This thesis analyzes Sophocles’ classic Greek tragedy Antigone as it relates to biopolitics, biopower, democratic language and non-normative principles of politics. I argue that the figure of Antigone enables a better understanding of exclusive biopolitical philosophy. Antigone is a figure not recognized as human because her gender is tortured and...
This thesis consists of two major components. The first is Laboring-Class Poets Online (LCPO), a database-driven website that provides information about the more than 2,000 British laboring-class poets who published between 1700 and 1900 and their writing, lives, and literary relationships. I developed LCPO to demonstrate the importance of laboring-class...
For centuries, continental philosophy has clung to the belief that the world only meaningfully exists through human perception--that, in other words, when a tree falls in the forest, it does not make a sound. Literary theory, which has strong roots in continental philosophy, followed suit, remaining tied to humanism even...
On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak entered into a partnership agreement to found Apple Computer. In the decade that followed, Apple experienced remarkable growth and success, as Jobs catapulted Apple to the Fortune 500 list of top‐flight companies faster than any other company in history. Under direction...
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...
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 explores the common features that unite postcolonial and posthumanist theories, finding that the Cartesian notion of representationalism has enabled the humanist hierarchy that both fields decry. This humanist hierarchy coalesces in the figure of the author, and as such its most effective criticism takes the form of metafiction....
In this two-article thesis, I argue that an opposition to Eurocentrism may be articulated without ethnic or identarian determinisms but through a critical engagement with the categories of ethics and truth in a global frame. I build upon the work of Frantz Fanon and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to accomplish a...
This thesis analyzes two Victorian fairy tales that feature queer endings, or endings that offer alternatives to the heteronormative fairy-tale tradition that idealizes heterosexual marriage and the biological family. In both George MacDonald’s The Wise Woman (1875) and E. Nesbit’s “The Island of the Nine Whirlpools” (1901), I argue that...
This dissertation examines the impact of the German naturalist and literary figure Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ideas on twentieth century Anglophone plant morphology and biology. Goethe interpreted the organ forms of flowering plants as metamorphoses of each other. His literary, historical, and philosophical writings suggest themes of alienation from and...
This project examines the production histories of two films that Alfred Hitchcock directed, his Hollywood debut Rebecca (1940) and the memorable Psycho (1960). The first chapter explores how Hitchcock succeeded and failed at influencing the picture as he, despite directing the movie, had to follow the vision that his producer,...
In this thesis, I read the teachers in four mid-century Victorian novels--Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (1850) and Hard Times (1854), Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) and Charlotte Brontё's Villette (1853)-- within the context of mid-century English educational debate in an effort to explicate the ways in which these characters...
This thesis examines a range of generic influences in William Shakespeare's Richard II. By exploring the play's references to conflicting interpretations of history from different generic perspectives, I hope to advance a more nuanced reading of the play's dynamic staging of history. In Chapter One, I suggest that Richard II...
This thesis analyzes the efficacy of emancipatory (critical) pedagogical practices in an educational climate of standards-based reform. Using two films noir of the blacklist era--Body and Soul and Crossfire--as the core texts of a unit in a secondary school curriculum, I argue that an emphasis on student agency and a...
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...
In this thesis, I use modern concepts of feminism, gender performativity, and psychoanalysis as a means to understand female characters and authors of Renaissance England in a new way. In my first article, I analyze various texts and performances of Queen Elizabeth I, as well as texts of Renaissance female...
This thesis examines the morphology of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) through several lenses. The first explores Goethe's morphology as he applied it in his botanical work and supplies an explanation of what Goethe referred to as archetypal phenomena and the archetypal plant. The scope of exploration then broadens to...
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...
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...