Browsing Dissertations & Theses by Title
Now showing items 103-122 of 175
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A Multi-functional Essay Prompt For State Mandated Assessments
(English, 2009-09-16)A State-mandated assessment of high school English composition skills can be a trying experience for sophomore basic writers. Because students must construct a text-supported argument around the State's choice of theme, ... -
Murder In The Digital Age: Rethinking Crime Fiction Theory through the Medium of Videogames
(English, 2012-07-25)Videogames are a multibillion-dollar industry. Their high definition graphics and sophisticated gameplay cater to a continuously growing crowd of enthusiastic players. But what is their standing in the academic community? ... -
The Mutual Influences Of Law, Medicine, And Fictional Literature Regarding The Disposition Of A Somnambulist In Eighteenth And Nineteenth Century Literature
(English, 2014-07-14)Somnambulism derives from the Latin words somnus- sleep and ambulare- to walk around, meaning a person appears to conduct waking actions, but is actually asleep. Classified as a disease, somnambulism raises questions of ... -
My Child And My Life: Sacrificial Obligation And Chaucer
(English, 2011-07-14)Medieval literature demonstrates that Christians of that era took their Bible seriously, particularly the Old Testament account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. For them, the story was both fascinating and perplexing. Not ... -
Native Spaces Of Continuation, Preservation, And Belonging: Louise Erdrich's Concepts Of Home
(English, 2008-08-08)In light of continual Native migration, relocation, and hybridization, it is my intention to examine the evolution and diversification of home in a spectrum of Louise Erdrich's writing. My examination of the texts focuses ... -
Navigating Women's Cultural Representation Through Video Games in the Obama Era
(2016-12-20)While the representations of women in video games have remained disappointingly negative since the 1980s, America’s political shift from the presidencies of George W. Bush to Barack Obama in 2007 had important cultural ... -
Negotiated Authorship: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Professional Writer Job Postings
(English, 2009-09-16)This qualitative study (a rhetorical/discourse analysis) explores the genre of job postings, particularly postings for writing-related jobs in the financial services sector, to determine how words like "author" and "writer" ... -
Negotiating The Sacred In Secular Writing Spaces: The Rhetoric Of Religion In American University Composition Textbooks
(English, 2014-07-14)This project demonstrates that religion comes into through the classroom door not only through the embodiment of students and instructors, but via the academy itself through the university composition textbook. Publishers ... -
Networked Authorship: A Community Of Creators In Born-digital Literature
Authorship of born-digital literature exists in a state referent to but decidedly apart from authorship of more traditional printed texts. Ranging far from the idea that the author exists in a state of solitary genius, ... -
No Longer Estranged: Women, Science, Science Fiction
(English, 2014-03-10)Feminist science fiction (SF) and feminist science studies share common concerns--the gendered perception of science and women's place in the sciences among them--but the two fields are rarely considered together. This ... -
No Utopia Is An Island: The Ecosystem Of Utopias In Paul Mcauley's Quiet War Saga
(English, 2013-03-20)In this thesis, I argue that a new, ambitious variety of literary utopia, which I call an ecosystem utopia, has developed over the past forty years, chiefly in science fiction and fantasy. My primary examples are Paul ... -
One Foot In The Grave: The Zombie's Consumption Of American Film
(English, 2012-04-11)American film has chronicled the evolution of the zombie mythos for nearly eight decades. Originally constructed as a projection of the plight of the enslaved population of Haiti, the zombie as introduced to American film ... -
One High Heel On Each Side Of The Border: A Closer Look At Gender And Sexuality In Chicana And Anglo Young Adult Literature
(English, 2014-03-12)There is currently very little analysis of Chicana young adult literature available, and by extension there is almost nothing at hand that compares Anglo and Chicana young adult literature. These fields need to be examined ... -
Ontological (Free) Agency: the Erasure, Commodification, and Autonomy of Black Athletes
(2021-09-03)The National Football League wields a powerful influence on American society and holds an authoritative sway over various sociopolitical discourses, each influencing the degrees of interaction between people of different ... -
Opinions In Context: Reconsidering Endoxa In Aristotle's On Rhetoric
(English, 2009-09-16)In On Rhetoric, Aristotle describes rhetoric as an ability of seeing the available means of persuasion. Rather than suggesting that rhetoric is persuasive discourse, Aristotle presents it as a skill one utilizes to assess ... -
Pandemic Pedagogy: A Case Study of Commenting Practices in a Pandemic
(2022-05-16)This thesis reviews best practices for commenting on student submission and reports the findings of a case study from the 2020 spring semester. -
The Parody Of Romance
(English, 2007-08-23)In Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, Janice A. Radway studies the romance formula, identifying a set of generic criteria which offer its readers escapist purposes. Christian writers have ... -
The Pedagogy Of Conclusions: From Rhetorical Ancestry To Modern Composition With A Research Study On Pedagogy In The Classroom
(English, 2014-07-14)The main focus of my thesis is to uncover what students know about conclusions (from current pedagogy, composition textbooks, questionnaires and classroom research). I analyze what instructors are taught about conclusions ... -
Perceptions Of Subversion: The Formation Of A Pop-subculture
(English, 2013-07-22)This project seeks to examine the emerging cultural significance of the modern hipster and determine their contribution to the greater discourse of counter-cultural formations of subversion and identity. Hipsters are ... -
The Performing Mother: Maternal Ethics Beyond Embodiment
The rich and diverse history of maternal thought is at once a response to the Western philosophical tradition's relegation of the maternal to the material abject, as well as a renegotiation of the maternal body as a site ...