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Margaret Fuller's Lost Legacy: Literary Criticism, Donna Needham Dec 2009

Margaret Fuller's Lost Legacy: Literary Criticism, Donna Needham

All Theses

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) is best known as a Transcendentalist, a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and first editor of the Transcendentalist publication, The Dial. She is considered a feminist by those familiar with her early work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Fuller was also a literary critic and author of 'A Short Essay on Critics' the seminal American work on literary criticism. Her theory of criticism, like the criticism of Matthew Arnold twenty years later, was based on the philosophy of Goethe.
After stepping down as editor in 1842, Fuller continued to contribute criticisms and essays to The Dial until …


Recollection/Re-Collection: A Re-Positioning Of Artificial Nature In The Natural World, Martha Epp-Carter Dec 2009

Recollection/Re-Collection: A Re-Positioning Of Artificial Nature In The Natural World, Martha Epp-Carter

All Theses

ABSTRACT
In this body of work I explore the division between our experiences with nature in a controlled environment versus the less frequent experience of true nature. I concern myself with the distance we create for ourselves by diminishing our interactions with nature, making them convenient, not messy or intrusive. I also attempt to resensitize the viewer to his or her own conscious or unconscious response to nature. By setting up situations that utilize both real and artificial objects, images and materials, I place the viewer in a relationship with the work that requires thoughtful attention.
Through the creation of …


Deviant, Courtney Richards Dec 2009

Deviant, Courtney Richards

All Theses

ABSTRACT
I create portraits and self-portraits that explore the dualities of the western human condition, namely the deviant and the ideal, the refined and the unrefined, and the perfect and the flawed. Drawing on personal experiences with people considered outsiders or social deviants, I construct figures that embody the conflicting ideas inherent in these dualities. I explore these conflicts in drawings that are constructed with marks and shapes that are both basic and refined, and in photographs that use analytic documentation to describe social turmoil. I reference artists both contemporary and historical, such as Egon Schiele, Robert Longo, Kathe Kollwitz, …


Physically And Viscerally Made, Jenny Hutchinson Dec 2009

Physically And Viscerally Made, Jenny Hutchinson

All Theses

Through the mediums of painting and drawing, I seek to create a figure that communicates particular states of being relative to contemporary conditions in society. Today we are individuals consumed by visual media and interconnectivity. I question -in wake of those conditions- how often we are self-aware. By living our lives through these two devices, we increasingly satisfy external needs, but may neglect internal needs. This situation, I believe, causes a dislocation of mind from body, and allows us to behave body-less. The distortion that we feel viscerally and live physically is actualized through the paint and drawing mediums. An …


Showcase (Concerns Of The Southern Man: From Gatlinburg To Kaohsiung City), Samuel Davis Dec 2009

Showcase (Concerns Of The Southern Man: From Gatlinburg To Kaohsiung City), Samuel Davis

All Theses

ABSTRACT
One's daily life consists of collecting objects, images, ideas, fears and dreams. These items and concepts do not conjure themselves, but are selected like so many berries in a basket. I question what objects people choose to showcase in their homes, their trophies and shrines. These types of objects serve to validate their owner's beliefs and through their collection, elevate that person's status. In what items does one subconsciously invest their identity?
My work speaks to the value of the collected once transformed. In my practice I juxtapose ideals held separately and simultaneously about the value and import of …


Provinializing World Literature: Tristram Shandy And Midnight's Children As Precursors To Current Postcolonial Critical Theory, Rachel Jordan Dec 2009

Provinializing World Literature: Tristram Shandy And Midnight's Children As Precursors To Current Postcolonial Critical Theory, Rachel Jordan

All Theses

Postcolonial critical theory is currently experiencing a period of upheaval. It is becoming increasing clear that the field's concentration on geopolitical bifurcation has provided an incomplete paradigm for critical literary analysis. The current approach incorrectly separates literature (and the analysis thereof), into that of former colonies and that of former colonial powers, with each having distinct critical methodologies that are considered appropriate. I argue that Dipesh Chakrabarty's method of provincializing, or the constant accumulation of new and divergent viewpoints to shape analysis through an iterative process, is a promising, but not new, critical paradigm.
Chakrabarty's contribution to postcolonial studies is …


The Classic Muscle Car Era, William Mckinney Dec 2009

The Classic Muscle Car Era, William Mckinney

All Theses

Big and bold, loud and brash, mighty and proud, the classic American muscle car is in many ways a reflection of America at a time in history when we were on top of the world and everything seemed to be going our way. This work will examine the classic muscle car era of 1964-1974, including how it started, who helped it along, what cars were involved, how it ended, and what it meant. What the future holds for a car such as a muscle car is also examined.


'Age Doth Not Wither Nor Custom Stale My Infinite Variety': Surveying The Evolution Of Dr. John H. Watson Through 70 Years Of The Hound Of The Baskervilles On Screen, Ashley Polasek Dec 2009

'Age Doth Not Wither Nor Custom Stale My Infinite Variety': Surveying The Evolution Of Dr. John H. Watson Through 70 Years Of The Hound Of The Baskervilles On Screen, Ashley Polasek

All Theses

The sixty tales that comprise the Sherlock Holmes Canon hold a unique place in the realm of both adaptation studies and culture studies. The stories were originally written at a time concurrent with the birth of cinema; Holmes was part of the vanguard of literary figures to appear on film. Since his first appearance on screen in 1900, Sherlock Holmes, his friend and colleague Dr. Watson, and the adventures in which they figure have been consistently adapted for the full lifespan of the cinematic medium. Despite this rich history, the adaptations have, almost without exception, been scrutinized through the lens …


'Light, More Light': The 'Light' Newspaper, Spiritualism, And British Society, 1881 - 1920., Brian Glenney Dec 2009

'Light, More Light': The 'Light' Newspaper, Spiritualism, And British Society, 1881 - 1920., Brian Glenney

All Theses

This thesis looks at the spiritualist weekly Light through Late Victorian, Edwardian, and World War I Britain. Light has never received any extended coverage or historical treatment yet it was one of the major spiritualist newspapers during this part of British history. This thesis diagrams the lives of Light's first four major editors from 1881 till the end of World War I and their views on the growth of science, God, Christ, evolution, and morality. By focusing on one major spiritualist newspaper from 1881 till 1920, this thesis attempts to bridge the gap in spiritualist historiography that marks World War …


Goddess, King, And Grail: Aspects Of Sovereignty Within The Early Medieval Heroic Tradition Of The British Isles, Robert Bevill Aug 2009

Goddess, King, And Grail: Aspects Of Sovereignty Within The Early Medieval Heroic Tradition Of The British Isles, Robert Bevill

All Theses

When studying the heroic tales and epics of medieval cultures, more questions
about their origins and influences remain than answers. The search for sources for a
single work, Beowulf, for example, can and has been examined within Germanic,
Brittanic, Norse, and even Irish traditions. Scores of sources, parallels, and analogues
have been found and analyzed, but so many possibilities may only serve to obfuscate
the actual origins of the Beowulf poet's myriad influences. However, the search for
analogous works can build a stronger sense of context for certain motifs and greater
themes within a large number of similar texts. Thus, …


Blue Skin, Yellow Flesh, Candace Wiley Aug 2009

Blue Skin, Yellow Flesh, Candace Wiley

All Theses

ABSTRACT
Set in November 2009 in the United States South, Blue Skin, Yellow Flesh will eventually cover eleven days and will be separated into two parts—before and after Thecla's funeral. It begins the Tuesday after Thecla dies and ends the day after Thanksgiving. The major conflict involves Thecla's death, how it affects her family, and how the family deals with the concept of family. Other important conflicts are Tam and Lynn's marriage, JoJo's sexual orientation, Lynn's affect on her children, and Julius's trek toward death. This novel excerpt consists of seven chapters, submitted in partial fulfillment of Clemson University's Master …


The Origins Of The Modern Religious Lobby In Virginia, 1968-1980, Kenneth Skipper Aug 2009

The Origins Of The Modern Religious Lobby In Virginia, 1968-1980, Kenneth Skipper

All Theses

The 1960s conservative movement of Barry Goldwater gave rise to a politically active and influential block of voters that came to be known as the religious Right. Disillusioned with the direction of America and a government that seemed hostile to their views and values, religious-minded Americans began to organize to fight for the issues that were important to them. Virginia was an important battleground in the fight over these important social issues due to its unique demographic make-up with a more liberal and urban northern part with the rest of Virginia more conservative and rural. The organization of politically minded …


Twenty Miles To Rome: The Story Of South Carolina's First Medal Of Honor Winner In World War Ii, Charles Taylor Aug 2009

Twenty Miles To Rome: The Story Of South Carolina's First Medal Of Honor Winner In World War Ii, Charles Taylor

All Theses

This thesis, which has encompassed my life for the last several months, began as sort of an afterthought. A graduate course that I was taking in fall 2008 required the students to produce a prospectus for a new biography that should be added to the historical record. Looking to find a subject that I did not mind researching, I chose to write a proposal on my great uncle Furman L. Smith, who was South Carolina's first Congressional Medal of Honor winner in World War II. I had always had an interest in family history, but felt guilty that I knew …


That Others May Live: The Cold War Sacrifice Of Ellenton, South Carolina, Samuel Ritchie May 2009

That Others May Live: The Cold War Sacrifice Of Ellenton, South Carolina, Samuel Ritchie

All Theses

The forced evacuation of Ellenton, South Carolina, beginning in November 1950 was the direct result of increasing international tension following the Soviet acquisition of an atomic weapon. Facing the loss of the American monopoly on nuclear weapons and an increasing Communist threat, the Truman administration authorized the construction of a nuclear facility near Ellenton, South Carolina, which would prove vital in the development of a hydrogen bomb. The people of Ellenton and the surrounding towns of Dunbarton, Meyers Mill, Robbins, and Leigh were required to sacrifice their homes and communities to provide land for the Savannah River Plant. The reaction …


The Rhetoric Of The Comment Box: Editorial Queries As Arguments And Relationships In Engineering Proposals, Ali Ferguson May 2009

The Rhetoric Of The Comment Box: Editorial Queries As Arguments And Relationships In Engineering Proposals, Ali Ferguson

All Theses

In today's academic engineering environments, securing funding has become a volatile process, requiring the hard work of and collaboration between many different people. Technical editors are one of these important forces in the proposal writing process, as they help engineer writers to develop their proposals and persuade reviewers of the value of their research. However, to date, there have been very few studies on how editors convince engineer writers to accept their proposed revisions. To fill this gap in the literature, this thesis offers an in-depth style analysis of six proposals in order to determine what technical editors do when …


Some Apocalypse, David Hehn Jr. May 2009

Some Apocalypse, David Hehn Jr.

All Theses

This creative thesis is comprised of three pieces of traditional fiction, three pieces of flash fiction, and one work that is neither traditional nor flash but positioned somewhere beneath the wide umbrella of creative writing. As partial fulfillment for the degree Master of Arts in English literature, these selections display a solid understanding of the principles of creative fiction and English literature as well as a desire to experiment with form and push the parameters of creative writing. These selections seek to entertain and to become active in the general discourse of literature.


Deus Ex Machinima: A Rhetorical Analysis Of User-Generated Machinima, Sean Callot May 2009

Deus Ex Machinima: A Rhetorical Analysis Of User-Generated Machinima, Sean Callot

All Theses

Beginning with corporate demonstrations and continuously evolving into today, machinima has become a major expressive art form for the gamer generation. Machinima is the user-centered production of video presentations using pre-rendered animated content, as generated from video games. The term 'machinima' is a combination of 'machine' (from which the video content is derived) and 'cinema' (the ultimate end product). According to Paul Marino and other members of the machinima community, Hugh Hancock, the creator of Machinima.com, first coined the term in 2000. Video productions of this kind have been used in various capacities for the past several years, including instruction …


The Dreamer Deepe: A Two-Act Play In The Lovecraft Horror Mythos, Nicholas Mazzuca May 2009

The Dreamer Deepe: A Two-Act Play In The Lovecraft Horror Mythos, Nicholas Mazzuca

All Theses

One full-length, two-act play comprises this creative thesis, which has been submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts in English literature. This manuscript showcases a creative work that fuses two separate genres: literary horror and dramatic theory. I take my vocabulary from a preexisting body of work so that I may generate something vital and new. May the words I write honor those who have gone before me and inspire as I have been inspired.


Fulfillment, Stacey Brown May 2009

Fulfillment, Stacey Brown

All Theses

The story of a woman writer's struggle to create a delusional, lovelorn character while maintaining her own sanity.


A Charitable Modernity: Milton And The Democratic Aesthetic, Jonathan Williams May 2009

A Charitable Modernity: Milton And The Democratic Aesthetic, Jonathan Williams

All Theses

This thesis traces a narrative of John Milton's modernity. My formulation of a
'charitable modernity' is a paradoxical one, and builds on Marshall Berman's theory of
modern life. Modernity is characterized by both disintegration and possibilities for
renewal. Charity, according to Milton, is the means by which different readers are
allowed to read different meanings into different texts. For Milton, a charitable modernity
is a promising thing, because it makes allowance for a democratic kind of government
where people are allowed to govern themselves in part by the way they each read texts
differently. Milton was not always a poet …


Accommodating Death: An Examination Of The Role Of Scientific Accommodation In Forensic Anthropology, Christina D'Elia May 2009

Accommodating Death: An Examination Of The Role Of Scientific Accommodation In Forensic Anthropology, Christina D'Elia

All Theses

Scientists have strong motivations to communicate with the public, yet this communication is often ineffective. As Ann Penrose and Steven Katz explain in Writing in the Sciences, there are three major reasons why scientists communicate with the public: moral, economic, and political (177). Despite these reasons for scientists to communicate with the public, it is not always easy for this communication to take place, due to divisions of audience and discourse community, as well as the scientists’ biases against communicating with the public. Scientific accommodation helps to bridge this gap.
In some fields, like forensic anthropology, scientists write their own …


Psyche And History In Shelley And Freud, Brent Robida May 2009

Psyche And History In Shelley And Freud, Brent Robida

All Theses

The comfortable thought is over in our psychical relation to Percy Shelley and Sigmund Freud because the line of reasoning it invokes is chaotic, if only because trying to define psyche and history leads to chaotic conclusions, especially at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Shelley and Freud recognized this and were able to channel it into their art, myth, fable, allegory. The events of their lives, their History, produces itself from chaos (Freud writes across two World Wars, Shelley under the shadow of the French Revolution, Jacobin massacres and Napoleonic wars), which means its producer is chaotic, Divine Chaos, …


Visual Argument Reconsidered: 'Objective' Theory And A Classical Rhetorical Approach, Daniel Richards May 2009

Visual Argument Reconsidered: 'Objective' Theory And A Classical Rhetorical Approach, Daniel Richards

All Theses

Visual argument is a relatively new discipline within the field of visual rhetorics. Consequently, visual rhetoricians have presented new theories of visual argumentation without fully considering the possibilities of existing textual methodologies as explanatory tools—especially classical rhetorical devices. This thesis presents a methodology for examining and creating visual arguments based on the concepts of topoi and figures of speech. I contend that these classical rhetorical devises embody an “objective” understanding of visual communication that shows one way of bridging the empiricism/rationalism debate in epistemology. By demonstrating that knowledge comes from the necessary interplay of perception and conception, I attempt to …


Victims And Aggressors: Black And Jewish Interethnic Relationships In Contemporary American Literature, Jessica Martin May 2009

Victims And Aggressors: Black And Jewish Interethnic Relationships In Contemporary American Literature, Jessica Martin

All Theses

Though blacks and Jews are often portrayed together in African-American and Jewish-American writing, the reasons for the juxtapositions are curious. Contemporary authors have created a close relationship between blacks and Jews that, perhaps with the exception of their cooperation during the Civil Rights movement, historically did not exist. But, the relationship between these two groups in literature offers a unique perspective on American racial and ethnic social structures because both blacks and Jews are considered minority groups, yet they also maintain a hierarchical relationship with one another. By employing black and Jewish characters, American writers, especially Jewish-American writers, create a …


Living In (Im) Material Worlds: Modes Of Production And Consumption In Utopian Literature, Pauline Spangler May 2009

Living In (Im) Material Worlds: Modes Of Production And Consumption In Utopian Literature, Pauline Spangler

All Theses

My thesis examines and defines 'conditions of production' and 'conditions of consumption' as they apply to both Marxist economic theory and to the more culturally-oriented production and consumption of literary texts according to Pierre Bourdieu. I will establish the relationship between these conditions as cause and effect, complementary, and, finally, mutually necessary depending upon their context and manifestation. Alterations in the conditions of production and consumption affect our treatment of their corresponding, associative dichotomies in the literary tradition - the transcendent and the material, the spiritual and the corporal, the well-wrought art object and the commodity fetish, and, finally, male …


Ambiguity And Apocalypse: Metafictional Reading Strategies In The Crying Of Lot 49 And One Hundred Years Of Solitude, David Foltz May 2009

Ambiguity And Apocalypse: Metafictional Reading Strategies In The Crying Of Lot 49 And One Hundred Years Of Solitude, David Foltz

All Theses

Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Gabriel Garc’a M‡rquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude posit reading strategies linked by similar methodologies and complementary conclusions. The exposition in the following chapters examines the novels' methodologies on three levels--the utilization of historical background, the Principle of Uncertainty, and apocalyptic endings--to establish a basis for the novels' shared perspective on narrative and, by default, approaches to engaging narrative. This thesis argues that the novels demonstrate that as uncertainty increases within narrative the potential for meaning increases, and the converse--as uncertainty decreases, the potential for meaning decreases. The resultant apocalyptic endings of …


The Design, Production And Analysis Of A Realistic Stereo Cg Short Film On A Six Month Budget., Celambarasan Ramasamy May 2009

The Design, Production And Analysis Of A Realistic Stereo Cg Short Film On A Six Month Budget., Celambarasan Ramasamy

All Theses

The production of stereoscopic CG films poses some interesting challenges, especially for student productions that work under the severe limitations of time and resources. This is mainly due to the non availability of off the shelf production tools catering to stereoscopic CG productions. This work presents the production process of one such student produced stereoscopic short film. The production process is described in detail starting from the initial conception of the narrative plot to the actual production of the film. Finally an experimental technique of using eye tracking as a tool for finding out the effectiveness of the various stereoscopic …