Doctoral Dissertations

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Browsing Doctoral Dissertations by Department "English"
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    A Life Less Gothic: Gothic Literature, Dark Reform, and the Nineteenth-Century American Periodical Press
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2017-03-20) Gray, Sarah B. ; Renfroe, Alicia ; Ostrowski, Carl ; Phillips, Philip ; English
    Gothic as a genre is particularly concerned with identifying and exposing anachronisms in social law and behavior. Though most scholars, both Gothic and otherwise, view this as a reactionary position, my study exposes how, especially in the hands of American dark reform writers, Gothic became an active genre, illuminating for readers not what they do fear, but what they should fear. Though many nineteenth-century reformers wrote tracts and sentimental novels in the service of social reform, Rebecca Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, E.D.E.N. Southworth, and George Lippard recognized that by paralleling nineteenth-century legal and social issues with Gothic literary elements—coverture with captivity, loss of female “purity” with live burial, and insane asylums and civil commitment with the veil—in short stories and serials published in popular periodicals, their calls for social reform would reach a much more vast and varied national audience.
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    The Afro-American novel, 1965-1975 : a descriptive bibliography of primary and secondary material /
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1976) Houston, Helen ; English
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    The American epic : a divided stream.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1995) Hubele, Donald ; English
    Classical epic models remind the reader of the sadness, futility, and sterility of living in the past; chapter one of this study illustrates, however, that from Cotton Mather to Walt Whitman, American history is celebrated in epic as an anthropomorphism of the mind of God. Further, classical poets who knew the glories of Troy also knew that its fate is inexorable to all in the future; from Whitman to Steinbeck, however, there are American epics such as The Octopus and The Grapes of Wrath that fly in the face of that knowledge.
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    American Independent Female Filmmakers: Kelly Reichardt in Focus
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2014-03-11) Hall, Dawn ; Badley, Linda ; Hollings, Marion ; Helford, Elyce ; English
    Female directors are historically underrepresented in the film industry. By studying the careers of independent women directors, scholars can identify their opportunities and challenges to create a more diverse and equitable industry. After synthesizing recent studies of women in film, this project focuses on the career of Kelly Reichardt as one example of the creative methodology, production, and content of women's work in the indie sector.
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    Anabaptists to Zwieback: Textual Access and Exclusion in Russian Mennonite Community Cookbooks of South Central Kansas
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2020) Harris-Aber, Amy A ; Myatt, Julie A. ; Pantelides, Kate L. ; Jack, Jordynn ; McDaniel, Rhonda ; English
    Russian Mennonite immigrants who settled south central Kansas in the late 19th century and their descendants naturally developed a discourse community that differentiates them from the dominant culture in which they reside. Changing regional dynamics regarding diversity along with continued acculturation impacts this ethnoreligious community in a kind of dual displacement; the descendants of these Russian Mennonites not only live in the shadow of their ancestors’ collected memories and traumas related to migration, but have and are currently witnessing further shifts away from the once agricultural lifestyle they previously observed. Therefore, heritage preservation is increasingly vital for stakeholders engaged with the history of Anabaptist life in Kansas. My dissertation attempts to elucidate aspects of the Russian Mennonite discourse community of south central Kansas by engaging with regional foodways as they appear in community cookbooks. I combine interview and text analysis data with John Swales’ concepts of discourse communities to further define how cultural insiders worked in previous decades to create community through the production of food focused texts. By analyzing the Zwieback recipes from eight community cookbooks produced within the same cultural group, I examine which texts exclude certain audiences, and which are meant to provide an access point for cultural “outsiders.” I maintain that due to acculturation and shifting population demographics in the region, long term regional and familial proximity to the Russian Mennonite community of south central Kansas determines understanding of high-context cultural practices. Establishing digital archives for Kansas Mennonite community cooking texts is also the most accessible form of preservation for all stakeholders.
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    Arab American Poetry 1967-Present: Songs of Defiance and Hope in the Face of Arab-U.S. Political Tension
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2014-11-14) Moqbel, Nedhal Saleh Mohsen ; Hibbard, Allen ; Johnson, Newtona (Tina) ; Albakry, Mohammed ; English
    This study examines Arab American poetry 1967-Present in light of the political tension between the United States and the Arab World. It explores the ways in which the Arab American community has been greatly impacted by such frequent political pressures as the Arab-Israeli conflict, violent events in the Middle East, and America's foreign policy in the region. The poems discussed in this dissertation reveal the community's collective anxieties, alienation, and fears due to hostility, anti-Arab racism, and media misrepresentation that often escalate during every crisis involving the U.S. and the Middle East. Analysis of these poems demonstrates a defiant response to a tense situation coupled with glimpses of hope for a better future. It also reveals the complexities of Arab American identity evident in the constantly ambivalent relationship between Arab and American contexts that is exacerbated by frequent political crises. Arab American poets address themes of war, violence, injustice, and hegemony, simultaneously touching upon deeper issues of belonging, hybridity, interrogation of identity, and reconciliation.
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    Archetype and metaphor : an approach to the early novels of Elie Wiesel.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1981) French, Ellen ; English
    This dissertation explores the development of Elie Wiesel's art as seen in his early novels. Since the late 1950's when the publication of Night first brought Wiesel to the attention of critics, his work has continued to command the respect of international critics and scholars. In fact, Wiesel has emerged in the United States as a leading spokesman for the survivors of the Holocaust, espousing a point of view that has wide appeal for its philosophical and humanitarian bases. The present study aproaches Night, Dawn, and The Accident as a trilogy linked by a single structural pattern of development, a single protagonist, and a single metaphoric and symbolic system.
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    The art of dying: suicide in the works of Kate Chopin and Sylvia Plath.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1992) Gentry, Deborah ; English
    Although the representation of suicide is commonplace in literature, few studies have explicitly dealt with the meaning of suicide in the works of women writers. Margaret Higonnet classifies representations of suicide as "masculine" or "feminine," and finds that since the Romantic age, literary suicides have been feminized. Masculine suicides are those where the characters, male or female, choose to die as an heroic act of protest against individual or social wrongs, while feminine suicides are the result of mental illness. Chapter I applies Higonnet's theories and those of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar concerning the division of women literary figures into angels or monsters to representative literary suicides of nineteenth century.
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    Baconian epistemology and the test for vocation in George Herbert's The temple /
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2007) Haynes, Katherine ; English
    While Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning was being translated into the elegant Latin of De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, a translation credited to George Herbert, Herbert was composing a series of religious English lyrics that would be published posthumously as The Temple. Public Orator for Cambridge University and Fellow, George Herbert was a candidate for Francis Bacon's call to begin the great instauration of learning that Bacon believed would ultimately usher in the Solomonic society that Bacon hoped would be established in England during the reign of James I. Part of his call was to open the experimentation to all who would be willing to share their results for the mutual advancement of knowledge.
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    Becoming frauds: unconventional heroines in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's sensation fiction.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2000) Schipper, Jan ; English
    By focusing on three of her early sensation novels, this study examines how Mary Elizabeth Braddon's fiction challenged conventional assumptions about the feminine and spoke to women's growing discontent with their limited roles as daughters, wives, and mothers. Her novels suggest how a number of women became frauds, in the sense of using deception, inventing false identities, and committing crimes in order to meet conventional society's expectations for the proper female. Braddon's female frauds subverted dominant Victorian ideology's representation of women as domestic ideals by defying the impractical and impossible role of "angel" and rejecting gender and class-based discrimination.
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    Between Grace and Grit: Modernity, Liminality, and Grace King
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-08-01) Lute, Khristeena Marie ; Bradley, Pat ; Renfroe, Mischa ; Donovan, Ellen ; English
    Critics and literary scholars typically associate American modernism with World War I and its effects on American society. Tenets of the movement, however, are evident in southern literature as early as Reconstruction; economic depression, social disillusionment, and a general sense of decay appear regularly in some southern literature texts of the late nineteenth century as well as in modernist literature of the 1920s. Southern writers use elements typically associated with Modernism, such as grotesque imagery and characterization, advanced linguistic play, narratives of community, and social liminality, decades before other national writers. Grace King, traditionally viewed as a New Orleans regionalist, is associated with a past era of pastoral novels and local color fiction, but in re-examining her work, one can identify techniques that would later be referred to as “modernist,” in particular, social liminality as described by anthropologists Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner. King’s New Orleans characters express universal gender, racial, socioeconomic, and national liminalities as the South attempted to recover after the Civil War. Through the use of close readings of King’s fiction and life writing, I explore the concepts of modernity and liminality in her writing and her place among more widely celebrated modernists. Identifying and exploring King’s pre-modernist techniques can clarify how her texts, lesser known in contemporary studies, may have played a part as early mentor-texts to a major literary movement. Numerous scholars now support the notion that King did not have the economic stability to take outward, radical stances and therefore needed her writing to express her own evolving opinions on social issues; this rhetorical strategy is part of the beauty of King’s writing, a liminal ambiguity that generates a multiplicity of interpretations, and is our final link to seeing Grace King as a pre-modernist writer.
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    'Between the house and the chicken yard' : the masks of Mary Flannery O'Connor /
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2008) Sharp, Jolly ; English
    Mary Flannery O'Connor's personal idiosyncrasies and literary talents enabled her to don multiple masks that both concealed and revealed segments of herself as she desired. While O'Connor's personal and social masks were shaped by her Southern and Catholic roots, her vivid imagination and artistry fashioned her literary masks, allowing her to explore life's grotesqueness. Many of O'Connor's literary characters shelter features of her own disposition and purpose.
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    BIRTHING AN ARCHETYPE: WAR AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE EPIC CHILD HERO
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2018-04-13) Cain, Jennifer M. ; Hixon, Martha ; Petersen, Robert ; McCluskey, Pete ; English
    ABSTRACT
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    Borders and blood : creativity in Beowulf /
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2010) Brown, Lisa ; English
    In Dimensions of Creativity, Margaret A. Boden defines a bordered, conceptual space as the realm of creativity; therefore, one may argue that the ubiquitous presence of boundaries throughout the Old English poem Beowulf suggests that it is a work about creativity. Since Beowulf creates stories from his exploits, and since those exploits consist of shedding blood as a result of both geographic and corporeal crossings, the blood must be seen as the inspiration for his narratives from the border. Not only does he prove himself to be a maker because of the stories he generates, but Beowulf also fits both the personality profile and behavior pattern of creators. Although Grendel also kills, he absorbs the blood rather than making something from it and thereby becomes a representation of the evil creative act. Beowulf, however, is a man with social and political duties, and his struggle with these as they conflict with his need for personal and private creativity culminates in his experience in the creative realm itself, the cave in the mere with the mother and the sword of the giants. Using Dorothy L. Sayers' arguments from The Mind of the Maker that humanity mirrors God in one major aspect, the need to create, and that culture is at odds with this need, Beowulf may be viewed as heeding his social responsibilities and out of necessity negating his creativity. In doing so, he suppresses violence and bloodshed, trying to find a way to negotiate between them and public duty. The result is tragic: he becomes almost non-productive in order to preserve his kingdom. As a work that regards creativity ambiguously, Beowulf may also be seen to speak to the concerns of the monastics who produced it and their struggles with the problem of trying to determine when the creative act is worship and when it is idolatry.
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    CAI Portfolio English 111 : a new direction for freshman composition at Middle Tennessee State University.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1998) Clayton, Maria ; English
    A paradigm shift occurred in writing instruction theory and pedagogy during the 1970's, a shift that mandated a move away from the current-traditional emphasis on product and towards a new, more rhetorically-based focus on the composition process. As a result of this shift, two different but complementary pedagogies emerged almost simultaneously, portfolio-based composition, also propelled by needs in the field of assessment, and computer-assisted composition, made possible by the rise in computer applications in the classroom. Portfolio-based and computer-assisted programs have enjoyed a solid following well into the 1990's and, in fact, continue to gain status among academic disciplines, particularly in composition studies. In the past decade the symbiotic potential of portfolio and computer methodologies has been recognized by many institutions of higher education where they have been implemented as natural partners in the teaching of writing.
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    Carson McCullers and Modernism
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2016-10-28) Johnson, Margaret Anne ; Brantley, Will ; Hibbard, Allen ; Renfroe, Mischa ; English
    To read Carson McCullers solely through the lenses of autobiography, Southern regionalism, or the Gothic—as many scholars and critics have done in the past—is to neglect her artistry as a writer who also scrutinized and worked within the aesthetics and thematics of American modernism. McCullers presented the complexities of modernity itself: the desire to make meaning in an impersonal society; the sense that institutions of the past no longer function in the present; the questioning of a larger purpose when "truth" itself seems artificially constructed; and the need to erase the distance between the self and “other” because “othering” produces racial and ethnic discrimination, particularly in the American South where McCullers was born and bred.
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    CARVING OUT A PLACE IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: AMERICAN AUTHORS OF CHINESE, JAPANESE, AND KOREAN DESCENT
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2019) Cho, Seokhee ; Hixon, Martha P ; English
    Asian American authors have been producing works for children for more than a century, adding to the diversity and sophistication of the body of children’s literature. Critics ascribe the development of Asian American works for children to the success of the civil rights movement and the subsequent ethnic awareness that brought about multiculturalism in the fields of education and children’s books. The growth of Asian American children’s literature, however, is rarely visible in marketplaces, and Asian American authors’ works have received scant scholarly attention or criticism. The critical attention they have received is often couched as complaints concerning their literary value. Using critical multiculturalism as a framework, however, sheds new light on some Asian American authors and their narratives, illuminating their literary treatment of racial hierarchy and material inequalities. Such a critical framework reveals how these authors demonstrate Asian Americans’ love for America. These authors salvage moments of Asian American historical experiences that might otherwise be buried or dismissed in traditional US history. They also reveal how the myth of the model minority has served to marginalize Americans with Asian faces, and recount how Asian American children develop culturally hybrid identities through ongoing negotiations of conflicts between the mainstream culture and their ethnic cultures. In their narratives, these authors make it clear that they are as American as they are Asian. To demonstrate the way Asian American authors narrate Asian American experiences in children’s books, this dissertation examines six representative texts: Dragonwings by Laurence Yep and Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata for Asian Americans’ historicity in the US, A Step from Heaven by An Na and Beacon Hill Boys by Ken Mochizuki for dissolving the model minority ideal, and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee and Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park for Asian American children as cultural hybrids. In addition to socio-political analyses of these texts, this dissertation also interrogates the literary aesthetics these authors employ. These authors maintain a striking balance between artistic mastery and their messages. Their literary techniques help these texts appeal to a broad readership, leading readers to empathize with Asian American children and disrupting readers ideological notions regarding American history, America as a land of equal opportunity, and Asian Americans themselves.
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    Change dire and delectable : time as meaning in Paradise Lost.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1995) Moore, Harry ; English
    Since for Milton time is the measure of motion, three kinds of time emerge in Paradise Lost: time that moves in a straight line, time that moves in a circle, and time that does not move at all. These varieties of time interact in rich and complex ways to embody major themes of the poem.
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    Clyde Edgerton's depiction of a South in transition.
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 1994) Harris, Stuart ; English
    In each of his first five novels, Clyde Edgerton portrays a South in transition, the older generation looking back to a simpler day when people worked the land and the younger generation losing or having lost touch with these values. Edgerton treats a number of attributes of life in the South which critics often propose as characteristics of Southern distinctiveness. Among these are the importance of family and community, Southern food and cooking, a religion which is predominantly Protestant and evangelical, tension between races, and the important role of storytelling. For each of these attributes of Southern distinctiveness, Edgerton describes members of an older generation--or members of a younger generation who have completely adopted the sensibilities of their parents--who find traditional Southern ways to be a source of comfort and support. On the other hand, Edgerton provides a different set of characters who reject traditional Southern ways. They believe that the values of their parents are outmoded and are a source of repression.
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    'Come forth and feel the sun' : Wordsworth's relational invitation /
    (Middle Tennessee State University, 2010) Hall, Cristy ; English
    True to Wordsworth's reformist agenda, this dissertation attempts to revive a vital aspect of his achievement and sensibility. Though his critical reputation as a "nature poet" persisted through the nineteenth century, the frequent imagery of nature's sights and sounds---the warbling of a choir of redbreasts or the blinking of a glow worm in the hills---has become a secondary consideration in recent decades both to idealist critics with their gaze fixed toward the Imagination and to New Historicists preoccupied with the poet's attitudes toward the French Revolution and the indigent and working poor.