English Language and Literature Commons^™

From Beyond The Grave: Dead Narrators In Young Adult Literature, Jessica L. Branton

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

While scholars and critics have explored various aspects of young adult literature, few have focused on the popular, but odd, use of dead narrators. When examining the dead narrators of Veronica Roth’s Allegiant, Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why, Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall, and Jess Rothenberg’s The Catastrophic History of You and Me, it becomes clear that the dead narrators are used as a foil for adolescent growth and maturation, and they also allow young readers to empathize with and accept death through the protagonists. These protagonists experience a proto-adulthood as they die too soon to …

Black Hawk In Translation: Indigenous Critique And Liberal Guilt In The 1847 Dutch Edition Of Life Of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, Frank Kelderman

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Lingua Franca Afloat And Ashore: Contact English In American Sea Fiction, 1824 To 1914, Fredrik Reidar Stark

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines how American sea writers between 1824 and 1914 promoted new perceptions of English as a various and expanding intercultural and international language. It argues that presentations of language contact form a critically underemphasized component of American nautical literature. It surveys how such presentations take shape in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot (1824) and The Crater (1847), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years before the Mast (1840). It asserts that Herman Melville’s innovative presentations of contact between pidgins and native varieties of English in Typee (1846) and Omoo …

Workers, Athletes And Artists: The Historical Continuity Of White Control Of Black America, Courtney Walton

Masters Theses

From the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first century, black Americans have been subject to different forms of control. This subjection of blacks to societal demands arose in part because black people are viewed as inferior to white people. Because of this misconstrued perception, black people are forced to present an acceptable level of blackness to prevent punishment. Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch" (1938), Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928), and Langston Hughes's "The Negro Artist and Racial Mountain" (1926) detail their lives at the tum of the …

The Mountains At The End Of The World: Subcultural Appropriations Of Appalachia And The Hillbilly Image, 1990-2010, Paul L. Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

There is an aversion within the field of Appalachian Studies to addressing the cultural formulations of the Appalachian/hillbilly/mountaineer as an icon of aggressive resistance. The aversion is understandable, as for far too long images of the irrationally and savagely violent mountaineer were integral to the most gross popular culture stereotypes of Appalachia. Media consumers often take pleasure or comfort in these images, which usually occur in a reactionary context with the hillbilly as either a type of nationally necessary savage OR as an unregenerate barbarian against whom a national civilization will triumph and benefit by the struggle.

I bookend my …

[Review Of The Book Looking For Lorraine: The Radiant And Radical Life Of Lorraine Hansberry, By I. Perry], Kaa Vonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Chicago, Illinois, native, Lorraine Hansberry wrote the highly acclaimed A Raisin in the Sun (1959), the first play produced on Broadway by a Black woman. The play's title is inspired by one of poet Langston Hughes's poems, "Harlem," and focuses on a Black American family with dreams of buying a home in a white neighborhood in segregated Chicago. A Raisin in the Sun is taught widely in high schools and colleges in America, and most of us who are aware of Hansberry know about the critical success of her play, but do we know much more than that about …

The Mockery Of Things: Material Culture And Domestic Ideology In The Detective Fiction Of Anna Katharine Green, Claire Meldrum

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The Mockery of Things: Material Culture and Domestic Ideology in the Detective Fiction of Anna Katharine Green examines how a popular genre author like Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) uses objects to articulate middle-class identity and social constructions in late-nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century America. During that era, the home as both a physical space and an ideological signifier was a central tenet in American middle-class identity. Focusing on domestically situated objects – clothing, household furnishings and domestic architecture – this dissertation considers how such items, which have tended to be read in support of domestic identity, instead function within the context …

The Intermedial Politics Of Handwritten Newspapers In The 19th-Century U.S., Mark A. Mattes

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Handwritten newspapers appeared in a variety of social contexts in the 19th-century U.S.1 The largest extant portion of 19th-century handwritten newspapers emerged from home and school settings. More far-flung examples include those written aboard ships during exploratory and military voyages. Others were produced within institutions such as hospitals and asylums. Such works were written during times of privation, including life in an army regiment or a prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War. At other times, handwritten newspapers accompanied efforts at westward settlement and transcontinental railway journeys. Impromptu papers could follow in the wake of natural disasters that knocked out print-based …

Integration Of Local Poetic Voices: An Interview With Lawson Fusao Inada, Alma Rosa Alvarez, John Rafael Almaguer

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

An interview with Lawson Fusoa Inada

Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Valerie Kennedy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs in The Reluctant Fundamentalist” Valerie Kennedy analyzes the interrelation of individual subjectivity and global capitalism and the conflict between two belief systems in Mohsin Hamid’s novel. These are, first, a neoliberal system that sees individuals as rationally self-interested, mobile, economic units, and, second, a system based on a humanist definition of individuals as defined by nation, family, and tradition. Changez, the novel’s protagonist, initially endorses the first, but later rejects it for the second, due to his growing awareness of the impact on Pakistan of American geopolitics after 9/11. The essay also examines …

An Exploratory Study Of Acculturation Experiences Of Graduate Student Immigrants At The University Of San Francisco, Courtney Lamar

Master's Theses

This study explores the shared challenges during the acculturation process of graduate student immigrants pursuing higher education in the United States. 13 graduate student immigrants at the University of San Francisco discuss their experiences of cultural adjustment into U.S. culture. Through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, this study seeks to understand the acculturation experiences of graduate student immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. This analysis is based on the individual-level experience examining attitudes and acculturation strategies in the dominant society. Analysis, possibly policy implication for institutions of higher education, and possible directions for future research …

Alienation, And Its Antidote, Anna Nissley

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This poster visually portrays and distills arguments within the paper of the same name, outlining its principal arguments and incorporating pictures of people/landscapes discussed within.

Visionaries Of The Road, Storm A. Wright

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

Cultures Of American Theology, Evan Colon

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

Mislabeled Muses, Deborah L. Dougherty

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

Rebellion And Change On The Road Poster, Natalie Rude

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article talks about rebellion, which has always been a prominent piece of American history, but it has always been associated with world changing events. Rebellion is an action that is anything, regardless of size, that is out of the ordinary that results in personal change while on the road. Unfortunately, Rebellion on the road is gendered, meaning that while men can rebel and change wherever they wish, women can only rebel on the road, and all the personal changes women make disappear as soon as they leave the road. This is largely due to the social spaces constructed by …

The Road That Got Us Here, Kayla M. Rotz

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article attempts to explain the romanticism of Native American culture existing in The United States and how it came to be. Through a chain of events this romanticism began. Forced Migration caused a social divide creating a separate social space for Native American people. Because of this negative social space we may see hegemony begin to take place. The American Government took Native children from their homes and forced them to assimilate into the general American population, thus creating a domino effect. In many cases children carry on a culture for other generations. However if these children are forced …

A Genealogy Of Personal Development In Modern America, Kelsey M. Binder

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

Societal Rebirth: The Importance Of Spirituality, Lauren Rothstein

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

The two texts Grapes of Wrath and Black Elk Speaks both include moments of anonymous forces imposing systematic modernization on society. Through the controversial subject of societal rebirths, traditionally defined through employment and steady food source availability. I propose an approach to societal rebirths that emphasizes the importance of spiritual connection to the land through a critical analysis of Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope and Leopold’s theory of land ethic.

Life On Wheels, James C. Mangum

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This analysis offers an insightful look into an aspect of travel and modernity that has gone seemingly unnoticed in the culture of American Mobility. As a social product space is created to serve the function of something integral in society. Working individuals need offices for example, students need schools, and citizens need residences. These are created spaces of society that intersect the realities of life, and an automobile is how we get to and from these spaces. Modernity has allowed us to stretch the ideas of mobility and space by combining the two. This analysis is an in depth look …

Automobility And The Future Of Transport, Lukas Koch

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

The Return Of The Dead: Resurrecting Chappell's Family Gathering, Jonathan Moore

Master's Theses

This thesis examines Fred Chappell’s virtually overlooked collection of poetry Family Gathering (2000), and how the poems operate within the mode of the grotesque. I argue that the poems illuminate both the southern grotesque and Roland Barthes’s theory of photography’s Operator, Spectator, and Spectrum. I address Family Gathering as a family photo album full of still shots, snapshots, and even selfies, which illumines how Chappell’s use of the grotesque in this collection derives more from its original association with visual arts rather than only depicting the grotesque typically associated with characteristics deemed explicitly shocking or terrifying. I argue that …

‘The Shadow And The Law’: Stevenson, Nabokov And Dostoevsky, Rose France

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Vladimir Nabokov's comments in lectures at Cornell praising Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde while condemning Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and compares the two novels' treatment of the double in their central character with Nabokov's Humbert Humbert in Lolita.

The Persistence Of The Past Into The Future: Indigenous Futurism And Future Slave Narratives As Transformative Resistance In Nnedi Okorafor's The Book Of Phoenix, Ellen Eubanks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, a number of authors have written science fiction works that express the concerns and experiences of marginalized people groups, including those in postcolonial societies, Indigenous/First Nations peoples, and other racial minorities. These works provide counter narratives to that of much canonical science fiction, which developed from narrative forms that often explicitly and implicitly supported colonial ideologies, and still often includes these ideologies today. This thesis analyzes the way The Book of Phoenix (2015) by the NigerianAmerican speculative fiction author Nnedi Okorafor uses a combination of the forms of Indigenous futurism and what Isiah Lavender terms meta-slavery narratives …

Beauty And The Beasts: Making Places With Literary Animals Of Florida, Haili A. Alcorn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Place theory examines the relationship between human identity and physical locations, asking how meaningful attachments are formed between people and the spots they visit or in which they live. Literature of place exhibits this relationship and the myriad ways humans connect to their environment through storytelling, both fictional and nonfictional. Florida literature, an emerging and dynamic genre, features characters, cultures, and histories heavily embedded in place. Florida’s places also abound with animal presences, and literature about Florida almost always illustrates significant human-animal interactions that drive plots and character development. Therefore, Florida literature invites consideration of how animals influence human attachment …

In Another Person’S Skin: Adaptations Of To Kill A Mockingbird And The Characterization Of Scout Finch, Eric A. Pitz

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

Representations Of Women In The Literature Of The U.S.-Mexico War, Janel M. Simons

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation examines figures of women as represented in the literature of the U.S.-Mexico war in order to think through the ways in which the border conflict was preserved in nineteenth-century U.S. American collective memory. Central to my dissertation is a consideration of the intersections of history, myth, legend, and fiction in the memorialization of this war. This dissertation demonstrates that a close look at fictionalized accounts of women’s experiences of and roles in the U.S.-Mexico war highlights the ways in which historical fictions influence how we remember this moment of our collective past.

Focusing on popular accounts of the …

Fine Southern Gentlemen: The Three Beaux Of Edna Pontellier, Keli Masten

The Hilltop Review

Much of the literary criticism on Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has focused upon the main character, Edna Pontellier, and her journey of self-discovery, but the surrounding cast is rich with personalities as diverse and enlightening as Edna’s own. While most of the characters seem clearly defined as to their values, desires, and how they reconcile any dissonance they might face, and Edna Pontellier might seem like the only person suffering the torment of this discord, each character is actually negotiating a careful playing field replete with rules, regulations, and strict penalties if one is to run afoul. This essay explores …

Individualism And Mobility, Markus Magiera

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

Cultural And Narrative Shifts Of Nineteenth Century Children's Literature In Hawthorne's Wonder Book For Girls And Boys, Kristen Clark Brandt

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Both folklorists and literary critics have been drawn to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s body of work because of his distinctive style and incorporation of folk motifs. Such motif-spotting presents no challenge in Hawthorne’s juvenile literature like his retellings from Greek mythology in Wonder Book for Girls and Boys; however, contemporary folklore redirects the focus of this scholarship to “how particular literary uses of folklore fit into a larger, more fundamental concept of what folklore is and how and what folklore communicates” (de Caro & Jordan 2015:15). Hawthorne’s work interacts with other forms of cultural expression in the nineteenth century such as dominant …