The purpose of this thesis is to thematically explore two novels which are considered to
be “non-conformist” for the ways that the characters struggle to understand themselves as
separate from society. By comparing the non-conformity of each character to Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s theory of individualistic non-conformity, as presented in his...
Wendy Bishop's lively voice and scholarly contribution continue to resonate and be important in composition studies. Bishop--poet, scholar, feminist, teacher, ethnographer, and compositionist--sought to blur the lines between creative writing and composition. This thesis argues that in challenging the boundaries that exist between creative writing and composition, Bishop also challenged...
Free and open source software (FOSS) projects primarily rely on the efforts of volunteer contributors from around the world. For this reason, recruiting and retaining contributor is vital to the sustainability and growth of FOSS projects. This notion became the jumping-off point for this three-part investigation into the cultural structure...
Monstrous beings, or distortions of nature, were a tangible object of fear in the medieval and early modern eras. Aristotle, as a precursor to the scientists and magical practitioners of the twelfth century or the barber-surgeons of the sixteenth century, understood monsters to be human or animal beings deformed by...
A majority of eighteenth-century novels remain in regular print over two hundred years since their inception. Yet with the possible exception of Robinson Crusoe, they have largely fallen out of popularity, rarely appearing on "The Summer's Hottest Reading" lists or receiving celebrity endorsement. I consider Ian Watt's foundational study, The...
This thesis takes an auteurist approach to the films of director Terrence Malick by reading them through the spiritual philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I establish Malick's thematic concern with the human struggle to achieve better existences in a broken material world, a concern buoyed by his signature aesthetic that...
This thesis explores the electrified female subject in two novels, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900) and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905). As cultural touchstones, two literary works that prominently feature electricity -- Henry James' story "In the Cage" and Henry Adams' biography The Education of Henry Adams --...
At first glance, Edgar Rice Burroughs's wildly popular romantic fantasy novel, Tarzan of the Apes (1912), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist science fiction-utopian novel, Herland (1915), with its dystopian companion, With Her in Ourland (1916), may appear to have little in common. Tarzan celebrates the human connection with wild nature...
As the necessity grows for undergraduate English teachers to incorporate various multimodal texts into their course material due to the changing landscape of what is considered English studies, comics can be an increasingly viable source for such texts. This thesis introduces several formal qualities of comics available for teachers to...
My thesis is comprised of two articles, titled "Journeying Through (An)Other World: Examining the Role of Magic and Transformational Otherness in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "Magic, Muggles, and Mudbloods: Examining Magical Otherness in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series." The introduction frames the thematic, theoretical, and critical connections...