Modern Literature Commons^™

Taste Of Dirt, Brianna Lynn Heisey

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Taste of Dirt is a novel about a young female wildland fire fighter and her travels across the western U.S with her fire crew. The forest, the open road, the animals, and the men and women she meets along the way help her overcome her fears and re-discover her place in nature. This Thesis is approximately 240 pages and includes a dedication, acknowledgements, a table of contents, a 25 page introduction, 16 complete chapters and a curriculeam vita. Enjoy.

Fin De Siecle 3.0: Cybernetic Anxieties In Posthuman Science Fiction, Jessica L. Dambruch

English Theses & Dissertations

The examination of technological metaphors as pervasive descriptive structures sustained in the genre of science fiction is most apparent in an analysis of the dialogue between posthuman discourse and science fiction. The literary posthuman, jointly derived from a rich history of socio-cultural anxieties of embodiment and identity dating back to Victorian Gothic literatures, is most recently manifest within the sphere of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk fiction of the late 20th century. A third wave feminist analysis of posthuman technological metaphors is valuable for its potential to apprehend essentialist ideological constructions of gendered identity within science fiction which N. Katherine Hayles and …

Balancing Rosie And June: A Study Of Lynchburg College Postwar Alumnae And The Impact Of The Feminine Mystique, Dinah Watson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In 2003, the movie Mona Lisa Smile debuted describing the frustrations that many college women may have faced in the years after World War II. Wellesley College was the elite all-female institution that openly and proudly prepared its young women with the proper rules of etiquette and correctness. Despite Wellesley’s own excellent academic reputation, its close proximity to the prestigious single-sex male college, Harvard, made it even more appealing and convenient for the Wellesley girls to find a “suitable” husband. The novice young art instructor, Katherine Watson, was unique in that she wanted to offer her students not only a …

La République Des Lettres: Ses Écrivains, Ses Critiques, Ses Limites, Jimia Boutouba

Modern Languages & Literature

L’article se propose d’étudier le rôle de la critique littéraire française et étrangère, ses incertitudes et ses dérives à propos de la littérature « beur » (terme désignant les Français issus de l’immigration maghrébine)

The author looks at the position of French and stranger literature criticism, its ambiguity and departure from “beur” creative writing.

The Fetish In/As Text: Retif De La Bretonne And The Development Of Modern Sexual Science And French Literary Studies, 1887-1934, Amy S. Wyngaard

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This essay examines the role of Rétif's writings in the development of the concept of erotic fetishism and in the formation of the French literary canon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rétif explored foot and shoe fetishisms more than a century before the phenomena were medically recognized, anticipating the modern psychosexual use of the term fetishism and making important contributions to the invention of the theoretical concept. Rétif's works were accorded a privileged place in early pathologies of fetishism, which provoked a series of polemics among German and French medical doctors and literary scholars centered …

A Dyke's Life: Sexual Identity And Gender Performance In Radclyffe Hall's The Well Of Loneliness, Erica L. Ellsworth

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis studies sexual and gender identity and gender performance in The Well of Loneliness by utilizing postmodern theory. The protagonist in the novel, Stephen Gordon, is not only one example of the many identities of lesbianism, but she is also an example of a multiplicitous identity. This thesis also questions whether we can find the exact moment or reason why an identity is formed. An exploration of not only The Well of Loneliness but also of a character study of Stephen Gordon is important to this dialogue because both studies validate the contradictory and complimentary relationship between sex and …

The Shell Seekers And Working Women Readers’ Search For Serenity, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

For the last decade feminist literary critics have convincingly argued that bestselling novels from Gone with the Wind (1936) and Forever Amber (1944) to The Valley of the Dolls (1966) and The Flame and the Flower (1972) reveal the psychic needs of twentieth-century middle-class American women, and that these needs have as much to do with desire for the emotional sustenance they once received from their mothers as with desire for heterosexual romance. However, as more and more women have moved from the private to the public workplace, their psychic needs have changed somewhat. Based on the American popularity of …

Madness And The Middle Passage : Warner-Vierya's Juletane As A Paradigm For Writing Caribbean Women's Identities., Ann Elizabeth Willey

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This article links Glissant's theory of an inherent Caribbean madness due to the originary rupture and alienation from Africa with Foucault's theory of the ritual significance and essential liminality of the madman as exemplified in the medieval figure of the "Ship of Fools." In calling the madman the "passenger par excellence," Foucault implies a connection between sanity and linear narratives, such as that of a voyage. Myriam Warner-Vierya's novel, Juletane, suggests that European paradigms of narrative and voyage are inadequate to provide a sense of self for Caribbean women. The novel takes the form of a diary that chronicles …

Tearing The Goat's Flesh: Homosexuality, Abjection, And The Production Of A Late Twentieth-Century Black Masculinity, Robert Reid-Pharr

Publications and Research

A negative image of the homosexual must be promoted to preserve the heterosexual society, an idea that extends to the construction of African-American masculinity. African Americans represent the lack of boundaries in a chaotic culture. The resulting presumption that blacks are subhuman and irrational comes from the history of slavery and the presumed separateness of the race. Homosexuals also have been cut from their history by society and therefore must rediscover their roots to reject society's negative images.

A New Sense Of Time In Female Development: Linearity And Cyclicity In Atwood's Surfacing And Cat's Eye, Diana L. Unes

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Female Language Barrier: A Close Reading Of The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson And Adrienne Rich, Annmarie Faiella

Honors Theses

Historically, the First Amendment right to free speech was limited to certain groups. Language, although constitutionally guaranteed since 1776, has not always been a freedom for everyone. Among those at language's mercy are immigrants, slaves, and women. Women's speech was limited not by a lack of knowledge, but by a societal acceptance of women as inferior.

What then do women do to overcome this ever-present chasm? What women did in the nineteenth century, the 1960s, and are still doing today is: write more creatively. The tighter the restraint of language, the more inventive the woman must be to use it …

Postmortem Diagnoses Of Virginia Woolf's 'Madness': The Precarious Quest For Truth, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

The reputation of British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is now well established. Her brilliance as a writer is seldom contested, and her place in the literary canon is assured. Whether interested in literary traditions, textual studies, applied feminism, or postmodern theory, most scholars and critics admire what she had to say and how she said it. The variety, volume, and quality of her writings are impressive; her skill as a writer is seen not only in her eight novels but also in her essays, diaries, letters, short stories, biographies and nonfictional works A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas …

Paintings And Drawings In Willa Cather's Prose: A Catalogue Raisonné, Polly P. Duryea

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Paintings and Drawings in Willa Cather's Prose: A Catalogue Raisonné considers the specific artists and their visual art that greatly influenced Willa Cather's textual compositions. The Catalogue draws upon the author's research of Cather-related art from both American and European libraries and art museums. This art includes painting, drawing, illustration, and tapestry. A detailed and alphabetized list of selected artists and paintings that Cather preferred is provided. The artists are cross-referenced with Cather's own statements about their work or style. Included is biographical data for each artist, the named work of art, and often the date executed, the location then …

Women And Revolution In Dystopian Fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Nadine Gordimer's July's People (1981) and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) are both dystopias, nightmare visions of the future. Both of the worlds depicted come into being because of revolutionary coups. However, in both cases, the revolutions were in progress long before the actual takeovers, and there were opportunities for citizens to have prevented these dystopian situations from coming to pass. Yet, because changing the direction of political events requires energy, solidarity, bravery or at least some self-sacrifice, most citizens are reluctant to become involved. Nadine Gordimer and Margaret Atwood understand this attitude because they have felt that way …

Virginia Woolf & Postmodernism: Literature In Quest & Question Of Itself, Pamela L. Caughie

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism argues not that Virginia Woolf is a postmodernist but that postmodern assumptions about art can account for her narrative innovations and feminist politics better than conventional modernist and feminist approaches to her works. In rethinking many of the prominent aesthetic and critical positions of her day, Woolf anticipated many postmodernist tenets. This book helps us to understand how and why she came to hold such views, and how we might change our reading of Woolf and narrative literature in turn.

Pamela Caughie brings together pragmatism and postmodern theory to move critical inquiry, particularly feminist criticism and …

Feminist Criticism Of Classical Rhetoric Texts: A Case Study Of Gorgias' Helen, Susan L. Trollinger

English Faculty Publications

Despite the diversity of claims feminist scholars of antiquity advance, they share at least one preoccupation: the critique of patriarchy. That is, they challenge "the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women" (Lerner 239) enacted in primary and secondary texts. The particular methods by which they make their critiques of women's subjugation vary as much as their claims, but most can be classified into one of two categories according to their broad interests in woman as a reader or as a writer of classical texts. Using Elaine Showalter's classifications, for example, we can group most of this scholarship under …

The Evolution Of Doris Lessing's Art From A Mystical Moment To Space Fiction, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

After publishing ten major novels, Doris Lessing has begun writing what she calls '·space fiction'· for her new series entitled Canopus in Argos: Archives. In a review of the first two novels published in this series, namely, Shikasta ( 1979) and the Marriages Between Zones Three. Four, and Five (1980)¹. Jean Pickering stresses that many of Doris Lessing's most avid readers were initially attracted to her because of her insights about the female experience and because of her allegiance to nineteenth-century realism." Pickering suggests that Lessing's growing interest in space fiction and Sufism (Islamic mysticism) has …

A Room Of One's Own: The Women's Room, Lou Ellen Crawford

Masters Theses

The recent resurgence of feminism has been accompanied by the development of feminist fiction. Identifying those characteristics by which feminist fiction adds to the American novel a new and valid perspective, feminist criticism has also flourished. Feminist critics agree that fiction with a new perspective demands critical evaluation from that same perspective; and Cheri Register provides a concise, thorough list of five elements which comprise effective feminist fiction. Of Register's five criteria, Carol Heilbrun stresses the equalizing, conciliatory influence of androgyny. Recent feminist authors have written many novels which perform one or more of the functions prescribed by Register. Three …

The Female Image In The Caldecott Medal Award Books, Patricia Lee Brighton Roberts

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

PROBLEM: Millions of children read and view the Caldecott Winners each year There are no published studies regarding the possible stereo-typing of the role of the human, animal and inanimate female image in the texts and illustrations of these 37 books.

Purpose: The. investigation ·was conducted to determine the extent the total population of the Caldecott books did stereo-type the role of the human, animal and inanimate female image.

Procedures: The investigation was completed in four steps: (1) First, a panel of sociologists determined the content validity of the definitions used in the hypothesis; (2) Second, a Content Analysis Form …

Mrs. Gaskell's Social Attitudes In Relation To Her Times, Carrie Lakin

English Language and Literature ETDs

It is the purpose of this study (1) to show the many influences which led Elizabeth Gaskell to write novels concerned with social problems of her day; (2) to show the relation of her social attitudes as revealed in three novels to her times and to the influences working on her; and (3) to show how she hoped to bring about reforms through her social problem novels.