Search Constraints
Filtering by:
Department
English
Remove constraint Department: English
Collection
Thesis
Remove constraint Collection: Thesis
« Previous |
1 - 50 of 779
|
Next »
Number of results to display per page
Search Results
- Creator:
- Alexander, Jacen Rynae
- Description:
- Reading “The Clerk‟s Tale” can be a frustrating experience, for it seems to mean something, but—even barring modern sensibilities from the analysis—it seems confused or even self-contradictory in its conclusions. Is it the ideal marriage or not? A little overboard or a lot? And what of Walter‟s thematic connection to God, if there is any? For that matter, does Griselda equate Job? Is she to be emulated or not? What of the Clerk? Yet analysis of the primary characters and their narrator can yield some interesting points about marriage, love, entitlement, sovereignty and, ultimately, despotism: the wife‟s unthinking acquiescence to the husband‟s tests justifies spousal abuse, and as royalty their twisted dynamic justifies the worst kind of tyranny. Therefore, this thesis will use theories and examples of modern tyranny and abusive relationships to examine Walter's disturbing power over Grisilde.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Iverson, Rebecca Anne
- Description:
- The textual, biographical and historical inquiry into Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre will center on the explicit and implicit Christianity of the novel and how it was possibly influenced by Charlotte Bronte's own unconventional religious perspective. The questions that I will explore deal with the brand of Christianity and social idealism with which Bronte was brought up, and how this is reflected in the text. Biography here is used to evaluate Bronte's attitudes concerning a multitude of Christianities, both prevalent and fledgling during the mid-eighteen hundreds. I will contextualize her faith, in hopes of broadening and enhancing our understanding of the text, and thus challenge aspects of the readings by critics who see her apparent feminism as a direct challenge to Christianity, (which they construe as a singular and monolithic social phenomenon). In chapter one I will contextualize Charlotte Bronte through the religious and social climate of her time and her own beliefs as they are revealed in her biography and letters. I will focus on the varying religious motifs of the novel as they are exemplified in the main characters. Chapter two will center on the character of St. John Rivers. Chapter three with Edward Rochester. Chapter four concerning Jane Eyre. At this point in my research, I have come to believe that Bronte studies in the recent past and present (1970's on) focus mainly on the feminist aspect of Jane Eyre while the Christian component is often marginalized or misunderstood.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Stock Stotler, Darlene
- Description:
- A study of equivocation will yield that this practice commanded a vast amount of attention during the Renaissance, the time period of 1450-1600, in which Jesuitical equivocation was an ongoing phenomenon. The practice became part of the Renaissance era's ideology; however, since the Greek suffix "logy" signifies "the study of," the term ideology is not as specific, nor does it explain the role ofJesuitical equivocation in relation to the Renaissance as accurately as another term: the episteme. A brief discussion of the episteme is necessary to discover its relevancy to the puns William Shakespeare used in his Porter Scene in the tragedy Macbeth. An episteme (Greek for "knowledge") is most clearly defined by the new historicist scholar Michel Foucault as a verbal device that involves "[a] network ofdiscursive practices--of thoughts, concepts, and cultural codes-dominant during a given historical period; and ... the rules governing the transformation of those practices" (Murfin 149). Placing an emphasis on the phrase "rules governing" is extremely illuminating in identifying the interplay between the Jacobean monarchy that held public disdain, and executions of, Jesuits. The persecutions forced subjugated Jesuits to the point that ordinances, such as confessions, needed some form of protection, hence Father Henry Garnet's treatise regarding equivocation . This imbalanced reciprocity of a monarchy instilling fear in religious leaders illustrates Foucault's "transformation of ... practices" and is the basis of the Foucauldian concept of the episteme. Applying Foucault's theory to the Porter Scene reveals the way Shakespeare's satirical puns mirrored the Jacobean episteme of the blatant hatred directed at Catholics and the Jesuits.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Sergi, Stephanie Lynne
- Description:
- In this thesis, I seek to resolve the debate over Tiresias’s ability to unify The Waste Land by offering a new perspective—Tiresias as a Modernist Maypole. I propose that Tiresias’s inability to perfectly coalesce the different voices and themes within the poem is not due to an authorial failing but is instead an imperfect unification that may suggest a modernist view of unity. In short, the thesis focuses Tiresias in regards gender, prophecy, and mythology. This thesis argues that Tiresias fails to completely unify The Waste Land; nevertheless, it also maintains that he can, in fact, fuse the poem’s fragments in an unusual way. Tiresias allows for a nuanced view of the poem’s structure by suggesting incomplete connections hidden in the numerous vignettes. An image of a maypole can illustrate this modernist view of unity. A traditional maypole consists of a fixed pole that has ribbons or streamers extending down from the top, and the end of each ribbon is held by a person. Then, the people dance around the pole weaving the ribbons together. In contrast, a modernist maypole would lack some of these ribbons, and others may be frayed or torn. In The Waste Land, Tiresias is the stationary maypole; however, some of the ribbons connecting him to the other characters in the poem are either torn or missing. In true modernist fashion, the maypole, Tiresias, unifies the work by suggesting what it might have been.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Martinez, Lauren Elizabeth
- Description:
- Originally published in 1898 in serial form, The Turn of the Screw has undergone many incarnations. The short story was published again, complete with a preface, in Henry James’s New York Edition, 1907-1909. The version I have chosen to use, edited by Robert Kimbrough, is based directly on this edition: “The first section of the present volume contains the only critical edition of The Turn of the Screw ever published and is the first modern text to follow the New York Edition, the one which had James’s final authority” (Kimbrough, ix). Kimbrough includes the notes that accompanied the serial version, as well as several of James’s personal letters about the story as well. Rather than choose sides and argue for or against the Governess’s sanity, I am studying James’s stylistic choices not to solve the debate over the ghosts’ existence, but to determine how, lingusitically and rhetorically, James created this unanswerable dilemma. Richard A. Lanham’s Analyzing Prose will serve as a starting point for my stylistic analysis, and I supplement with Aristotle’s theories of rhetoric. James wrote in his New York edition preface that this story is “a piece of ingenuity pure and simple, of cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those not easily caught (the “fun” of the capture of the witless being ever but small), the jaded, the disillusioned, the fastidious” (120). My interest lies not in what ambiguity he created, but rather in how.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Kroll, Rebecca
- Description:
- To approach these concerns, this project seeks to provide an evaluation of the intellectual and personal relationship between authors Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke as viewed through the lens of personal correspondence. A review of selected letters demonstrates the two authors maintained an enduring relationship, one that spanned from the forties up until Kenneth Burke’s death in 1993. In other words, the authors maintained a friendship lasting roughly half their lives. To that end, this project presents a chronology of selected correspondence in order to provide an initial set up, so that scholars may encounter the letters in one place and consider the role each author played in the development of the other’s ideas.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Wrisley, Brooke
- Description:
- toogoodtobetrue is a fiction creative project containing a collection of queer short stories designed to examine the unifying and diverse experiences of a modern queer existence. Thematically, the collection seeks to create and explore the practical and affective possibilities of queer optimism, or optimism without futurity.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Soto, Erik M.
- Description:
- Statement of Intent: The intent behind Children of Immigrants is to give a voice to people who are Latinx, Chicanx, or Mexican in a country which constantly shapes our narratives to benefit the Anglo-American narrative. By writing about the culture, religion, relationship dynamics, and the clash of between Mexican and American societies, I hope to give the reader an authentic perspective of the Mexican/Latinx/Chicanx experience. Scope: The scope of Children of Immigrants is always through the eyes of someone who is Mexican/Latinx/Chicanx. Everything about the characters in these poems is a reflection of the Mexican/Latinx/Chicanx and, by extension, people who interact with this identity. Approach: Because the purpose of Children of Immigrants is to illustrate an authentic Mexican/Latinx/Chicanx experience, my approach was to mimic and write about situations and locations that helped build a foundation to this experience. This included incorporating the Spanish language, including real locations, and writing with politically charged themes. Many of the experiences I wrote about come from my personal life or tales told by friends, family members or the news.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Davies, John William
- Description:
- If Shakespeare “invented the human,” a claim made rather spectacularly by the critic Harold Bloom in a 1998 book, then the six British poets who comprised what was to become known as the Romantic Period perfected the mode. Shakespeare, in Bloom’s terms, depicted interiority in a unique way, allowing his characters to “overhear” themselves, to be self-reflective and existential (or proto-existential). Existentialism proper, along with the whole modern conception of self, has been merely catching up. It is my contention that the Romantics accelerated this paradigm shift by making the figure of The Poet highly subjective in a way it had not been before. Byron is the archetype. The “Byronic Hero” inaugurated in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” and perfected in “Manfred” and “Don Juan,” is subjectivity (at least male subjectivity) personified, a titillating amalgam of ambition, weakness, androgyny, power, lust; mortality and immortality in locked combat like Jacob and the angel. Only Jacob is not an abstract, allegorical figure here. These characters are Byron, by his own admission “such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me". We have another name for this and it is “human nature.”
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
10. The Politics of cultural trauma and violence in Junot Díaz's The Brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
- Creator:
- Wong, Jana Lee
- Description:
- This thesis, entitled “The Politics of Cultural Trauma and Violence in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” asserts that transgenerational trauma takes place in the aftermath of the 1930-1961 reign of Dominican president Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina. A history of genocide, highlighted by Diaz’s book, is also closely linked to American politics. As the main character, Oscar Cabral de León , tries to reclaim his Dominican past from his place of exile, the United States , he tries to blunt the spell of his family’s curse. This process compels him to tell his family history as part of a strategy of providing testimony. Through the recording of stories of many voiceless victims, Oscar reclaims their lost culture and lost power. Once in America, where Oscar’s family is forced to assimilate and work under extreme conditions to survive, they must find their collective history in order to face the injustices of the past and the present. This thesis also juxtaposes the fictional and historical narratives and motifs of Diaz’s novel with psychological studies that demonstrate that personal and political violence shape racist discrimination and that violent politics disrupt positive notions of self and cultural community.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Davis, Ashley B.
- Description:
- The text offers a barren landscape and desolate setting, governed by a violent zealot. We are presented with characters whose minds we cannot penetrate and an unresolved ending, with our only potential hero dying off just like the rest of them, except perhaps a little more personally. The most resistant of them all, the kid, is still annihilated by the judge despite having earned something akin to the judge’s favor at various intervals. These are the facts we have to deduce the forces at work in the text. Superimposed over the whole of Blood Meridian, the concept of evil does not satisfy, for there are too many unanswered questions. While the scholarship has shown “evil” to be a grey area in the novel, the reader can easily identify the judge as a destructive force, and thus closer to Aquinas’s concept of natural evil, or dissolution.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Gaumond, Theresa Anita McCarron
- Description:
- Barnes’s works are steeped in overt grief and rage, and all of her longer works can be directly traced back to traumatic events in her life. Antiphon and Ryder both are vicious retellings of her early family life. Themes of incest, rape and stolen virginity run through both. Her constant thematic repetitions have been considered by critics as a stylistic attempt to disassociate herself from the disturbances in her life, but she was never able to completely divorce her works from partially retelling her past. Her masterpiece, Nightwood, is no exception. It was written to cope with her anguish after her eight-year co-dependent relationship with Thelma Wood ended, and most of the characters are traceable to their real-life counterparts; for example, Thelma Wood is Robin Vote, and Djuna Barnes is Nora Flood. Nearly all of the characters in the book have been identified by researchers to their real-life counterparts. Barnes repeatedly called Nightwood “my life with Thelma,” and wrote to T. S. Eliot that the work was semi-autobiographical (Field 43). Nevertheless, care has to be taken not to confuse the events in the book with the reality of Barnes’s and Wood’s life together. The focus must remain upon the rhetorical and stylistics methods that Barnes uses within Nightwood to explicate the trauma of a failed relationship.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Jeanpierre, Shani
- Description:
- Critics have been known to connect Fitzgerald’s personal life with the characters and events in Gatsby. Once a reader does research on Fitzgerald’s life, obvious connections can be made such as the attitudes and names that some of his characters share with people who made an impact in his life, but few have considered what Fitzgerald’s motivations behind these parallels were and what purpose they serve. People often see similarities between Fitzgerald and the characters of Gatsby, Nick, and sometimes even Tom, but they do not often consider why he would create these parallels or what their significance is. The same can be said for the similarities between significant figures in his life, such as the women he loved, and different characters in the novel. After closely examining both his life and the connections that are often found in Gatsby and paying close attention to how the people and events are represented in his novel, it seems that Fitzgerald’s purpose in creating such connections was to criticize the materialistic society and attitudes of Americans of the 1920’s.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Ward Hubbard, Barbara
- Description:
- Much research and critical analyses have been done concerning Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem, The Canterbury Tales. The various characters in this work have been examined thoroughly and the mechanics of the poem have been scrutinized and dissected mercilessly over the centuries. My interest has been to discover how and why Chaucer used so many Scriptural verses and Biblical references in the stories, most of which were adapted versions of familiar folktales and stories by contemporary writers, such as, Boccaccio and Petrarch. After a review of historical events occurring during that tumultuous 14th century, particularly those related to the religious unrest of the time, it became apparent that Chaucer was, in a very subtle way, using the characters and their stories as a veiled criticism of the Catholic Church. The prologues and stories told by The Wife of Bath, The Summoner, and The Pardoner illustrate how and why Chaucer used these characters as that criticism.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Wilson, Mark
- Description:
- University and college students today are reading and writing more than ever before, but in spite of this they often do not consider themselves successful writers. This is because the material they read and respond to is mostly electronic, is constantly updated, and usually breaks many of the traditional rules that instructors expect from “real” writing: text messages, online blog posts, wiki contributions, status updates, discussion boards, and page comments, just to name a few. Unfortunately, most students have been told throughout their lives that these kinds of writings are less valid and proper writing must conform to very strict academic rules in order to be correct. The truth is, despite their lack of academic reading and writing skills, by sheer exposure and daily practice, students today have greater untapped linguistic resources than perhaps any other generation in history. The difficulty for students of this technological age is harnessing and refining those innate expressive abilities, so they can adapt to the demands of the academic and professional types of writing needed for success in their educations and careers. Context: Reading and Writing in Today’s World attempts to bridge this gap by presenting useful reading and writing skills in an electronic format more convenient and accessible to students who already spend a great deal of their time online using electronic devices. It validates the experiences of students who may not realize how much reading and writing skills they have acquired and gives them the tools and practice needed to consciously create effective writing consistently. The student’s ability to recognize and utilize their own essential reading and writing skills, rather than occasionally stumble upon success, is at the heart of Context.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Canning, Denise
- Description:
- In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” does Chaucer merely retell the story popularly known as “The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell?” These two stories are essentially the same, except that Chaucer’s is more humorous. In order to argue against the claim that Chaucer’s tale is simply a retelling of the latter, I must contend that Chaucer makes a point with his story that the source tale does not make. Chaucer significantly and strategically changed “The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell” in his version of the story, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” Furthermore, in his tale, Chaucer emphasizes women and their roles, whereas the other story focuses on men. Also, in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” the queen (a female) is the person who exercises control to determine the outcome of the knight’s life. His overall change was to demonstrate how men must be monitored closely in their actions in which women request of them. In doing this, Chaucer shows how women truly try to achieve sovereignty over the men in their lives in order for women to acquire freedom to make their own decisions, thus allowing them to have a sense of control over their own destiny. Chaucer changed the original tale in order to demonstrate that early on in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” the women are the ones who hold the power over the outcome of the knight’s life, whereas in “The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell,” the knight holds the power of the outcome of the king’s life. This is relevant to our reading of Chaucer’s version because Chaucer immediately wants to focus on women desiring sovereignty. To illustrate, in the Prologue and in the tale itself, the Wife focuses on the men in her life and her relationship with them in terms of sovereignty.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
17. Podloujny
- Creator:
- DeMartini, Paul
- Description:
- Podloujny is a creative thesis in the form of a fiction novel. The thesis features the generational dynamics of a family experiencing a series of profound crises. The narrative form of Podloujny shifts perspectives between each family member, exploring the hopes, fears and delusions within each character’s consciousness. While the work is grounded in traditional drama—scene, dialogue, action, consequence—the novel’s core is what occurs within. Beyond this framework, the novel focuses on what happens when the established solidity of a family unit begins to fray and crumble; in this case, the dementia diagnosis of the family’s elder and spiritual center acts as both a catalyst for change and a means to examine the past. Podloujny investigates thematic conflicts including harmony and dissonance, pride and shame, beauty and ugliness, realization and repression, falling apart and coming together.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Bates, Rebecca Joyce
- Description:
- To become part of any literary tradition is to call upon the classics while inventing new and individual ideas and concepts. In my writing I strive to find a balance between the old and the new . I have been heavily influenced by authors in the literary canon such as Jane Austen , Charlotte and Emily Bronte , and George Eliot, while being deeply interested in contemporary writers like Libba Bray and Brad Barkley. This has created a deep fascination in me for finding the balance between the traditional and the contemporary and what will happen when the two clash . The novel seeks to capture a moment in time and wrap its pages around the intense questions of identity in a time and place where traditional and contemporary society are grating against each other. The identity in question is that of eighteen-year-old Tara Worthington , the middle-child in an old-money southern family. The novel 's theme revolves around the idea of holding onto traditions of the past while also struggling to move forward and away from the old . What can stay and what must be left behind when the two worlds will not combine? I intend to set up as many dichotomies as possible such as the left and the right, north and south , the traditional and the contemporary. In placing all these ideas together I hope to illustrate the struggle that happens in one person when faced with all of them.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Henry, Lorelei Lee
- Description:
- My thesis will focus on three of O'Brien's Vietnam War novels: The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato, and In the Lake of the Woods. I will show how O'Brien develops these stories in terms of individual, social, cultural, and historical aspects in ways similar to, and perhaps indebted to Hemingway and Conrad. However, I will also demonstrate that O'Brien is correct in seei11g differences between his own approach and that of these authors, and other war literature writers. Where the suggestive style of Hemingway and Conrad minimize horrid detail, O'Brien's style highlights horror in an evocative, Gothic depiction of the true horror of war: the degeneration of men, the impossibility of regeneration, and the absolute moral desolation that results from the experience of war. O'Brien will thus be seen as representative of his generation, given to exaggeration, excess, overt disgust, anger, and fear. Chapter I will address the way in which O'Brien's depiction of the Vietnam War aligns it with World War I. In many ways, the cultural climate of the 1960s made the war a battle not unlike The Great War, in which Romantic ideals of nationalism and patriotism crumbled at the hands of a more personal disillusionment with war. The horrific individual, social, and cultural ramifications of war are brought to the forefront in O'Brien's works. Like Hemingway, O'Brien discusses very similar issues, central to the war of his time, in which, like Hemingway, the wasteland of the battlefield becomes an individual wasteland. In many ways, society was not prepared for either war, or for the shock, horror and degradation that war entails. We can see this clearly in the depiction of war as a degenerative force on society and culture in both Hemingway and O'Brien. Aligning the two wars historically also sets up social and cultural parallels between O'Brien and Hemingway. O'Brien is quoted as stating his admiration for Hemingway's work, and critics have noted the similarities between O'Brien's Vietnam stories and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. However, a much clearer connection exists between O'Brien's works and Hemingway's In Our Time, which depicts the transformation of Romantic idealism at the hands of Modernist fragmentation and alienation. The similarities between O'Brien and Hemingway are seen most strikingly between "Speaking of Courage," from The Things They Carried and "Soldier's Home" from In Our Time. Like Hemingway, O'Brien points out the failure of a Romantic ideal of war, the loss of patriotism and nationalism, to reveal the impossibility of individual, social, or cultural post-war regeneration. The Modernist wasteland that begins with Krebs ends logically in O'Brien. In Chapter Two, I will compare O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Where Hemingway's style mutes some of the awful details of war, O'Brien's style elaborates these details in order that the horror of war, in both the realistic and the Conradian sense, can be more clearly depicted. In In the Lake of the Woods, as in Heart of Darkness, one character's journey toward another through a dark and mysterious outer landscape mirrors an inner, moral journey, and exposes a figurative darkness lurking within the novel's protagonist. John Wade, a Vietnam veteran who now faces the shame and guilt not only of losing a political election, but also of his participation in the My Lai Massacre, is haunted by a past he cannot reconcile with his present life. Wade's psyche, already overshadowed by a traumatic childhood, grows morally darker as a direct result of his violent and horrific Vietnam War experience, which takes place in a dark and chaotic jungle reminiscent of Conrad's Congo. Although O'Brien's works are clearly indebted to Hemingway for the depiction of war as degenerative, and also to Conrad for the depiction of war as horror and moral terror, the most profitable way to read them is in terms of those elements we think of as Gothic, for then they become like confessionals, attempting to justify and resolve the transgressive individual, social, and cultural conflicts created by war. Chapter Three examines O'Brien's novels in terms of the Gothic genre, which sheds new light on the victory of fear over bravery, of terror over courage, of the loss of self at the hands of "the other," and of ghosts, the memories of war that arise from that dark landscape to haunt those that survived. By placing soldiers within a haunted landscape, issues of bravery and courage no longer lie solely within the realm of the characters' will, but, as in Gothic novels, are subject to outside forces that are constantly at odds with reality. When we examine O'Brien's Vietnam stories as discussing the failure of a Romantic ideal, as the reflection of individual, historical, social, and cultural anxiety, then they can be seen in terms of horror, where the stripped-down wasteland of Hemingway and the festering horror of Conrad come together in a Gothic world. O' Brien's The Things They Carried, In the Lake of the Woods, and Going After Cacciato, mediated by Gothic elements, reveal an individual, historical, social, and cultural anxiety beyond that which can be accomplished within the war literature genre.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
20. Marlow and the "necessary fiction" of morality in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim
- Creator:
- Theriault, Jennifer Marie
- Description:
- This thesis explores the moral evolution of Joseph Conrad's protagonist, Marlow, in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Marlow appears uniquely in literature as the omnipotence of cloistered Victorian moral ideals began to fade and just as the shattering of all forms of ideals that would come to characterize Modernism as a literary movement began to emerge. I show how Marlow transforms what would ordinarily be characterized as nihilistic lies into affirmations of life in order to sustain the illusion that traditional notions of Western morality are still in tact. Until Marlow reveals the truth about his lies and the corrupt European imperialism that they conceal in Heart of Darkness, he tells a series of untruths that effectively perpetrate for European bourgeois culture the myth that "civilizing" is benevolent. In telling lies that appear to compromise Marlow's own moral fidelity so that the existence of vast evil is concealed, Marlow comes into the "hard wisdom" that conventional morality is a facade. Despite Marlow's revelation about this, some twenty years later his aiding the criminal Jim in Lord Jim continues to sustain this illusion about morality. This is because in Marlow's collision -- and collusion -- with the European imperial enterprise in the African Congo, he learns that in the moral vacuum of "civilizing" lies that have a saving and stabilizing power are preferable to the truth that barbarism, and not benevolence, is at the "heart" of civilization. In illustrating this thesis, I show how Marlow's lies function as part of a Nietzschean "revaluation" of his rigid Victorian morality. In this process, Marlow reinterprets the traditional values that he associates with notions of "good" and "evil" so that his lies, once considered equivalent to death, are transformed into acts of "good" that sustain European colonial progress. These lies initially appear to compromise Marlow's own fidelity to his Victorian values because they make him what he has always loathed to become, a liar. However, these lies are really the hallmarks of Marlow's "revaluation." Marlow skews the truth in such a way that for a time his lies successfully function to confirm his allegiance to what he thinks is redeeming about the idea of a moral system - the efficiency and progress that sustain civilization.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Siegel, Stacey Beth
- Description:
- Women today are taught to believe that mothering is instinctual and that when they have children they are supposed to love taking care of them. This notion perplexes many women who give birth without immediately feeling kinship with their baby. Some, in fact, experience panic and guilt wondering what is wrong with them, and while they watch and listen to �other mothers, they desperately attempt to figure out if what they feel is justifiable. Often they keep their anxiety to themselves, fearing that they will not be accepted by society if they voice their refutation of the concept of intuitive maternity. What no one has told them is that the concept of inherent mothering is actually socially constructed. Although previously genre was defined exclusively in terms of form and content and referred to literary works, modern rhetorical theorists have recently redefined the term genre and applied it more broadly. Contemporary genre theorists have come to the conclusion that while form and content are still integral in examining genre, function and context are equally important. In other words, the social, historical and rhetorical forces that shape writing, the way writers use these forces, and the effect on the reader can reveal a great deal about a particular text. These forces strongly influence the purpose or function of a text, and it is the rhetorical activity or exigence behind that purpose which helps to classify genre. The exigence, which is something that strongly invites a response, helps to provide meaning and rhetorical character to writing. By examining the purpose and exigence of a text, the function and context can help to classify its audience or discourse community and therefore its genre. This project will examine parenting literature, specifically parenting magazines, beginning with an analysis of the rhetorical situation, which is the relationship between the reader, writer and social context in which the text is created. I intend to suggest that the audience of parenting magazine articles are significantly influenced by the social and rhetorical forces used by writers of these texts, and that the relationship is recursive because of the effect the readers have on their creation.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
22. Two trees
- Creator:
- Caruth, Elissa S.
- Description:
- Two Trees explores writing from a post-modern, post-sturcturalist perspective and experiments with form. Some of the works include elements of conventional poetry and fiction. Other poems combine the two genres of writing to create a poetic-fiction that expresses, through a poetic vision, non-conformity and rejection of accepted ideals. Two Trees is divided into four sections. Each section addresses different elements of survival from seemingly unimportant aspects of day to day coping to the societal victimization of women and different forms of rape.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- D'Andrea, April Lynn
- Description:
- A teenage girl grows up in the early nineteen eighties. Her parents are divorced, she rarely sees her father, and she doesn't get along with her stepfather. She moves to a new town and makes friends with popular kids. She meets an older boy and has a relationship. The relationship falls apart and her best friend moves to Oregon, so she struggles to with the loss. She gets closer to an old friend, makes new friends, and dates other boys; however, she holds on to the dream of winning her old boyfriend back and moving out with her best friend. When she finds out her best friend is pregnant and planning to get married, she does something that alienates her from all of her friends. Eventually she reconnects with her old boyfriend but decides she has outgrown him.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Kolarek, Tara
- Description:
- As a writer I have positioned myself within the framework of lesbian writing. The term 'lesbian writing', however, is varied and constantly in a state of definition. Yet, both in spite of, and because of this, I must construct a framework of lesbian writing that shapes and defines my writing. Lesbians disappear within the dominant ideology of heterosexuality as we are positioned/ defined in relation to heterosexual, as other, as object. This position is manifested in the institutions which reflect and affirm the heterosexual ideology, one of which is conventional narrative plot structure. If, as a lesbian writer, I utilize this structure and simply insert lesbians as central characters, I have only substituted pronouns and merely replicated gendered ideas, for at once there are butch(male) and femme(female) constructs and there exists only male desire. As a lesbian I am neither entirely outside nor entirely inside this dominant ideology and, as a lesbian writer, I must simultaneously challenge the structure and work within the structure to locate/define/identify a narrative as lesbian. In doing so, the work also seeks to create a narrative space in which the writer/ reader/ text come together in a relationship which can be defined as lesbian.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Maechler, Julie L.
- Description:
- The plays of Lanford Wilson have interested scholars, critics and playgoers for more than three decades . Among other things, critics have focused on Wilson's use of language. Some assert that Wilson's evocative language has captured the voice of the American people, resulting in the generally accepted notion that Lanford Wilson is an �American Voice.� In this study I examined the way Wilson uses language to create characters that speak in an �American� way about "American" concerns. My objective was to develop a criteria by which Wilson's language could be judged "American." This criteria includes three general features: elements of sound in terms of dialect, rhythm and colloquialism( aspects of national personality, identity, experience and mythos; and the themes and associations made available through the expanding signs of Roland Barthes' semiotic codes. This study applies the definition to three of Lanford Wilson's plays: Fifth of July, Talley's Folly, and Talley and Son. These three plays all focus on members of a single Midwestern family, the Talleys, during significant times in American history, and all take place on the uniquely American and semiotically significant Independence Day. Wilson's "American voice" is established linguistically in the elements of "sound" that can be detected through dialect and colloquialism; it is also present in the national identity and perspective as expressed by the characters.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Saunders, Judith
- Description:
- This thesis suggests that Bertolt Brecht's play, Round Heads and Pointed Heads, has been underserved both critically and theatrically. Although it evolved from a previous attempt Brecht made to adapt Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, there has been little scholarly discussion of Round Heads and Pointed Heads in light of its Shakespearean original. It is the intention of this thesis to revisit Brecht's play and argue that a comparative analysis of the two plays serves to rescue Brecht's play from its reputation as a failed Nazi satire and a na'ive Marxist account of the rise of fascism in Germany. This thesis also proposes that a study of Brecht's early, incomplete attempt to adapt Measure for Measure, which exists in the Bertolt Brecht Archives in fragmented form, strengthens the link between Round Heads and Pointed Heads and Shakespeare's play. I have included a working translation of these manuscript pages, which comprise the appendix to this thesis. Identifying Round heads and Pointed Heads as Brecht's final, free adaptation of Measure for Measure encourages a critical re-evaluation of the play, rescuing it from its reputation as an anti-Hitler satire and resurrecting it as a complex and sophisticated political parable with multiple implications.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Babayeva, Syuzanna
- Description:
- This thesis explores the manifestation of closed and open consciousness in conventional rhetoric of persuasion and the rhetoric of the rhizome. The rational mode of the Western discursive tradition has determined a pragmatic mode of consciousness, which gravitates toward discovering the rationality of truth opposed to the eternal motion of desire. Desire as a meaningful part of existence is examined in the works of Epicurus, Spinoza, Bergson, Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, and others. While emphasizing the vital role of desire, these theorists primarily associate desire with pleasure or lack and consider the notion of desire to be an indeterminate and antagonistic attribute in the logical contest of rational and irrational entities. This way of thinking creates a linear type of consciousness expressed in a cause-effect frame of persuasive argumentation dominant in Western thought since Aristotle. French scholars Deleuze and Guattari have problematized the notion of desire by locating desire in the rhizome as the main driving force of organic and nonorganic beings. They describe the rhizome as a nonhierarchical web of connections where all material matters are in a constant process of becoming. The rhizome excludes an idea of the finality of truth, offering a picture of the world based on difference and perpetual movement. The philosophy of the rhizome demonstrates an open type of consciousness which is not defined or limited by any conventions. My thesis demonstrates the manifestation of the conventional, or Aristotelian, type of consciousness through the rhetorical analysis of contemporary US nonfiction texts that offer finality as answers to the problems explored: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff in Love by Richard Carlson and Kristine Carlson, Stiffed by Susan Faludi, and What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage by Amy Sutherland. I contend that each of these texts has a clear line of argument related to essential concerns of existence such as relationships, love, and the construction of social values framed as a clear-cut resolution presenting answer to the question posed. To illustrate the rhetoric of the rhizome, I analyze a different type of nonfiction that is not organized around one central point of view on the topics explored. Employing Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the rhizome, I call this type of nonfiction "rhizomatic" because it is written in a reflective mode and invites the audience to contemplate the ideas for possibilities and potentials. In the context of the rhetoric of the rhizome, I examine three contemporary works of US nonfiction: Against Love by Laura Kipnis, Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz, and Husbandry by Stephen Fried. Addressing principles of deterritorialization, multiplicity, and becoming as the vital categories of the rhizome, I demonstrate through the analysis of the rhizomatic texts an open consciousness of composing ourselves" (Lunsford). I compare the results of the conventional rhetorical approach to the rhetoric of the rhizome and suggest that the limits of truth that we impose on ourselves can be opened through incorporating the open consciousness of the rhizome into our lives.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Garcia, Mario Steven
- Description:
- This thesis contains the first seven chapters of a novel in progress. The novel is set in the present. The protagonist and narrator is an engineer working at an aerospace company in the San Fernando Valley. The narrator is a remarkable figure in that he has repressed the memories of the death of his mother and father. He operates in the present by insulating himself within a false past. This insulation allows him to postpone experiencing the trauma associated with the death of his parents. We encounter the narrator soon after his repression begins to falter. As a manifestation of the faltering repression, the narrator experiences a recurring dream in which he sees a man and piano joined as one. Additionally, the narrator begins to suffer paranoid episodes in which he experiences mild distortions of reality. The narrator engages both of these features of his life unaware that he has engaged his potent and repressed past. Much of the narrative occurs while on a road trip to Yosemite with his girlfriend and another couple. Although this road trip is an ostensible get-away, events occur which act as catalysts, enabling the narrator's crisis. The novel is written as an interior monologue. This point of view is useful in that it allows an economical explication of manifold distortions of reality experienced by the narrator. In this work, all four characters suffer from their own personality quirks and therefore it is problematic to point to any one objective reality. The narrative relies on the reader to absorb disparate points of view and establish a virtual reality through narration, dialogue and action.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Senteney, Natasha D.
- Description:
- Nobody’s Damn Business is a collection of autobiographical narratives that focus, primarily, on the author’s childhood. As a whole, the essays aim to convey the complicated nature of trauma in relation to familial relationships, while dealing with topics such as child abuse, domestic violence, addiction, mental illness, and poverty.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Rouley, Hannah
- Description:
- This thesis project examines the role that narrative and memoir play in a writing classroom that is focused on growing and educating an entire student. I begin by examining critical expressivist and postpedagogical approaches to teaching writing; these pedagogies, I argue, support the work that memoir and narrative writing can do in helping students build effective and diverse literacies, and towards the end of the first chapter, I define memoir and narrative; these definitions emphasize the humanizing effect on students who read the writing of others about being human. In doing this, I aim to set a precedent for a writing classroom that asks students to engage with their own experience, which provides them with an education which is far more than a final term grade, and instead offers them a way of relating to the entirety of humanity through story and experience.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Molle, Kierstin E.
- Description:
- My intent with Through the Valley was, in part, to provide representation in a genre I so rarely find for myself and for others who fall into similar identities as myself in terms of gender and sexuality. Historical fiction has always been a genre I have been passionate about and it was my goal to imbue the historical setting I’ve chosen to work within with themes that can still be felt in the present day such as a search for one’s identity, the impact of war on those who fight it, the lengths people will go as a result of fervent patriotism. Having grown up in a period of conflict I find it cathartic in some ways to write what might be qualified as war literature in spite of the fact I myself have never experienced military service. I sincerely hope that my characters will read as real people with real struggles that the reader can connect and empathize with in spite of any inherent differences between themselves and the characters on the page. If I can provide a glimpse of representation for even one person who reads my thesis, I will have achieved the goal I set for myself as I crafted it.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Ganiy, Helen
- Description:
- My thesis begins by interrogating the ways in which two texts by Harriet Beecher Stowe--Uncle Tom’s Cabin and its follow-up, Dred--construct Black supernatural ability as racially innate and divinely specific. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s notion of “Black spiritual superiority” invigorated racial tensions of the time and encouraged white reader’s hyperbolic notions of Blackness. The undisputed architect of the Magical Negro trope, Stowe’s creation forces the enslaved into a position to prove themselves superhuman; that is, the trope burdens their humanity with inhumane assumptions. To contemporize my discussion of Stowe’s work, I assert that her character, Uncle Tom, was the largest and most significant influence on the production of the Magical Negro, which has become highly visible in film and literature of the past half century. Additionally, the trope positions Black individuals as divided into two categories: ordinary criminals or supernatural creatures. Both of these assumptions deny Black humanity in the same way that black exceptionalism denies the existence of a human spectrum in the Black community. This polarization of types works to story the black experience into extreme poles, forcing perceptions of Blackness to recede back into “Uncle Tom-isms”, relegated into the space of characters, stereotypes and relics. Shifting from this historical perspective into a speculative lens, I argue that Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Song of Solomon disavow the Magical Negro by engaging with Black Supernaturalism - a term that denotes a literary phenomenon which seeks to rework dominant notions of Black religious participation and traditional African Voodoo. My work excavates Black Supernaturalism through the anthropological and fictional works of Zora Neale Hurston, whose work formed the foundation upon which Morrison, and other Black authors, built their work. Further, Black Supernaturalism certifies and upholds communal traditions that certify magical storytelling, ghosts and impossible feats as palpably sourced in the scars of slavery borne by the black community.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Clark, Nicolette
- Description:
- Violence is a fundamental truth in the works of Cormac McCarthy. More than just violence for the sake of violence, McCarthy employs violence in a way that is productive within his works: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. This study examines the productive nature behind violence, which I argue, manifests through language. Beginning with Blood Meridian, McCarthy’s judge appropriates language through the manipulation of referents re-shaping truth, informing all violence throughout the novel. No Country For Old Men brings us to the language of the law and how it caters to the objectivity of the law, using it as a guiding principle, without the scope of morality. Through the characters of Chigurh and Flannery O’Connor’s The Misfit, we are asked to judge the validity of the state’s versus the vigilante’s truth, which are ultimately synonymous. Leaving us with Sheriff Bell, who relinquishes his position as sheriff because he is unwilling to be an accessory to a morally corrupt system. Then, in The Road, the ultimate violence occurs through the disintegration of language, resulting from the indifference of man. With the perspective as perceiver of violence throughout this range of McCarthy’s works, we are in the position to judge this violence and consider its productivity. Its productivity lies in the fact that great violence must occur for redemption to manifest—as in The Road, the preciousness and life of language is not discernible until it faces its own mortality.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Cassells, Breanne
- Description:
- Throughout Toni Morrison’s novels, characters struggle to reclaim their own humanity in the face of domination and trauma. While countless scholars have remarked upon the themes of oppression and language, and several others upon the symbolism of nature in her works, the symbiotic relationship between the three has remained largely unremarked upon. This project explores the similarities between white supremacy, misogyny, and the plundering of the natural world—which I refer to as types of biosubjugation—in The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved. Utilizing Simon Estok’s theory of ecophobia, this project examines how the interactions between characters and the natural world are influenced by linguistic, physical, and ecological trauma. In The Bluest Eye, internalized oppression causes female characters to judge and exclude other females for their perceived dirtiness, understood in floral and/or animalistic terms. In Sula, female sexuality is conflated with and expressed through natural landscapes. In Beloved, trauma is literalized through natural elements, such as the tree on Sethe’s back and the shrubs in which Denver hides. An exploration of Morrison’s use of language clarifies her invocations of nature, which in turn elucidates her depiction of the alienating nature of oppression. These systems of intersectional oppression cause the characters to react in ecophobic ways in order to assert their own humanity, but these exclusionary tactics amputate the communal connections which are necessary to heal from communal trauma, and thus the cycle continues.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Lo, Isabella
- Description:
- The Hmong people are a group of Southeast Asians who came to America around 45 years ago. Because they are still so new and still such a small group, their stories have only began to come to light. As a group of becoming, the Hmong are now engaging in conversation with Western perspective as to who they, the Hmong, really are. Through this thesis I hope to inform and teach a little more about the Hmong community. I want to help rhetoric and composition scholars to understand more on how to incorporate our Hmong stories and narratives into the field. With more generations being born in America, the Hmong are beginning to find agency in the midst of the dominant culture. Where there was silence before, a rhetoric from the Hmong community is starting to spill over and into the dominant culture, demanding to be heard. In this thesis I analyze many texts and artifacts in relation to and within the Hmong community in order to bring to the forefront the Hmong rhetoric that has been pushed aside due to the dominant culture’s idea of what counts as rhetoric. In Chapter 2: “Voices from the War,” I highlight personal narratives of the Hmong people and “the Secret War” through documentary evidence. In Chapter 3: “Voices of a Daughter,” I investigate Hmong weddings to highlight the cultural relevance of the wedding in The Bride Price through the use of critical rhetorical analysis. Finally, in Chapter 4: “Voices from the Cloth,” I investigate the cultural and rhetorical relevance of the Hmong stitching and quilting, as material rhetoric and cultural literacy.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Fresno
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Wilson, Veronica Lauren
- Description:
- The literature and drama of the long eighteenth century is overpopulated with nuns, and they are all transgressors of patriarchal society in one way or another. These nuns are all vow-breakers, fornicators, and fallen women; whether they were ruined after taking their holy vows or took their vows as a way to escape a society who rejected them for being ruined, there is one thing that is certain: Catholic nuns of eighteenth century literature are clearly trouble. This theme is too pervasive to be a mere whim, so where does this negative view of Catholic women monastics come from? Some of the blame can certainly be placed on the anti-Catholic sentiment that saturated Protestant England’s society, but more of it can be place on the even more pervasive anti-woman sentiment in England at this time.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Abbassi, Susan
- Description:
- In the play of Othello, Shakespeare perfectly explores the issue of racial tension that existed in the Elizabethan era. Othello, a loyal soldier and the protagonist of the play, appears as an outsider in Venice because of his dark skin; he is repeatedly and often harshly judged by others based on his different ethnic background and special outward characteristics. Despite being a warrior of high status, he cannot be fully embraced by the white people around him due to his otherness.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Collins, Kim Maria
- Description:
- This paper is dedicated to improving the classroom experience of students enrolled in writing courses one level below university level composition. Everyone's goal is persistence and completion. The question this paper seeks to answer is, what do instructors of individual basic writing classrooms need to know and do to contribute their piece to the complex puzzle of student success? This paper has three emphases. The first section considers the emotional and social needs of basic writing students and proposes that a classroom environment that emphasizes mastery, trust, cooperation, and interest best meets these needs. A mastery approach aids in restoring the confidence and self esteem of battle-worn students, and is also strongly correlated with promoting other desirable classroom characteristics. According to Senko et al, mastery encourages academic honesty and collaboration. The value of academic honesty is self evident. Collaboration is beneficial to all students but is especially advantageous for students who have been physically and emotionally marginalized from mainstream learning and often feel isolated and barred access to meaningful interactions. Finally, mastery promotes interest. Many basic learners have disengaged from actual learning and have settled for rote, formulaic memorization of rules and facts. Creating interest enhances students' subjective classroom experience and sparks engagement which results in objective gains (Senko et al. 35-36).
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Grigorian, Masha
- Description:
- This thesis is concerned with analyzing the characters of Harry Potter, Lord Voldemort, and Professor Severus Snape from the sensational children's book series, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling through the perspective of literary and critical theory. Although I explain and expand upon the underlying connection between these three characters, who ultimately create a trinity of sorts within the books, I focus mostly on evaluating each character as an individual, as well as within the trinity, through theories of gender, identity formation and development, sexuality, hybridity, language, psychoanalysis, abjection, and others. These theories are described not only as they pertain to the specific characters, but are contextualized in the larger scope of the novels, touching upon lucid central issues as well as veiled trivial issues.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
40. Collectors
- Creator:
- Chukhadarian, Lucin
- Description:
- This thesis brings together three shorter plays, "Reverse Intimidation," "Collectors," and "Chandra," each of which I've been working for some time. Each play explores the courage and the fragility of women. "Reverse Intimidation" is based on personal experience with the secret service that took place on one of my travels to Cairo, Egypt. The "Collectors" is a play based on true stories told by both my grandmothers of their experiences as children during the Armenian Genocide. "Chandra" on the other hand, is about growing old, finding inner peace, and regretting nothing and everything. It wasn't difficult recognizing the similarities in all my female characters, but the notion of bringing these plays together was very overwhelming. My passion for playwriting started with The Cryptogram by David Mamet, The Dumbwaiter by Harold Pinter, Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht, and Far Away by Caryl Churchill. I also think that age and experience have played a pivotal role in how I think and write. The courage that comes with age takes a person on an unknown journey for which one might not be ready for in the physical sense, but one is willing to fearlessly endeavor in the spiritual sense, since one is no longer worried about the aesthetic aspects of one's self. Initially, "Collectors" was going to be a play about certain women during a specific historical period; however, I decided to integrate women of different age groups and different time periods from my plays making appearances though-out the play. I believe history has a way of repeating itself. No matter where in the world, women under extreme conditions learn to adapt and survive. Women have found ways to challenge their natural abilities against the masculinity of society's expectations to conform and abide by. Women are not commodities, yet society dictates otherwise hence the title "Collectors." Virginia Wolf said, "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." I'm hoping that women writers including myself can change that one day.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Leavenworth-Keenberg, Gretchen Daria
- Description:
- Melancholy, enigmatic, haunting, spectral. These are words often used to describe W.G. Sebald’s prose style. Critics and lay readers who find themselves enmeshed in Sebald’s enchanting, dark web of words sometimes find his work difficult to categorize, yet strangely alluring. W.G. Sebald, a German-born professor who spent most of his adult life living and teaching in England, challenged old notions of what a novel should look like and be about. His four “prose-narratives,” published between 1990 and 2002, explore intense themes such as trauma, loss, identity, time, sexuality, psychosis, war, and amnesia. Sebald strongly emphasizes the unspeakable horror of the holocaust and its aftermath, while incorporating non-traditional elements in his creative works such as photography, old postcards and scribbled notes, antiquated words, verbosity, and quite a few digressions.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Freeman, Daniel
- Description:
- A comedienne clasping a manly-man hand to her face-that's the sight gag splashed across the cover of Tina Fey's bestselling memoir Bossypants, a joke and title with centuries' worth of setup. A subversion of expectations is reflected in the cover design of Fey's book-a woman, but with "manly" hands photoshopped on, in the same way "Bossypants" takes the term "boss" and cobble onto it the essence of "smartypants." "'Why can't we accept the human form as it is?' screams no one...we never have" Fey observes, "That's why people wore corsets and neck stretchers and powdered wigs" (Fey 245). In between impersonating Sarah Palin and informing the world "Fetch" will never happen, Fey's comedic oeuvre has consistently involved commentary on women, the body-and she's not alone. As Carol Hanisch put it decades ago, "The personal is political," and few things have consistently embodied the tension between those two elements of identity politics throughout modernity like the perceptions and depictions of the female body, especially in relation to women's role in society (Hanisch 23). To trace the manner in which English and French literature from the Early Modern Period onward has "dressed up" and presented women in relation to their bodies is to trace the evolution of modernity itself, from the advent of gender politics to the effects of new workers and capital to shifting societal roles and power relations. In particular, it examines the tension between conceptions of men, women, gender roles, and power relations which allow for the subversion implied by Fey's sight gag and title-namely, with men traditionally associated with power and the professional sphere, the process and, indeed, progress of modernity is reflected in women subverting social hierarchy and expectations while still running up against the challenges of that gender dynamic-tracing a narrative of modernity and the body from codpieces and corsets to bustles, Beauvoir, and back again.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Elisara, Unai
- Description:
- In this grant I will be addressing the need for an expansion of Feleti Barstow Public Library of Pago Pago, American Samoa. This Library is the only library on the island and houses many of the island's cultural and historical artifacts. I am requesting $15,000,000 for this expansion that will not only serve as extra storage for artifacts of Samoa's history, it will also serve as an emergency resource center as well as a multipurpose center that will hold many activities and demonstrations to promote wellness on all levels of the body, both mentally and physically, in order to also preserve the future of Samoa. This will serve as an area where locals of Pago Pago, as well as those from nearby islands can gather in a formal environment (meetings with the chiefs, tradition and cultural ceremonies, etc.) However, in adding on to the Feleti Barstow Public Library, this extension will also serve as an area for children to gather in an environment which encourages education and fosters a sense of culture pride in studying the artifacts housed here. During my time in graduate school I have come to realize that no matter how much an institution claims to promote "diversity and inclusion," the colonizers have now evolved; instead of "we come in peace," they now say they "encourage all voices." When really it is "most voices" from white faces. This grant will allow the people of American Samoa to be more self-sufficient during times of emergency, so we do not have to wait on the white man for "aid," or a prolonged genocide. This extension will serve as an entity in which artifacts and the cultural history is housed, is taught and passed on, as well as an area where the Samoan people can come for emergency shelter during times of crisis, while also serving as a safe space to embrace the history of our culture.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Narayanamurti, Krishna
- Description:
- Late in Jane Austen’s "Emma," a peculiar scene of harrowing adventure disrupts an otherwise realistic novel. On an early morning walk, Harriet Smith takes a wrong turn into the woods outside the posh village of Highbury. A “gang” of young “gypsies,” presumably of Romany descent, surround Harriet and demand her purse. As a foreign element outside of Highbury’s rigid class structure, the parent-less gypsy children represent a corrupted reflection of Harriet, herself an orphan, in her attempts to assimilate into Emma’s social circle. Prior critical responses to this scene have trended in one of two directions—a sociopolitical interpretation through the lens of cultural studies and historicism or an analysis of the rhetorical and narratological devices Austen employs. By emphasizing particular interpretive methods over others, critics often miss opportunities for a multi-pronged analysis of how the formal elements of a narrative may inform the political ideology it knowingly or unknowingly promotes—and vice versa, how politics can influence the choice of aesthetic forms. When dealing with authors like Austen who eschew overt ideological statements, the New Formalist methods proposed by Caroline Levine and others can reveal hidden layers of thematic resonance and contradiction. Similarly, adopting Amy Devitt’s view of genre as a flexible rhetorical tool, rather than a fixed literary category, allows for an analysis of the gypsy scene’s function in harmony or contrast with other genres Austen employs in the novel. "Emma’s" abrupt placement of Harriet in distress provides what Levine might call a “collision” of multiple forms—story devices, social networks, and unifying structures—which unsettle each other but ultimately reshape and confirm the novel as both a political work with nationalist aims and a lighthearted comedy that satirizes its own insular preoccupations.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Lee, Ambre
- Description:
- Establishing and maintaining a professional teacher blog enables teachers to publish, reflect, share, collaborate, and enrich their professional presence. While publishing has long been the standard for university professors, secondary teachers do not have the same expectations placed upon them. Primarily, this is due to time constraints, but the result is that secondary teachers do not always remain current in their field. To this point, a weekly writing practice can enable teachers to stay engaged and relevant in their particular field of study in regards to pedagogy and current research. Blogging enables teachers to understand writing for a purpose and for an audience, which increases credibility when insisting on the same from students. Since reflection is one of the most important aspects of improving one's teaching practice, the blog seems like an essential tool for every teacher. Finally, in an environment of questionable evaluation procedures for teachers, a teacher blog enables the teacher to highlight successes in the classroom and demonstrate his/her teaching pedagogy instead of being limited to one or two observations a year. I plan to utilize my teacher blog in a number of ways: Create a dialogue for secondary Special Day Class teachers about issues that aren't addressed anywhere else. Share and reflect on teaching practices. Read and write about current research in special education. Maintain a focus on potential interventions for both reading and writing at the secondary level. Lastly, increase my professional online presence.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Evans, Megan Day
- Description:
- Feminist rhetoric often looks back in history to find instances of women’s voices in writings, but for my thesis, I argue the importance of looking at modern forms of feminist rhetoric in academia. I am specifically looking at what I term as Rouge Feminist rhetoric, and how it situates itself in public feminist conversations online. My thesis brings forth questions about current understandings of feminist rhetoric online, and it calls for further study on how this new form is different or adding to the discussion of digital feminist rhetoric. I also suggest how future studies can be conducted by researchers looking at modern instances of feminist rhetoric online in order to answer the questions I pose.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Fresno
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Farrukh, Sawsan
- Description:
- This paper is an investigation of the widows found in Jane Austen’s Lady Susan and Sanditon, two unpublished works during her lifetime. The paper presents a careful close read of both Lady Susan and Lady Denham and their methods of manipulation in order to gain profit. The concepts of capitalism and colonization are also discussed within the paper to gain further understanding of the widows’ motivation for the incessant manipulation of the emotions of those surrounding them. They do this in order to acquire marriages that will provide financial security and high social standing; marriage is one of the few ways a person can instantly attain wealth during the Regency Era.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Beckman, Donna S.
- Description:
- The creative portion of this thesis is The Girl Who Loved Gable, a psychological detective novel. Set in Los Angeles in the present, the novel is a first person narrative. The central character is Leda Swann, a 30 year old female detective who is assigned a missing persons case involving a teenage runaway girl. Her search for the girl becomes a search for herself. In the tradition of the Oedipal detective, Leda is posed a riddle, and, like Oedipus, must undergo self discovery before she can arrive at its solution. Although The Girl Who Loved Gable derives its form from a popular genre, the detective novel, it utilizes literary techniques. One such element is the use of an unreliable first person narrator who is also the protagonist. The critical portion of this thesis is a study of the function of point of view as an element in the structure of the novel. Wayne Booth, in his essays on reliable commentary and reliable/unreliable narrators, stresses that there must be a character within the dramatic framework of the novel who can be trusted by the reader to function as a touchstone of objectivity. Booth overlooks an alternative structure. Both detective fiction and some modern novels are centered around a character who begins with limited or wrong knowledge and works his way through to truth. A series of epiphanies arising organically from the action of the novel bring the character and the reader to simultaneous revelation. Thus, in Willaim Styron's Sophie's Choice for example, discovering the objective truth becomes the central experience of the novel. The critical section of this thesis will address the question of whether Booth's touchstone is a prerequisite for a coherent novel, or if, by maintaining a Jamesian emphasis on dramatization, and by using the reader's experiences and expectations as a backdrop, the author can use an unreliable point of view to present a narrative that is "solved" as well as read.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Harris, Laura E
- Description:
- One of the biggest problems facing incoming freshmen in American colleges today is lack of preparation in appropriate reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. These abilities are necessary for success not only in college but also in the professional world. The issues surrounding this problem are complicated and may appear to be unrelated; however, the connection between learning and instruction provides the solution. If instructors possess the concern and tenacity to understand and address how this connection relates to improving student learning, success rates of both the students and the academy can be improved. Learning must be understood in regards to diversity of style, cultural and social background, steps of knowledge building, the role of neuroscience, and the implications of the digital age on education.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Bakersfield
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Zumstein, John
- Description:
- This essay enters the ongoing disciplinary debate regarding the place of literature in the composition classroom, with special emphasis on first-year college college composition courses. Drawing on the work of past scholars, as well as on my own field experience and research, I will argue in favor of the use of literature in First Year Composition classes by demonstrating its efficacy in helping students develop key composition skills, including critical thinking and command of rhetorical technique. Further still, I will argue that when assigned well-chosen literature texts, students are in fact more receptive to internalizing these skills in ways that are organic and long-lasting, rather than contextualizing them as something purely "academic" and thus separate from everyday life.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English