English Language and Literature Commons^™

Sherwood Anderson’S "Shadowy Figure": Rural Masculinity In The Modernizing Midwest, Andy Oler

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Cultural And Rhetorical Elements Of American Picaresque, Cory James Dahlstrom

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The picaresque is a literary genre with a long and rich history. Although protean in nature, it is essentially the fictional autobiography of a likeable delinquent or rogue, who survives a series of adventures and a life of hardships by his or her wits and affinity for trickery. Stemming from a long line of tropes dating back to Greek mythology, the picaresque comes into its own fruition towards the end of the Spanish Golden Age with the anonymous publication of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). Since then, the antihero of the picaresque, the picaro, has become a literary figure across a …

Life In Translation, Marion W. Copeland

Animal Sentience

This commentary emphasizes Broom’s (2014) attack on “the widely stated human prejudices” that prevent modern humans from understanding and communicating with animals of other species. As a student and scholar of what is now referred to as literary animal studies, I find one of these biases — anthropocentrism (human exceptionalism) — of particular concern because much of the literature I study is valued only for its concern with animals presented as so remarkably similar to human beings that they are read as symbols or allegorical representations of the human rather than real animals: when some of these animal characters speak …

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

"A Better Calm / Of Meet Companionship" : Augusta Webster's (Re)Vision Of Victorian Wifehood And Marriage, Jennifer Sabatelli

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

That nineteenth-century female poets appropriated genre conventions for their own purposes is not a new idea; how and why they did so, though, are ongoing points of conjecture for feminist scholars. The following is an exploration of how the Victorian poet Julia Augusta Webster appropriated genre—more specifically the dramatic monologue and the closet drama—to advance her own feminist agenda and provoke social change, particularly with regard to the Victorian marriage institution.

Part I consists of a paired analysis of two lesser-known dramatic monologues by Webster, “Sister Annunciata” and “The Happiest Girl in the World.” Both works offer compelling critiques of …

Struggling Adolescent Writers Describe Their Experiences, Teri A. Spargur

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Writing continues to be difficult for adolescents throughout the United States. There is little known about writing from the adolescent's perspective. This case study describes six 8th graders' thoughts and motivations on writing. The purpose of the current study was to examine the perceptions and experiences of struggling adolescent writers by taped participant interviews of six students, three male and three female, which scored below proficient on their state writing assessment. The conceptual theoretical framework for the current study is Bandura's social cognitive theory. The central research question of this study focused on the experiences of adolescents who struggle …

Compassion Fatigue In Emergency Department Nurses, Dionne Hutson Hendy

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Compassion fatigue (CF) is a problem seen within healthcare institutions worldwide, especially critical care units and emergency departments (EDs). The problem identified in this quality improvement (QI) project was CF, experienced by nurses in the ED. The effects of CF cross nurse-patient boundaries and negatively impact a patient's expectations of having a quality care experience. The Iowa model's evidence-based team approach was used to guide the development of the education initiative for nurses on recognizing, preventing, and identifying methods of coping with CF in the ED. The outcome products for the project included an extensive review of the literature, a …

What Do You Think I Am?: On Perceiving Unintelligibility In The Nonbinary Gender Experience, James Warwood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What does it mean to be “retired from gender,” and what role does such an identity play in daily life? Engaging with the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Judith Butler, this project attempts to elucidate the experience of nonbinary – that is, external to the male/female gender binary – gendered individuals, and the ultimate unintelligibility of that experience. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach to perception allows for an exploration of the social norms and regulations that determine how gender is defined in Western culture; combined with Butler’s significant work on gender and its performativity, phenomenology proves a useful tool for revealing the …

Toward An Ontology Of Exhaustion: On The Affective Structures Of Masculinity In The American Oilfield, John W. Jepsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What is the significance of the oil encounter in the lives of men living and working in the modern oilfields of the United States? Engaging with both literary examples of the lives of men in the Interior West and the personal experiences and reflections of the author, this essay seeks to examine the connections between ideology and place as it works to shape the identity and affect of men in America's oilfields, ultimately ending in them identifying with the very resources their activities seek to exploit and exhaust. Utilizing Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia as its moral touchstone, this essay works …

Uprooted, By Naomi Novik. Reviewed By Ryder W. Miller., Ryder W. Miller

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Introduction : Translingual Work., Min-Zhan Lu, Bruce Horner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This issue both reflects and builds on the efforts prompted by the 2011 College English essay “Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach,” by Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. Contributions to this symposium contextualize the emergence of a translingual approach, explore the tension and interconnections between a translingual approach and a variety of fields, and explore the viability of a translingual approach in light of existing academic structures.

Translation As (Global) Writing, Bruce Horner, Laura Tetreault

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This article explores translation as a useful point of departure and frame- work for taking a translingual approach to writing engaging globalization. Globalization and the knowledge economy are putting renewed emphasis on translation as a key site of contest between a dominant language ideology of monolingualism aligned with fast capitalist neoliberalism and an emerging language ideology variously identified as translingualism, plurilingualism, translanguaging, and transcultural literacy. We first distinguish between theories of translation aligned with neoliberalism, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a critical approach to translation focused on the difference that a translingual approach insists translation makes …

Orbic Bards: Religious Liberalism And The Problems Of Representation In The Postbellum Works Of Walt Whitman And Herman Melville, Anthony Gus Cohen

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In an attempt to reconcile the critical camps that attempt either to christianize or otherwise, "scripturize" nineteenth century literary texts with the converse, which attempts to paint them cynically as "infidel countertexts" this project seeks to find a middle ground. The works of Herman Melvile and Walt Whitman steeped in the increasingly liberal religious atmosphere of New York City following the Civil War, both strive to offer up an impressively accurate historical and poetical record, free from the problems of hearsay that nagged the deists and transcendentalists, and instead attempted to offer something that instead was nearer to reason, and …

Brújula Quebrada, Julio Antonio Molinete

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Brújula quebrada o la reinvención del dolor, es un cuaderno de poesía en el cual se aborda el fenómeno del exilio, de la diáspora. Verso a verso es la historia de un diasporante signado por la angustia, el rechazo y el desprecio. Pero más que un poemario personal, deviene en un pedazo de la historia contemporánea cubana. Esa en donde los hijos de la Isla se ven obligados a escapar en pos de la libertad, un derecho que se hace esquivo aun en la tierra de la libertad.

Keeper Of Darkness, Meagan Elizabeth Kinley

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Keeper of Darkness" follows Hal as he encounters the monsters that makes up his dark world. When darkness shifts and an escape is found, he falls into the world of light erupting into a sea of questions about his world, as well as who is responsible for the eternal night.

El Más Fuerte De Los Ruidos, Gianfranco Giusseppe Languasco Bellido

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Tesis para optar por el título de Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

Translingual Practice & Identity Performance: A Study Of Mongolian Youth On Facebook, Sara Bartlett Large

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study explores the translingual practices and identity performances of five participants on the social networking site, Facebook. The participants in this study are five young adults from Mongolia who participated in the U.S. State Department sponsored English Access Microscholarship program, an intensive English language program for disadvantaged youth in developing countries, from 2009 - 2011. Using a qualitative methodology based on constructivist grounded theory and relying on interviews, questionnaires, and observations of the participants' Facebook pages, this study considers the participants' use of translingual practices to build and maintain capital - linguistic, cultural, and social - as they develop …

'Out Vile Jelly': The Consumption Of Violence In King Lear And The Winter's Tale, Evan Marie Stapleton

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a distinct difference in the representation of violence and its aftermath in Shakespeareâ??s Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. More so after 1603, bloody spectacles, brutal torture, and public theatrics are commonplace in daily life and entertainment; Jacobean life is comprised of a culture of violence. This paper examines the representation of violence and its aftermath in "King Lear" and "The Winter's Tale." As Shakespeare adapts plays for a Jacobean audience, the violence in the plays is decidedly more nuanced and psychological than in the Elizabethan plays, which tend to favor gore, spectacular images, and mostly physical damages. First, I …

Parody And The Pen: Pippi Longstocking, Harriet M. Welsch, And Flavia De Luce As Disrupters Of Space, Language, And The Male Gaze, Kelsey Mclendon

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In opposition to a literary tradition of damsel-in-distress female characters, Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, and Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie provide examples of empowered, intelligent, and capable young girls living in a mid-20th century environment and successfully subverting patriarchal norms. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s theory on women as spectacle, Hélène Cixous’s concept of l’ecriture feminine, and New Historicist influences, I explore the common threads within these post-World War II era texts. Pippi’s strength and humor, Harriet’s spying and writing, and Flavia’s scientific expertise and detectival work illustrate their …

She Voices Them: Evidence Of Black Feminism In Black Women’S Harlem Renaissance Literature, Danielle Carr

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

"Voices At The Crossroads: East Indian Women, Grass-Root Culture, And The Power Of Becoming", Rufena Watson

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Efficacious Uncertainty In Two Animal Texts: The Lives Of Animals By J. M. Coetzee And "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More To Follow)" By Jacques Derrida, Kristofer Jon Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Jacques Derrida divides all texts into two categories in light of human encounters with animals. On the one hand are texts produced by those who may have devoted thought and attention to animals but have not imagined that animals might have a gaze of their own directed back at humans. On the other hand are texts produced by those whose thought and attention to animals has indeed been troubled, perplexed, and complicated by the recognition of an animal’s reciprocal gaze. Derrida’s own text, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” in which he distinguishes between these two kinds …

The Poetry Of Wilmer Mills, Rachael Acheson

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to contextualize the work of Wilmer Mills, a late, minor Southeastern American poet, within the complex and frequently misread tradition of New Formalism, as this manifested in the United States shortly after World War II. The analysis places Mills‟s work in conversation with the formalist philosophy of former U.S. Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur, and it suggests that both Mills‟s poetry and his reception amongst fellow academics who adhered to a more progressive philosophy demonstrates the continued relevance of this older, less-often discussed strain of formalism in American poetry. An appendix presents the first checklist of Mills‟s published …

Bound Bodies: Book Use And The Early Modern Reader, 1450-1660, Emily Rendek

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the act of reading during the early modern period. Examining both the text block and the margins of printed pages, this project contends that early modern reading practices create a hybrid book/body circuit. The texts selected for this project provide a depiction of not only how the act of reading functioned during the early modern period but also reveal the manner in which reading was presented to audiences and readers on the stage and printed page. This project resists a linear, chronological narrative of the act of reading and instead makes evident different versions of reading and …

Becoming South: Postmodern Southern Distinction, Melody Knight Pritchard

Theses and Dissertations

Within Southern studies scholarship, much has been said (or told) about "the South" and southern distinction or essentialism. No one can define what, exactly, the South or southernness is, but we are determined to spend much energy and ink writing about it, anyway. Since the late 20th century, southern studies scholarship has largely followed a discourse-focused trajectory, and the popular (or at least the loudest) answers to questions about the South's distinction have often been angry “nos,” critical rejections of a "special" South that functions—or even exists—outside of discourse. Though this line of inquiry is well-intentioned, it has done little …

Illustrating Adolescent Awareness: Teaching Historical Injustices And Promoting Agency Through Picture Books In Secondary Classrooms, Melissa Hoak

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Picture books, often marketed to and written for young children, are typically thought of only as tools to inspire early literacy. They rarely make their way into secondary lesson plans, and with their seemingly simple illustrations and text, they are mostly deemed (socially, if not academically) inappropriate for accomplished readers. This thesis explores the advantages of including picture books when teaching four young adult texts: Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising (2000), Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (2005), Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2003). Picture books can serve as valuable companions to anchor texts such as …

Phonemic Inventory Of The Shor Language, Uliana Kazagasheva

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis describes the phonemic inventory and morphophonological properties of the Shor language. Shor is a Turkic language spoken in southwest Siberia, in the area designated as Mountainous Shoriya. It is one of more than 100 minority languages spoken in the territory of Russia, and it is currently on the verge of extinction. The language is characterized by agglutinative morphology, vowel harmony, and consonant assimilation typical of Turkic languages, which are discussed in the project. The main phonological processes, morphotactics, and some aspects of grammar are described and discussed in this thesis. Along with the discussion of the morphophonology of …

Haec Fortis Sequitur Illam Indocti Possident: A Linguistic Analysis Of Demonstratives In Genres Of Early Latin Fragments, Erica L. Meszaros

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the claim that demonstratives are used more frequently in Latin comedies than in other genres (Karakasis, 2014; Palmer, 1975), as well as additional hypotheses regarding the use of demonstratives within this language. To examine these claims, I created a corpus composed of fragments of Early Latin authors of comedic, tragic, and non-dramatic works. I examined demonstratives within this corpus for frequency, form, syntactic role, affective force, co-occurrence with personal pronouns, and use in multimembral demonstrative sets. This study provides the first quantitative evaluation of demonstrative use for often neglected authors of Early Latin. It also identifies those …

Strange Compositions: Chemistry And Its Occult History In Victorian Speculative Fiction, Susan Hroncek

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines how depictions of chemistry in Victorian literature are influenced by concerns regarding the history of chemistry and its relationship to the occult. Among these depictions, I consider non-fiction writings of the period, such as histories of science and articles from periodicals, but I focus on novels that prominently feature chemistry, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story (1862), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), George Griffith’s Olga Romanoff (1894), T. Mullet Ellis’s Zalma (1895), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). These texts link chemistry with its origins in alchemy, the occult, and …

The Transition From The Psychical To The Psychological: An Examination Of William James’ Influence On Henry James’ “The Turn Of The Screw”, Harry A. Jones Iv

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will show that, in its original form, “The Turn of the Screw” acted as a monument to the intellectual unity shared between Henry James and his brother William. Through evaluating James’ biography, memoirs, and letters with William, this thesis will illustrate the subtle collaborative inspirations that initially helped James write the first twelve-part serial edition of “The Turn of the Screw” for Collier’s Weekly, which ran from January 27, 1898 until April 16, 1898. I will also demonstrate the effect of William’s philosophy and his death on the revisions James’ made to his story as published in the …