English Language and Literature Commons^™

Red Rose, Sara Lauren Purifoy

Student Publications

Red Rose follows the narrator’s innermost thoughts and feelings of abruptly being immersed into a culture very different from her own. While hiking with her brother, a second year environmental Peace Corps volunteer, to visit the home and garden of a Nicaraguan native, she reflects on the changes she sees in her brother and her inability to communicate in a foreign country. She struggles to overcome her feelings of linguistic isolation while still being fascinated by the culture around her. The piece ends on a lovely image of universal understanding.

Romancing The Stone Age: John Updike's "Wife-Wooing" And The Naturally Occurring Nuclear Family, Sue Norton

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Southern Woman: A History Of Rebellion, Passion, And Betrayal In Gone With The Wind And Caballero: A Historical Novel, Jessica Banda Vela

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis closely reads, Margaret Mitchell’s, Gone with the Wind and Caballero, co-authored by Jovita González and Eve Raleigh, to illustrate how women in two separate regions of the Southern United States were transformed by the effects of a historical war setting. While these two literary texts deal with distinctive social, political, and historical contexts, they both highlight factors that contributed to the Southern woman’s alteration: colonization, gender roles and a historical war--setting that ironically liberated women. As a result, the female characters of each story become progressive by the events that take place with and during their respective wars. …

The Past And Its Impact On The Present: The Development Of Gender And Ethnic Identity In Kingston's "Woman Warrior", Mukherjee's "Jasmine" And Kincaid's "Lucy", Rachel M. Puckett

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis analyzes three immigrant narratives and exemplifies the impact that the past has on the main character’s cultural and gender development. During the course of each narrative reflections of the past intrude on the present immigrant experience and remind the characters of who they are and where they came from. Kingston’s Woman Warrior revolves around her cultural past and the psychological impression that her mother’s immigrant experience has left on her. In Jasmine Mukherjee’s main character embarks on a self-reflecting journey that highlights the past that influences her ever changing identity. Finally, in Lucy a young woman is determined …

Aqui Es: The Rhetoric Of Identification In An Act Of Local Branding, Bonnie M. Garcia

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Brands are a large part of our cultural discourse. In the Rio Grande Valley a group of network-marketing sponsored entrepreneurs has tapped into branding as a rhetorical resource. I use Burke’s concept of consubstantiation to analyze the rhetorical motives represented both in the use of branding in general and in the “Aqui Es” sign utilized by local nutrition clubs. Burke’s concept of consubstantiation allows me to contextualize the production of the sign and open avenues to explore the relationships behind the sign’s use. I then utilize Lacanian psychoanalysis to explain the psychological motives behind the sign’s use and production. I …

Remembering As A Source Of Creation In The Poetry Of Ezra Pound And H.D. And The Musical Representations Of The Holocaust By Arnold Schoenberg And Steve Reich, Ruth J. Jacobs

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This project explores the complex relationship between language and violence. Many theorists, such as Elaine Scarry, argue that language is silenced by violence and that extreme trauma inherently defies representation. Despite the impossibility of representing trauma, its preservation is a cultural and historical necessity. I am going to examine the different ways extreme violence is depicted in both poetry and music and the complex moral issues that are raised by these representations. Ezra Pound wrote The Pisan Cantos while imprisoned in a cage at the DTC in Pisa. I plan on exploring the role of personal and cultural memory in …

Prairie Bound: How Laura's Past Forged My Future, Lori J. Houston

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This work of creative non-fiction seeks to explore my past at the same time as I explore the past of a favorite childhood author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. This exploration took the form of a road trip with my father to visit the sites written about in Laura’s books. I found that Laura’s life appealed to me because it represented an insular security that I felt I needed, and that was why I chose, as a child, to immerse myself in the 1880’s. While finding out what she meant to me then, I also discovered that Laura is an even better …

Developing Global Communication Skills For Technical Communicators In The 21st Century: Researching The Language Of Collaboration And Cooperation In The Bologna Process, Diane L. Martinez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Globalization presents opportunities, but also challenges for all professions, most especially for professional communicators. Likewise, professional communication programs must be aware of the complexities and nuances of contemporary global communication and adapt their instruction to reflect these realities. Thus, there is a need for research efforts in global communication that provide insight into the intricacies of this type of communication.

This dissertation is a study of the language of collaboration and cooperation in professional and global contexts. Using Burke’s theories of identification and terministic screens, cooperation theory, activity theory, and a brief historical perspective on the European Union, I conducted …

The Hegemony Of English In South African Education, Kelsey E. Figone

Scripps Senior Theses

The South African Constitution recognizes 11 official languages and protects an individual’s right to use their mother-tongue freely. Despite this recognition, the majority of South African schools use English as the language of learning and teaching (LOLT). Learning in English is a struggle for many students who speak indigenous African languages, rather than English, as a mother-tongue, and the educational system is failing its students. This perpetuates inequality between different South African communities in a way that has roots in the divisions of South Africa’s past. An examination of the power of language and South Africa’s experience with colonialism and …

The Individual Voice: The Expression Of Authority Through Dialects, Idiolects, And Borrowed Terminology In Chaucer’S Canterbury Tales, Jacqueline Cordell

Honors Theses and Capstones

Using Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this paper seeks to demonstrate how language affects the social construction of identity in literature within the late Middle Ages. To accomplish this it looks at how characters (particularly those in the Reeve's and Miller's Tales) attempt to give themselves greater authority over their peers in instances of social conflict by either changing their dialect or, by using terminology borrowed from power-imbued languages like French and Latin. The paper also discusses changes in authority outside the literature by examining the impact of scribal idiolect on the presentation and perception of Chaucer's individual characters.

The Dangerous ‘New Woman’ In The Victorian Press: ‘Blind Alike To Maiden Modesty And Maternal Dignity, Danielle Nielsen

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Present in photography, artwork, fiction, drama, and popular journalism, the New Woman was a familiar presence in late-Victorian Britain. By analyzing the journalistic portrayal of the New Woman and the construction of a negative femininity by those authors who opposed her and the values she represented, this essay draws from that popularity and presence. I argue that Victorians who disagreed with the political and social ramifications of the New Woman participated in discourse communities or communities of practice. These discourse communities portrayed the New Woman as one who was first, competitive rather than cooperative, and second, a mythical, unnatural creature. …

Star Lake, Arda Collins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Star Lake is a collection of poems.

Topic Modeling And Figurative Language, Lisa M. Rhody

Publications and Research

Located at the center of Jorie Graham’s collection The End of Beauty, “Self Portrait as Hurray and Delay” crafts a portrait of the artist, poised at a precarious moment in which thought begins to take shape. Like Penelope, Graham entertains the illusion, if only momentarily, of a choice between bringing a creative impulse into form or allowing it to come undone. A weaver of language, Graham subtly, deftly, but unsuccessfully attempts to delay the inevitable moment in poetic creation in which complexity of thought adopts form through language, and so realized is also reduced. In The End of Beauty, the …

Strike Out Across The Shoreless Ocean, Julia Claire Paajanen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

What happens between a reader and a poem is none of my business. The world has always been yours; find your own way.

(1) Every choice is correct.

(2) Everything is true.

(3) What is anything, unless so far as it is enjoyed?

All you have to do is see the course, and when you see it, go.

Relocating Basic Writing., Bruce Horner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

I frame the continuing value of basic writing as part of a long tradition in composition studies challenging dominant beliefs about literacy and language abilities, and I link basic writing to emerging--e.g."translingual"--approaches to language. I identify basic writing as vital to the field of composition in its rejection of simplistic notions of English, language, and literacy; its insistence on searching out the different in what might appear to be the same and the familiar; and its commitment to work with students consigned by dominant ideologies to the social periphery as in fact central, leading edge. These positions enable basic writing …

The New Chicana Heroine: Representations Of Anzaldua's Mestiza Consciousness In Chicana Feminist Cultural Productions, Monica E. Montelongo

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis analyzes Gloria Anzaldúa‟s mestiza consciousness as a representation seen thematically in Chicana feminist cultural productions. Mestiza consciousness, defined in Anzaldúa‟s Borderlands/La Frontera, is a non-binary feminist ideology, which proposes a third space in female identity, explored in terms of gender, class, race, and sexuality identification. The representation of mestiza consciousness in Chicana feminist cultural productions is proposed as a new trope in Chicana\o cultural studies, which I term the “New Chicana Heroine.” The New Chicana Heroine is both a proposal and representation of a third space in female identity. An examination of several authors, artists, and filmmakers, spanning …

Looking For Adam: An Analysis Of The Works Of Marilynne Robinson, Kristina Y. Zavala

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Many scholars have analyzed the works of Marilynne Robinson, focusing their work on analyzing her novels separately instead of as a whole according to her views of Calvinism and other faith-related themes. This thesis will take apart all of the essays in The Death of Adam, examining each of them for the most important views and opinions expressed by the author. These issues have served to evolve Robinson‘s opinions in such a way that to analyze her novels according to only her religious views would be an injustice. By examining the use of certain aspects of the novel form, this …

The Ripening Of Mangos, Katherine Hoerth

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This project is a collection of poems which draw influence from Romantic, confessional, and post-modern poetry movements, and can most accurately be described as Confessionalistic, though they are resistant to categorization. The poems function to dismantle archetypal definitions of feminine identity, and instead aim to depict identity to be fluid and multifaceted.

The Ripening of Mangos is divided into four sections. The first section deconstructs the 'angel' or 'virgin' archetype, while the second deconstructs the 'monster' or 'whore' archetype. Section three includes voices of procreation, and functions to complicate the image of 'the mother.' The last section, Transplanting, shows gendered …

The New Woman Persona In “Dracula” And The “Twilight” Series: An Elliptical Struggle Of Social Order, Silvia E. Herrera

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis will explore the existence of the New Woman persona found in the Gothic works, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. By exploring this persona, we can shed light on the internal struggle, comprised of Victorian gender roles and one’s desire to seek greater liberation, which results in the presence of an elliptical struggle that finds itself at a constant state of progression and digression. In order to have a greater understanding of the New Woman persona, we must explore both works’ themes of the uncanny figure, sexuality and female heroism. Through the exploration of these themes, …

Triangular Desire In Sandra Cisneros's “Never Marry A Mexican”, Laura V. Bazaldua

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis focuses on desire in Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Never Marry a Mexican” in her collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Cisneros alters the typical configuration of triangular desire in Western literature by focusing on two females and one male. This thesis analyzes the protagonist’s mimetic desire, applying the Girardian model of triangular desire, for her lover’s wife and how it illustrates her internalized racist views. This analysis examines the correlation between mimetic desire and the protagonist’s, an individual of color, investment in the illusion of whiteness.

Her desire is fundamentally a drive toward Megan, who represents the …

Signifying Ruins: The Wreck And Rebirth Of Modernity, Language, And Representation, Audrey Farley

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores formal and thematic representations of ruins in twentieth century literary texts, including James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck.” Analyzing these texts and concepts of ruins in the theoretical work of Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, and Julia Kristeva, I argue that ruins underscore the arbitrariness—and, thus, the fragility—of symbolic systems of signification. Ruins, by virtue of their fragmentation, invite nostalgic projections of totality only to betray totality as an illusion. Thus, the imagination of wholeness that the ruin incites allows—only to disallow—meaning. Modernity and …

Language, Geography, Globalization: Susana Chavez-Silverman’S Rejection Of Translation In Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories, Ania Spyra

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The ephemerality of Susana Chavez-Silverman's desires for a very specific scent, remembered well although smelt only once on a stranger in passing, meets the disappointment of the un-searched for, the inauthentic, the reality of cheap cologne. Maybe precisely for its lack of fulfillment the search remains a quest, and the latter term does not seem too exaggerated for as frivolous a search as this one, because it functions as a metaphor for many other searches.

The Power Of Words: The Use Of Language In Ethan Frome, Heather Faye Spear

Masters Theses

Edith Wharton's novel, Ethan Frome, has been sharply criticized for its tragic ending, yet Wharton's compelling storytelling which depicts universal conditions of mankind accomplishes something powerful through its narrative: it defends language. The complicated relationship between the three main characters, Zeena, Ethan, and Mattie is rooted in their utilization of language. Using a combination of close reading for textual analysis and identifying a communicative style for each character, this thesis asserts that how the characters in this novel utilize language contests the meaninglessness and relativity supported by deconstructionists. Wharton clearly illustrates Zeena's linguistic power over both Ethan and Mattie, and …

The Conservative Conversation, Heather Hall

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The conservative movement is defined by its ideology as well as its rhetoric. Richard Weaver’s conversion to the Right offers an opportunity to define conservatism and conservative rhetoric through his hierarchy of argumentation, and his examination of Plato’s Phaedrus allows an examination of the speaker’s nature and the nature of rhetoric. Glenn Beck, one of today’s most controversial conservative representatives, also deserves examination for his ideology and rhetoric. Both Richard Weaver and Glenn Beck bear scrutiny as influential members of the conservative movement and the role their rhetoric has in the conservative conversation today.

Commodifying Creativity: Class, Labor, And Authorship In Isabella Whitney's “A Sweet Nosgay”, Janette Cavazos

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Isabella Whitney, the first woman to publish secular verse under her own name, is generally considered by scholars in terms of gender. My thesis argues she should be seen, instead, through her identity as a working-class writer. Her book of poetry, A Sweet Nosgay (1573), is shaped by her efforts to make her way in the world of print publication by commodifying creativity into a product. My thesis assesses the content of her poetry on the basis of class, which was the impetus for this commodification. My focus gives full authority to her as a Renaissance writer, one who resists …

Feminism, Imperialism, Utopianism, And Science Fiction In Margaret Cavendish's “Blazing World", Terina Garza Vazquez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Margaret Lucas Cavendish (1623-1673), the Duchess of Newcastle, was a woman writer in seventeenth-century England who was the first woman in history to be allowed within the halls of the Royal Society. She was also the first woman to write what should be considered the first work of science fiction by a woman titled The Description of a New World Called, The Blazing World, or simply The Blazing World. This thesis focuses on The Blazing World which offers a proto-feminist critique of imperialism and of gender relations in seventeenth-century England and of England’s emergent imperialist culture and points to a …

Review: Frindle, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

Review of Andrew Clements' Frindle. Illustrated by Brian Selznick. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 1996. ISBN: 0689806698 (Ages 10 to 12)

The Luminous Halo: The Place Of Language In The Waves And The Years, Rachel Luban

Honors Papers

Can words ever express a truth beyond language? Virginia Woolf explores this persistent question most directly in two of her late novels, The Waves and The Years. The two appear to sit at opposite ends of the spectrum of her writing, The Waves embodying interiority and vision and The Years embodying exteriority and fact. The apparent realism of The Years, following on the heels of the impressionism of The Waves, has caused many critics to dismiss it as an aberration. But in fact the later novel is far from a regression to traditional realism: it takes up where its predecessor …

American Poetry And The Daily Newspaper From The Rise Of The Penny Press To The New Journalism, Elizabeth M. Lorang

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation examines the relationship of poetry and the U.S. daily newspaper in the nineteenth century and begins the process of recovering and reevaluating nineteenth-century newspaper poetry. In doing so, it draws on and participates in current discussions about the role of poetry and poets in society, the importance of periodicals in the development and dissemination of American literature in the nineteenth century, and the value of studying non-canonical texts. The appearance and function of poems in daily newspapers changed over the course of the nineteenth century, and these changes were part of larger shifts in the newspaper and its …

Sex At The Park: Stories From My Days With Ninfa, Dalel Serda

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This creative nonfiction manuscript chronicles the burgeoning relationship between the narrator and her subject, Ninfa—the folkloric, enduring and elusive Harlingen, Texas prostitute. This project aims to document the process of demystification the narrator undergoes as the women get to know each other. Furthermore, in the process of gathering the materials that will tell her subject’s story, the narrator attempts to tell the story about getting the story, about what led to this story and of what resulted. In sum, this work explores the often-blurry boundaries and complexities of what is inevitably a friendship.