This thesis argues that the first two novels of Cormac McCarthy’s The Border Trilogy mark a sharp turn from the antihumanism of his earlier ‘Southern’ novels to a more affective exploration of posthumanist subjectivity within a world dominated by social discourse and metanarratives. In my examination of All the Pretty...
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of the most widely read novels written by an Oregonian. A mute Native American, a boisterous Irish white man, and numerous African Americans working behind the scenes of the narrative all converge in this struggle for autonomy. Little to no...
My thesis examines how the American identity is constructed through thinking shaped by deception and domination, as James Baldwin argues in the corpus of his work. I rely on the work of Eddie Glaude Jr., Sean Kim Butorac, and Joel Schlosser to forward love in Baldwin’s political vision as being...
Composition scholars who have written about trauma have typically focused on creating classrooms that are conducive to healing and learning. In doing this work, however, they have considered neither how PTSD nor other people’s responses to it can impact one’s perceived rhetoricity in the college classroom. In other words, they...
I always knew I was interested in the criminal justice system, evident from the hours I spent as a child binge watching Law & Order, Rizzoli and Isles, and Dateline when my parents weren’t home. I very nearly pursued criminal justice as a major, but ended up going a different...
My mother named me after Hollywood icon Katharine Hepburn, but what made a working-class girl grow to love this posh celebrity so much? The obvious answer is that my mother aspired to be posh herself; but lack of money or sophistication were not the only things impacting her potential— there...
This investigation examines The Jetsons’ vision of the future and tracks to what extent the content of the show is relevant to the modern era, both technologically and socially. Much of the dazzling technology in the show feels familiar, and most of it is either already available or is in...
This thesis invokes Black Jesus as an abstract figure in two seemingly disparate early twentieth century American novels and, in doing so, intervenes in ongoing debates about the ethical capacities of literature as means of grappling with difference. The Christ figure is a literary trope of waning importance in contemporary...
Drawing on Deborah Brandt’s “literacy sponsorship,” this thesis examines ways English language learners (ELLs) in the Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center (CMLC) act as literacy sponsors, sharing their expertise in language, textiles, and cooking, based on nine in-depth interviews with ELLs at the center. The findings of this thesis are presented...