Index Catalog // ScholarsArchive@OSU

Writing home : memoirs of a working-class student

Creator:: Lathrop, Arminda W.
Abstract:: This collection of personal essays, inspired by Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory, raises questions about the separation that becomes apparent through writing, education, and transitions between class. The author uses her personal experience of writing in, and attending a private university to explore the interactions of class, literacy, and education....
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Bildungsroman in contemporary black women's fiction

Creator:: Carey, Cecelia V.
Abstract:: Bildungsroman in Contemporary Black Women's Fiction is a study of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Both of these writers implement a newer version of the genre of Bildungsroman to reveal the complexities involved in coming of age for a young woman of color. Both...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Elementary Music

Creator:: Treat, Tanya
Abstract:: The four stories and one essay within are linked by themes: love, sex, truth, and music. Three of the stories are told by first person narrators who are also musicians. In "Elementary Music," a young girl views her parents' divorce through the lens of an orchestra concert in which she...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Unfinished work : reading Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth

Creator:: Ridinger, Angela F.
Abstract:: Ralph Ellison died without ever completing his second novel. After his death, the executor of his literary estate, John F. Callahan, edited Ellison's work into a novel published under the title Juneteenth. This thesis examines the problems posed by Ellison's posthumously released text, especially the issues of authorial intent and...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The infinite margin : living in reading

Creator:: Kleiman, Alicia J. Alicia J.
Abstract:: This thesis, a collection of creative non-fiction essays, explores the nature and influence of reading and school in the author's life. After a brief introduction explaining the title, part one describes the sensory dimensions of reading. Part two discusses the author's work as a student and teacher and the contradictions...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Remaking myths and subverting the mainstream : teen girls come of age on and off the screen

Creator:: Hentges, Sarah Duncan
Abstract:: For at least 30 years American culture has failed to provide empowering myths and symbols to its adolescents as they come of age and try to make sense of their selves, sexuality and the culture that surrounds them. This lack of myths and symbols is especially harmful to girls and...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Speaking for the dead : funeral rhetoric and women's lament in ancient Athens

Creator:: Robertson, Wayne
Abstract:: Recently, feminist scholars have begun to question the traditional telling of the history of rhetoric. Dissatisfied with a history which is told in terms of privileged, white males to the exclusion of all other voices, these scholars have worked to recover "lost" female rhetoricians and have begun critically rereading the...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

A feminist love story : the cinematic possibilities of Shakespeare's Juliet

Creator:: Faherty, Dionna E.
Abstract:: Literary and feminist theory have recently begun to recognize William Shakespeare's character of Juliet as a possible feminist heroine, but communicating this interpretation on film will be complicated. Not only will the film need to deal with the issues of adaptation that come with moving any play onto film, but...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

"They called me the hyacinth girl" : T. S. Eliot, masculinity, and the Great War

Creator:: Query, Patrick
Abstract:: This thesis traces the relationship between the First World War, constructions of masculinity, and the life and poetry of T.S. Eliot. Central to this relationship is a study of homoeroticism, which the author characterizes as different from homosexuality but not exclusive of it, in late 19th and early 20th century...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Of dragons, palaces, and gods : a mormon perspective on C. S. Lewis

Creator:: Garrett, Christopher Edward
Abstract:: During his lifetime C. S. Lewis chose to speak to Christians in plain and simple language that they could understand. Lewis taught and defended truths that he felt were discernible through reason. Morality, free will, and the divinity of Jesus Christ were fundamental to his core beliefs and teachings. His...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Claire Lies and other stories

Creator:: Rosenberg, Valerie P.
Abstract:: The five short stories included in this thesis depict characters who struggle as they try to balance their responsibilities to each other, and their own independent desires. Whether those desires include personal freedom, another relationship, or self-protection, these characters are at least minimally aware that obtaining what they most want...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Double exposure

Creator:: Raleigh, Elisabeth A.
Abstract:: DOUBLE EXPOSURE is a novel concerned with the phenomenon of memory. The story explores such questions as: To what extent does "memory" (and the narratives we construct from it) explain who we are? How is memory influenced by others-and does it matter if it is? Can a memory that is...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Fortunate son

Creator:: Bernard, Sean
Abstract:: The narrator of Fortunate Son is Jake, a 21 year-old who has recently arrived in Tucson, Arizona, after the death of his mother. He's spent his entire life on the road with his mother, possibly followed and antagonized by his father, whom Jake has never seen. He has come to...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Doing time : papers from Framingham prison

Creator:: Power, Katherine A.
Abstract:: This thesis is an arrangement of essays, poems, and journal entries expressing and exploring experiences from the author's six years in a medium security women's prison. They are collected around the themes of longing and grief, of despair, of survival, of joy, and of the complexity of homecoming.
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Aspiration

Creator:: Abbott, Michelle N.
Abstract:: This thesis consists of a collection of personal essays with interconnecting themes. The title, Aspiration, suggests a desire for high achievement and also reflects the metaphor of breathing, which serves to tie the collection together. Breathing is a physiological function that is subject to both voluntary and involuntary control, and...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The Orient King, and other stories

Creator:: Hess, Demian
Abstract:: These six stories represent a child's search for identity. The first story, "Road Map," is intended to be independent from the other pieces in this collection, but has been included because it is clearly set in the same place and explores many of the same themes of the other pieces....
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Believing details

Creator:: Harrell, Anna M.
Abstract:: In this creative non-fiction thesis, the author reads her own life, suggesting that she believes in the details of experience and knows truth in and through experience even though the truth is not always clear. The first chapter includes several narratives from her childhood experience. In the second chapter, the...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The influence of imperialist ideology on the dichotomy of passion and reason in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

Creator:: Dietrich, Rhonda
Abstract:: A prevalent belief during the Victorian age was that the world was divided between inferior beings governed by passion and superior reasoning beings. On the political level, this idea separated inferior passion-driven natives from superior reasoning Europeans. This division contributed to the maintenance and expansion of imperialist rule in distant...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Expression & identity : the word made flesh

Creator:: Beach, J. M.
Abstract:: This essay is an exploration of identity formation and expression. Humanity's identity formations create the orientations and languages with which we use to create our knowledge and understanding of the surrounding external environment (both social and physical) and our internal environment (psychological). This essay traces the sources of identity formation...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Angel of Tough Love and other stories

Creator:: Wells, Jerome B.
Abstract:: The overarching theme of these stories is the relationship between love and hate, especially the connection between kindness and violence. In this fictional world, love often begets hate, and hate, love: a man's capacity for empathy serves as the catalyst for an act of brutality; a character's loneliness, his desire...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Book of changes

Creator:: Fawbush, Vanessa
Abstract:: I have elected to write a creative nonfiction thesis because it serves to demonstrate my proficiency in the areas of rhetoric and composition. This thesis consists of a series of personal essays based on my effort to reclaim my voice as a writer. In order to organize these essays, I...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Geographers of writing : the authorship of Aphra Behn and Daniel Defoe in Oroonoko and Robinson Crusoe

Creator:: Klinikowski, Autumn
Abstract:: Themes of authorship in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe highlight locations in the stories that expose the author's concerns with their responsibilities and contributions to society. In order to frame a discussion of authorship in Oroonoko and Robinson Crusoe, it is essential to position Behn and Crusoe...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Mother's Choices

Creator:: Dietz, Amy L.
Abstract:: A memoir is variously defined as an abbreviated autobiography; a record of events based on the writer's personal observation or knowledge; and the written story of one's own life. I set out to do those things. But when I sat back to read the first of many drafts, I discovered...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Rethinking the dualism : Don DeLillo's White Noise and the ecocritical possibilities of the nature/culture mix

Creator:: Bowman, Natalie A.
Abstract:: Rethinking the Dualism: Don DeLillo's White Noise and the Ecocritical Possibilities of the Nature/Culture Mix questions current applications of ecocriticism and offers that these applications are inadequate in dealing with the perceived nature/culture dualism. This thesis suggests that ecocritics need to stop thinking in dualistic terms, but instead must consider...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The Way In: Interviews with Evangelical Christians

Creator:: Williams, B. Patrick
Abstract:: The purpose of this study is to examine the most significant reasons evangelical Christian faith is compelling to its adherents. Through the interviews of nineteen Evangelical Christians, it becomes clear that evangelicals see the Bible and Christian theology in a literal and factual way. Thus, contrary to some strains of...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Violence and voice

Creator:: Dahlin, Angela
Abstract:: Violence and voice seem to be related. In this thesis I detail personal experiences with violence, and then put them into the context of research done about the ways in which violence affects the writing voice, as well as the speaking voice. Helene Cixous' writings about the writing voice and...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

"Present fears" and "Horrible Imaginings" : Gothic elements in Shakespearean Tragedy

Creator:: Appel, Ian S.
Abstract:: Gothic literary works are characterized as such by their ability to represent and evoke terror. The form this representation takes is varied; often terror originates in the atmospheric effects of settings, in the appearance of mysterious, supposedly supernatural phenomena, and, perhaps most significantly, in the behavior of villainous characters. Shakespearean...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

An autumn journey : time, place, and pattern in Henry David Thoreau's later work

Creator:: Dotterman, Anthony Matthew
Abstract:: This thesis situates a discussion of Thoreau's later natural history essays in the context of the author's other writings. Beginning with an examination of the writings of Thoreau's friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, this paper examines Thoreau's relation to and departure from Emerson's understanding of time, place, and pattern...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Mike Rose : composing a reading of inclusion

Creator:: Jameson, Sara
Abstract:: Mike Rose researcher, professor, scholar, and author of numerous articles and books including the literacy memoir - Lives on the Boundary - has been active in the field of education and composition for over 30 years. This thesis looks back at the development of the discipline of composition studies to...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Water over stones : Oregon watershed stories

Creator:: Oberst, Gail D.
Abstract:: The 13 personal essays in Water over Stones: Oregon Watershed Stories explore the author's experiences in dozens of Oregon watersheds. Using the genre of the personal essay, the author, a fifth-generation Oregonian and amateur ecologist, writes about her life and family relationships in stories that are saturated with the waters...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Of mice and bunnies : Walt Disney, Hugh Hefner, and the age of consensus

Creator:: Allen-Spencer, Patricia C.
Abstract:: 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...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Breeding the new woman : the eugenic discourse of motherhood in Shaw, Yeats, and Lawless

Creator:: Tracy, Hannah R.
Abstract:: The popularity and pervasiveness of eugenic discourse during the modernist period in England and Ireland raised many questions about race, class, and gender. While Hitler's Nazi "experiment" ultimately demonstrated the consequences of implementing eugenic ideas, forcing eugenicists to abandon, or at least mask, their theories, the eugenics movement before World...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The problems [of Paul Ricoeur's symbols] of evil

Creator:: Ritenour, Karen E.
Abstract:: In the early part of his philosophical career, Paul Ricoeur worked out a general theory of symbols which he illustrated with the symbols of evil. He subsequently explained this theory in several essays (his final major statement on symbols can be found in Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Writing Rhodesia : young girls as narrators in works by Doris Lessing and Tsitsi Dangarembga

Creator:: Thomas, Jane McCauley
Abstract:: Doris Lessing and Tsitsi Dangarembga write fiction set in Zimbabwe, the former Southern Rhodesia. Although Lessing grew up as a white settler and Dangarembga, a generation later, as part of the colonized African population, the women sometimes address similar issues. Both write of young girls trying to find a speaking...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Houses along fourth street

Creator:: Yee, Ann L.
Abstract:: This thesis consists of four short stories and Chapter 1 of a novel in progress. Each of the four stories are thematically linked through a common protagonist, Nancy, and through a relatively chronological following of events in her life. I chose to tell Nancy's stories in an attempt to gain...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Finding Fantasy : Three Newspapers Tell the Story of Kip Kinkel and Thurston High School

Creator:: Wood, Josie MaryAnne Soules
Abstract:: On May 21, 1998 Kip Kinkel drove to Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon. Kinkel killed two students and wounded another twenty-two students. He killed his parents the day before. The shootings at Thurston High School came on the heels of a number of prominent school shootings and Kip Kinkel...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Vicarious power : masculinity, access and the hard-boiled detective

Creator:: Winsor, Shiloh
Abstract:: Dashiell Hammett's fiction and detective pulps generally, offered the reader a chance to participate in vicarious power, by giving them a sense of the profession of detection, both in and out of the stories. It was the realism of the detective figure that allowed the audience to relate to him....
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick : hermeneutics and epistemology in Ishmael's seafaring

Creator:: Goodrum, Emily A.
Abstract:: This paper defends a reading of Hennan Melville's Moby-Dick that elevates Ishmael's status from mere narrator of Ahab's tragedy to that of protagonist of his own story, a novel of epistemological seafaring. As a metaphysical quester, Ishmael provides the novel's only reliable and complex vision of the condition of man...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Viria Woolf and "A Woman's Autobiography" : Rewriting Victorian Conventions of Autobioaphy

Creator:: Vanderpool, Aubrae M.
Abstract:: This thesis brings together gender and genre criticism to consider Virginia Woolf s memoir, "A Sketch of the Past," as a modern experiment in rewriting the traditions and conventions of Victorian autobiography. This thesis will demonstrate how Woolf specifically disrupts the conventions of linear representations of time and the assumed...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Fan geeks

Creator:: Warnicke, Clair N.
Abstract:: In the Spring of 2001, the short documentary Fan Geeks was filmed. Fan Geeks explores The X-files fan community, showing the fans in context to the friendships and activities that express television as being part of their lives. Using film to document fans' micro-situations, Fan Geeks allows for audience analysis...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis and Video

Abraham's daughter

Creator:: Melton, Barbara
Abstract:: This thesis is a series of personal essays that explore themes of fundamentalism, family, loss, personal growth and the question of free will. The work reflects my study of the written word, of language, and of how people have tried to define, or have experienced, the numinous. The essays are...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Confusion and disappointment in the dream world: the allegorical senses, courtly language, and poetic landscape in Pearl

Creator:: Lewis, Michael Stewart
Abstract:: My current Project on the late fourteenth-century Pearl observes the workings of allegory, courtly language, and poetic landscape. During this study, I pursue the elements of the poem that suggest a lack of spiritual growth and change, and an abundance of pain, torment, and confusion for the poem's narrator. I...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Traversing the displaced: incarcerated women's writing selves

Creator:: Maybaum, Lenore D.
Abstract:: This quasi-ethnographic research documents the autobiographical utterances of incarcerated women taking part in a narrative writing course, Life Writing, at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. The purpose of this research was to cultivate a better understanding of how incarcerated women move through different discourses of identity via narrative writing, and how,...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Scenes of language

Creator:: Duerst, Gretchen
Abstract:: In this creative non-fiction thesis, I present a collection of personal essays that examine my significant moments of awkwardness with failed communications or frustrated relationships when I wanted to draw people closer with language, but was unsuccessful. In the twelve stories, I discuss these issues in my interpersonal communication interwoven...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Cutting off the Medusa's head : mythological transcendence in Emily Brontë and Eudora Welty

Creator:: Caputi, Roseanne Pascalette
Abstract:: The purpose of this project is to draw a more explicit connection between Eudora Welty and the literary influence Emily Brönte had on her, revealing Welty as a writer who is more integrated into literary tradition and history than many readers and critics have acknowledged. Both writers rely heavily on...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Space and movement : dance, art, and the poetry of William Carlos Williams

Creator:: Hoch, Jamie
Abstract:: The Modern era, roughly the time between 1860-1930, brought about a significant restructuring of artistic mediums. From the canvas to the page, artists of the twentieth century turned towards collaboration as a means by which they could reconfigure their works. Painters, writers, and dancers, borrowed aesthetic techniques from one another...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The control, resistance, and evolution of digital artifacts: a materialist study of internet culture

Creator:: Villemarette, Chris
Abstract:: 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...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Whitman and technology: a modern romance

Creator:: Turner, David N.
Abstract:: Walt Whitman looked to the natural world, which he considered an original example of divine creation, for insights into the methods and patterns of the Creative Force; the poet then intuited connections between these divine natural patterns and human existence and spirituality. Convinced of the divinity of the human body,...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Tacit collusion : evidence of price leadership and sticky downward pricing in retail gasoline markets

Creator:: Russell, Scott P.
Abstract:: In this study, I test for tacit collusion in retail gasoline markets by testing for sticky downward pricing and price leadership. Using an extensive dataset consisting of twenty-five gasoline markets located in the greater Willamette Valley region of Oregon, I find evidence of sticky downward pricing in every market. I...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Fantastic Histories: How Malory's Morte Darthur Influenced Tolkien's The Silmarillion

Creator:: Tatom, Simon K.
Abstract:: My thesis, entitled "Fantastic Histories: How Malory's Morte Darthur Influenced Tolkien's The Silmarillion," argues that J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion shares distinct similarities in style and content with Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, primarily in the lack of detail in the descriptions of characters and events, as each attempts to create a...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

How we live with words

Creator:: Rhoten, Karalee N.
Abstract:: The words we use to define our lives are often determined by the way we render any given moment. Every instance of writing is a moment of remembering, and a non-fiction essay gives the author free rein to unravel an instance, paint a portrait of what time has already come...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The wild flesh of Gary Snyder's "natural language"

Creator:: Hanson, Michael (Michael Edward)
Abstract:: This paper explores the language theories of Gary Snyder, an important modern environmental author whose early work was associated with the Beat movement of the early 1950's. I am particularly interested in Snyder's thoughts on how language relates to nature. I focus primarily on Snyder's prose in attempts to understand...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Twin Peaks and the Ideological Problematic of Feminine Representation: An Examination of the Character Audrey Home

Creator:: Wood, Susan (Susan Elaine)
Abstract:: In this thesis, I examine the ways in which the television series Twin Peaks represents the feminine through a textual analysis of the character Audrey Home. Using reader-response theory, I seek to show that while the series conforms to patriarchal media conventions such as the male gaze and narrative stereotypes...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The Oregon State University Writing Center : history and context

Creator:: Weintraub, Melissa R.
Abstract:: The Oregon State University (OSU) Writing Center: History and Context provides a detailed and multi-faceted view of the Writing Center from its start in 1976 through the present. The information was gathered from interviews, annual reports, archival sources, and scholarly research. Chapter One examines the scholarly conversation about writing centers,...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Responsible pedagogy : (re)framing contemporary educational theory and American cultural politics

Creator:: Rust, Stephen
Abstract:: Responsible Pedagogy is examination of contemporary education in the United States. Responsible educators are dedicated to being representative, responsive, and respectful. These three principles guide the best teaching and learning that are taking place in classrooms across the country. Launched in 2003, Shakespeare in American Communities is the most ambitious...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Sound and death in John Haines's poetry

Creator:: Noble, Darren L.
Abstract:: Poet John Haines is best known for his first book of poetry, Winter News, which was published in 1966. The book contains poems about the Alaskan landscape that surrounded Haines during his many years of living in Richardson, Alaska. The recurring motifs in his poems include hunting, trapping, the Arctic...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

What is an English Major?: A Comparative Exploration of Perceptions of English Studies at OSU

Creator:: Paulsen, Brittney Renee
Abstract:: My project is designed to determine how the English major and English Studies exist at OSU, through the collection of perceptions and opinions about English Studies at OSU from students and faculty (both inside and outside of the English department) via email surveys. I used secondary research to determine how...
Resource Type:: Honors College Thesis

Backpacking Through the Canon

Creator:: Sauter, Megan E.
Abstract:: During summer and fall 2007, I traveled across Europe and studied in Spain. My experiences abroad shaped my reading of certain literary texts as I gained insight into the cultures and settings in which they were produced. In my thesis, I recount some of these experiences and show how my...
Resource Type:: Honors College Thesis

The silence is deafening : voices of the unheard

Creator:: Loftin, Sam
Abstract:: This thesis project explores the experiences of individual people living lives in the face of difficult or oppressive circumstances. It sets forth a series of creative narrative essays that are partly inspired by people the author has encountered and partly created from his own imagination.
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Literacy politics and literacy education : thematic perspectives in contemporary Chicana/o narrative

Creator:: Bowman, Christine D.
Abstract:: Literacy is often considered to be a basic set of skills to be mastered by the student; the conventional wisdom maintains that the individual who has mastered these skills is then literate. Scholars in the field of literacy studies, however, argue that such assumptions about literacy fail to take into...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Asynthesis & act: the evental sublime in Badiou, Byron, and Barker

Creator:: Drury, Adam Marshall
Abstract:: 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...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Edith Wharton’s dark ecology : representations of nature in three major novels

Creator:: Bacon, Julie M.
Abstract:: This thesis is arranged in three chapters which explore Wharton’s representations of nature in three novels: The House of Mirth (1905), The Fruit of the Tree (1907), and The Custom of the County (1913). This thesis contends that Wharton’s novels reveal changes in the interplay between representations of nature and...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Other-directed protest : a study of Galen Fisher's anti-internment rhetoric

Creator:: Boes, Cynthia D.
Abstract:: This study seeks to show how a member of an empowered group is able to argue on behalf of a disempowered group. Other theorists in the field of other-directed protest have claimed that these protestors have a negative effect on the disempowered group and only serve to raise their own...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

A Pentadic Analysis of Tropico : Dramatism and Digital Games

Creator:: Shields, Matthew J.
Abstract:: How do digital games convey meaning? Academic studies of video games seem concerned with creating discipline-specific new methodologies for examining the medium. From the standpoint of the rhetorical critic, however, new forms of communication can still be examined with traditional techniques. This paper analyzes the 2001 video game Tropico using...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Patriarchal power and punishment : the trickster figure in the short fiction of Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates

Creator:: Strempke-Durgin, Heather D.
Abstract:: This thesis is an exploration of how male trickster figures operate in the Gothic fiction of 20th century American female authors. Specifically, I look at the short stories “The Daemon Lover” by Shirley Jackson, “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Truth, justice, and the American way : what Superman teaches us about the American Dream and changing values within the United States

Creator:: Karp, Lauren N.
Abstract:: This thesis is a study of the changes in the cultural definition of the American Dream. I have chosen to use Superman comics, from 1938 to the present day, as litmus tests for how we have societally interpreted our ideas of “success” and the “American Way.” This work is primarily...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The postwar novel as postmodern : revisiting Catch-22 & Slaughterhouse-five

Creator:: Spreitzer, Peter
Abstract:: This thesis is an exploration of Catch-22 (1961) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), two early documents of American postmodern literature. In particular, this thesis attempts to present the critical discussions surrounding each novel as parallel to the broader theoretical discussions surrounding the concept of postmodernism. My contention is that, in both of...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

To Express the Inexpressible: Poetry as Philosophy within Mystical Discourse

Creator:: Hyam, Jarrod
Abstract:: Within this thesis, I posit that poetry, rather than philosophical argument, is a more effective means of expressing and understanding the nature of mystical experiences. William James’ analysis of mysticism inspires the theoretical approach utilized in this thesis. An analysis of the unique qualities of poetic language within mystical discourse...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

(In)Forming the Female Bildungsroman in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John

Creator:: Farrow, Rebecca L.
Abstract:: Caribbean women authors, in an attempt to reclaim their voices lost to patriarchy and colonialism, are creating a new literary tradition by expanding the boundaries of the Bildungsroman genre. Many have challenged the conservative male Bildungsroman's deeply entrenched gender bias where female transcendence was impossible due to cultural prescriptions that...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Learning by imitation : the scholarly works of David Bartholomae

Creator:: Gallup, Sarah E.
Abstract:: This thesis examines the scholarship in pedagogical theory and practice of David Bartholomae over the past thirty-five years, in particular examining the role that the rhetorical construct of imitation has played in its development. Through my research, I trace the evolution of Bartholomae’s pedagogical stances and practices, as these both...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

A quest to redefine feminine heroism : heroines of the Brothers Grimm and Angela Carter

Creator:: Butler, Kelly E.
Abstract:: Literary fairy tales facilitate a specific inquiry into heroine quests. Due to the flexibility of the fairy tale genre, a variety of heroine tales have been produced. The specific stages of a heroine quest must be described in order to understand the direction and goals of these quests. In order...
Resource Type:: Undergraduate Thesis

A circle of response : addressing the tensions of teacher responseto student writing

Creator:: Carothers, April D.
Abstract:: What students need most from instructors’ written response on their texts is commentary that evokes a sense of exchange. Teachers often believe that their job is to point out the deficits in a student’s paper and help eliminate those deficits. While this is a part of the function of response,...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

From the encoded to the explicit in the 20th Century Irish romance : a study of Elizabeth Bowen's The last September and Edna O'Brien's The country girl's trilogy

Creator:: Breeden, Shobana L.
Abstract:: This thesis uses both feminist and new historic theories to argue that the women's romance novels The Last September (1929) by Elizabeth Bowen and The Country Girl's Trilogy (1960, 1962, 1964) by Edna O'Brien are tragic bildungsroman that subvert and challenge the Irish patriarchal marriage expectations of their respective time...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Confessing Our Sims: The construction of gender and sexuality among women ages 18-22 on MySpace

Creator:: Papaleo, November R.
Abstract:: MySpace is a social network phenomenon with over 100 million profiles and a strong presence in over 24 countries. As digital media become more commonplace, social networks are becoming sites where women create and manage relationships and identities. This thesis is a study of how women ages 18-22 are constructing...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The accessible Chaucer

Creator:: Luepke, Natasha M.
Abstract:: In this thesis I explore the ways in which twenty-first century Americans have access to Geoffrey Chaucer and his works. I look at issues surrounding Chaucer within the canon debate, high school history and literature textbooks, and Chaucer in popular culture, such as in movies like A Knight's Tale. I...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Under the Shadow of this Red Rock: Reading T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land for its Places, Persons, and Poetics

Creator:: Summers, Stephen James
Abstract:: Thomas Stearns Eliot’s 1922 modernist poem The Waste Land presents itself as an alternative to the decaying society Eliot found himself inhabiting. It begins as a personal means of pulling together one’s fragmented consciousness, but in doing so Eliot manages to present a solution to a world of selfishness—looking beyond...
Resource Type:: Honors College Thesis

Water, fire, and stone : images and meaning in Melville

Creator:: Martin, Brian D.
Abstract:: This thesis is a study of Herman Melville’s symbolism. I have chosen to investigate the elemental images of water, fire, and stone in Moby-Dick (1851), Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852), and Clarel; A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876). This work is a semiotic study, insofar as the...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

"Style upon style": The Handmaid's Tale as a palimpsest of genres

Creator:: Boulware, Taylor J.
Abstract:: This thesis undertakes an examination of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, as a layering of genres. A futuristic dystopia that imagines late twentieth-century America as having fallen into neo-Puritanism and totalitarianism following widespread infertility and violence, The Handmaid’s Tale invites contemplation of various forms of fundamentalism, radicalism, and...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

"It was on the tip of everyone's tongue, Tyler and I just gave it a name" : Fight Club's representation of consumer culture

Creator:: Wicks, James Anthony
Abstract:: This thesis examines the representation of consumer culture in Fight Club within the context of Frederic Jameson's theory of postmodernism. I propose that the film represents consumer culture as a totalizing system. This representation is evident in the setting of the film and in the Narrator's attempt to escape from...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Watchmen : as a work of literature

Creator:: Strobel, Elizabeth
Abstract:: "Watchmen: as a Work of Literature" asserts the premise that literature contains complexity and themes, as well as literary devices, and decided that is a graphic novel meets these requirements, it is also considered literature. The graphic novel Watchmen is analyzed like a literary text, and the narrative devices, literary...
Resource Type:: Honors College Thesis

The Impact of World Literature in Secondary Schools in Oregon and Chile : A Comparative Case Study

Creator:: McFarland, Annette Catherine
Abstract:: The reading of world literature, literary works from cultures other than one’s own, offers an effective means of creating greater awareness and sensitivity towards others. Research on the subject makes it clear that world literature can help lay the groundwork for a sense of world citizenship in students. To what...
Resource Type:: Honors College Thesis

Confessing Ireland : the colonial politics of Irish Catholicism in James Joyce's A portrait of the artist as a young man

Creator:: Rathert, Gregory S.
Abstract:: Ireland's Catholic Church played an important role in the turn-of-the-century nationalism that shaped James Joyce's identity and writing; yet it also played an important part in preventing that nationalism from achieving its goals of autonomy and cultural independence. For Joyce, this was particularly evident in the dialects and thought structures...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Fitzgerald’s idealism and the question of wealth

Creator:: Wood, Amy
Abstract:: In This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and several of his short stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald questions the importance of wealth as a factor in supporting happiness and fostering the American Dream on an individual basis. With these texts, Fitzgerald acknowledges that wealth is a factor and, simultaneously, a...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Ideology, reality, and rhetoric : Kenneth Burke's dramatism

Creator:: Beach, Josh M.
Abstract:: The American philosopher and literary critic Kenneth Burke was an "ideologist" (although he never called himself this, and added to that, he spent most of his life avoiding the Marxist term of ideology to describe human "systems" of ideas). Burke instead used the terms "orientation," "rationalization," "perspective." "critical perspective," "way...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Imagining Kenya in Ngugi's fiction

Creator:: Prasansak, Ram
Abstract:: The relationship between literature and nation-building has been one of the most crucial issues in postcolonial studies. The novel in particular is regarded as a means by which writers forge national consciousness among the colonized during the time of colonization. Many African writers themselves, for example, conceive of their work...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Writing against convention : Kate Chopin's short fiction in Vogue, 1893-1900

Creator:: VanKooten, Crystal
Abstract:: 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...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The practice of home

Creator:: Goodrich, Charles
Abstract:: If home is the hearth, a place of safety and centeredness, it is also the portal, the magic door. From home we go out into spaces more humanized and technologized, or into spaces more natural, more other-than-humanized. We dress up and head downtown, or we pack up and head for...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Traversing the city of blogs : pedagogy, performance, and public spheres

Creator:: Faris, Michael J.
Abstract:: 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...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Constructing heroic identities : masculinity and the western film

Creator:: Foster, Brad D.
Abstract:: This thesis employs the study of gender to demonstrate how recent Hollywood western films have constructed a hero that is reflective of contemporary beliefs regarding masculinity. Beginning with a New Historicist approach at studying gender, this work first considers the construction of masculinity in post World War II America and...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Pathway to publication : the written word in Tunisia

Creator:: Partin, Rachel and Partin, Rachel K.
Abstract:: This thesis examines the current state of the publishing industry in Tunisia in order to understand the nature of writing and publishing in an international context. In discovering the publishing procedure, I have included information on how books are used in education, homes, and libraries as well as the roles...
Resource Type:: Undergraduate Thesis

"A dissonant element" : the difficulty of Anais Nin

Creator:: Burghauser, Sarah B.
Abstract:: This thesis is arranged in three main chapters, each of which focuses on a particular type of Anaїs Nin text, and each of which is intended to enlarge Nin's complexities through distinct but overlapping perspectives. The idea connecting these three chapters is that Nin, who has been radically misrepresented by...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

The Clerk’s Tale : literal monstrosities and allegorical problems

Creator:: Brock, Christopher J.
Abstract:: My thesis, entitled “The Clerk’s Tale: Literal Monstrosities and Allegorical Problems,” argues that Chaucer’s Clerk is engaging both sides of a binary system. The Clerk has situated himself in a precarious position between two major schools of thought in the medieval culture, Franciscan and Dominican; the former promotes the will...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Revisioning grandeur : an exploration of intertextuality in Alice Munro and Virginia Woolf

Creator:: King, Michelle L.
Abstract:: In this thesis I argue that Alice Munro’s work takes part in an ongoing feminist discourse that examines alterations in male and female gender relations, as they have been represented in domestic fiction by women writers since the late nineteenth century. I analyze two short stories written by Munro: “Meneseteung,”...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Fighting tradition : Hemingway’s Nick Adams and shell shock

Creator:: McGrath, Cole P.
Abstract:: In his Nick Adams stories, Ernest Hemingway traces the life of a single man as he moves from boyhood to adolescence to adulthood to fatherhood. From the beginning of Nick Adams life, it is clear that he does not fit into the role of the traditional hero. In addition, Nick...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Voices of CALYX: Narratives of Feminist Publishing Activism, 1976-2006

Creator:: Steuben, Marieke L.
Abstract:: This thesis examines the nature of publishing as a political endeavor through a detailed investigation of the feminist publishing movement in the U.S. since the 1970s. Feminist publishers emerged from an activist context of feminist struggle, and they evolved within changing political and social climates, facing ideological and economic challenges...
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Discovering white privilege : a series of difficult stories

Creator:: Blumhardt, Tammy
Abstract:: This project combines service learning with narrative writing (fiction and non-fiction) as an effective tool for the discovery and communication of social understanding; more specifically, the project discusses white privilege in literary form. Four short stories and seven vignettes, drawn from service learning experience over the course of three years,...
Resource Type:: Honors College Thesis

Charting their own course as writers : a study of writing-intensive students’ self-assessment and goal-setting at start of term

Creator:: Robinson, Tracy Ann
Abstract:: Curricular models and teaching techniques that support college students as the primary authors of their writing-across-the-curriculum experiences remain largely unexplored. This thesis addresses that research gap by investigating the use of a start-of-term writing self-assessment and goal-setting questionnaire (STQ) for upper-division undergraduates taking writing-intensive (WI) college courses in their majors....
Resource Type:: Masters Thesis

Search Constraints

Search Results

Limit your search