My goal is to demonstrate that a coevolutionary relationship exists between decentralized networks over which digital media are used and the control mechanisms placed on those networks and digital media. The resisting digital media and the control mechanisms placed on them push each other toward further decentralization. The aspects of...
In Can You See Me?, a collection of nine short stories, Elizabeth Wyckoff explores the conflicting desires of young women who long for connection, but struggle to find the balance between concealing and revealing themselves. The female protagonists in these stories simultaneously yearn to be seen, recognized, and acknowledged; and...
Nineteenth-century England witnessed burgeoning urban growth and the resultant struggle of the poor to find adequate shelter. Against this backdrop, Charles Dickens was a fierce advocate for the rights of the street people of London to have sanitary and adequate housing, earning him the title of radical. By combining sentimentality...
In their respective novels, The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and
Passing (1929), both Charles Chesnutt and Nella Larsen utilize racial
passing, the process of a mixed-race individual living as "white," to
explore the relations between black and white people during early-twentieth century America. This thesis specifically argues that
Chesnutt...
Kate Chopin, author of the proto-feminist novel The Awakening, was also a prolific writer of short stories. Nineteen of her stories were originally published in Vogue magazine between 1893 and 1900. This study looks at six of these stories, "The Father of Desiree's Baby," "A Respectable Woman," "The Dream of...
Post World War II victory culture and its fallout-the consensus ideology-led to the creation of a middle class willing to conform to a prescribed set of ideals, safely removed from all danger, and enjoying the material benefits of a growing middle-class income bracket. Walt Disney and Hugh Hefner, two seemingly...
In this collection of nonfiction essays, Brisker recounts her path of recovery after suffering traumatic brain injury. The memoir opens with her first waking moments in the hospital one week after she was thrown from her horse and fractured her skull, and her beginning attempts at piecing together her fragmented...
Asynthesis & Act is a significant intervention into the discourse of the sublime. Through a deep investigation of the critical metaphysics of Immanuel Kant, the first chapter of this thesis puts forth the claim that the sublime is a radical experience that occasions a possibility for the individual to commit...
In this thesis, I conduct an analysis of blogs in order to understand their potential use in the composition classroom with the goals of students writing for a public audience and developing their rhetorical and civic agency. I do so by exploring the potential for the blogosphere as a public...