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Theses and Dissertations

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Terror, Performance And Post 9/11 Literature, Elise Christine Silva Apr 2011

Terror, Performance And Post 9/11 Literature, Elise Christine Silva

Theses and Dissertations

This project explores 9/11 as a performative act that is re-represented in post 9/11 fiction. Although many scholars have engaged spectacle theory to understand the event, this project asserts that performance theory gives a more dynamic and ethical reading of post 9/11 literatures like Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Don DeLillo's Falling Man. The aforementioned post 9/11 texts showcase narrative performances and also give formal performances for an audience of readers. Theatricality in these texts promotes dialogue and healing through interactive communication.


“That I Should Always Listen To My Body And Love It”: Finding The Mind-Body Connection In Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Slave Texts, Emily Stuart Watkins Apr 2011

“That I Should Always Listen To My Body And Love It”: Finding The Mind-Body Connection In Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Slave Texts, Emily Stuart Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the presence of the movement theories of Irmgard Bartenieff, Peggy Hackney, and Rudolf Von Laban in the following texts: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself (1845), The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave (1831), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Linda Brent (1861), Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose (1986) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). The terms and phrases of movement theory will be introduced to the contemporary critical discussion already surrounding the texts, both furthering and challenging existing arguments.


Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, And The Rhetoric Of Aesthetics, Meridith Reed Apr 2011

Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, And The Rhetoric Of Aesthetics, Meridith Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Kenneth Burke and John Dewey each published books on aesthetics in the 1930s. These texts present parallel conceptions of aesthetics as holding a distinctly rhetorical role in society. My project is to line up these theories, focusing particularly on two key terms in each theory: Burke's eloquence and Dewey's expression. Together, these two terms explain what constitutes an aesthetic experience and explain how an aesthetic experience can open up individuals in a society to a variety of perspectives and identifications. As individuals are allowed to inhabit the experiences of others through their interactions with art, they are poised to …


Gesamtkunstwerk And Other Trifles: Poems, Derk A. Olthof Apr 2011

Gesamtkunstwerk And Other Trifles: Poems, Derk A. Olthof

Theses and Dissertations

In all their various categories, the arts serve as the dominant subject matter of Gesamtkunstwerk and Other Trifles. The title itself begins with a German word-meld—gesamt (total) + kunstwerk (work of art). Thus a primary aim of these poems is to bring as many elements of art together as possible and to use their various forms (self-portraits, nocturnes, odes, etc.) as metaphorical frameworks that inform abstractions such as regret ("How to Draw Regret"), psychological disorders ("Insomnia Nocturnes") and confusion in how one should feel about living realities as opposed to inanimate objects ("Dead Starling"). Most of the poems …


Reviving The Latent Content Of Alchemy In William Shakespeare's Othello, Sarita Clara Rich Apr 2011

Reviving The Latent Content Of Alchemy In William Shakespeare's Othello, Sarita Clara Rich

Theses and Dissertations

While many of Shakespeare's alchemical allusions are noted for their language of positive regeneration and healing, the playwright's departures from these conventional uses of alchemy deserve further attention. This essay presents an examination of inversions in the redemptive alchemical paradigm of Othello, a play whose connections to alchemy are not announced by obvious references to gold making, the philosopher's stone, or other key terms relating to the discourse of the opus that a modern audience is likely to recognize. I argue that in Othello, alchemical allusions are more subtly deployed in the language that describes Othello and Desdemona's …


Between The Camera And The Gun: The Problem Of Epistemic Violence In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Katherine Ann Rich Apr 2011

Between The Camera And The Gun: The Problem Of Epistemic Violence In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Katherine Ann Rich

Theses and Dissertations

Since the 75th anniversary of the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane in 2003, a growing number of journalists and historians writing about the disaster have incorporated Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God as part of the official historical record of the hurricane. These writers often border on depicting Their Eyes as the authentic experience of black migrant workers impacted by the hurricane and subsequent flood. Within the novel itself, however, Hurston theorizes on the potential epistemic violence that occurs when a piece of evidence—a photograph, fallen body, or verbal artifact—is used to judge a person. Without a person's …


Signifyin' Black Power: Soul On Ice And The Subversion Of Normative Whiteness, James David Fife Apr 2011

Signifyin' Black Power: Soul On Ice And The Subversion Of Normative Whiteness, James David Fife

Theses and Dissertations

This study emphasizes the methodology of linguistic resistance in Eldridge Cleaver's best-known work, Soul on Ice. Through a process of signification, Cleaver works to redefine key words and concepts that form a web of racialist and racist thinking called normative whiteness. By emptying key terms, like those of "life," "liberty," and "property," Cleaver's text attempts to offer a new, less biased foundation on which a more inclusive and pluralistic American narrative can be written, a move that both makes his rhetoric significantly different from that of many contemporary resistance writers and positions him as an important link in a …


"It's What You Do That Defines You": Batman As Moral Philosopher, Vilja Olivia Johnson Mar 2011

"It's What You Do That Defines You": Batman As Moral Philosopher, Vilja Olivia Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

In 2008, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight became the most commercially successful comic book adaptation to date. His film, which highlights the humanity and fallibility of Batman, builds on a long character history while also functioning as an individual work. Nolan's depiction of Batman, which follows a long progression towards postmodernism in graphic novel versions of the character, is just one of multiple filmic superhero representations in recent years to depict a darker side of the "superhero" mythos. These films highlight the humanity and fallibility of these heroic figures and place their actions under scrutiny. In Nolan's two Batman films, …


The "Crafting" Of Austen: Handicraft, Arts And Crafts, And The Reception Of Austen During The Victorian Period, Natalie Quinn Mar 2011

The "Crafting" Of Austen: Handicraft, Arts And Crafts, And The Reception Of Austen During The Victorian Period, Natalie Quinn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the significant but often overlooked relationship between Jane Austen's works and the body of criticism about them and the two major craft movements of the nineteenth century: the Handicraft Movement and the Arts and Crafts Movement. The connections occur at two important moments during that century—first, at the moment of Austen's career during the Regency/Romantic period, and second, at the Victorian moment of the years surrounding the 1869 publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir about Austen. In both of these moments, critics and reviewers repeatedly respond to Austen's life and works by using craft-related diction. This diction …


Letting Go And The Silence That Remains: The Effects Of Translating Point-Of-View From Text To Film In The Remains Of The Day And Never Let Me Go, Jennifer L. Price Mar 2011

Letting Go And The Silence That Remains: The Effects Of Translating Point-Of-View From Text To Film In The Remains Of The Day And Never Let Me Go, Jennifer L. Price

Theses and Dissertations

Kazuo Ishiguro's novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go exhibit many of the same characteristics as his other works. Out of all of those works, however, only these two novels have been adapted to film as of yet. Because of Ishiguro's reliance on first-person narration and point-of-view his novels are particularly more problematic to adapt to screen. This phenomenon is partially due to the audio-visually dependent medium of film and the camera lens' limitations when it comes to exhibiting character interiority. Therefore, the effect of the translation to screen for both of these films is a …


"Play Your Fan": Exploring Hand Props And Gender On The Restoration Stage Through The Country Wife, The Man Of Mode, The Rover, And The Way Of The World, Jarred Wiehe Jan 2011

"Play Your Fan": Exploring Hand Props And Gender On The Restoration Stage Through The Country Wife, The Man Of Mode, The Rover, And The Way Of The World, Jarred Wiehe

Theses and Dissertations

The full irony and wit of Restoration comedies relies not only on what characters communicate to each other, but also on what they communicate to the audience, both verbally and physically. Hand props help foster this important relationship with the audience as props provide moments of dramatic irony where the visual meaning portrayed through the object complicates the verbal text. Specifically, gendered props such as the fan, the sword, and the pistol visually establish conventions for the sexes, yet are also used to subvert these conventions through gesture, appropriation, or misuse. Thus far, the critical conversation concerning the possibility of …


Constructing The Christian: Agency And Emulation In Old English Poetry, Jennifer Ross Jan 2011

Constructing The Christian: Agency And Emulation In Old English Poetry, Jennifer Ross

Theses and Dissertations

Old English religious verse - born out of a productive fusion between pre-existing Germanic ideals and Christian value-systems brought to England at the end of the sixth century - grapples energetically with the question of how people ought to live morally upright lives pleasing to God. In Beowulf, Judith, Juliana, and The Dream of the Rood, a model for the believer/God relationship is constructed from a common pattern of the Germanic thane/lord relationship, but, like garments cut from the same cloth by different tailors, each poem crafts its subject differently. Still, each is constructed around a …


Pomp And Circumstances: A Film, Danielle Melissovas Thompson Jan 2011

Pomp And Circumstances: A Film, Danielle Melissovas Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Since this is a thesis project about film, I thought it appropriate to acknowledge wellknown films about film in my chapter titles. In their own way, each of these films enhance audiences' understanding of the film industry and the creative and technical skills required in filmmaking. Writing about making my own film has had a similar effect on me because it has made me more aware of my choices and expectations about the film, as well as the collaboration that made it all possible. My thesis project began with a desire to experience every stage of the independent filmmaking process: …


A Rhetoric Of Change: Church Growth And Social Change At The Richmond Outreach Center, Rebekah Holbrook Dec 2010

A Rhetoric Of Change: Church Growth And Social Change At The Richmond Outreach Center, Rebekah Holbrook

Theses and Dissertations

The Richmond Outreach Center “The ROC” is an independent soulwinning megachurch in Richmond, Virginia. This thesis explores how rhetoric plays a role in the rapid growth of this urban church and considers the church’s response—rhetorically and politically—to the city’s social issues. Through a rhetorical analysis of sermons and written texts by Geronimo Aguilar, the ROC’s founder and pastor, it is concluded that Aguilar has generated a rhetoric of change that says social change must come to Richmond and that everyone, both rich and poor, are responsible for change. Aguilar galvanizes an audience to seek social change because he articulates roles …


Murder Will Out: James Hogg's Use Of The Bier-Right In His Minor Works And Confessions, Tanya Ann Terry Dec 2010

Murder Will Out: James Hogg's Use Of The Bier-Right In His Minor Works And Confessions, Tanya Ann Terry

Theses and Dissertations

In The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), James Hogg uses the uncanny trope of the bier-right, a medieval superstitious belief of Christian origin that a murdered corpse will bleed in the presence or at the touch of the actual murderer, to negotiate his struggle with fading belief in local superstitions and religious faith in the Scottish Borders. Examining the origins of the bier-right, court cases involving the bier-right, and Hogg's minor works using the bier-right I offer a comparison of how Hogg manipulates and morphs this trope in Confessions. I also argue that the main …


Anonymous Pseudo-Autobiographies: Passing The New Southern Studies In The Southerner And The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man, Matthew S. Dinger Nov 2010

Anonymous Pseudo-Autobiographies: Passing The New Southern Studies In The Southerner And The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man, Matthew S. Dinger

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to understand the South as a space through which the contested bodies of two literary characters and the men who authored them can be more fully explored: the Ex- Colored Man in James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Nicholas Worth in Walter Hines Page's The Southerner; each appearing within an early twentieth-century novel masquerading as an autobiography. These bodies serve to help us understand how the regional Other of the South has inflicted itself on individuals living in the South and caused an irreparable fracture to the characters' identities forcing them into …


Merit Beyond Any Already Published: Austen And Authorship In The Romantic Age, Rebecca Lee Jensen Ogden Nov 2010

Merit Beyond Any Already Published: Austen And Authorship In The Romantic Age, Rebecca Lee Jensen Ogden

Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades there have been many attempts to pull Austen into the fold of high Romantic literature. On one level, these thematic comparisons are useful, for Austen has long been anachronistically treated as separate from the Romantic tradition. In the past, her writings have essentially straddled Romantic classification, labeled either as hangers-on in the satiric eighteenth-century literary tradition or as early artifacts of a kind of proto-Victorianism. To a large extent, scholars have described Austen as a writer departing from, rather than embracing, the literary trends of the Romantic era. Yet, while recent publications depicting a “Romantic Austen” yield …


Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, And The Changing Romantic, Marianne Lind Baker Nov 2010

Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, And The Changing Romantic, Marianne Lind Baker

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid to late 1700s, men of letters became more and more interested in the natural world. From studies in astronomy to biology, chemistry, and medicine, these "philosophers" pioneered what would become our current scientific categories. While the significance of their contributions to these fields has been widely appreciated historically, the interconnection between these men and their literary counterparts has not. A study of the "Romantic man of science" reveals how much that figure has in common with the traditional "Romantic" literary figure embodied by poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This thesis interrogates connections between Romantic …


Pierced Through The Ear: Poetic Villainy In Othello, Kathleen Emerald Somers Nov 2010

Pierced Through The Ear: Poetic Villainy In Othello, Kathleen Emerald Somers

Theses and Dissertations

The paper examines Othello as metapoetry. Throughout the play, key points of comparison between Iago and Shakespeare's methodologies for employing allegory, symbolism, and mimetic plot and character construction shed light upon Shakespeare's self-reflexive use of poetry as an art of imitation. More specifically, the contrast between Shakespeare and Iago's poetry delineates between dynamic and reductive uses of allegory, emphasizes an Aristotelian model of mimesis that makes reason integral to plot and character formation, and underscores an ethical function to poetry generally. In consequence of the division between Iago and Shakespeare as unethical and ethical poets respectively, critical contention concerning the …


"Who Would Keep An Ancient Form?": In Memoriam And The Metrical Ghost Of Horace, Ryan D. Stewart Nov 2010

"Who Would Keep An Ancient Form?": In Memoriam And The Metrical Ghost Of Horace, Ryan D. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Although Alfred Tennyson's 1850 elegy, In Memoriam, has long been regarded for the quality of its grief and its doubt, the deepened sense of struggle and doubt produced by his allusions to Horace in both the matter and the meter of the poem have not been considered. Attending to both syntactical/tonal allusions and metrical allusions to Horace's Odes in In Memoriam, I will examine Horace's role in creating meaning in Tennyson's poem. Drawing on various critics and Tennyson's own works, I argue that Tennyson was uncommonly familiar with Horace's Odes and Horatian Alcaic (the most common meter of …


Reading Holiness: Agnes Grey, Ælfric, And The Augustinian Hermeneutic, Jessica Caroline Brown Nov 2010

Reading Holiness: Agnes Grey, Ælfric, And The Augustinian Hermeneutic, Jessica Caroline Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Although Anne Brontë's first novel, Agnes Grey, presents itself as a didactic treatise, Brontë's work departs from many accepted Evangelical tropes in the portrayal of its moral protagonist. These departures create an exemplary figure whose flaws potentially subvert the novel's didactic purposes. The character of Agnes is not necessarily meant to be directly emulated, yet Brontë's governess is presented as a tool of moral instruction. The conflict between the novel's self-proclaimed didactic purpose and the form in which it presents that purpose raises a number of interpretive questions. I argue that many of these questions can be answered through …


Shavian Self-Fashioning: Authorized Biography And Shaw's Superman, Cort H. Kirksey Jul 2010

Shavian Self-Fashioning: Authorized Biography And Shaw's Superman, Cort H. Kirksey

Theses and Dissertations

George Bernard Shaw exercised an above-average level of authorial control, which even extended to his relationship with his biographers. Shaw crafts a persona, with the help of his "authorized" biographer Archibald Henderson, which displays a process of evolutionary development and progress along the lines of the Shavian philosophy of the Life Force and the Superman. In essence, Shaw is casting himself as a prototype for the Superman through the autobiographical manipulation of his biographers and aesthetic modes of self-fashioning.


Alexander Korda And His "Foreignized Translation" Of The Thief Of Bagdad (1940), Jessica Caroline Alder Wiest Jul 2010

Alexander Korda And His "Foreignized Translation" Of The Thief Of Bagdad (1940), Jessica Caroline Alder Wiest

Theses and Dissertations

Adaptation studies has recently turned an eye towards translation theory for valuable discussion on the role of movie makers as translators. Such discussion notes the difficulties inherent in adapting a medium such as a book, a play, or even a theme park ride into film. These difficulties have interesting parallels to the translation of one language into another. Translation theory, in fact, can shed important light on the adaptation process. Intrinsic to translation theory is the dichotomy between domesticating translation and foreignizing translation, the two major styles of translation. Translation scholar Lawrence Venuti, the author of these two terms, argues …


Civic Participation In The Writing Classroom: New Media And Public Writing, Jonathan S. Wallin Jun 2010

Civic Participation In The Writing Classroom: New Media And Public Writing, Jonathan S. Wallin

Theses and Dissertations

Public writing evolved from the social turn in composition pedagogy as scholars sought to determine which practices would be most effective in utilizing writing instruction to help fulfill the civic mission of the university and educate not just for vocational training, but to train students as better citizens as well. Based on the scholarship of Susan Wells, Elizabeth Ervin, and Rosa Eberly (among others), public writing scholars strove to distance the theory from old, generic forms, like letters to the editor, and create new arenas where students could be genuinely involved in civic acts and public discourse. As these scholars …


Burke, Dewey, And The Experience Of Aristotle's Epideictic: An Examination Of Rhetorical Elements Found In The Funerals Of Lincoln, Kennedy, And Reagan, Xanthe Kristine Allen Farnworth Jun 2010

Burke, Dewey, And The Experience Of Aristotle's Epideictic: An Examination Of Rhetorical Elements Found In The Funerals Of Lincoln, Kennedy, And Reagan, Xanthe Kristine Allen Farnworth

Theses and Dissertations

This article examines the role of epideictic rhetoric as a tool for promoting civic virtue in the public realm through the application of Kenneth Burke's theory of identification and John Dewey's explanation of an aesthetic experience. Long the jurisdiction of Aristotle's logical arguments, civic discussion usually works within the realm of forensic or deliberative persuasion. However, scholarship in the last fifty years suggests there is an unexplored dimension of Aristotle's discussion of epideictic and emotion that needs to be examined in an attempt to identify its usefulness as a tool for examining human experience and practical behavior in the political …


Layering The March: E. L. Doctorow's Historical Fiction, Rachel Yvette Redfern Jun 2010

Layering The March: E. L. Doctorow's Historical Fiction, Rachel Yvette Redfern

Theses and Dissertations

E.L. Doctorow implements ideas of intertextuality and metafiction in his 2007 novel, The March, which is most notably apparent through its resemblance to the 1939 film, Gone with the Wind. Using Michel de Certeau's theory of spatial stories and Linda Hutcheon's of historiographic metafiction, this thesis discusses the layering of Doctorow's The March from the film seen in the character of Pearl from the novel and Scarlett from the film and Selznick's version of the burning of Atlanta and Doctorow's burning of Columbia.


Reason, Conflict, And Psychological Haunting: Considering The Turn Of The Screw As An Adapation Of Wieland, Elisa A. Findlay Jun 2010

Reason, Conflict, And Psychological Haunting: Considering The Turn Of The Screw As An Adapation Of Wieland, Elisa A. Findlay

Theses and Dissertations

Recent decades have seen heightened interest in Charles Brockden Brown and his contribution to American literature. Scholars have worked to reclaim Brown from the margins of literary history, but he remains on the outskirts of literature classrooms and conversations. In an effort to further map Brown's influence and significance in the American literary tradition, I discuss his most famous novel, Wieland, in relation to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Brown has not previously been linked to James or The Turn of the Screw in any significant way, but the similarities between the texts provide plenty of …


Reverence And Rhetorology: How Harmonizing Paul Woodruff's Reverence And Wayne Booth's Rhetorology Can Foster Understanding Within Communities, Jonathan D. Ogden Jun 2010

Reverence And Rhetorology: How Harmonizing Paul Woodruff's Reverence And Wayne Booth's Rhetorology Can Foster Understanding Within Communities, Jonathan D. Ogden

Theses and Dissertations

Wayne Booth's neologism rhetorology, introduced in 1981, hasn't caught on in rhetorical scholarship. Nevertheless, in this essay I hope to revive rhetorology by harmonizing it with Paul Woodruff's work on reverence. I show how harmonizing these terms makes each more comprehensible. In order to illustrate how reverence and rhetorology might be made more practical I also analyze two arguments in the health care debate leading up to the passing of the Affordable Health Care for America Act in early 2010. Ultimately I hope to show that rhetorology is a reverent rhetorical practice, one that can help us restore …


Interrupting The Cycle: Idealization, Alienation And Social Performance In James Joyce's "Araby," "A Painful Case," And "The Dead.", Nicholas Muhlestein Jun 2010

Interrupting The Cycle: Idealization, Alienation And Social Performance In James Joyce's "Araby," "A Painful Case," And "The Dead.", Nicholas Muhlestein

Theses and Dissertations

The thesis considers Joyce's short stories "Araby," "A Painful Case," and the "The Dead," illustrating how these works present three intellectually and emotionally similar protagonists, but at different stages of life, with the final tale "The Dead" suggesting a sort of limited solution to the conflicts that define the earlier works. Taken together, "Araby" and "A Painful Case," represent a sort of life cycle of alienation: the boy of "Araby" is an isolated, deeply introspective youth who lives primarily within his own idealized mental world before discovering, through a failed romantic quest at the story's end, the complete impracticality of …


Twitter Rhetoric: From Kinetic To Potential, Jeffrey C. Swift Jun 2010

Twitter Rhetoric: From Kinetic To Potential, Jeffrey C. Swift

Theses and Dissertations

Everyone can agree that microblogging service Twitter makes a terrible first impression. Many will agree that this impression is an accurate assessment of many microblogging media, especially considering the narcissistic and egotistical bent that so often dominates the genre. Rhetoricians are justifiably skeptical of microblogging, especially of its rhetorical value (or lack thereof). While many rhetorical scholars have contributed to the field of digital rhetoric, the field of microblogging rhetoric is still undefined. This article examines a new kind of rhetoric exhibited by Twitter, attempting to both start the discussion about Twitter rhetoric and enter the ongoing discussion about theories …