Latest content added for UNT Digital Library Partner: UNT Librarieshttps://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/partners/UNT/browse/?fq=untl_decade:2000-2009&fq=str_degree_department:Department+of+English&fq=dc_type:text_etd2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00UNT LibrariesThis is a custom feed for browsing UNT Digital Library Partner: UNT LibrariesGod's Perfect Timing2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12193/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12193/"><img alt="God's Perfect Timing" title="God's Perfect Timing" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12193/small/"/></a></p><p>When I was thirty-three years old, I discovered I was an adoptee. In this memoir of secrecy and love, betrayal and redemption, I reflect on my early experiences as a doted-on only child firmly rooted in the abundant love of my adoptive family, my later struggles with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, my marriage to a fellow-adoptee, my discovery of my own adoption and the subsequent reunion with my birth family, my navigation through the thrills and tensions of newly complicated family dynamics, and my witness to God's perfect timing through it all.</p>The Other Side of Yesterday2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12194/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12194/"><img alt="The Other Side of Yesterday" title="The Other Side of Yesterday" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12194/small/"/></a></p><p>The four stories in this collection follow different, yet strikingly similar, protagonists who are facing crossroads in life. These stories include memories and specific scenes from the past that combine with scenes from the present to trace the development of the characters.</p>A Catalog of Extinctions2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12093/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12093/"><img alt="A Catalog of Extinctions" title="A Catalog of Extinctions" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12093/small/"/></a></p><p>The preface describes the construction of a book-length, interwoven sequence of poems. This type of sequence differs from other types of poetry collections in its use of an overarching narrative, repeated images, and recurring characters. Three interwoven sequences are used as examples of how to construct such a sequence.</p>Peonies for Topaz2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12097/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12097/"><img alt="Peonies for Topaz" title="Peonies for Topaz" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12097/small/"/></a></p><p>A collection of three, interwoven short stories set in Japantown, San Francisco and the Topaz Internment Camp in central Utah during World War II. The pieces in this collection feature themes of cultural identity and the reconstruction of personal identity in times of change and crisis. Collection includes the stories "Moving Sale," "Evacuation," and "Resettlement."</p>Prudence Stories2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12099/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12099/"><img alt="Prudence Stories" title="Prudence Stories" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12099/small/"/></a></p><p>This collection of three original short stories is an excerpt from a novel about an East Texas family whose common bond is the need for a second chance. A preface dealing with the use of setting as a character precedes the short stories.</p>Where My Own Grave Is2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12100/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12100/"><img alt="Where My Own Grave Is" title="Where My Own Grave Is" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12100/small/"/></a></p><p>The preface to this collection, "Against Expectation: The Lyric Narrative," highlights the ways James Wright, Stephen Dunn, and C.K. Williams use narrative to strengthen their poems. Where My Own Grave Is is a collection of poems that uses narrative to engage our historical fascination with death.</p>The List2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12171/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12171/"><img alt="The List" title="The List" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12171/small/"/></a></p><p>The List is a collection of short stories focusing on the inability to adapt, or learn from self-destructive patterns, and the bizarre ways people reach out for one another when they don't know what else to do.</p>The Politics of Sympathy: Secularity, Alterity, and Subjectivity in George Eliot's Novels2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12145/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12145/"><img alt="The Politics of Sympathy: Secularity, Alterity, and Subjectivity in George Eliot's Novels" title="The Politics of Sympathy: Secularity, Alterity, and Subjectivity in George Eliot's Novels" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12145/small/"/></a></p><p>This study examines the practical and political implications of sympathy as a mode of achieving the intercommunicative relationship between the self and the other, emphasizing the significance of subjective agency not simply guided by the imperative category of morality but mainly enacted by a hybrid of discourses through the interaction between the two entities. Scenes of Clerical Life, Eliot's first fictional narrative on illuminating the intertwining relation of religion to secular conditions of life, reveals that the essence of religion is the practice of love between the self and the other derived from sympathy and invoked by their dialogic discourses of confession which enable them to foster the communality, on the grounds that the alterity implicated in the narrative of the other summons and re-historicizes the narrative of the subject's traumatic event in the past. Romola, Eliot's historical novel, highlights the performativity of subject which, on the one hand, locates Romola outside the social frame of domination and appropriation as a way of challenging the universalizing discourses of morality and duty sanctioned by the patriarchal ideology of norms, religion, and marriage. On the other hand, the heroine re-engages herself inside the social structure as a response to other's need for help by substantiating her compassion for others in action. Felix Holt, the Radical, Eliot's political and industrial novel, investigates the limits of moral discourse and instrumental reason. Esther employs her strategy of hybridizing her aesthetic and moral tastes in order to debilitate masculine desires for moral inculcation and material calculation. Esther reinvigorates her subjectivity by simultaneously internalizing and externalizing a hybrid of tastes. In effect, the empowerment of her subjectivity is designed not only to provide others with substantial help from the promptings of her sympathy for them, but also to fulfill her romantic plot of marriage.</p>Transnational Compositionality and Hemon, Shteyngart, Díaz; A No Man's Land, Etc.2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12164/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12164/"><img alt="Transnational Compositionality and Hemon, Shteyngart, Díaz; A No Man's Land, Etc." title="Transnational Compositionality and Hemon, Shteyngart, Díaz; A No Man's Land, Etc." src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12164/small/"/></a></p><p>Contemporary transnational literature presents a unique interpretive problem, due to new methods of language and culture negotiation in the information age. The resulting condition, transnational compositionality, is evidenced by specific linguistic artifacts; to illustrate this I use three American novels as a case study: Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon, Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. By extension, many conventional literary elements are changed in the transnational since modernity: satire is no longer a lampooning of cultures but a questioning of the methods by which humans blend cultures together; similarly, complex symbolic constructions may no longer be taken at face value, for they now communicate more about cultural identity processes than static ideologies. If scholars are to achieve adequate interpretations of these elements, we must consider the global framework that has so intimately shaped them in the twenty-first century.</p>Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12168/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12168/"><img alt="Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English" title="Fictionalized Indian English Speech and the Representations of Ideology in Indian Novels in English" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12168/small/"/></a></p><p>I investigate the spoken dialogue of four Indian novels in English: Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable (1935), Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan's The World of Nagaraj (1990), and Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters (2002). Roger Fowler has said that literature, as a form of discourse, articulates ideology; it is through linguistic criticism (combination of literary criticism and linguistic analyses) that the ideologies in a literary text are uncovered. Shobhana Chelliah in her study of Indian novels in English concludes that the authors use Indian English (IndE) as a device to characterize buffoons and villains. Drawing upon Fowler's and Chelliah's framework, my investigation employs linguistic criticism of the four novels to expose the ideologies reflected in the use of fictionalized English in the Indian context. A quantitative inquiry based on thirty-five IndE features reveals that the authors appropriate these features, either to a greater or lesser degree, to almost all their characters, suggesting that IndE functions as the mainstream variety in these novels and creating an illusion that the authors are merely representing the characters' unique Indian worldviews. But within this dialect range, the appropriation of higher percentages of IndE features to specific characters or groups of characters reveal the authors' manipulation of IndE as a counter-realist and ideological device to portray deviant and defective characters. This subordinating of IndE as a substandard variety of English functions as the dominant ideology in my investigation of the four novels. Nevertheless, I also uncover the appropriation of a higher percentage of IndE features to foreground the masculinity of specific characters and to heighten the quintessentially traditional values of the older Brahmin generation, which justifies a contesting ideology about IndE that elevates it as the prestigious variety, not an aberration. Using an approach which combines literary criticism with linguistic analysis, I map and recommend a multidisciplinary methodology, which allows for a reevaluation of fictionalized IndE speech that goes beyond impressionistic analyses.</p>Tinder for the Bathhouses2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12088/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12088/"><img alt="Tinder for the Bathhouses" title="Tinder for the Bathhouses" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12088/small/"/></a></p><p>In the preface to this collection, "Poetry and History: Finding 'What Will Suffice,'" I show how Czeslaw Milosz's "Dedication" and Jorie Graham's "Guantánamo" embody the virtues of philosophical meditation and the moral imagination to create a unique poetry of witness. These poems also provide American poets with an example of how they can regain the trust of an apathetic general reading audience. Tinder for the Bathhouses is a collection of poems in which I use the moral imagination to indirectly bear witness to events as far ranging as the Holocaust and the Iraq War. Using the family as a foundation, I show how historical narratives can provide a poet with the tools to think about larger metaphysical questions that poetry can raise, such as the nature of beauty and the purpose of art.</p>Clutch2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12080/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12080/"><img alt="Clutch" title="Clutch" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12080/small/"/></a></p><p>Clutch is the title of the creative portion of my thesis as well as the name of my theory 'clutch' which I outline in the preface section. The purpose of the clutch theory is to recognize modes of inspiration in the body, heart and mind so that the poet can consciously move beyond passive receptivity to engage inspiration more fully. Mechanically, to "clutch" does not mean to create inspiration, but it is the opportunistic, spirited encouragement of these moments of inspiration and, more importantly, the direction of the artist's own response in moving from inspiration to creation. The clutch process unfolds through three centers: body, heart and mind, where we initially encounter inspiration. And, through a discussion of three notable poets' work, Henri Cole, Li-Young Lee and T.S. Eliot, the relationship between a completed work and clutch as a process further explains the boundaries of each mode.</p>Personal Properties: Stage Props and Self-Expression in British Drama, 1600-17072010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12081/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12081/"><img alt="Personal Properties: Stage Props and Self-Expression in British Drama, 1600-1707" title="Personal Properties: Stage Props and Self-Expression in British Drama, 1600-1707" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12081/small/"/></a></p><p>This dissertation examines the role of stage properties-props, slangily-in the construction and expression of characters' identities. Through readings of both canonical and non-canonical drama written between 1600 and 1707-for example, Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (1607), Edward Ravenscroft's adaptation of Titus Andronicus (1678), Aphra Behn's The Rover (1677), and William Wycherley's The Plain Dealer (1677)-I demonstrate how props mediate relationships between people. The control of a character's props often accords a person control of the character to whom the props belong. Props consequently make visual the relationships of power and subjugation that exist among characters. The severed body parts, bodies, miniature portraits, and containers of these plays are the mechanisms by which characters attempt to differentiate themselves from others. The characters deploy objects as proof of their identities-for example, when the women in Behn's Rover circulate miniatures of themselves-yet other characters must also interpret these objects. The props, and therefore the characters' identities, are at all times vulnerable to misinterpretation. Much as the props' meanings are often disputed, so too are characters' private identities often at odds with their public personae. The boundaries of selfhood that the characters wish to protect are made vulnerable by the objects that they use to shore up those boundaries. When read in relation to the characters who move them, props reveal the negotiated process of individuation. In doing so, they emphasize the correlation between extrinsic and intrinsic worth. They are a measure of how well characters perform gender and class rolls, thereby demonstrating the importance of external signifiers in the legitimation of England's subjects, even as they expose "legitimacy" as a social construction.</p>True Selves: Narrative Distance in Stories of Fiction and Nonfiction2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12069/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12069/"><img alt="True Selves: Narrative Distance in Stories of Fiction and Nonfiction" title="True Selves: Narrative Distance in Stories of Fiction and Nonfiction" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12069/small/"/></a></p><p>True Selves: Narrative Distance in Stories of Fiction and Nonfiction consists of a scholarly preface and four creative works. The preface discusses narrative distance as used in both fiction and nonfiction, and as compares to other narrative agents such as point of view, especially in contemporary creative writing. The selection of stories examines relationships, especially familial, and themes of isolation, community, and memory. Collection includes two chapters of a novel-in-progress, Fences, short fiction story "Trees and Furniture," and creative nonfiction essays, "Floating" and "On the Sparrow."</p>Dawn in the Empty House2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12091/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12091/"><img alt="Dawn in the Empty House" title="Dawn in the Empty House" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12091/small/"/></a></p><p>The preface to this collection of poems, "Memory and The Myth of Lost Truth," explores the physical and metaphysical roles memory plays within poetry. It examines the melancholy frequently birthed from a particular kind poetic self-inquiry, or, more specifically, the feelings associated with recognizing the self's inability to re-inhabit the emotional experience of past events, and how poetry can redeem, via engaging our symbolic intuition, the faultiness of remembered history. Dawn in the Empty House is a collection of poems about the implications of human relationships, self-deception, and memory as a tool for self-discovery.</p>Rhetorical Transformations of Trees in Medieval England: From Material Culture to Literary Representation2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12130/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12130/"><img alt="Rhetorical Transformations of Trees in Medieval England: From Material Culture to Literary Representation" title="Rhetorical Transformations of Trees in Medieval England: From Material Culture to Literary Representation" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12130/small/"/></a></p><p>Literary texts of medieval England feature trees as essential to the individual and communal identity as it intersects with nature, and the compelling qualities and organic processes associated with trees help vernacular writers interrogate the changing nature of this character. The early depiction of trees demonstrates an intimacy with nature that wanes after the tenth-century monastic revival, when the representation of trees as living, physical entities shifts toward their portrayal as allegorical vehicles for the Church's didactic use. With the emergence of new social categories in the late Middle Ages, the rhetoric of trees moves beyond what it means to forge a Christian identity to consider the role of a ruler and his subjects, the relationship between humans and nature, and the place of women in society. Taking as its fundamental premise that people in wooded regions develop a deep-rooted connection to trees, this dissertation connects medieval culture and the physical world to consider the variety of ways in which Anglo-Saxon and post-Norman vernacular manuscripts depict trees. A personal identification with trees, a desire for harmony between society and the environment, and a sympathy for the work of trees lead to the narrator's transformation in the Dream of the Rood. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Junius 11 manuscript, illustrated in Genesis A, Genesis B, and manuscript images, scrutinizes the Anglo-Saxon Christian's relationship and responsibility to God in the aftermath of the Fall. As writers transform trees into allegories in works like Genesis B and Geoffrey Chaucer's Parson's Tale, the symbolic representations retain their spontaneous, organic processes to offer readers a visual picture of the Christian interior-the heart. Whereas the Parson's Tale promotes personal and radical change through a horticultural narrative starring the Tree of Penitence and Tree of Vices, Chaucer's Knight's Tale appraises the role of autonomous subjects in a tyrannical system. Forest laws of the post-Norman period engender a bitter polemic about the extent of royal power to appropriate nature, and the royal grove of the Knight's Tale exposes the limitations of monarchical structures and masculine control and shapes a pragmatic response to human failures.</p>The Map and the Territory in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12205/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12205/"><img alt="The Map and the Territory in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens" title="The Map and the Territory in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12205/small/"/></a></p><p>In this dissertation, Wallace Stevens' imagination-reality problem as depicted in his poetry is discussed in terms of an eco-critical map-territory divide. Stevens's metaphor of "the necessary angel" acts to mediate human necessity, the map, with natural necessity, the territory, in order to retain contact with changing cultural and environmental conditions. At stake in this mediation are individual freedom and the pertinence of the imagination to the experience of reality. In Chapter 2, the attempt at reconciliation of these two necessities will be described in terms of surrealism. Stevens's particular approach to surrealism emphasizes separating and delineating natural necessity from human necessity so that through the poem the reader can experience the miracle of their reconciliation. In Chapter 3, this delineation of the two necessities, map and territory, will be examined against Modernist "decreation," which is the stripping bare of human perception for the purpose of regaining glimpses of the first idea of the external world. And in Chapter 4, Stevens's approach to the problem of the map-territory divide will be considered against his alienation or internal exile: balancing nature and identity through mediating fictions results in a compromised approach to the marriage of mind and culture in a historically situated place.</p>Laying the foundation for successful non-academic writing: Professional communication principles in the K-5 curricula of the McKinney Independent School District.2010-03-17T11:40:26-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12206/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12206/"><img alt="Laying the foundation for successful non-academic writing: Professional communication principles in the K-5 curricula of the McKinney Independent School District." title="Laying the foundation for successful non-academic writing: Professional communication principles in the K-5 curricula of the McKinney Independent School District." src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12206/small/"/></a></p><p>Traditionally, K-5 students' writing has had a primarily academic aim-to help students master concepts and express themselves. Even if students take a professional writing course later, they typically do not have the opportunity to practice-over the long period of time mastery requires-the non-academic writing skills they will be required to use as part of their jobs and in their civic life. Based on a limited K-5 study, Texas' McKinney Independent School District is doing a good job of preparing students at the elementary-school level in the areas of collaboration and presentation. A fair job of helping elementary-school students understand the communication situation, define audience, clarify purpose, gather and evaluate resources, and test usability. [And] a poor job of helping elementary-school students with analysis and organization. With their teachers' help, K-5 students eventually grasp the communication situation and can broadly identify their audience and purpose, but they do not appear to select words, format, communication style, or design based on that audience and purpose. Their writer-based focus affects their presentations as well, although they do present frequently. If teachers routinely incorporated audience and purpose considerations into every aspect of communication assignments (format, communication style, design), students would be better prepared for non-academic communication. Texas pre-service teachers practice the types of documents they will write on the job but do not receive training in design or style. Likewise, they practice researching, collaborating, and presenting but receive little training in those skills. If Texas K-5 teachers are to supplement the curriculum with professional writing principles, as trends suggest they should, education programs need to focus on these principles in their pre-service teacher curriculum. Professional writing principles need to become part of ingrained writing patterns because these are the skills that will best serve students after they graduate, both in their careers and civic lives. Understanding how to tailor communication for audience and purpose; how to effectively collaborate; how to select, evaluate, analyze, and organize information efficiently and productively; and how to format presentations effectively requires practice over a long period of time.</p>The Sacred and the Profane: Nin, Barnes, and the Aesthetics of Amorality2009-11-19T20:18:01-06:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11047/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11047/"><img alt="The Sacred and the Profane: Nin, Barnes, and the Aesthetics of Amorality" title="The Sacred and the Profane: Nin, Barnes, and the Aesthetics of Amorality" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11047/small/"/></a></p><p>Barnes's Vagaries Malicieux, and Nin's Delta of Venus, are examples the developing vision of female sex, and both authors use their literary techniques to accomplish their aesthetic vision of amorality. Nin's visions are based on her and her friends' extreme experiences. Her primary concern was expressing her erotic and amorally aesthetic gaze, and the results of her efforts are found in her aesthetic vision of Paris and the amoral lifestyle. Barnes uses metaphor and linguistics to fashion her aesthetic vision. Her technique in "Run, Girls, Run!" both subverts any sense of morality, and offers an interesting and challenging read for its audience. In "Vagaries Malicieux" Barnes's Paris is dark while bright, and creates a sense of nothingness, indicated only by Barnes's aesthetic appreciation.</p>Always Painting the Future: Utopian Desire and the Women's Movement in Selected Works by United States Female Writers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century2009-11-19T20:17:53-06:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11060/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11060/"><img alt="Always Painting the Future: Utopian Desire and the Women's Movement in Selected Works by United States Female Writers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" title="Always Painting the Future: Utopian Desire and the Women's Movement in Selected Works by United States Female Writers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11060/small/"/></a></p><p>This study explores six utopias by female authors written at the turn of the twentieth century: Mary Bradley Lane's Mizora (1881), Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant's Unveiling Parallel (1893), Eloise O. Richberg's Reinstern (1900), Lena J. Fry's Other Worlds (1905), Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915), and Martha Bensley Bruère's Mildred Carver, USA (1919). While the right to vote had become the central, most important point of the movement, women were concerned with many other issues affecting their lives. Positioned within the context of the late nineteenth century women's rights movement, this study examines these "sideline" concerns of the movement such as home and gender-determined spheres, motherhood, work, marriage, independence, and self-sufficiency and relates them to the transforming character of female identity at the time. The study focuses primarily on analyzing the expression of female historical desire through utopian genre and on explicating the contradictory nature of utopian production.</p>The Museum of Coming Apart2009-11-19T20:16:29-06:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11000/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11000/"><img alt="The Museum of Coming Apart" title="The Museum of Coming Apart" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11000/small/"/></a></p><p>This dissertation comprises two parts: Part I, which discusses use of second person pronoun in contemporary American poetry; and Part II, The Museum of Coming Apart, which is a collection of poems. As confessional verse became a dominant mode in American poetry in the late 1950s and early 60s, so too did the use of the first-person pronoun. Due in part to the excesses of later confessionalism, however, many contemporary poets hesitate to use first person for fear that their work might be read as autobiography. The poetry of the 1990s and early 2000s has thus been characterized by distance, dissociation, and fracture as poets attempt to remove themselves from the overtly emotional and intimate style of the confessionals. However, other contemporary poets have sought to straddle the line between the earnestness and linearity of confessionalism and the intellectually playful yet emotionally detached poetry of the moment. One method for striking this balance is to employ the second person pronoun. Because "you" in English is ambiguous, it allows the poet to toy with the level of distance in a poem and create evolving relationships between the speaker and reader. Through the analysis of poems by C. Dale Young, Paul Guest, Richard Hugo, Nick Flynn, Carrie St. George Comer, and Moira Egan, this essay examines five common ways second person is employed in contemporary American poetry-the use of "you" in reference to a specific individual, the epistolary form, the direct address to the reader, the imperative voice, and the use of "you" as a substitute for "I"-and the ways that the second-person pronoun allows these poems to take the best of both the confessional and dissociative modes.</p>Opening Day2009-05-11T20:08:41-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9018/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9018/"><img alt="Opening Day" title="Opening Day" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9018/small/"/></a></p><p>Although I've read and written poetry for my own pleasure for about twenty years now, I've only seriously studied and written poetry on a consistent basis for the past two years. In this sense, I still consider myself a beginning poet. When attempting to pursue an art form as refined and historically informed as poetry, only after spending a number of years reading and writing intensively would I no longer consider myself a beginner, but a practitioner of the art. I've grounded my early development as a poet in concision, voice, and imagination, and hope to build upon these ideas with other poetic techniques, theories, and forms as I go forward. I am particularly interested in mastering the sonnet form, a concise and imaginative form that will allow me to further develop my skills. Hopefully, the works in this thesis reflect that effort.</p>What Do You Do? A Memoir in Essays2009-05-11T20:08:09-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9074/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9074/"><img alt="What Do You Do? A Memoir in Essays" title="What Do You Do? A Memoir in Essays" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9074/small/"/></a></p><p>These personal essays present a twenty-something's evolving attitudes toward her occupations. Each essay explores a different job-from birthday party clown, to seitan-maker, to psychiatric den mother-while circling around sub-themes of addiction, disability, sex, love, nature, and nourishment (both food and otherwise). Through landscape, extended metaphor and symbol, and recurring characters, the collection addresses how a person's work often defines how she sees the world. Each of the narrator's jobs thrusts her into networks of people and places that both helps and impedes the process of self-discovery. As a whole, the essay collection functions as a memoir, tracking an often-universal journey, one that many undertake in order to discover a meaningful life, and sometimes, eventually, a career.</p>Shared Spaces: The Human and the Animal in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain, and Jack London2009-05-11T20:07:59-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9095/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9095/"><img alt="Shared Spaces: The Human and the Animal in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain, and Jack London" title="Shared Spaces: The Human and the Animal in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain, and Jack London" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9095/small/"/></a></p><p>Living in tune with nature means respecting the natural environment and realizing its power and the ways it manifests in daily life. This essay focuses on the ways in which respect for nature is expressed through animal imagery in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mark Twain's "The Stolen White Elephant," Roughing It, and Pudd'nhead Wilson, and Jack London's The Call of the Wild. Each author encouraged readers to seek the benefits of nature in order to become better human beings, forge stronger communities, and develop a more unified nation and world. By learning from the positive example of the animals, we learn how to share our world with them and with each other.</p>The Politics of Translation: Authorship and Authority in the Writings of Alfred the Great2009-05-11T20:07:53-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9112/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9112/"><img alt="The Politics of Translation: Authorship and Authority in the Writings of Alfred the Great" title="The Politics of Translation: Authorship and Authority in the Writings of Alfred the Great" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9112/small/"/></a></p><p>The political implications of the OE prose translations of King Alfred (849-899) are overlooked by scholars who focus on the literary merits of the texts. When viewed as propaganda, Alfred's writings show a careful reshaping of their Latin sources that reaffirms Alfred's claim to power. The preface to Pastoral Care, long understood to be the inauguration of Alfred's literary reforms, is invested with highly charged language and a dramatic reinvention of English history, which both reestablishes the social hierarchy with the king more firmly in place at its head and constructs the inevitability of what is actually a quite radical translation project. The translations themselves reshape their readers' understanding of kingship, even while creating implicit comparison between Alfred and the Latin authors.</p>Short Stories2008-10-02T16:52:20-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6144/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6144/"><img alt="Short Stories" title="Short Stories" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6144/small/"/></a></p><p>This collection of seven representative original short stories will include four short stories relating to a fictional location in Dallas, the Starry Skies gay country-and-western dance hall. Three short stories set in fabulous, sometimes absurd settings, will follow. A preface dealing with the nature of fictional place and non-fictional place in fiction will precede the collection of short stories.</p>Libertines Real and Fictional in Rochester, Shadwell, Wycherley, and Boswell2008-10-02T16:45:41-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6051/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6051/"><img alt="Libertines Real and Fictional in Rochester, Shadwell, Wycherley, and Boswell" title="Libertines Real and Fictional in Rochester, Shadwell, Wycherley, and Boswell" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6051/small/"/></a></p><p>Libertines Real and Fictional in Rochester, Shadwell, Wycherley, and Boswell examines the Restoration and eighteenth-century libertine figure as it appears in John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester's Satyr against Mankind, "The Maim'd Debauchee," and "Upon His Drinking a Bowl," Thomas Shadwell's The Libertine, William Wycherley's The Country Wife, and James Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763. I argue that the limitations and self-contradictions of standard definitions of libertinism and the ways in which libertine protagonists and libertinism in general function as critiques of libertinism. Moreover, libertine protagonists and poetic personae reinterpret libertinism to accommodate their personal agendas and in doing so, satirize the idea of libertinism itself and identify the problematization of "libertinism" as a category of gender and social identity. That is, these libertines misinterpret-often deliberately-Hobbes to justify their opposition and refusal to obey social institutions-e.g., eventually marrying and engaging in a monogamous relationship with one's wife-as well as their endorsement of obedience to nature or sense, which can include embracing a libertine lifestyle in which one engages in sexual encounters with multiple partners, refuses marriage, and questions the existence of God or at least distrusts any sort of organized religion. Since any attempts to define the word "libertinism"-or at least any attempts to provide a standard definition of the word-are tenuous at best, it is equally tenuous to suggest that any libertines conform to conventional or standard libertinism. In fact, the literary and "real life" libertines in this study not only fail to conform to such definitions of libertinism, but also reinterpret libertinism. While all these libertines do possess similar characteristics-namely affluence, insatiable sexual appetites, and a rebellion against institutional authorities (the Church, reason, government, family, and marriage)-they often misinterpret libertinism, reason, and Hobbesian philosophy. Furthermore, they all choose different, unique ways to oppose patriarchal, social authorities. These aberrant ways of rebelling against social institutions and their redefinitions of libertinism, I argue, make them self-satirists and self-conscious critics of libertinism as a concept.</p>Paradox and Balance in the Anglo-Saxon Mind of Beowulf2008-10-02T16:42:31-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6110/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6110/"><img alt="Paradox and Balance in the Anglo-Saxon Mind of Beowulf" title="Paradox and Balance in the Anglo-Saxon Mind of Beowulf" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6110/small/"/></a></p><p>This essay argues that the Anglo-Saxon poet of Beowulf presents the reader with a series of paradoxes and attempts to find a balance within these paradoxes. At the forefront is the paradox of past and present, explored through the influence of the past on the characters in the poem as well as the poet. Additionally, the poem offers the paradox of light and dark, which ultimately suggests light and dark as symbols of Christianity and paganism. Finally, the land and the sea offer the third primary paradox, indicating the relationship that the characters and poet had with land and sea, while also reflecting the other paradoxes in the poem. The result is the desire to find balance within the paradoxes through the recognition of ongoing tension.</p>Animals That Die2008-05-05T15:08:47-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5418/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5418/"><img alt="Animals That Die" title="Animals That Die" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5418/small/"/></a></p><p>The thesis has two parts. Part I is a critical essay entitled "Lessons Under the Amfalula." Part II is the collection of poems entitled "Animals That Die."</p>Between the Waves: Truth-Telling, Feminism, and Silence in the Modernist Era Poetics of Laura Riding Jackson and Muriel Rukeyser2008-05-05T15:08:43-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5419/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5419/"><img alt="Between the Waves: Truth-Telling, Feminism, and Silence in the Modernist Era Poetics of Laura Riding Jackson and Muriel Rukeyser" title="Between the Waves: Truth-Telling, Feminism, and Silence in the Modernist Era Poetics of Laura Riding Jackson and Muriel Rukeyser" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5419/small/"/></a></p><p>This paper presents the lives and early feminist works of two modernist era poets, Laura Riding Jackson and Muriel Rukeyser. Despite differences of style, the two poets shared a common theme of essentialist feminism before its popularization by 1950s and 60s second wave feminists. The two poets also endured periods of poetic silence or self censorship which can be attributed to modernism, McCarthyism, and rising conservatism. Analysis of their poems helps to remedy their exclusion from the common canon.</p>The Feminine Ancestral Footsteps: Symbolic Language Between Women in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables2008-05-05T15:06:06-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5434/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5434/"><img alt="The Feminine Ancestral Footsteps: Symbolic Language Between Women in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables" title="The Feminine Ancestral Footsteps: Symbolic Language Between Women in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5434/small/"/></a></p><p>This study examines Hawthorne's use of symbols, particularly flowers, in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Romantic ideals stressed the full development of the self¬reliant individual, and romantic writers such as Hawthorne believed the individual would fully develop not only spiritually, but also intellectually by taking instruction from the natural world. Hawthorne's heroines reach their full potential as independent women in two steps: they first work together to defeat powerful patriarchies, and they then learn to read natural symbols to cultivate their artistic sensibilities which lead them to a full development of their intellect and spirituality. The focus of this study is Hawthorne's narrative strategy; how the author uses symbols as a language his heroines use to communicate from one generation to the next. In The Scarlet Letter, for instance, the symbol of a rose connects three generations of feminine reformers, Ann Hutchinson, Hester Prynne, and Pearl. By the end of the novel, Pearl interprets a rose as a symbol of her maternal line, which links her back to Ann Hutchinson. Similarly in The House of the Seven Gables Alice, Hepzibah, and Phoebe Pyncheon are part of a family line of women who work together to overthrow the Pyncheon patriarchy. The youngest heroine, Phoebe, comes to an understanding of her great, great aunt Alice's message from the posies her feminine ancestor plants in the Pyncheon garden. Through Phoebe's interpretation of the flowers, she deciphers how the cultivation of a sense of artistic appreciation is essential to the progress of American culture.</p>Stranger Than Fact2008-05-05T15:05:54-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5436/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5436/"><img alt="Stranger Than Fact" title="Stranger Than Fact" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5436/small/"/></a></p><p>As a dyslexic child, I always had trouble finding my voice. It's hard to express yourself in words, when you struggle with them. For me words always come later when I write. But most people don't understand how I feel. If your synapses fire off at the right time how can you image what it would be like it they didn't? That's where fiction comes in. If you can override someone's lack of experience with the use of a metaphor, then by distancing the reader from reality with an allegory, you can get to truth that's hard to capture any other way. You can also simply tell the truth in your writing with plain nonfiction. For me, fiction and nonfiction are a way for me to claim my voice and convey truth. Only a reader can decided what that truth looks like.</p>Reforming Ritual: Protestantism, Women, and Ritual on the Renaissance Stage2008-05-05T15:05:38-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5439/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5439/"><img alt="Reforming Ritual: Protestantism, Women, and Ritual on the Renaissance Stage" title="Reforming Ritual: Protestantism, Women, and Ritual on the Renaissance Stage" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5439/small/"/></a></p><p>My dissertation focuses on representations of women and ritual on the Renaissance stage, situating such examples within the context of the Protestant Reformation. The renegotiation of the value, place, and power of ritual is a central characteristic of the Protestant Reformation in early modern England. The effort to eliminate or redirect ritual was a crucial point of interest for reformers, for most of whom the corruption of religion seemed bound to its ostentatious and idolatrous outer trappings. Despite the opinions of theologians, however, receptivity toward the structure, routine, and familiarity of traditional Catholicism did not disappear with the advent of Protestantism. Reformers worked to modify those rituals that were especially difficult to eradicate, maintaining some sense of meaning without portraying confidence in ceremony itself. I am interested in how early Protestantism dealt with the presence of elements (in worship, daily practice, literary or dramatic representation) that it derogatorily dubbed popish, and how women had a particular place of importance in this dialogue. Through the drama of Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton, along with contemporary religious and popular sources, I explore how theatrical representations of ritual involving women create specific sites of cultural and theological negotiation. These representations both reflect and resist emerging attitudes toward women and ritual fashioned by Reformation thought, granting women a particular authority in the spiritual realm.</p>Scotland Expecting: Gender and National Identity in Alan Warner's Scotland2008-05-05T15:03:55-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5459/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5459/"><img alt="Scotland Expecting: Gender and National Identity in Alan Warner's Scotland" title="Scotland Expecting: Gender and National Identity in Alan Warner's Scotland" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5459/small/"/></a></p><p>This dissertation examines the constructions of gender and national identity in four of Alan Warner's novels: Morvern Callar, These Demented Lands, The Sopranos, and The Man Who Walks. I argue that Warner uses gender identity as the basis for the examination of a Scottish national identity. He uses the metaphor of the body to represent Scotland in devolution. His pregnant females are representative of "Scotland Expecting," a notion that suggests Scotland is expecting independence from England. I argue that this expectation also involves the search for a genuine Scottish identity that is not marred by the effects of colonization. Warner's male characters are emasculated and represent Scotland's mythological past. The Man Who Walks suggests that his female characters' pregnancies result in stillbirths. These stillbirths represent Scotland's inability to let go of the past in order to move towards a future independent nation.</p>"Is She Going to Die or Survive with Her Baby?": The Aftermath of Illegitimate Pregnancies in the Twentieth Century American Novels2008-05-05T14:52:45-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5316/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5316/"><img alt=""Is She Going to Die or Survive with Her Baby?": The Aftermath of Illegitimate Pregnancies in the Twentieth Century American Novels" title=""Is She Going to Die or Survive with Her Baby?": The Aftermath of Illegitimate Pregnancies in the Twentieth Century American Novels" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5316/small/"/></a></p><p>This dissertation is mainly based on the reading of three American novels to explore how female characters deal with their illegitimate pregnancies and how their solutions re-shape their futures and affect their inner growth. Chapter 1 discusses Dorinda Oakley's premarital pregnancy in Ellen Glasgow's Barren Ground and draws the circle of limits from Barbara Welter's "four cardinal virtues" (purity, submissiveness, domesticity, and piety) which connect to the analogous female roles (daughter, sister, wife, and mother). Dorinda's childless survival reconstructs a typical household from her domination and absence of maternity. Chapter 2 examines Ántonia Shimerda's struggles and endurance in My Ántonia by Willa Cather before and after Ántonia gives birth to a premarital daughter. Ántonia devotes herself to being a caring mother and to looking after a big family although her marriage is also friendship-centered. Chapter 3 adopts a different approach to analyze Charlotte Rittenmeyer's extramarital pregnancy in The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. As opposed to Dorinda and Ántonia who re-enter domesticity to survive, Charlotte runs out on her family and dies of a botched abortion. To help explain the aftermath of illicit pregnancies, I extend or shorten John Duvall's formula of female role mutations: "virgin>sexually active (called whore)>wife" to examine the riddles of female survival and demise. The overall argument suggests that one way or another, nature, society, and family are involved in illegitimately pregnant women's lives, and the more socially compliant a pregnant woman becomes after her transgression, the better chance she can survive with her baby.</p>The Sky in Our Mouths2008-05-05T14:48:30-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5337/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5337/"><img alt="The Sky in Our Mouths" title="The Sky in Our Mouths" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5337/small/"/></a></p><p>I believe that poetry has survived for thousands of years because it provides people with a transpersonal connection that they can't find elsewhere. I look for poetry that is more than an emotional expression, more than witty word play, and more than an interesting observation. I want poetry to give me that inspirational spark, that glimpse into a world beyond my own. Poems that succeed in doing this force me into a perspective that I haven't previously imagined by yoking together two or more seemingly disparate elements. This tension between the old elements and the new link between them creates energy for the poem. This poetic nexus contributes to the transpersonal experience that I seek.</p>Language Choice in the ESL and FL Classrooms: Teachers and Students Speak Out2008-05-05T14:44:44-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5374/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5374/"><img alt="Language Choice in the ESL and FL Classrooms: Teachers and Students Speak Out" title="Language Choice in the ESL and FL Classrooms: Teachers and Students Speak Out" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5374/small/"/></a></p><p>This paper compares English as a second language (ESL) and foreign language (FL) teachers' and students' perspectives regarding target language (TL) and first language (L1) use in the respective classrooms. Teachers and students were given questionnaires asking their opinions of a rule that restricts students' L1 use. Questionnaires were administered to 46 ESL students, 43 FL students, 14 ESL teachers, and 15 FL teachers in Texas secondary public schools. Results were analyzed using SPSS and R. Results demonstrated an almost statistical difference between perspectives of ESL and FL students regarding TL and L1 use, while teacher results demonstrated no statistical difference between the groups. Students had a more positive perspective of the rule than teachers.</p>Pulling Tangled Strings: "The Puppeteer" and Other Stories2008-05-05T14:43:19-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5388/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5388/"><img alt="Pulling Tangled Strings: "The Puppeteer" and Other Stories" title="Pulling Tangled Strings: "The Puppeteer" and Other Stories" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5388/small/"/></a></p><p>Pulling Tangled Strings: "The Puppeteer" and Other Stories is a collection of stories with strong thematic and emotional connections that includes an opening preface describing the process used when writing the stories. Each of the stories is united by a main character that desperately wants to gain control of his environment. From a character acting out a classic revenge tale on his friend to a comatose teenager victimized by an ambiguous tragedy, these are characters who have been put into difficult life situations and need to feel like they are pulling the strings in their lives again. In all cases, however, the characters come to find that control does not come easily and that the motivations for their behavior are never clear cut, even to themselves.</p>"The Barroom Girls" and Other Stories2008-05-05T14:15:01-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5218/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5218/"><img alt=""The Barroom Girls" and Other Stories" title=""The Barroom Girls" and Other Stories" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5218/small/"/></a></p><p>This creative thesis is comprised of five original short stories and a critical preface. The preface discusses the changing cultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic landscape of the modern American South and the effects-positive, negative, and neutral-these changes have had on the region's contemporary literature, including the short stories contained within.</p>Language and the Art of Writing2008-05-05T14:14:11-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5230/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5230/"><img alt="Language and the Art of Writing" title="Language and the Art of Writing" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5230/small/"/></a></p><p>I start writing by conjuring up an image in my mind. Sometimes it will be something that I have thought about for a while, sometimes it will be something that I sit around attempting to create. Either way, it is simply the idea that I need in order to get started. People will say, "Just sit down and write" which I can do, but it does not mean I will end up anywhere worthwhile. In my writing I need a focus. I need an idea or just one image to get me writing and I can base an entire story off of that one image. I think the reason this works for me is because in my mind it is an illustration and always something that is vibrant and unique. I want the image to stand out and to mean something because I feel that it comes to me for a specific reason, I just have to piece it all together and let the characters and plot unfold for themselves. People often say this, that the characters end up running the story. I think this is true, but in my case my stories are not so driven by character or plot as they are by language. A language driven piece can be a difficult thing to manipulate because it needs to have some direction and some purpose other than just being pleasing to the ear/mind/reader. And what is the point of a language driven piece?</p>Technical Communication and the Needs of Small 501(c)(3) Organizations2008-05-05T14:07:57-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5239/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5239/"><img alt="Technical Communication and the Needs of Small 501(c)(3) Organizations" title="Technical Communication and the Needs of Small 501(c)(3) Organizations" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5239/small/"/></a></p><p>This exploratory study examines documentation practices and processes in ten small non-profit organizations. The objectives of this study were to answer the following two research questions: (1) What organizational needs do small non-profit organizations have that are relevant to technical communication? and (2) How are small 501(c)(3) organizations attempting to meet these needs? Which of these attempted solutions are ineffective? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two people from each organization: the executive director and a volunteer. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed, and grounded theory was used to identify coding categories related to documentation development. Primary findings suggest that interviewees are aware that they need documentation, yet they often postpone developing such documentation until problems develop. The study findings also suggest that interviewees across different nonprofit organizations value documentation for similar reasons. Strategies are provided for technical communicators interested in working with nonprofit organizations, and additional research avenues are identified.</p>"Mad Mary Sane" and Other Stories2008-05-05T14:06:30-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5254/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5254/"><img alt=""Mad Mary Sane" and Other Stories" title=""Mad Mary Sane" and Other Stories" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5254/small/"/></a></p><p>The following is a multi-genre collection, including short shorts, short fiction, non-fiction, and drama. Each piece utilizes Gothic motifs and dark comedy in an effort to explore life and loss.</p>The Human Body is Not Designed for Ambivalence: Odes2008-05-02T15:20:30-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5112/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5112/"><img alt="The Human Body is Not Designed for Ambivalence: Odes" title="The Human Body is Not Designed for Ambivalence: Odes" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5112/small/"/></a></p><p>The critical analysis section of this dissertation seeks to define the ode using examples in translation from Greek and Latin odes and examples in English written from the 1500s to the 2000s. Although most definitions of the ode contend that this subgenre of the lyric is an occasional poem of praise that includes a meditative or mythological element, the ode is far more complex. An ode is an occasional poem, but it works to privilege rather than strictly praise its subject, allowing for the speaker's ambivalence toward the subject. Meditation is a key element of the ode, since the poet uses the subject as a means for moving to the meditation or as a conduit through which the meditation occurs. The meditation in the poem is also a way for the poet or speaker to negotiate the relationship between the subject and herself; thus, the ode is concerned with power, since the poet must place herself or the speaker in relation to the subject. Power thus may be granted to either the speaker or the subject; the poet names and speaks of the subject, and often the poet names and speaks of himself in relation to the subject. Additionally, odes usually contain some exhortation, generally directed to the subject if not to those surrounding the reader or capable of "listening in" to the performance of the poem. This definition, it should be noted, is intended to be fluid. In order for a poem to be relevant to its age, it must either adhere to or usefully challenge the contemporary concerns. Thus, while many of the odes discussed will contain the elements of this definition, others will work against the definition. In the remainder of the introduction, I examine ancient models and twentieth- and twenty-first century examples of the ode as a means of exploring what an ode is and how it can undermine the elements of the definition and still work as a poem of this subgenre. In the second section of the dissertation are lyric poems, many of which fit in varying degrees the definition laid out in the critical analysis.</p>AGenesis: A Novel2008-05-02T15:19:28-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5119/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5119/"><img alt="AGenesis: A Novel" title="AGenesis: A Novel" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5119/small/"/></a></p><p>AGenesis is a novel of "postmortal fiction" set entirely in an afterlife. Nessie, a recently dead woman, accidentally kills an already-dead man, and in the confusion that follows, sets out to discover how he could have died and what after-afterlife he might have gone to. During her travels, she is raped and then help captive by a city of tormented souls; she descends into madness until rescued by children, and she and her newborn but "undead" daughter set out again, this time to find the end of the afterlife. Nessie's daughter eventually seeks a way to enter a living world she's never known, while Nessie tries to end her suffering and find peace.</p>An analysis of the syntactic and lexical features of an Indian English oral narrative: A Pear Story study.2008-05-02T15:18:56-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5123/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5123/"><img alt="An analysis of the syntactic and lexical features of an Indian English oral narrative: A Pear Story study." title="An analysis of the syntactic and lexical features of an Indian English oral narrative: A Pear Story study." src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5123/small/"/></a></p><p>This pilot study addresses the distribution of nonstandard syntactic and lexical features in Indian English (IE) across a homogeneous group of highly educated IE speakers. It is found that nonstandard syntactic features of article use, number agreement and assignment of verb argument structure do not display uniform intragroup distribution. Instead, a relationship is found between nonstandard syntactic features and the sociolinguistic variables of lower levels of exposure to and use of English found within the group. While nonstandard syntactic features show unequal distribution, nonstandard lexical features of semantic reassignment, and mass nouns treated as count nouns display a more uniform intragroup distribution.</p>Vulgar Moon2008-05-02T15:17:01-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5142/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5142/"><img alt="Vulgar Moon" title="Vulgar Moon" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5142/small/"/></a></p><p>The preface to this collection, "Speculation and Silence," argues that confessional poetry remains integral to contemporary poetics, though the implications of the term have changed since its "first-generation." Confessional poetry must not be dependent on simply the transmission of sensational details and the emotional consequences, but on poets' implementation of silence and restraint in both the diffusion of ideas and in the crafting of the piece. Vulgar Moon is a collection of poems in which I explore the implications of events ranging from erotic love and motherhood, to the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, and Jewish history. In addition, these pieces explore the inner workings of the human psyche, both tender and malignant, and the inherent human need for absolution.</p>Murky Impressions of Postmodernism: Eugene Gant and Shakespearean Intertext in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River2008-05-02T15:16:38-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5143/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5143/"><img alt="Murky Impressions of Postmodernism: Eugene Gant and Shakespearean Intertext in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River" title="Murky Impressions of Postmodernism: Eugene Gant and Shakespearean Intertext in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5143/small/"/></a></p><p>In this study, I analyze the significance of Shakespearean intertextuality in the major works of Thomas Wolfe featuring protagonist Eugene Gant: Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River. Specifically, I explore Gant's habits and preferences as a reader by examining the narrative arising from the protagonist's perspectives of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and King Lear. I examine the significance of parallel reading habits of Wolfe the author and Gant the character. I also scrutinize the plurality of Gant's methods of cognition as a reader who interprets texts, communicates his connections with texts, and wars with texts. Further, I assess the cumulative effect of Wolfe's having blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality, between the novel and drama. I assert, then, that Wolfe, by incorporating a Shakespearean intertext, reveals aspects indicative of postmodernism.</p>A Comparison of Morris' News from Nowhere and Life in the Twin Oaks Community2008-05-02T15:12:21-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5179/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5179/"><img alt="A Comparison of Morris' News from Nowhere and Life in the Twin Oaks Community" title="A Comparison of Morris' News from Nowhere and Life in the Twin Oaks Community" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5179/small/"/></a></p><p>It is the purpose of this paper to explore how Morris' novel relates to life in Twin Oaks, primarily as depicted in two books: Living the Dream (1983) by Ingrid Komar, a long-term visitor to the commune and Kinkade's Is It Utopia Yet? (1996). This comparison will demonstrate that the experiences of contemporary intentional communities such as Twin Oaks provide a meaningful context for reading News from Nowhere because of the similarities in goals and philosophy. It will further demonstrate that though Twin Oaks was originally inspired by a utopian novel much more in the tradition of Bellamy's work than Morris', the community's subsequent evolution has brought it much closer in philosophy to News from Nowhere than Looking Backward.</p>The Search for Cultural Identity: An Exploration of the Works of Toni Morrison2008-05-02T15:11:25-05:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5191/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5191/"><img alt="The Search for Cultural Identity: An Exploration of the Works of Toni Morrison" title="The Search for Cultural Identity: An Exploration of the Works of Toni Morrison" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5191/small/"/></a></p><p>Many of Toni Morrison's African-American characters attempt to change their circumstances either by embracing the white dominant culture that surrounds them or by denying it. In this thesis I explore several ways in which the characters do just that-either embrace or deny the white culture's right to dominion over them. This thesis deals primarily with five of Toni Morrison's novels: The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, Sula, and Tar Baby.</p>Change of Condition: Women's Rhetorical Strategies on Marriage, 1710-17562008-02-15T16:32:10-06:00https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4921/<p><a href="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4921/"><img alt="Change of Condition: Women's Rhetorical Strategies on Marriage, 1710-1756" title="Change of Condition: Women's Rhetorical Strategies on Marriage, 1710-1756" src="https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4921/small/"/></a></p><p>This dissertation examines ways in which women constructed and criticized matrimony both before and after their own marriages. Social historians have argued for the rise of companionacy in the eighteenth century without paying attention to women's accounts of the fears and uncertainties surrounding the prospect of marriage. I argue that having more latitude to choose a husband did not diminish the enormous impact that the choice would have on the rest of a woman's life; if anything, choice might increase that impact. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hester Mulso Chapone, Mary Delany, and Eliza Haywood recorded their anxieties about and their criticisms of marriage in public and private writings from the early years of the century into the 1750s. They often elide their own complex backgrounds in favor of generalized policy statements on what constitutes a good marriage. These women promote an ideal of marriage based on respect and similarity of character, suggesting that friendship is more honest, and durable than romantic love. This definition of ideal marriage enables these women to argue for more egalitarian marital relationships without overtly calling for a change in the wife's traditional role. The advancement of this ideal of companionacy gave women a means of promoting gender equality in marriage at a time when they considered marriage risky but socially and economically necessary.</p>