American Literature Commons^™

Navigating With Harriet Quimby, Rachael Peckham

English Faculty Research

My maternal grandmother Ruth never missed an episode of the game show Jeopardy! One night in 2008, while I was working on my dissertation about a long-forgotten aviatrix with whom my family and I share connections, Grandma Ruth called to tell me about a Jeopardy! clue she had just heard: "The first woman to fly across the English Channel." My grandmother was reserved and soft-spoken, but I imagine her slapping the armrests of the recliner, disturbing the outstretched cat at her side, and beating all three contestants to the buzzer: "Who is Harriet Quimby?"--the subject of my dissertation.

After A Funeral, Before A Test; And Other Stories, David Stewart Robinson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

After a Funeral, Before a Test; and Other Stories is a collection of nine fictional short stories. Their focus is diverse in regard to multiple aspects of creative fiction: subject matter, theme, style, setting and characters. Despite the array of material, one common method was to provide narration that would invite readers to make their own interpretation rather than to present overt, didactic stories. This narrative strategy was accomplished by using fictional concepts of setting, the objective correlative, and literary minimalism. Other elements include surrealism, Hemingway’s “iceberg effect,” and psychologically complex narrators. Literary influences include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great …

Literacy, Discourse, And Identity: The Working-Class Appalachian Woman Academic, Sarah Marie Mcconnell

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Drawing on conversations about the politics surrounding literacy acquisition, I take a deeper look into the effects of obtaining membership within an academic discourse community on Appalachian women from the working class. The tensions that develop between the two opposing discourses promotes a sense of loss as they create distance between these women and their home community, alter relationships, and disrupt identity. Working-class Appalachian women occupy the borderlands between discourses: one foot in their Appalachian community; the other in their academic community. They negotiate their fragmented identities in order to play the appropriate role within the appropriate context. Their status …

Storm Chaser, Samir Ali Abdel-Aziz

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Storm Chaser is a work of fiction that uses strange, almost supernatural occurrences to symbolically represent various meanings and truths for different characters. Works of fiction that influenced Storm Chaser include The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel. Reappearing themes include sacrifice, the desire to live a life of purpose, freewill, and the fear of becoming one’s parents.

Persistence: "My Grandmother's Eyes" And Other Memories, Christine Fede Williams

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Persistence: “My Grandmother’s Eyes” and Other Memories is a collection of five essays based on the author’s life. “My Grandmother’s Eyes” depicts the difficult, but loving, communication between the author and her grandmother, who speaks Italian as a first language. “Christmas: A Journey” compares and contrasts the celebration of Christmas in the author’s Italian-American family and her celebration of Christmas as an adult. “Room in My Heart” describes the events leading up to a decision to adopt a child. “Renaming Oriental Avenue” follows three threads: the author’s relationship to the Monopoly game; the author’s study of the Japanese language and …

Nothing Personal : A Collection Of Nonfiction Essays Exposing The Perverted Experiences Of Life, Interactions, And Responses, Benjamin P. Taylor

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Nothing Personal is a collection of nonfiction essays playfully written in response to subtle misunderstandings. Such misunderstandings, in this creative thesis, are fueled by an unexplained divorce, alcoholism, the new absence of love, and the difference between the personal and the traditional church. The essays also expose the science of conversation and other lighter occurrences and happenings in an esteemed pursuit to live life more humorously.

The Description Of The Characters In Herman Melville's White-Jacket, Or The World In A Man-Of-War, Toru Nishiura

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Many characters who have various personalities app ear in Herman Melville’s White-Jacket . However, few critics have comprehensively examined the action and the characteristics of them in detail. In this thesis, I explore Melville’s depiction of the battleship world in this novel by clarifying the narrator ’s standard to judge ot her characters. In White-Jacket, the whole story is narrated by White-Jacket; therefore, the characteristics of his narrative clarify the theme of this novel. I start with an analysis of his narrative and examine whether he is a reliable narrator or not. Then, I explore the relationship between the battleship …

Canary In The Dark, Andrea Fekete

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

I began researching Appalachian culture in 1998. I wanted to tell a story about conflict and beauty while revealing my vision of who my people were/are. I strived to create a fiction not unlike poetry with realistic and minimalist features to give Appalachia the most accurate face possible as perceived by me through my own lens.

I wanted to explore the idea of beauty: Virginia’s (the main character) ideas about her beauty, her culture and other cultures. What is beauty? Who defines it? Can it be found everywhere? How? What does it look like when it is somewhere you wouldn’t …

Hit The Ground Running: A Novella And Other Stories, Lisa Robinson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This creative thesis contains a collection of short stories divided into two parts. The first half, a novella entitled Clothes on a Line, consists of a series of linked vignettes that depict the life of a young, unnamed Appalachian girl and her relationship with her promiscuous mother. Throughout the work, the narrator struggles to create and come to terms with her identity as she experiences the adversities of sexual abuse, death, alcoholism, and the looming “secret” of her unknown father. The second half, Consumed and Other Stories, features several short pieces that, while not inter-related like those in …