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...
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...
Haiti's political and economy history has led to a maternity care system that lies out of reach, geographically and financially, of most Haitians, resulting in excessively high maternal and infant mortality. The most common birth practitioners are homebirth midwives (matwòns), who attend roughly three-fourths of all births in Haiti (UNICEF),...
In her 2016 article “Beyond Rights as Recognition, Black Twitter and Posthuman Coalitional Possibilities,” Pritha Prasad argues that the hashtag, one of the decade’s most omnipresent features of digital communication, functions as “a performative composing medium that not only demands relationality” and “call[s] for the recognition of both the Black...
The sudden and unexpected death of a seemingly healthy infant sets in motion a number of linked processes with potentially complex and far-reaching ramifications. While individuals, families and communities grapple with the shock and heartbreak associated with the loss of a young life, a chain of multidisciplinary investigative responsibilities is...
This thesis examines the characterization of the femme fatale and the implications of this trope for late-Victorian gender and sexuality in the ghost stories of female aesthete Vernon Lee. In her treatment of the femme fatale figure, Lee both reinforces and complicates the image of the sexualized, often bestialized woman...
Within the U.S. there is a growing interest in the case of female adolescents being coerced into the sex industry (Bernstein, 2010; Estes & Weiner, 2001; Soderlund, 2010; Williams and Frederick, 2009). This interest, which emerged due to U.S. involvement in the international trafficking phenomena and grassroots organizing, has resulted...
This research explores the experiences of Iraqi women during and after the 2003 U.S.-led war (2003-2011). The aim of the project was to provide an occasion for a group of Iraqi women to give voice to their lived experiences of war and to document these voices, adding their subjective perspectives...
This thesis investigates how beginning, women farmers, within in a women farmers’ network in the Willamette Valley, Oregon are accessing land and farming information. Using ethnographic, community-based research methods, I ask how land access mediates their ability to care for their land and soil. Are these farmers interested in fostering...
This thesis examines two cultural productions of the Harlem Renaissance: Aaron Douglas's mural series, Aspects of Negro Life, and Nella Larsen's novel Passing. I read these works together because, more than their shared time period, they showcase an attention to the visual. Both Larsen and Douglas's works are concerned with...
In the months preceding the 2016 presidential election and during the Trump presidency, rhetoric, composition, and communications scholars expressed an urgent concern about the threat that Trump and his political affiliates posed to the status of truth in political life (McComiskey; Rice; Harsin; Cloud). However, the conversations surrounding the discipline’s...
School is a hostile environment for many LGBTQ youth. Teachers participate, consciously or unconsciously, in perpetuating oppressive heteronormative expectations in the classroom both through the overt and covert curriculum. Yet, pre-service teachers are under-trained about questions related to gender and sexuality during their teacher preparation. This qualitative study explores the...
Over two million people experience homelessness in the United States, but homeless people are often marginalized by invisibility and stigmas surrounding poverty within their local communities. This research seeks to amplify the voices of Corvallis area homeless women as a means to understand their everyday lived experiences. Six women residing...
While a number of scholars in the field of Rhetoric and Composition continue to reassert the importance of whiteness as an object of study, a sense of anxiety about the effectiveness of extant antiracist rhetorical practices permeate recent scholarship. This thesis engages with thinking from black studies, afropessimism, and transnational...
Chronic disease is costly to treat and burdensome for those living with its impacts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2017), 117 million Americans currently live with chronic disease, and one in four adults live with two or more chronic diseases. The burden placed on the U.S....
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...
Despite apparently supportive national policies, including nation-wide legalization of home birth and coverage by the national health care system of the costs associated with that option, these births account for less than 1% of all births in the Republic of Ireland. Using data collected during participant observation, both in person...
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a multimodal adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, released from 2012-2013. As a media event, the show proved how effective transmedia storytelling can be, eventually winning an Emmy for Original Interactive Program. In creating an intensely immediate narrative world, the series adapted more than Jane Austen’s...
This paper focuses on Satan as a sympathetic figure in Paradise Lost, and it argues that readers' sympathy for Satan drives them to pursue God's grace in order to avoid falling into the same fate as Satan. It uses Reader Response theory to show how readers connect with Satan, and...
This thesis examines depictions of medievalism in three central texts: Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. Each of these texts provides an entry point for exploring the ways in which English and American writers have...
The purpose of this study is to explore the uncertainty and fear that DACAmented college and university students experience with the potential termination of the United States Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. There is limited research on the experiences of DACAmented individuals during this time of uncertainty for...
Recent conflicts in America concerning the environment (the harvesting of old growth timber in the Pacific Northwest, or the proposed opening of public lands in southern Utah to mining interests, for instance) have precipitated a personal examination of "historical others" (Jensen 64), individuals that possess very different sensibilities from a...
This thesis focuses on performances of masculinity by British Royal Flying Corps (RFC) airmen in the charged landscape of the First World War prisoner of war (POW) camp. I examine how captive airmen coped with imprisonment by reasserting the familiar homosocial communities of pre-capture squadron life, particularly through practices associated...
Being an Eastern Shawnee Tribal member I understand the importance of documenting oral histories of Tribal elders to ensure that our cultural history is passed on to future generations. Therefore, the focus of this project is the collection, of oral histories and folklore in order to document traditional knowledge and...
This thesis examines Latinx poetry in relation to the September 11th attacks and the reconfigurations of racial structures and the American empire that followed, most notably through the Department of Homeland Security and their agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE politically characterizes immigrants as anti-American to perpetuate stereotypes against...
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...
This thesis examines the internet phenomenon of the “Sad Girl,” a name given to young women who identify and present themselves as inherently melancholic people online. I position the internet community of the Sad Girl, which spans across three social media platforms, Tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram, within a larger history...
In this paper I discuss an ethnographic research project on identity embodiment among transgender and gender nonconforming punks in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., with focus on the relationship between transgender/gender nonconforming identity and affiliation to DIY punk communities. Trans punks create a unique, hybridized subculture-based identity embodiment...
Tennyson and Hopkins scholarship is dominated by a focus on antithetical dichotomies. Tennyson's speakers are fractured selves focused on the gap between matter and spirit, faith and reason, solitude and community. Likewise, Hopkins' doubled vocation as priest and poet is presented as a contradiction to the point that the transition...
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...
My thesis explores the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth as emblematic of Western philosophy and literature's longstanding preoccupation with the relationship between mind and matter. The poets' attempts to mediate their languages and sensibilities with "real nature" have a complicated legacy for today's readers, as Romantic literature...
In the fall 2015, students at the University of Missouri embarked upon an extended series of protests aimed at calling out the University’s failure to address recent racist incidents against Black students and a larger oppressive campus culture. The protests prompted the creation of a student group led largely by...
“The system is fucked. Everything needs to change” was stated by Ashley Paige, a professional dominatrix and author in We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, at a book launch event. Paige’s sentiments are poignant and a call to action to all of us. Through this thesis, I will...
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...
There is a fundamental distortion in our understanding of Native people, especially Native women. This distortion is rooted in imperialism and the colonization of Native lands and has created a dominant/subordinate relationship between Non-Native/Native people. Anthropological life history research has traditionally reflected this relationship. As a Native woman, the author...
Research shows that women's lives are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. While the topic of women is largely absent from climate discourse overall, the representations of women that occur reveal underlying structures of power rooted in imperialism and colonial dominance. This thesis presents an analysis of the...
Native America tribes and community members throughout Oregon have asserted a strong opposition to the fossil fuel industry’s attempt to expand railways, build pipelines, and construct refineries, holding facilities, and export terminals. Despite the limited presence of fossil fuel infrastructure in the state, however, the industry is actively pursuing permits...
France's universalistic idea of citizenry has been complicated by a history of colonialism, racialization, and selective acceptance of difference. Although Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood) is France's motto, the consequences of colonial rule continue to impact the lives of non-autochthonous French citizens today. Since the colonial days, immigrants and...
Recent work in moral philosophy has displayed a renewed interest in ethics and ontology that consider the social constitution of the subject. However, these approaches to ethics, exemplified in Judith Butler’s work in Giving an Account of Oneself, often neglect the problem of antiblackness, which Afro-pessimist scholars argue operates at...
This thesis explores the evolving purposes for the teaching of first-year English composition in Belize. Starting from an analysis of the underlying cultural assumptions of U.S. composition pedagogies, this thesis argues that American composition pedagogies need to be rethought when applied in a Belizean context to fulfill the country's unique...
Traditional interpretations of James Joyce's Dubliners have often focused on the pervasive "paralysis" of the city, covered in the stories' range of "childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life." However, these approaches have limited their focus on the women in the stories, often spotlighting the male characters--and the author--through a Freudian...
Contrasting the productive ground gained in ecological rhetorical theory through embedded fieldwork, composition as a discipline has yet to enact such transformative engagements with ecology. In this thesis, I put forward a praxis for ecological rhetoric and composition through permaculture design, utilizing the design framework’s system of ethics and principles...
This thesis examines the postmodern confrontation of representation throughout the oeuvre of Martin McDonagh. I particularly look to his later body of work, which directly and self-reflexively confronts issues of artistic representation & masculinity, in order to gain a more nuanced understanding of his earliest and most controversial plays. In...
In India, globalized flows of bio-medical discourse, practices and technologies are reshaping the field of reproductive healthcare, and the performance of childbirth more specifically. These projects aim to produce institutional delivery rooms that are "safe and modernized" by equating the utilization of westernized, obstetric techniques for managing delivery with better...
The existence of a “digital divide,” or inequalities of access to digital technologies among different American subpopulations, has been hotly debated and contested since the National Telecommunications and Information Administration first popularized the phrase in 1995. The purpose of this thesis is to critically examine the dominant discourses around the...
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,...
This paper is a classification of 181 problems, each of which involves the evaluation or application of determinants. The problems are those which have appeared in the "Problems and Solutions" sections of the American Mathematical Monthly, Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung Jahresbricht, Mathematics Magazine, and School Science and Mathematics. The problems are classified,...
The purpose of this study was to explore American and Chinese college student underlying cultural assumptions, which influence their perceptions and behaviors in various domains of life. The objectives of this study were to: (a) To generate timely knowledge of Chinese and American youth's cultural images, meanings, and frame of...