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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Khwaam Jam : Memory, Keith Lee Crane Dec 2009

Khwaam Jam : Memory, Keith Lee Crane

Art and Design Theses

Khwaam Jam is an introspective installation of works that explore the perceptions of identity based on memory. Created through the exploration of my past and present, the works of Khwaam Jam utilize the principles and techniques of textile design and production while involving mixed media and new materials in a site-specific installation. This installation is intended to represent my memory on a large scale. The hanging pieces are the focal point of the exhibition and are the physical manifestation of my perception of the categorization and storage of my memories. Memories are the vessels through which we create our identity. …


Static, Yet Fluctuating: The Evolution Of Batman And His Audiences, Perry Dupre Dantzler Dec 2009

Static, Yet Fluctuating: The Evolution Of Batman And His Audiences, Perry Dupre Dantzler

English Theses

The Batman media franchise (comics, movies, novels, television, and cartoons) is unique because no other form of written or visual texts has as many artists, audiences, and forms of expression. Understanding the various artists and audiences and what Batman means to them is to understand changing trends and thinking in American culture. The character of Batman has developed into a symbol with relevant characteristics that develop and evolve with each new story and new author. The Batman canon has become so large and contains so many different audiences that it has become a franchise that can morph to fit any …


Heroes With A Hundred Names: Mythology And Folklore In Robert Penn Warren's Early Fiction, Leverett Belton Butts, Iv Dec 2009

Heroes With A Hundred Names: Mythology And Folklore In Robert Penn Warren's Early Fiction, Leverett Belton Butts, Iv

English Theses

This dissertation examines Robert Penn Warren‘s use of Arthurian legend, Judeo-Christian folklore, Norse mythology, and ancient vegetation rituals in his first four novels. It also illustrates how the use of these myths helps define Warren‘s Agrarian ideals while underscoring his subtle references to these ideals in his early fiction.


Literature As Prophecy: Toni Morrison As Prophetic Writer, Khalilah Tyri Watson Dec 2009

Literature As Prophecy: Toni Morrison As Prophetic Writer, Khalilah Tyri Watson

English Dissertations

From fourteenth century medieval literature to contemporary American and African American literature, researchers have singled out and analyzed writing from every genre that is prophetic in nature, predicting or warning about events, both revolutionary and dire, to come. One twentieth-century American whose work embodies the essence of warning and foretelling through history-laden literature is Toni Morrison. This modern-day literary prophet reinterprets eras gone by through what she calls “re-memory” in order to guide her readers, and her society, to a greater understanding of the consequences of slavery and racism in America and to prompt both races to escape the pernicious …


Wangechi Mutu: Feminist Collage And The Cyborg, Nicole R. Smith Dec 2009

Wangechi Mutu: Feminist Collage And The Cyborg, Nicole R. Smith

Art and Design Theses

Wangechi Mutu is an internationally recognized Kenyan-born artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She creates collaged female figures composed of human, animal, object, and machine parts. Mutu’s constructions of the female body provide a transcultural critique on the female persona in Western culture. This paper contextualizes Mutu’s work and artistic strategies within feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial narratives on collage, while exploring whether collage strategies are particularly useful for feminist artists. In their fusion of machine and organism, Mutu’s characters are visual metaphors for feminist cyborgs, particularly those outlined by Donna Haraway. In this paper, I examine parallels between collage …


The Culinary Browns, Phoebe A. Brown Dec 2009

The Culinary Browns, Phoebe A. Brown

Art and Design Theses

The Culinary Browns is an experimental documentary that traces four generations of the Brown family beginning with Bob Brown, my great-grandfather, a writer of pulp fiction, modern poetry, cookbooks and social commentary. This documentary is not a linear history or purely factual document, but instead, uses personal experience as a means to generate more universal connections to the inherently dysfunctional dynamics of family, the fragmentary quality of memory, and to ultimately remind the viewer that history is relative.


Ecocritical Theology Neo-Pastoral Themes In American Fiction From 1960 To The Present, Joan Anderson Ashford Dec 2009

Ecocritical Theology Neo-Pastoral Themes In American Fiction From 1960 To The Present, Joan Anderson Ashford

English Dissertations

Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of …


Middle School Technology And Media Literacy: An Action Research Case Study, Mekisha Renaé Parks Dec 2009

Middle School Technology And Media Literacy: An Action Research Case Study, Mekisha Renaé Parks

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This qualitative action research case study seeks to modify a Middle School Computer Science Course at a medium‐sized private school in North Atlanta, Georgia by examining the intersection of media literacy, technology, and adolescent teens. The main purpose of this project is to improve the course by incorporating media literacy skills into the curriculum. Guided class discussions, active participant observation, participant journals, and participant projects will be used to learn more about students’ experience with Media Literacy education. Centering on reflective practices, teacher‐student dialogue, and peer collaboration, this project aims to identify, engage, and explore issues critical to the effective …


Toward A Rhetoric Of Scholar-Fandom, Tanya R. Cochran Dec 2009

Toward A Rhetoric Of Scholar-Fandom, Tanya R. Cochran

English Dissertations

Individuals who consider themselves both scholars and fans represent not only a subculture of fandom but also a subculture of academia. These liminal figures seem suspicious to many of their colleagues, yet they are particularly positioned not only to be conduits to engaged learning for students but also to transform the academy by chipping away at the stereotypes that support the symbolic walls of the Ivory Tower. Because they are growing in number and gaining influence in academia, the scholar-fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy) and other texts by creator Joss Whedon are one focus of …


Exploring The Factory: Analyzing The Film Adaptations Of Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Richard B. Davis Dec 2009

Exploring The Factory: Analyzing The Film Adaptations Of Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Richard B. Davis

English Theses

Film adaptations are becoming more popular and past critics and scholars have discussed films based on dramas and novels. However, few have explored the children’s literature genre. In discussing such a topic, it takes more than just debating whether the novel or book is better. A discussion on what elements have been maintained, removed, or added in such an adaptation has to be made along with its success or failure. With this in mind, Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and its two film adaptations will be explored along with an analysis of film adaptation theory to …


The Thirteenth-Century Fresco Decoration Of Santa Maria Ad Cryptas In Fossa, Italy, Ashely Wilemon Walker Dec 2009

The Thirteenth-Century Fresco Decoration Of Santa Maria Ad Cryptas In Fossa, Italy, Ashely Wilemon Walker

Art and Design Theses

This paper discusses the fresco decoration of Santa Maria ad Cryptas. The frescoes are described and analyzed, and then compared to similar programs in order to determine which features are based on earlier sources, and which are unusual or unique to this particular church. The traditional features are found to reflect a long-established pattern of church decoration reflected in such monuments as Old Saint Peter’s, Sant’Angelo in Formis, the Cathedral of Monreale, and the Cappella Palatina. The unusual features (including the placement of the Passion cycle in the presbytery, and the location of the Crucifixion over the altar) are explained …


Fifty Years Of Challenges To The Colorline Montgomery, Alabama, Alison L. Murphy Dec 2009

Fifty Years Of Challenges To The Colorline Montgomery, Alabama, Alison L. Murphy

History Theses

After fifty years of challenges to the color line in Montgomery, Alabama, the Metropolitan Statistical Area is more integrated now than it was in 1950. Through exploring the effects of Brown v. Board of Education, the bus boycott, school integration court cases, re-segregation of schools in city and suburban districts, and federal open-housing policies, the volatile transformation appears to shows how, after fifty years, Montgomery has moved from a segregated dual society to a partially integrated society in spite of the massive resistance to integration.


Modernist Aesthetics Of "Home" In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway And Rebecca West's The Return Of The Soldier, James Harper Strom Nov 2009

Modernist Aesthetics Of "Home" In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway And Rebecca West's The Return Of The Soldier, James Harper Strom

English Theses

The First World War wrought untold destruction on the physical and psychological landscape of Europe. For Britain, the immediate post-war period represented no less than a national “nostos,” or homecoming, and few social institutions were so fragmented by the conflict as the home. This thesis will explore the various conceptions of “home,” from the nation and the domestic sphere to post-war consciousness, through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s "Mrs. Dalloway" and Rebecca West’s "The Return of the Soldier." Though unique in style and scope, Woolf and West interrogate and revise pre-war notions of “home” and suggest a Modernist aesthetic of …


Can Consciousness Be Taken Seriously When It Comes To Personal Identity?, Stephen Matthew Duncan Nov 2009

Can Consciousness Be Taken Seriously When It Comes To Personal Identity?, Stephen Matthew Duncan

Philosophy Theses

Certain contemporary philosophers (e.g. Dainton, 2008; Strawson, 1999; Foster, 2008) have thought that the first-person, qualitative aspect of conscious experience should be taken seriously when it comes to our thinking about personal identity through time. These philosophers have thus argued that experiential continuity is essential to a person’s ability to persist identically through time. This is what I will call ‘the phenomenological theory’. In this thesis I describe the phenomenological theory and then discuss three problems that have plagued the history of this theory: the bridge problem, the token problem, and the ontological problem. I will argue that a recent …


Protestants Reading Catholicism: Crashaw's Reformed Readership, Andrew Dean Davis Aug 2009

Protestants Reading Catholicism: Crashaw's Reformed Readership, Andrew Dean Davis

English Theses

This thesis seeks to realign Richard Crashaw’s aesthetic orientation with a broadly conceptualized genre of seventeenth-century devotional, or meditative, poetry. This realignment clarifies Crashaw’s worth as a poet within the Renaissance canon and helps to dismantle historicist and New Historicist readings that characterize him as a literary anomaly. The methodology consists of an expanded definition of meditative poetry, based primarily on Louis Martz’s original interpretation, followed by a series of close readings executed to show continuity between Crashaw and his contemporaries, not discordance. The thesis concludes by expanding the genre of seventeenth-century devotional poetry to include Edward Taylor, who despite …


The Mystery Of The Body: Embodiment In The Nancy Drew Mystery Series, Katie Still Aug 2009

The Mystery Of The Body: Embodiment In The Nancy Drew Mystery Series, Katie Still

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This thesis investigates the ways in which ideas about class, gender, and race are produced and articulated through the body in the Nancy Drew Mystery series in the 1930s. Physical descriptions and bodily movements, as well as material surroundings, work together to reify and contradict dominant ideas of normalcy and deviance being located on the body.


Relays In Rebellion: The Power In Lilian Ngoyi And Fannie Lou Hamer, Cathy Laverne Freeman Aug 2009

Relays In Rebellion: The Power In Lilian Ngoyi And Fannie Lou Hamer, Cathy Laverne Freeman

History Theses

This thesis compares how Lilian Ngoyi of South Africa and Fannie Lou Hamer of the United States crafted political identities and assumed powerful leadership, respectively, in struggles against racial oppression via the African National Congress and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. The study asserts that Ngoyi and Hamer used alternative sources of personal power which arose from their location in the intersecting social categories of culture, gender and class. These categories challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries and complicate any analysis of political economy, state power relations and black liberation studies which minimize the contributions of women. Also, by analyzing resistance leadership …


Sleeping Beauty And Her Many Relatives, Dorothy Jeanine Kemptner Jul 2009

Sleeping Beauty And Her Many Relatives, Dorothy Jeanine Kemptner

World Languages and Cultures Theses

The Grimm Brothers’ Little Briar-Rose is a beloved fairytale, which is more commonly known as Sleeping Beauty. What began as a Volksmärchen, is now a world famous and beloved Kunstmärchen. The Brothers collected and adapted the tale, incorporating their own literary style, helping to develop a literary Germanic cultural history. In this thesis I analyze how the tale evolves from the original oral tale to the literary story, and how various perspectives of culture and authors, with particular audiences in mind, adapt their versions. Historical background of the Grimms and their influences, an analysis of how the story was revised …


Power And Surrender: African American Sunni Women And Embodied Agency, Lisa Renae Frazier Jul 2009

Power And Surrender: African American Sunni Women And Embodied Agency, Lisa Renae Frazier

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This thesis addresses the lack of scholarly attention devoted to African American Sunni women by examining how they use collective memory to negotiate embodied agency. Through an analysis of African American Sunni women’s narratives of testifying conversion, and vignettes from diaries and interviews, I show how African American Sunni women utilize racial, religious, and spiritual memory in the form of ritual practices and Islamic texts to multiply construct their bodies, and how this construction allows them to enact multimodal and nomadic forms of agency. A contextual analysis also illustrates how environment and interpretation (tafsir) further mobilizes forms of agency, articulating …


Where I Am, There (Sh)It Will Be: Queer Presence In Post Modern Horror Films, Melanie Mcdougald Jul 2009

Where I Am, There (Sh)It Will Be: Queer Presence In Post Modern Horror Films, Melanie Mcdougald

English Theses

This paper will consider the function of queer space and presence in the post modern horror film genre. Beginning with George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and continuing through to contemporary examples of the genre, the paper posits the function of the queer monster or monstrous as integral to and representative of the genre as a whole. The paper analyzes both the current theory and scholarship of the genre and through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and queer theory offers a theory of how these theories can add to existing theory and scholarship.


Taking Eudora Welty's Text Out Of The Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild And The Queering Of Saint George, James R. Wallace Jul 2009

Taking Eudora Welty's Text Out Of The Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild And The Queering Of Saint George, James R. Wallace

English Theses

Eudora Welty’s characterization of George Fairchild (Delta Wedding) queers the heroic masculine ideal, St George, whose legendary exploits have been popularized in narrative literature, Catholic iconography, and children’s fairy tale. Lauded by the Fairchild women for his “difference,” George’s sexuality offers him an identity apart from the suffocating Fairchild family myth. George Fairchild’s queer sexuality and homoeroticism augments our critical understanding of Delta Wedding, the character, as well as other characters. The author’s subtly politicized construction of the novel’s ostensible hero subverts literary tradition, the gender binary, and patriarchal myth.


Conduire Amour: Liebe Der Frau Als Schlüssel Zum Heil Und Brüderlichen Frieden In Wolfram Von Eschenbachs Parzival, Eleanor Kinser Hall Jul 2009

Conduire Amour: Liebe Der Frau Als Schlüssel Zum Heil Und Brüderlichen Frieden In Wolfram Von Eschenbachs Parzival, Eleanor Kinser Hall

World Languages and Cultures Theses

This paper examines Wolfram von Eschenbach’s juxtaposition of contrary things in Parzival as the beginning of the road to spiritual salvation for Parzival. Men’s quest for fame and honor in the material, Arthurian world is compared to the divine Grail kingdom and the godlike women who shed compassionate, Christ-like tears. Wolfram’s message of peace and love for brother is examined through his use of symbolism, particularly through womens’ tears and turtledove imagery. Parzival, Gâwân and Feirefiz are compared in order to show that the love and quest for personal honor in the Arthurian world is a necessary step on the …


"Ah Ain't Brought Home A Thing But Mahself": Cultural And Folk Heroism In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God And Ellen Douglas' Can't Quit You, Baby, Kimberly Giles Cochran Jul 2009

"Ah Ain't Brought Home A Thing But Mahself": Cultural And Folk Heroism In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God And Ellen Douglas' Can't Quit You, Baby, Kimberly Giles Cochran

English Theses

In scholarship discussing Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s self-realization is central to her identity, and many scholars view and discuss her as a cultural hero. But her success is conditional on circumstance rather than composition of character, a fact this essay explores through a careful comparison between Janie and Tweet, a character from Ellen Douglas’ Can’t Quit You, Baby; specifically, while Janie ultimately succeeds in her world—even while confronting gender oppression—she improbably avoids the additional, crippling subjugation of racial prejudice that Tweet endures. Through this and a discussion of definitions and Hurston’s work as a folklorist/writer, …


To Keep On Knowing More(?): Seminar Xvill, The Other Side Of Psychoanalysis, John Lowther Jul 2009

To Keep On Knowing More(?): Seminar Xvill, The Other Side Of Psychoanalysis, John Lowther

English Theses

This is an explication of Lacan’s Seminar XVII. The introduction situates the Seminar in its time and in relation to other theories of discourse. In part one I examine the changes which it brings to a variety of ideas already known in Lacan’s oeuvre such as Jouissance, Master Signifier(s) and Oedipus. Part two looks the four discourses in detail after considering the positions common to each. I provide accounts of each discourse as taking place internally to a subject and between subjects. The coda examines areas where further research is possible, reviews and critiques some scholarship on this seminar and …


Searching For The Womanist Within, Carmela L. Pattillo Jul 2009

Searching For The Womanist Within, Carmela L. Pattillo

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

Searching for the Womanist Within is a play about self identity and the daily experience of African-American women who are at the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class. The unique life perspective of Afeican-American women is explored through the retelling of stories from the writer’s life as well as the lives of other black women. In Feminist, Black Feminist, Afrocentric and Womanist drama it is common to steer away from conventional theatrical structures, Solo drama, a less conventional structure, was selected for this play. In addition to the play is an essay about the writing process, as well as …


Naming Experience And Revealing Sentiment: The Archetypal Journey In Edna St Vincent Millay's "Renascence", Jennifer Rose Forsthoefel Jul 2009

Naming Experience And Revealing Sentiment: The Archetypal Journey In Edna St Vincent Millay's "Renascence", Jennifer Rose Forsthoefel

English Theses

This thesis uses archetypal theory as explained by Carol Pearson in The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By to illustrate the heroic journey undertaken by the protagonist in Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "Renascence." Feminist archetypal theory is a useful lens for gaining the reader access to the underlying paradigms of struggle experienced by the female literary character because it exposes the parallels that exist in separate female experiences. By applying Pearson's theory to Millay's work, readers are able to elucidate more clearly the methods used by the poet to create commonality and continuity with her female audience. Throughout …


Epicurean Friendship: How Are Friends Pleasurable?, Melissa Marie Strahm Jul 2009

Epicurean Friendship: How Are Friends Pleasurable?, Melissa Marie Strahm

Philosophy Theses

Although the Epicurean ethical system is fundamentally egoistic and hedonistic, it attributes a surprisingly significant role to friendship. Even so, I argue that traditional discussions of Epicurean friendship fail to adequately account for the value (or pleasure) of individual friends. In this thesis I present an amended notion of Epicurean friendship that better accounts for all of the pleasure friends afford. However, the success of my project requires rejecting an Epicurean ethical principle. Because of this, I explore textual evidence both in favor and against the amended notion I propose and the problematic ethical principle. After arguing against the problematic …


Representations Of Labor In The Slave Narrative, Agnel Natasha Barron Jul 2009

Representations Of Labor In The Slave Narrative, Agnel Natasha Barron

English Theses

This study examines the slave narratives The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself and The Bondwoman’s Narrative to determine the way in which these texts depict the economics of labor in slave society. Taking into account the specific socio-historical contexts in which these narratives were written, this study analyzes the way in which the representations of labor in these narratives interrogate slavery and address issues relating to the social relations and power dynamics of their respective societies. Emphasis is given to the way in which the …


Coke Vs. Pepsi: The Cola Wars In South Africa During The Anti-Apartheid Era, John Kirby Spivey Jul 2009

Coke Vs. Pepsi: The Cola Wars In South Africa During The Anti-Apartheid Era, John Kirby Spivey

History Theses

This thesis looks at the actions of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in South Africa during both the anti-apartheid movement and the post-apartheid era. The processes which led to those actions, both corporations’ removal of their presence in South Africa, the effects this had on South Africa, and their reemergence in a post-apartheid state are examined. It will be shown that, despite the public relations campaigns of both Coke and Pepsi, far more importance was placed on their products’ profitability than the well-being of the black Africans who produced, delivered, or consumed the soft drinks. However, both companies found their actions during …


Mentor-Teaching In The English Classroom, Timothy R. Blue Jun 2009

Mentor-Teaching In The English Classroom, Timothy R. Blue

English Dissertations

This dissertation is a rhetorical analysis of the theories and practices surrounding student-centered mentor-teaching. I examine textual representations of the teacher/student relationship as well as theories and practices involved in the discursive formation of teacher/student relationships, examining the intersection (or lack thereof) between the ways we as researchers talk about teacher/student relationship formation and the way(s) such relationships form in the “real world” of the English classroom. This institutional critique of teacher/student relationships draws on the works of ancient rhetorical scholars like Quintillian and Socrates, and on the post-1980 scholarship of Robert Connors, Lad Tobin, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Parker …