Violence, Hesley R. Keenan

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Novelistic Intimacies: Reading And Writing In The Late Age Of Print, Vincent Michael Haddad

Wayne State University Dissertations

In Novelistic Intimacies, I consider the political and aesthetic structure of intimacy in a diverse set of narrative forms produced in the so-called digital age, or the late age of print—from encyclopedic and metafictional novels to graphic storytelling and Afrofuturist fantasy. As an organizing principle, intimacy forces us to consider, at once, how novelists have attempted to restore language and narrative with personal meaning after postmodernism—often termed New Sincerity or post-irony. At the same time, intimacy allows us to see how novelists have experimented on the materiality of the book and the eroticism of language to invent new, impersonal modes …

The Western Stemmed Point Tradition: Evolutionary Perspectives On Cultural Change In Projectile Points During The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, Lindsay D. Scott

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis I analyze the cultural techniques of Paleoindians in North America by examining the diversification and fusion of stemmed projectile point traditions using an evolutionary analysis. The Western Stemmed Point tradition has an extensive regional and temporal distribution throughout the Intermountain West and High Plains during the Paleoindian period. In an effort to determine how stemmed projectile point technologies relate to each other, I applied a phylogenetic approach to construct heritable patterns of projectile point histories. By measuring the physical traits of those points and using a macro-evolutionary theoretical approach, changes in artifact form can be acquired and …

Birth City: Race And Violence In The History Of Childbirth And Midwifery In The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Borderlands, 1907-2013, Heather Marie Sinclair

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Since the founding of The Maternity Center by midwife Shari Daniels in 1976, thousands of women have traveled from throughout North America to El Paso, Texas to train in midwifery, making the U.S.-Mexico border region the epicenter of the North American home birth movement. Through an analysis of government reports, periodicals, archival documents, and oral histories, this study investigates the complex process through which midwifery and birthing at home, racialized as "primitive" and Mexican by White health officials and reformers in early twentieth-century El Paso, transformed into practices associated with White middle-class women by the century's end. Centered on themes …

Orbic Bards: Religious Liberalism And The Problems Of Representation In The Postbellum Works Of Walt Whitman And Herman Melville, Anthony Gus Cohen

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In an attempt to reconcile the critical camps that attempt either to christianize or otherwise, "scripturize" nineteenth century literary texts with the converse, which attempts to paint them cynically as "infidel countertexts" this project seeks to find a middle ground. The works of Herman Melvile and Walt Whitman steeped in the increasingly liberal religious atmosphere of New York City following the Civil War, both strive to offer up an impressively accurate historical and poetical record, free from the problems of hearsay that nagged the deists and transcendentalists, and instead attempted to offer something that instead was nearer to reason, and …