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Articles 31 - 56 of 56
Full-Text Articles in American Literature
Beyond "Main Street": Small Towns In Post-"Revolt" American Literature, Rachael Price
Beyond "Main Street": Small Towns In Post-"Revolt" American Literature, Rachael Price
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
“Beyond Main Street” examines the impact and legacy of the literary movement that Carl Van Doren, in an infamous 1920 article from The Nation, referred to as the “revolt from the village.” This movement, which is widely acknowledged to encompass such writers as Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis, pushed back against the primacy of the heretofore-dominant pastoral tradition when it came to depictions of rural America. These authors sought to create a more accurate portrayal of the small town, one that, while not completely eschewing the pastoral, also exposed the more seedy side of village life. Critics …
“Maybe It Was You”: The Implications Of Southern Gothic Elements Of Criminality, Sexuality, And Race In Truman Capote’S In Cold Blood, Shirley Ellen Rash
“Maybe It Was You”: The Implications Of Southern Gothic Elements Of Criminality, Sexuality, And Race In Truman Capote’S In Cold Blood, Shirley Ellen Rash
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is frequently the subject of critical analysis of its genre, its factual accuracy, and its style. Previous critical examinations of the text often briefly acknowledged the thematic connections between this text and Capote’s previous southern gothic work but do so without substantially delving into these similarities. For many, the text’s Kansas setting prevents the book from properly being considered southern gothic because Kansas is commonly perceived as the most quintessentially wholesome and American of states while the U.S. South is frequently deemed the site of taboo and undesirable activity. This thesis questions this dichotomy and …
A Light In Darkness, Oscar Micheaux: Entrepreneur Intellectual Agitator, Airic Hughes
A Light In Darkness, Oscar Micheaux: Entrepreneur Intellectual Agitator, Airic Hughes
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Oscar Micheaux was a luminary who served as an agent of racial uplift, with a unique message to share with the world on behalf of the culturally marginalized African Americans. He produced projects that conveyed the complexity of the true black experience with passion and creative courage. His films empowered black audiences and challenged conventional stereotypes of black culture and potential. The legacy of Oscar Micheaux is historically unparalleled among his contemporaries. He transcended traditionally held perspectives about what black people could accomplish. The consciousness within his work still heavily influences black entertainment today. This study seeks to add to …
Past Traumas, Present Griefs: Exploring The Effects Of Colonialism, Microaggressions, And Stereotyping From Wild West Shows To Indigenous Literature, Kimberly Dawn Allen
Past Traumas, Present Griefs: Exploring The Effects Of Colonialism, Microaggressions, And Stereotyping From Wild West Shows To Indigenous Literature, Kimberly Dawn Allen
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Native Americans have long been, and continue to be, victims of racism, microaggression, and stereotyping. This continued exposure to violence, degradation, belittling, and discrimination work in the forefront to historical trauma and unresolved grief which has led to an increase in the numbers of individuals suffering from mental illness within the Indigenous population. Colonization created a long history of trauma and genocide that effects generations of Native American people, not just the individuals on which the horrific sins were committed. Using the lens of disability studies, this project will examine the ways in which portrayals of Native American people in …
The Spectacle Of Orphanhood: Reimagining Orphans In Postbellum Fiction, Afrin Zeenat
The Spectacle Of Orphanhood: Reimagining Orphans In Postbellum Fiction, Afrin Zeenat
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Orphan iconography has always been deployed in American literature and culture, but nineteenth-century American literature, fiction in particular, abounds in orphans, both real and imaginary. The orphan’s amphibious nature is hailed and demonized as the epitome of individualism and unbridled freedom, and also as the location of society’s anxiety. This complicated and conflicted construction of orphans animates the Social and cultural realm in postbellum America, foregrounding issues of class, race, and gender.
Immigrant Cosmopolitanism: Jewish-American Immigrant Narratives And Modernist Cosmopolitan Aesthetics, Mindy Renee Trenary
Immigrant Cosmopolitanism: Jewish-American Immigrant Narratives And Modernist Cosmopolitan Aesthetics, Mindy Renee Trenary
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
I propose to show in this study how Jewish-American authors of mass media immigrant works from the first three decades of the 20th century utilize a form of modernist cosmopolitan aesthetics to challenge notions that these works are unworthy of study and appreciation. These authors, not happy with the classifications and aesthetics available to them as immigrant authors, borrow from other ideologies and aesthetic schools to create an aesthetic system meeting the needs of immigrant individuals. In theory, this system, which I have termed 'immigrant cosmopolitanism,' meets the needs of these individuals and capitalizes on the authors' diverse backgrounds and …
Architectures For A Future South: Posthumanism And Ruin In The Novels Of Cormac Mccarthy, Joshua Ryan Jackson
Architectures For A Future South: Posthumanism And Ruin In The Novels Of Cormac Mccarthy, Joshua Ryan Jackson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This thesis reads the novels of Cormac McCarthy as posthuman southern literature to explain why fiction from the South after World War II could no longer convey a sense of place during postmodernity: that is, because the region's culture and economy were transitioning from predominantly humanistic thinking (i.e., believing that humans [and especially southern humans] are supreme beings) to predominantly posthumanistic thinking (i.e., believing that humans are not as supreme as they think they are). It argues that we can trace this ideological change over time via structural shifts in the South’s architectural record, which we see in the ruins …
Immigrant Labor In Contemporary Southern Literature, 1980-2010, Huseyin Altindis
Immigrant Labor In Contemporary Southern Literature, 1980-2010, Huseyin Altindis
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation project emerges from an interest in immigrant labor, the globalization of southern literature, and the ways in which laboring bodies, specifically those of food processing workers, casino workers and motel workers, are represented in contemporary literary and cultural productions. Literary and cultural productions about immigrants and immigrant labor aim to problematize and challenge the dominant perception of immigration and narratives of immigration that continue to perpetuate ideas of exploitation and alterity. In doing so, these texts contribute to the reconstruction of the U.S. South as a global region and to the liberation of southern literature from traditional conceptual …
Trashed: The Myth Of The Southern Poor White, April Elizabeth Thompson
Trashed: The Myth Of The Southern Poor White, April Elizabeth Thompson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The fact of class has been a powerful tool in the process of identity formation, particularly in the American South, which has been viewed as a region apart from the national imaginary. To counter this exclusion, Southerners have often relied on stereotypes. One of the most prevalent and tragic of these is the stereotype of poor white trash, a construction that has been utilized to insist upon elite white Southerners' exceptionalism and innocence and to assert their rightful place in American historiography. While it is difficult to calculate their level of success, as perceptions of the region have varied through …
Monsters In Common: Identity And Community In Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11, Jeremy J. Burns
Monsters In Common: Identity And Community In Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11, Jeremy J. Burns
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
In the aftermath 11 September, 2001, postapocalyptic science fiction has offered a way to make sense of the events of that day, as well as the years of social, cultural and political upheaval that have followed. In many ways, 9/11 began immediately to take on apocalyptic significance in the American national narrative, seemingly marking the end of one period and the beginning of another, entirely different one. To think of 9/11 as a kind of apocalyptic break with the past, however, does not tell the whole story. Moreover, such thinking denies key historical linkages between the American response to 9/11 …
The Influence Of Literacy On The Lives Of Twentieth Century Southern Female Minority Figures, Laura Leighann Dicks
The Influence Of Literacy On The Lives Of Twentieth Century Southern Female Minority Figures, Laura Leighann Dicks
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The American South has long been a region associated with myth and fantasy; in popular culture especially, the region is consistently tied to skewed notions of the antebellum South that include images of large plantation homes, women in hoop skirts, and magnolia trees that manifest in television and film representations such as Gone With the Wind (1939). Juxtaposed with these idealized, mythic images is the hillbilly trope, reinforced by radio shows such as Lum and Abner, and films such as Scatterbrain (1940). Out of this idea comes the southern illiteracy stereotype, which suggests that southerners are collectively unconcerned with education …
Still Circling The Sun, Stefan Rafael Delagarza
Still Circling The Sun, Stefan Rafael Delagarza
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This work is a collection of traditional and experimental short stories that explore dynamic human relationships in a variety of settings: a bunker, a beach, and a family home, to name a few. Each character is on a journey to find deeper meaning in his or her life, and oftentimes, this means finding a path to forgiveness.
Salman Rushdie In The Postmodern Current: New Venues, New Values, Aya Akkawi
Salman Rushdie In The Postmodern Current: New Venues, New Values, Aya Akkawi
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The aim of this study is to prove that Rushdie's recent novels are not postcolonial in the sense that they abandon the colonial/colonized binary, the embrace of hybridity, and the theme of undermining the coercion and domination of the colonial country assumed in postcolonial discourse. Instead, his recent fiction is labeled postmodern because it is filled with exuberant postmodern techniques such as historiographic metafiction, the hegemony of mode of productions, the postmodern fragmented self, and suspicions of grand narrative. Furthermore, I will argue that there is an association between Rushdie's postmodern narrative technique (his mixing of history and fantasy) and …
Facing The Wreck: Death, Optimism, And The Fragmented Form, Rachael Marie Schaffner
Facing The Wreck: Death, Optimism, And The Fragmented Form, Rachael Marie Schaffner
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Walter Benjamin described history as a winged angel who faces backwards, staring perpetually into the past as the violent winds of destiny carry him into the future (Illuminations). Despite a western, post-enlightenment myth of eternal progress, the wreckage of human contributions to history is clearly evident in our 21st-century understanding of anthropogenic impact on global ecology. In the context of these ecological crises (and the resulting political and economic questions), postmodern novels reveal a powerful ability to imagine different ways of living and interacting with the world. This thesis traces the relationship between fragmentation, death, and liminal experiences …
Shape-Note Singing, Traci Rae Letellier
Shape-Note Singing, Traci Rae Letellier
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Shape-Note Singing is a collection of poems about what is loved, lost, and being lost. Placed in the landscape of the Ozark foothills in the northwest corner of the state of Arkansas, the collection explores the poet’s connection to kin, land, and lore. Shape-Note Singing is the story of plain-spoken folks of simple origins telling the truth as they see it and as best they know how.
Queer Tastes: An Exploration Of Food And Sexuality In Southern Lesbian Literature, Jacqueline Kristine Lawrence
Queer Tastes: An Exploration Of Food And Sexuality In Southern Lesbian Literature, Jacqueline Kristine Lawrence
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Southern identities are undoubtedly influenced by the region's foodways. However, the South tends to neglect and even to negate certain peoples and their identities. Women, especially lesbians, are often silenced within southern literature. Where Tennessee Williams used literature to bridge gaps between gay men and the South, southern lesbian literature severely lacks a traceable history of such connections. The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the ways in which southern lesbians manipulate food metaphors to describe their sexual desires and identities. This thesis only begins to lay out a history of southern lesbian literature as many lesbian writers …
Dead Dad Project, Adrian Mcbride
Dead Dad Project, Adrian Mcbride
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
A creative work of fiction centered around two friends. The work takes place during their senior year of high school, and investigates how their friendship is changed during the course of that year.
Cascadia Don't Fall Apart, John Lewis Englehardt
Cascadia Don't Fall Apart, John Lewis Englehardt
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This short story collection explores the tenuousness of relationships--both romantic and familial--against the backdrop of Washington State's regional identity. These stories feature tsunami debris washing up on the peninsula, a biologist combating wetland violations in Olympia, a funerary artist in Seattle, young lovers attempting to be sexually explorative, a young man so befuddled by college graduation that he joins the infantry, and an adult son attempting to comfort his sick father.
You Can't Get There From Here: Movement Sf And The Picaresque, Robert Glen Wilson
You Can't Get There From Here: Movement Sf And The Picaresque, Robert Glen Wilson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the …
Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese
Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …
Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams
Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.
My Master's thesis …
Mossy Bottom Golf And Hunt Club, Andrew Joseph Albertson
Mossy Bottom Golf And Hunt Club, Andrew Joseph Albertson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This is the story of Greg Goforth and Rick Hale, the owner and director of golf, respectively, of the Mossy Bottom Golf and Hunt Club. Greg and Rick work together through many comic mishaps in attempt to bring the 2015 U.S. Open to Mossy Bottom, Mississippi.
Nature And The Environment In Ana Castillo's So Far From God And Elmaz Abinader's Children Of The Roojme, Rosario Nolasco-Bell
Nature And The Environment In Ana Castillo's So Far From God And Elmaz Abinader's Children Of The Roojme, Rosario Nolasco-Bell
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This study analyzes the role of nature and the environment in two works by the ethnic minority women writers Ana Castillo and Elmaz Abinader. The works examined are Castillo's novel So Far From God and Abinader's memoir Children of the Roojme. My research begins with a review of these authors' ouvre, contextualizing it within the themes here addressed. It continues with an analysis of a spectrum of Arab American and Chicano/a works that lend fruitful content and perspective to an ecocritical analysis. Although these two works are dissimilar in genre, my study demonstrates significant parallels in the following areas: characters' …
The Children Of Cain: Melville's Use Of The Abject Lineage From The Bible, Joseph Matthew Meyer
The Children Of Cain: Melville's Use Of The Abject Lineage From The Bible, Joseph Matthew Meyer
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This study looks at how the abject lineage--consisting of Cain, Ishmael and Esau--has played an influential role in the works of Herman Melville. While many critics have exploredthe relationship between Melville and these characters in the past, my study proposes that the author was intimately aware of the differences between these characters and their relationship to God and used these differences to compose his works. Ultimately, Melville struggled with the need for an abject lineage, and this struggle manifests itself most prominently in the evolving silence of Christ from Mardi to "Bartleby."
Happily Ever After? Redefining Womanhood And Marriage In Nineteenth-Century Novels, Laura Elizabeth Cox
Happily Ever After? Redefining Womanhood And Marriage In Nineteenth-Century Novels, Laura Elizabeth Cox
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and Henry James challenged patriarchal conventions and assumptions by redefining womanhood and marriage in their novels, particularly by breaking from the traditional marriage ending. While Pride and Prejudice, North and South, and Jane Eyre end in marriage, these novels depict a freely chosen companionate marriage based on equality; Villette replaces the typical marriage ending with complete independence; and Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady both portray the decisive rejection of the marriage ideal for a life of renunciation. This thesis analyzes the ways in which these novels challenge nineteenth-century society, as well …
Winter And Springtime: The Passing Of A Literary Generation In 1901, Kenneth R. Walker
Winter And Springtime: The Passing Of A Literary Generation In 1901, Kenneth R. Walker
Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science
No abstract provided.