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Across Borders and Barlines: Chicana/o Literature, Jazz Improvisation, and Contrapuntal Solidarity

Description: In this study, I examine Chicana/o writings and Black and Brown musical traditions as they entwine in urban centers and inform local visions of inclusion and models of social change. By analyzing literature and music from South Texas, Southern California, and Northeastern Michigan, I detail how the social particularities of each zone inform Chicana/o cultural productions rooted in the promise of empowerment and the possibility of cross-cultural solidarity. I assert that highlighting localized v… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Leal, Jonathan J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

After the Planes

Description: The dissertation consists of a critical preface and a novel. The preface analyzes what it terms “polyvocal” novels, or novels employing multiple points of view, as well as “layered storytelling,” or layers of textuality within novels, such as stories within stories. Specifically, the first part of the preface discusses polyvocality in twenty-first century American novels, while the second part explores layered storytelling in novels responding to World War II or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. T… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Boswell, Timothy
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The American Eve: Gender, Tragedy, and the American Dream

Description: America has adopted as its own the Eden myth, which has provided the mythology of the American dream. This New Garden of America, consequently, has been a masculine garden because of its dependence on the myth of the Fall. Implied in the American dream is the idea of a garden without Eve, or at least without Eve's sin, traditionally associated with sexuality. Our canonical literature has reflected these attitudes of devaluing feminine power or making it a negative force: The Scarlet Letter, Mob… more
Date: May 1993
Creator: Long, Kim Martin
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The American Southern Demogogue and His Effect on Personal Associates

Description: The nature of the American Southern demagogue, best exemplified by Huey Pierce Long, is examined. Four novels which are based on Long's life: Sun in Capricorn by Hamilton Basso, Number One by John Dos Passos, A Lion Is in the Streets by Adria Locke Langley and All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, are used to exemplify literary representations of Long. First the individual personalities of the four demagogue characters are described. Next, the relationships of female associates to the dema… more
Date: May 1976
Creator: Allen, Charline
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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"Among Waitresses": Stories and Essays

Description: The following collection represents the critical and creative work produced during my doctoral program in English. The dissertation consists of Part I, a critical preface, and Part II, a collection of seven short stories and two nonfiction essays. Part I, which contains the critical preface entitled "What to Say and How to Say It," examines the role of voice in discussions of contemporary literature. The critical preface presents a definition of voice and identifies examples of voice-driven … more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Hobbs, Jessica
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

An Analysis of Conflicts in Mrs. Gaskell's "North and South"

Description: Both contemporary and modern critics recognize the industrial, regional, and personal conflicts in North and South. There are, however, other conflicts which Mrs. Gaskell treats and resolves. This study emphasizes inner struggles resulting from repressive Victorian sexual mores. An examination of conflicts at a deeper -level than has previously been attempted clarifies motivations of individual characters, reveals a conscious and unconscious pattern within the novel and gives a fuller appreciat… more
Date: May 1976
Creator: Brown, Kathleen B.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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An Analysis of the Major Characteristics of American Black Humor Novels

Description: This thesis serves to classify Black Humor as a philosophy, which holds that the world is meaningless and absurd, and as a literary technique. Historical origins are discussed and the idea is related to a reflection of the middle-class syndrome of twentieth century man. Close philosophical and literary relatives are presented and a pure work isn't defined. Black Humor literary characteristics are described in terms of style, theme, plot, setting, chronology, and characteristic ending. Black Hum… more
Date: May 1974
Creator: Tyler, Alice Carol
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Angry Charmer

Description: This screenplay, dealing with the theme of anger, is divided into three acts: setup, confrontation and resolution, respectively. Beginning in medias res, flashbacks are employed for expositions of the two main characters, Connor Tracy, alias the Angry Charmer, and Howard Goldberg. Act I opens with Connor at the wheel of a van, driving wildly, Howard accompanying. The setup is established. Act IlI returns to the careening van and then flashbacks to the college meeting of Connor and Howard. By t… more
Date: May 1988
Creator: Wall, Jeffrey R. (Jeffrey Robert)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Anti-Christian Elements in Thomas Hardy's Novels

Description: A commonplace among Hardy critics is that as a young man Hardy lost his Christian faith and entered a serious religious disillusionment. The mainstream of Hardy criticism has followed the general consensus that Hardy suffered keenly as a result of this experience and looked back on Christianity with poignant nostalgia. If his view is not purely nostalgic, traditional criticism has insisted, then it seems at worst only ambivalent. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that Hardy's attitud… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Alexander, B. J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Hell: the Rhetoric of Universality in Bessie Head

Description: This dissertation approaches the work of South African/Botswanan novelist Bessie Head, especially the novel A Question of Power, as positioned within the critical framework of the postcolonial paradigm, the genius of which accommodates both African and African American literature without recourse to racial essentialism. A central problematic of postcolonial literary criticism is the ideological stance postcolonial authors adopt with respect to the ideology of the metropolis, whether on the one … more
Date: May 1998
Creator: Edwards, George, Jr.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Appropriating Language on the Usenet

Description: The Usenet is a global computer conferencing system on which users can affix textual messages under 4500 different categories. It currently has approximately 4,165,000 readers, and these .readers have appropriated language by adapting it to the Usenet's culture and medium. This thesis conceptualizes the Usenet community's appropriation of language, provides insights into how media and media restrictions cause their users to appropriate language, and discusses how future media may further cause … more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Spinuzzi, Clay I. (Clay Ian)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Awen, Barddas, and the Age of Blake

Description: Studies of William Blake's poetry have historically paid little attention to the Welsh literary context of his time, especially the bardic lore (barddas), in spite of the fact that he considered himselfto be a bard and created an epic cosmos in which the bardic had exalted status. Of particular importance is the Welsh concept of the awen, which can be thought of as "the muse," but which must not be limited to the Greek understanding of the term For the Welsh, the awen had to do with the Christi… more
Date: May 1997
Creator: Franklin, William Neal
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Bearclaw: a Novel

Description: Written in the tradition of American political suspense thrillers such as "Fail-Safe" and "Seven Days In May," "Bearclaw" uses their idealistic and nationalistic elements to tell a story of an American President eager to lead the world's peoples in a quest to achieve man's "highest destiny," the conquest of space. Believing that this common goal will cause mankind to come together in a spirit of brotherhood, he misreads the historical purpose of the United States and, in the end, refuses to rec… more
Date: May 1992
Creator: Elston, James C. (James Cary)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Beneficent Characters in William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha Novels

Description: In William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha novels, a group of characters exists who possess three common characteristics--a closeness to mankind, a realization of the tragedy in life, and a positive response to this tragedy. The term beneficent is used to describe the twenty individuals who possess these traits. The characters are divided into two broad categories. The first includes the white and black primitives who innately possess beneficent qualities. The term primitive describes the individual w… more
Date: May 1978
Creator: Bryant, Deborah N.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

"Beowulf": Myth as a Structural and Thematic Key

Description: Very little of the huge corpus of Beowulf criticism has been directed at discovering the function and meaning of myth in the poem. Scholars have noted many mythological elements, but there has never been a satisfactory explanation of the poet's use of this material. A close analysis of Beowulf reveals that myth does, in fact, inform its structure, plot, characters and even imagery. More significant than the poet's use of myth, however, is the way he interlaces the historical and Christian eleme… more
Date: May 1990
Creator: Aitches, Marian A. (Marian Annette)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Blackland Prairie

Description: Blackland Prairie contains a scholarly preface, “Cross Timbers,” that discusses the emerging role of place as a narrative agent in contemporary fiction. The preface is followed by six original short stories. “Parts” depicts the growth of a boy's power over his family. “A Movie House to Make Us All Rich” involves the sacrifice of familial values by the son of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century. “The Place on Chenango Street” is about a man who views his world in monetary terms. “The Ni… more
Date: May 2002
Creator: Magliocco, Amos
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Body Matters: Gary Snyder, The Self and Ecopoetics

Description: Gary Snyder has offered, in poems and essays, ways to acknowledge the interrelationships of humans with the more-than-human. He questions common notions of selfness as well as understandings of what it is to be human in relationship to other species and ecosystems, and he offers new paradigms for the relationship between cultures and the ecosystems in which these cultures reside. These new paradigms are rooted in a reevaluation of our attitudes toward our physical bodies which impacts our relat… more
Date: May 2000
Creator: Murray, Matthew
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Bridging the Gap: Finding a Valkyrie in a Riddle

Description: While many riddles exist in the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book containing female characters, both as actual human females and personified objects and aspects of nature, few scholars have discussed how the anthropomorphized “females” of the riddles challenge and broaden more conventional portrayals of what it meant to be “female” in Anglo-Saxon literature. True understanding of these riddles, however, comes only with this broader view of female, a view including a mixture of ferocity and nobility of pu… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Culver, Jennifer
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Briefs: A Discussion of Genre and a Presentation of Short Fiction

Description: Eleven short fictions are introduced with a discussion of genre. Genre is looked at as being a matter of degree ranging from absolute prose on one end of the spectrum to a very specific form of poem with conventions of its own such as the Shakespearean Sonnet on the other end of the spectrum. The analysis is made in an appeal for the short-short story (or sudden fiction) as being a genre of its own. It is argued that regardless of what category a fiction may fall into (and some of the distincti… more
Date: May 1993
Creator: Kenney, Stephen Robert
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Bureaucratic Writing in America: A Preliminary Study Based on Lanham's Revising Business Prose

Description: In this study, I examine two writing samples using a heuristic based on Richard A. Lanham's definition of bureaucratic writing in Revising Business Prose: noun-centered, abstract, passive-voiced, dense, and vague. I apply a heuristic to bureaucratic writing to see if Lanham's definition holds and if the writing aids or hinders the information flow necessary to democracy. After analyzing the samples for nominalizations, concrete/abstract terms, active/passive verbs, clear/unclear agents, textual… more
Date: May 1993
Creator: Su, Donna
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Calling Up the Dead

Description: Calling Up the Dead is a collection of seven short stories which all take place over the final hours of December 31, 1999 and the first few hours of January 1, 2000. The themes of time, history, and the reactions toward the new millennium (positive, negative, indifferent) of a variety of cultures are addressed. Each of the six major continents has a story, along with its cultural perspective, delivered by narrators both young and old, three female, three male and one balcony.
Date: May 2000
Creator: Weaver, Brett
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Can These Bones Live? A Collection of Stories

Description: The collection concerns itself with race, gender, masculinity, marginalization, the act of violence as a means of self expression, identity and the performance of identity, love, and loss. The collection also uses historical events-more specifically, events that are central to black culture in Northeast, Ohio- to situate the characters and witness their response to these historical events. I strive to illustrate blackness as both political and fragmented with the characters in my collection. M… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Hoey, Danny M., Jr.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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