In this thesis, I argue that the cooptation and commodification of young peoples’ creative expressions of individuality through the practice of “coolhunting” causes alienation within said young people and is, therefore, unethical. I support this claim by using Marxist theory of the Frankfort Institute, viz., Max Horkheimer and Theodor W....
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...
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...
In this era of free trade and globalization, food is traveling greater and greater distances to its consumers. This is causing small farms and small farmers all over the world to protest as their livelihood is being undercut by cheap agricultural commodities from outside their communities. In the Ecuadorian Andes,...
Thesis summarizes interviews with growers residing within the Groundwater Management Area (GWMA) in the Southern Willamette Valley of Oregon. Informal and semi-structured interviews were used to identify perceived impediments and incentives perceived by local farmers in following best management practices related to water quality. Results from the interviews were coded...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...