Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Altered States Of Style: The Drug-Induced Development Of Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose, Eric M. Izant

Theses and Dissertations

Jack Kerouac's spontaneous prose method was inspired in part by his use of drugs while writing. While there is abundant biographical evidence that Kerouac used drugs frequently, little attention has been paid to their effects on the development of his style. This thesis attempts to demonstrate that the altered states of consciousness produced by Kerouac's drug use should be considered in conjunction with historical, cultural, and biographical forces in tracing the evolution of Kerouac's creative growth. As a member of the Beat Generation, Kerouac used drugs both as a social statement of rebellion and for artistic insight. In fact, he …

A Reassessment Of James Joyce's Female Characters, Anna Margaretha Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

The female characters in James Joyce's fiction have received considerable critical attention since the publication of his writings and are often denigrated as misogynist portrayals of women. However, a textual and historical analysis of the female characters in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake shows them in a more constructive light. Such an analysis reveals them to be sympathetic portrayals of the situation of Irish women at the turn of the twentieth century. An historical contextualization of the characters is essential in any reading of Joyce, but is particularly important for his …

Grace Through Love : An Examination Of Milton's Monism, Mortalism, And The Puritan Ideals Of Desire As Reflected In Sonnet 23, Leslie Naomi Wyatt

Master's Theses

This thesis examines Sonnet 23, especially in concern to: 1) Milton’s adherence to monism, a philosophical and theological position that he derived from his reading of Rabbinical approaches to the Old Testament; 2) His adherence to the related doctrine of mortalism, which held that death entailed the death, until resurrection of both body and soul; and 3) Milton’s interest in the way certain Puritan thinkers idealized desire for aspects of the world’s beauty, especially desire for one’s spouse, and how, particularly in the process of mourning, such desires could foster a stronger bond with God. The thesis also looks at …

The Endangered Representation Of Sexual Violence In Sarah Kane's Blasted, Dina Zhurba

Master's Theses

In Blasted, Kane represents how incidents of rape highlight, exacerbate and solidify the unevenness of power distribution between men and women in the modern world and provides a new perspective at what we might call “rape in general” – a transhistorical phenomenon of rape as a practice of violence towards the female victim. Through a detailed analysis of the unique representational circumstances of the multiple scenes of rape, such as Cate’s meaningful absence in Ian’s scene of rape, the author of the essay comes to a conclusion that rape is and remains an engendered practice. However, along with reaffirming …

Lessons In Humanity: A Memoir, Chelsi Joy Sutton-Linderman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the opening pages of his work, Dog Years; A Memoir, Mark Doty explains: Love for a wordless creature, once it takes hold, is an enchantment, and the enchanted speak, famously, in private mutterings, cryptic riddles, or gibberish. This is why I shouldn't be writing anything about the two dogs that have been such presences for sixteen years of my life. How on earth could I stand at the requisite distance to say anything that might matter? (1)

In this thesis I argue that Doty, among other respected contemporary writers, is saying something that matters when he writes of …

Teaching Creativity In Technical Communication Curricula, Curtis Robert Newbold

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis addresses the need to claim creativity as an essential component to our technical communication curricula as we prepare students for what their managers want. While many technical communication programs at universities across the country have recognized a need to teach skills beyond "writing technically," few, if any, have addressed or "claimed" a concept such as creativity that helps build these skills. I argue that creativity is what managers are looking for and what technical communication programs are already implementing. Claiming this concept will help us further define a discipline that is becoming much richer and help students develop …

Rereading And Rewriting Women's History, Jacqueline Harris

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In Margaret Atwood’s nonfiction book Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002), Atwood discusses the importance of the female writer’s responsibility, that to write as a woman or about women means that you take upon yourself the responsibility of writing as a form of negotiation with our female dead and with what these dead took with them—the truth about who they were. By rereading and rewriting our communal past, women writers pay tribute to our female ancestors by voicing their silent stories while also changing gender stereotypes, complicating who these women were, and acknowledging their accomplishments.

In her …

It's Important For Me To Get Good Light. Or "Things Which Are Happening", Elizabeth Ferguson

Pitzer Senior Theses

Artists' book utilizing cross disciplinary media.

Resurrecting Speranza: Lady Jane Wilde As The Celtic Sovereignty, Heather Lorene Tolen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways in which Lady Jane Wilde, writing under the pen name of Speranza, established ethos among a poor, uneducated, Catholic populace from whom she was socially and religiously disconnected. Additionally, it raises questions as to Lady Wilde's exclusion from the roster of Irish literary voices who are commonly associated with the Irish Literary Revival, inasmuch as Lady Wilde played a critical, inceptive role in that movement. Lady Jane Wilde, mother of Oscar Wilde, was an ardent nationalist who lived in Victorian Ireland. She contributed thirty-nine poems and several essays to the Nation newspaper—a nationalist publication—under the …

Citizens (Or Citoyennes) Of The World: Women’S Citizenship And Exile In The French Revolutionary Years 1789-1793, Lisa Michelle Christian

Masters Theses

This study examines the fluid definitions of citizenship during the French Revolution, especially citizenship’s relationship to exile. I assert that citizenship was always defined by who could not be citizens. Furthermore, this study focuses upon women’s experience of citizenship and exile for their especial vulnerability to exclusion from public and political affairs. In particular, I address the political actions of Parisian common women, and the political actions and writings of the English exiles Helen Maria Williams and Mary Wollstonecraft. Essentially, this study has three distinct parts that demonstrate the development of women’s citizenship during the Revolution and the causes of …

A Migration Of Tastes: New York City And American Naturalism, 1890-1925, Tyler James Weseman

Masters Theses

Changes in the literary evaluation/reception of American Naturalism are related to changes in both literary criticism and American publishing. Naturalism responded to vigorous cultural issues of the time, but its chief focus was on the role of biology, class, and environment in the development of the individual. As a result, the response to Naturalism by American criticism was as much a response to these issues as it was to the literature itself, and the tenor of the responses near the turn of the century often reflected the differing values of criticism originating either in New York or Boston. By looking …

Performing Passing: Theatricality In Zo‰ Wicomb's Playing In The Light And Nella Larsen's Passing, Jennifer L. Apgar

English Theses

Acts of “passing” inform the plots of Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light and Nella Larsen’s Passing. Examples of contemporary South African fiction and Harlem Renaissance fiction respectively, these texts explore racial passing and its correlative, social passing. Social passing includes enactment of social relationships, responds to class anxieties, and requires repression of emotions as participating characters attempt to fix their performed roles into permanent identities. At issue are the texts’ multiple enactments of passing with special interest paid to these acts’ constitutive theatricality. Characters perform within narrative settings, locations subsequently deconstructed exposing both implicit and explicit theatrical functions. Threshold …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of An American University's Diversity Policy, Adam C. Faust

English Theses

This thesis focuses on the guidelines that university governing bodies have adopted in order to regulate the actions of its student population and the factors that influenced their decisions. The evaluation of these guidelines is not a judicial analysis, but an analysis of the rhetorical aspects associated with the guidelines. The thesis contends that the current rhetoric of diversity on American college campuses, while drafted with the best of intentions, fails due to the limitations that it places on its students, the morality argument in which it draws strength, and the increase in differences, not acceptance, that it creates. The …

By Her Own Hand: Female Agency Through Self-Castration In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Angela Marie Hall-Godsey

English Dissertations

By Her Own Hand: Female Agency Through Self-Castration in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction explores the intentional methods of self-castration that lead to authorial empowerment. The project relies on the following self-castration formula: the author’s recognition of herself as a being defined by lack. This lack refers to the inability to signify within the phallocentric system of language. In addition to this initial recognition, the female author realizes writing for public consumption emulates the process of castration but, nevertheless, initiates the writing process as a way to resituate the origin of castration—placing it in her own hand. The female writer also recognizes …

The Morphic Orator: Transmogrified Delivery On The Audio-Enabled Web, Brian Johnson Snead

English Theses

Audio is an effective but often overlooked component of World Wide Web delivery. Of the nearly twenty billion web pages estimated to exist, statistically few use sound. Those few using sound often use it poorly and with hardly any regard to theoretical and rhetorical issues. This thesis is an examination of the uses of audio on the World Wide Web, specifically focusing on how that use could be informed by current and historical rhetorical theory. A theoretical methodology is applied to suggest the concepts and disciplines required to make online audio more meaningful and useful. The thesis argues for the …

Can The Wound Be Taken At Its Word?: Performed Trauma In Don Delillo's The Body Artist And Falling Man, Brett Thomas Griffin

English Theses

Two of Don DeLillo’s recently published novels, The Body Artist (2001) and Falling Man (2007), feature performance artists performing trauma. Through the bodies of these performers, DeLillo restates the central concern of trauma studies: if trauma is that which denies mediation, how may we speak about traumatic experience? DeLillo’s stagings of traumatic (re)iterations illustrate how the missed originary moment of trauma precludes directly referential content in traumatic representation. But I propose that performed trauma – the knowledge of forgetting addressed to another – recapitulates the structure of traumatic experience itself, thereby revealing trauma to be wholly constituted in repetition, and …

A Transnational Study: Young Adult Literature Exchanged Between The Us And Germany, Kristana Miskin

Theses and Dissertations

Both young adult literature and transnational literature occupy transitional spaces and defy simple classifications. Their commonalities naturally suit the two sets of literature for concurrent study. However, the field is underdeveloped, particularly in the United States. With a concentration on the exchanges taking place between the U.S. and Germany, this thesis addresses the need to assemble primary materials and pertinent critical commentary into a single place available to educators, scholars, and researchers to acquire background on transnational YAL themes. The thesis delineates methods used in conducting and compiling research on U.S.-German YAL exchange and highlights the translation and publication concerns …

Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis proposes a theory of relational identity development in Chicana literature. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera offers an interpretation of Chicana identity that is largely based on historical models and mythology, which many scholars have found useful in interpreting Chicana literature. However, I contend that another text, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, not only illustrates the need for an alternative paradigm for considering identity development, but in fact offers such an alternative. I argue that Cisneros shows a model for relational identity development, wherein the individual develops in the context of her community and is not determined solely …

Blank Power: The Social And Political Criticism Of Blank Fiction And Cinema, Ashley Minix Donnelly

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores a style of literature known as "blank" fiction that became popular in the United States in the mid-1980s, focusing on its stark, limited form, its minimal plots, its focus on commodification, and its scenes of graphic violence. The author presents the argument that filmmakers were producing pieces of cinema during the same time period that are similar in both form and content to the works of blank fiction. These films are a part of a style she labels "blank" cinema.

Blank fiction and cinema are politically charged and highly critical of the social and political situation in …

Origins And Orthodoxy: Anthologies Of American Literature And American History, Daniel Richard Vollaro

English Dissertations

This dissertation examines how the new “multicultural phase” anthologies of American literature treat American history. Anthologies of American literature are more historical, more diverse, and more multidisciplinary than ever before, but they have over-extended themselves in both their historical and representational reach. They are not, despite their diversity and historicism, effective vehicles for promoting critical discussions of American history in the classroom. Chapter One outlines a brief history of anthologies of American literature, while also introducing the terminology and methodology used in this study. Chapter Two explores the role of the headnote as a vehicle for American history in anthologies …

Wees Gonna Tell It Like We Know It Tuh Be: Coded Language In The Works Of Julia Peterkin And Gloria Naylor, Crystal Margie Hills

English Theses

This study employs African American literary criticism and critical discourse analysis to evaluate Julia Peterkin's Scarlet Sister Mary (1928) and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day (1988). These women write stories of African American life on the Sea Islands through different prisms that evoke cultural memory within and outside the texts. Peterkin, a white Southerner, writes as an "onlooker" and “pioneer” of fictional Gullah culture; Naylor, a black Northerner by birth, writes as an "outsider" to Gullah culture, although a veteran of African American Southern heritage. The authors' hybridity produce different literary voices. A close examination of their discourse conveys a coded …

The Evolution Of Feminine Loyalty Trends In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century Appalachian Literature., Candace Jean Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loyalty to the self, family, and husband create interesting tensions for feminine characters in Appalachian literature. Traditional views of loyalty dictate that the Appalachian woman chooses to be loyal to her husband and family while abandoning her self loyalty. Appalachian women writers define the terms of loyalty and the conflicts these three levels create. Furthermore, studying a progression of novels from 1926 to the present shows that feminine loyalty trends have changed. This argument focuses on examining loyalty trends of feminine Appalachian characters, studying the contentions among those loyalties, specifically showing how loyalty patterns have changed in literature, and offering …

Propaganda And Poetry During The Great War., Norma Compton Leadingham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the Great War, poetry played a more significant role in the war effort than articles and pamphlets. A campaign of extraordinary language filled with abstract and spiritualized words and phrases concealed the realities of the War. Archaic language and lofty phrases hid the horrible truth of modern mechanical warfare. The majority and most recognized and admired poets, including those who served on the front and knew firsthand the horrors of trench warfare, not only supported the war effort, but also encouraged its continuation. For the majority of the poets, the rejection of the war was a postwar phenomenon. From …

Setting The Record Straight: Anne W. Armstrong, Regionalism, And The Social Efficacy Of Fiction, Katherine Hoffman Doman

Doctoral Dissertations

Categorized by the few critics who know her work as a "minor" Appalachian writer, Anne Wetzell Armstrong has never enjoyed the recognition she deserves. But she produced an important body of work, including fiction, non-fiction and drama. In the 1970‘s, critic Elaine Showalter led the gynocritical effort to recover women writers and inspired the reintroduction of a number of overlooked authors. This national impulse and the positive reception of its results has driven, in turn, an interest in similar regional efforts—hence my own interest in recovering the work of Armstrong, whose work has value in both national and regional contexts. …

Field Portrait: Poems, Jesse Kendall Graves

Doctoral Dissertations

This creative dissertation is a collection of original poems entitled Field Portrait. The poems in Field Portrait emerge from a long apprenticeship to the aesthetics of poetry, and to the study of how work, family, history, community, and landscape have been represented by poets in the western literary tradition. Many of the poems in Field Portrait are set in rural eastern Tennessee where I grew up, but several poems respond to other places I have lived and visited, such as upstate New York and New Orleans, Louisiana. My poems aspire to an integrated relationship between description and perception, in …

"Of Beggeris And Of Bidderis What Best Be To Doone?": The Problem Of Poverty In Piers Plowman, Dina Bevin Hess

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine William Langland’s continual wrestling with issues of poverty, both voluntary and involuntary, in Piers Plowman. The poem raises a multitude of questions, but to each question a multitude of contradictory answers is proposed, none of which is long permitted to remain unchallenged. The initially bewildering complexity of the representation of poverty found within the poem, however, may be clarified through the recognition of two fundamental underlying themes: caritas and justitia. Langland relies throughout the poem upon well-established tenets of medieval theology; what sets Piers apart is not that the central …

Reconsidering African-American Identity: Aesthetic Experiments By Post-Soul Artists, Letitia Guran Tudorica

Master's Theses

The present study attempts to offer an overview of the Post-Soul aesthetic and its role in re-writing African-American identity and focuses explicitly on three authors: Spike Lee, Touré, and Suzan-Lori Parks. My premise is that Post-Soul art is a direct result of the sweeping changes brought by the post-Civil Rights era in the African- American mentality, which inaugurated a new age in African-American art. Thus, the Post-Soul generation represents blackness as diverse, free to define itself in its own terms; they promote a critical take on black nationalism, and new perspectives on slavery. Most of the Post-Soul artists consider themselves …

Student Writing And Composition Instruction Using Web 2.0 : The Problems And Promise Of Collaborative Technology, Bruce Robert Henecker

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Educators have long sought the best methods for instructing students in the intricate art of effective written communication. Various technologies, from the pencil to the word processor, have been considered in this endeavor. With the emergence of newer digital technologies that allow students to publish writing directly to the World Wide Web, instructors have begun to explore how best to use this technology for writing instruction. Wikis, in particular, are tools many educators have begun to experiment with when trying to supplement their collaborative writing practices. This study attempts to answer three important questions: have computer-based technologies improved student writing; …

The Narrative “I” And Eye : Hawthorne’S Artist As Social Observer, Orah Dan Massarsky

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis considers the position of the artist in a polarized society experiencing radical extremist political tensions and which demands public allegiance and identification with the dominant ideology. Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose personal origins were grounded in the American past that formed his creative domain, was an astute social critic whose writings in the turbulent period of mid nineteenth-century America reflected an acute awareness of the fundamental crises in his time, such as slavery and the efforts towards its abolition, the perils of regional conflict that threatened national unity, the effects of increasing commercialization and urbanization of American culture and the …

Embodied Vision: Sublimity And Mystery In The Fiction Of Flannery O’Connor, Andrew Patrick Hicks

Masters Theses

This thesis serves as a study of representative pieces of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction alongside three particular theories of the sublime, and offers an exploration of the ways in which O’Connor employs and modifies and aesthetics of sublimity throughout her fiction. Three particular theories of the sublime are considered throughout this study: Edmund Burke’s empiricist sublime, Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern sublime, and Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt’s theological sublime. Burke’s theory is considered alongside both the early O’Connor story “The Turkey” and the later “Greenleaf,” while the story “Parker’s Back” is read in light of Lyotard’s theory and the novel The Violent Bear It …