Browsing Auburn Theses and Dissertations by Department "English"
Now showing items 81-100 of 128
A Real Reflection of How I Write: Young Adult Female Authors Seizing Agency Through Fan Fiction
(2008-05-15)
This research project examines 'fan fiction' (stories based upon existing texts such as movies, books, and video games) written by a young adult female and posted online for others to read. The research was conducted in ...
Reconfiguring Cultural Literacy: Multi-Authored Cultural Literacy Narratives in a Post-Hirsch Age
(2012-08-03)
My dissertation argues that Hirsch’s definition of cultural literacy must be updated so that it focuses on the behaviors, practices, beliefs, and ideals of individuals (any individual) and how each of these areas connects ...
Reconsidering Jessie Pope: The Writer Before "A Certain Poetess"
(2015-12-10)
In four chapters, I present a case study of Jessie Pope’s early career, focusing on her use of women in her writing for adults. Her women are smart, and their situations are orchestrated by Pope in ways that lay bare ...
Redrawing the Maps for the Transfer of Writing Skills and Knowledge
(2015-07-30)
This research examines the case studies of two participants, students at a large land-grant university, as they transfer their knowledge of writing skills and practices across contexts as evidence of the shifting nature ...
"Reeled in and Warmly Socketed": Mass Mediated Identity of the Contemporary Literary Figure
(2010-05-05)
In the literature of a globalized twenty and twenty-first century world, mass media
help to shape characters’ perceptions of selfhood and agency. As media forms are
incorporated into the daily lives of characters, important ...
Rejecting and Embracing the Past: The Challenge of Post-Troubles Identity Construction in Contemporary Northern Irish Novels
(2016-04-27)
The conflict known as The Troubles which has dominated both real and fictional narratives from and about Northern Ireland since it began in the late 1960s characterizes Northern Ireland as a place steeped in ceaseless and ...
Representations of Catholicism in American Literature, 1820-1920
(2009-04-30)
This dissertation examines the representation of Catholics and Catholicism in literature by non-Catholic authors in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century American prose fiction and travel narratives. Moving ...
Revising the Eighteenth-Century Epistolary Novel: Creating A More Inclusive Literary History
(2022-05-03)
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) has remained the most central character in accounts of the English epistolary novel of the eighteenth century since the publication of Pamela (1740). His technique of ‘writing to the moment’ ...
Rhetoric, Ethics, and Health Identities in the FDA's Drug Approval Process
(2022-07-12)
This dissertation examines how health identities are rhetorically constructed and discursively taken up in the FDA’s new drug application (NDA) documents. The project specifically focuses on approval processes related to ...
The Right to Represent: The Transformation of Topsy in Robert Alexander's I Ain't Yo' Uncle
(2007-08-15)
For my master’s thesis, I intend to examine the reception of “Topsy” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin from the date of publication as a novel in 1852 through 1892. I will investigate and demonstrate the struggle ...
Shakespeare and the Cultural Impressment of Ireland
(2005-08-15)
Using a combined lens of cultural materialist and postcolonial studies to read the early modern inclusion of Irish in the culture of the British empire, this study explores --Y΄cultural impressment‘ as a descriptor for ...
Shut it Down: Nineteenth-Century Southern Fictions of Reproduction
(2015-05-04)
The dissertation analyzes how the establishment of professionalized—and masculinized—medicine during the nineteenth century controlled female sexuality by policing reproductive rights and rates. Focusing specifically on ...
Social and Linguistic Conditioning of the Sociolinguistic Variable (ai) among Textile Mill Workers of Columbus, Georgia, and Southeast Alabama
(2010-04-08)
The purpose of this study is to examine the the social and linguistic conditioning as well as the frequency of the sociolinguistic variable (ai) among a group of European-American textile mill workers born in Columbus, ...
The Sounds of Social Change: Phonology and Identity in Elba, Alabama
(2012-08-02)
The purpose of this study was to determine whether and to what degree integration impacted speakers’ linguistic choices in the community of Elba, Alabama, with respect to three phonological variables: (ai), (oi), and ...
Speaking Silences: Lyric Poetry in the Narrative Strategies of Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, and Jane Barker
(2015-03-20)
This dissertation is an exploration of how Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, and Jane Barker co-opted Philip Sidney’s prose romance interpolated with poems, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. I explore how each writer uses ...
Staging and Upstaging Revolt: The Maternal Function in Twentieth Century Drama
(2009-07-24)
This dissertation explores the maternal role in subject formation and surveys varying depictions of this role in twentieth-century drama. While sifting through the genealogy of psychoanalytic theory, this project investigates ...
A State of Perpetual Inbetweenness: Black Women Negotiating Liminal Spaces in Contemporary Literature
(2019-12-09)
My dissertation underscores how Black women transform space through liminality, a term I use to unpack notions surrounding being Black and woman and living at the intersection of race and gender. More specifically, I define ...
Stitching Individuality Through Conformity: Reading Samplers from the Sarah Stivours Embroidery School
(2007-05-15)
From the years 1778 to 1794 Sarah Stivours taught Salem, Massachusetts girls the art of sampler-making. Sent to the school to hone their embroidery skills, these affluent young women created needleworks that are wholly ...
"Straight People Are Looking at You:" Heterosexual Privilege and Homonormativity in American Visual Texts
(2013-07-25)
My dissertation deals with the topic of representations of gay men in such American popular texts as film, television, and mainstream theatre. I advance the argument that while the 2000s have seen a dramatic rise in the ...
“Strange Homecomings” Place, Identity Formation, and the Literary Constructions of Departure and Return in the Works of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway
(2010-04-29)
This dissertation considers place identity theory to examine three American authors’ constructions of place. It examines the literature of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway for what it might reveal about ...