Department: English/Literature ![[clear]](close-x.png "Remove this limiter")
30 matches in the database.
These are records: 1 - 30.
1.
Alexander, Jessica L.
‘World Wisdom’: Difference And Identity In Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha”.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► As a premise for discussing the anticipation of post-modern theories of identity…
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▼ As a premise for discussing the anticipation of post-modern theories of identity in Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha,” my project intervenes in the debates surrounding Stein’s debt to William James’s psychology. Though scholars such as Richard Bridgman, Lisa Ruddick, and Marianne DeKoven illustrate James’s influence on Stein’s work as well as the challenges Stein’s aesthetics pose to the Jamesian model, few view Stein’s aesthetic innovations in light of postmodernpsychoanalytic models. James argues that individuals construct their identities by selecting, amidst an onslaught of impressions, only those details that pertain to their interests. The Jamesian model, however, illustrates only a single subject’s ability to think the world, whereas Stein’s “Melanctha,” depicts the conflict between two subjects who exercise different habits of selection. I will argue that Stein’s work not only provides new ways of constructing aesthetics but also new ways to consider the construction of identity. I will suggest that Stein tests the limits of the Jamesian model by depicting the engagement between two thinking subjects. Interpreting textual examples through Jessica Benjamin’s and Judith Butler’s theories of inter-subjectivity, I will illustrate how the construction of identity in “Melanctha,” depends not only on the characters’ capacities to select objects of attention but also on 1) the recognition conferred on the characters by others and 2) the social forces that construct identities that precede the characters’ processes of individuation.
Advisors/Committee Members: Coates, Kimberly.
Subjects: American literature; Gender; Philosophy
Keywords: Gertrude Stein; inter-subjectivity; Judith Butler; Jessica Benjamin; William James; modernism; psychoanalysis; object relations theory; selective attention
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2.
Ark, Darcy Lynne.
DEMYSTIFYING HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG THROUGH POSTCOLONIAL AND FEMINIST LENSES.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis, which used both postcolonial and feminist frameworks, detailed the value…
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▼ This thesis, which used both postcolonial and feminist frameworks, detailed the value of a widely-popularized text like Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog in academic discourse. Employing mainly the works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, the thesis explained how Dubus’ work exposes issues of internal colonization in America for both immigrants like the Iranian Behrani family in House of Sand and Fog and white, less recently immigrated citizens. In addition, it acknowledged the value of distinguishing between First and Third World feminisms when working with a text like House of Sand and Fog, and it illustrated such a distinction in the exploration of the two main female characters in Dubus’ novel. Through exploring issues of language, identity, class, race, sex, economic opportunity, and physical space, it argued for an opening of Dubus’ text that acknowledges the suppression of voice endured – in separate and distinct ways – by both immigrant and female voices in America. Ultimately, this thesis encouraged a reconsideration of a somewhat overlooked text, as far as academic discourse is concerned, and a rejuvenation of interest in Dubus’ novel.
Advisors/Committee Members: Begum, Khani.
Subjects: Literature, English
Keywords: Andre Dubus III; House of Sand and Fog; Postcolonialism; Feminism; Internal Colonization; Contemporary Literature
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3.
Barnes, Christopher.
Mediating Terror: Filmic Responses to September 11th, 2001, and the "War on Terror".
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis applies both postcolonial and trauma theory to explore filmic responses…
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▼ This thesis applies both postcolonial and trauma theory to explore filmic responses to September 11th and the “War on Terror.” I examine the Hollywood films United 93 and World Trade Center and compare them to the omnibus film 11”09’01 and the Bollywood release My Name is Khan in order to understand the different ways in which each work portrays the trauma of September 11th as well as each film’s unique attempt to memorialize the attacks. Both trauma theory and postcolonial theory, I argue, help illuminate the different ideological responses to September 11th. I contend that the two Hollywood films both evacuate the surrounding context from the attacks and instead use the trauma of September to celebrate American heroism, ultimately reinforcing conservative notions of what motivated the attacks, as well as who can claim U.S. citizenship, and by extension, who can claim victimhood. This is contrasted with 11”09’01 and My Name is Khan, both of which return context to September 11th and also attempt to use the trauma as a means of potentially forging new alliances with disparate communities both within the United States and across the globe. It is by examining how the trauma of September 11th continues to inform discourses on terrorism that there exists the potential to contest mainstream discourses on terror and also form more potentially liberatory alliances with different groups of people across the globe.
Advisors/Committee Members: Begum, Khani.
Subjects: Film Studies
Keywords: POSTCOLONIALISM; 9/11; SEPTEMBER 11TH; TERRORISM AND CINEMA; TRAUMA STUDIES; FILM STUDIES
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4.
Barrie, Steven J.
Shakespearean Variations: A Case Study of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► In this thesis, I examine six adaptations of the narrative known primarily…
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▼ In this thesis, I examine six adaptations of the narrative known primarily through William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark to answer how so many versions of the same story can successfully exist at the same time. I use a homology proposed by Gary Bortolotti and Linda Hutcheon that explains there is a similar process behind cultural and biological adaptation. Drawing from the connection between literary adaptations and evolution developed by Bortolotti and Hutcheon, I argue there is also a connection between variation among literary adaptations of the same story and variation among species of the same organism. I determine that multiple adaptations of the same story can productively coexist during the same cultural moment if they vary enough to lessen the competition between them for an audience.
Advisors/Committee Members: Gearhart, Stephannie.
Subjects: American literature; English literature; Literature
Keywords: Shakespeare; Hamlet; Saxo the Grammarian; Belleforest; Updike; Gertrude and Claudius; Almereyda; Wroblewski; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle; Adaptation; Evolution; Bortolotti; Hutcheon; Variation
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5.
Bear, Sarah M.
The Power of the Phallus in Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Contemporary Feminist Reading.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► Much of the scholarship on The Awakening looks at the text through…
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▼ Much of the scholarship on The Awakening looks at the text through a psychoanalytic lens, but the lens tends to be limited to a Freudian psychoanalytic reading. However, despite the large amount of feminist scholarship, psychoanalytic scholarship, and feminist psychoanalytic scholarship on this novel, no one has examined the context of the novel from the perspective of feminist critiques of psychoanalysis. Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler provide the basis of my argument. I argue that Chopin not only anticipated Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, but she also anticipated Irigaray’s critics of phallocentric psychology. Chopin humanizes the damage that a phallocentric society can cause a woman who dares to defy the conventions, and who begins to see her life in her own terms rather than functioning under erasure.
Advisors/Committee Members: Coates, Kimberly.
Subjects: Literature, American
Keywords: The Awakening; Kate Chopin; phallocentrism; Irigaray; Butler; phallus
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6.
Caddy, Scott A.
(Mis)appropriating (Con)text: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in Contemporary Literary Criticism and Film.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► In this thesis, the critical tradition of Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park…
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▼ In this thesis, the critical tradition of Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park (1814), the historical context of the novel, and a contemporary film adaptation are re-examined. The film in question is Patricia Rozema’s 1999 adaptation, entitled Mansfield Park. In Chapter I, the critical tradition of the novel is examined in order to determine what consensus, if anything, scholars have come to in regards to an accepted reading of the novel. By examining this criticism a historical context unique to the novel is uncovered. In Chapter II, Austen’s personal letters and contemporary authors are scrutinized in terms of the debate over abolition at the time. Because most scholars of the novel see slavery as an important or central theme in the novel, the historical context becomes integral to any reading of the novel; it also becomes intrinsic to any adaptation of the novel into film. Chapter III uses the arguments outlined in Chapter’s I and II to re-evaluate Rozema’s Mansfield Park to revitalize and reinterpret the debate over Austen (as an author and person) in regards to any critical tradition of her works. Overall, this thesis examines how the criticism of the novel and/or film has become a battle over who Jane Austen is, was, and what kinds of political sentiments she had. Focus has been taken off the text(s), resulting in a critical tradition more concerned with control over critical readings instead of discourse over meanings and interpretations of Mansfield Park.
Advisors/Committee Members: Lapinksi, Piya.
Subjects: English literature; History; Literature
Keywords: Jane Austen; Mansfield Park; adaptation; Patricia Rozema; film
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7.
Chiarelott, Clayton J.
A Postmodern Picaresque: The Limits of the Sovereign Self in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to…
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▼ The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson is often celebrated by popular culture and either ignored or derided by literary critics, while this thesis reads it in relation to the picaresque literary tradition with a consideration for both the mass appeal and the disturbing qualities that make it a messy and difficult text. At times it comes across as transgressive in the way it creates sovereign space for alternative lifestyles, sometimes referred to as freaks by the narrator, Raoul Duke, but those moments are fleeting. More often, the narrator and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, are reinscribing a dominant structure that abuses the less privileged and less mobile members of society, such as a hitchhiker, a maid, and a waitress. Moreover, the narrator even ends up working against himself and counteracting what he apparently values: mobility, individual sovereignty and liberty, and his version American Dream. Through a rapidly moving and episodic narrative structure reminiscent of the picaresque tradition but with a postmodern twist that amplifies and accelerates the format to such an extreme that it paradoxically paralyzes meaningful movement in a focused direction, the novel proves both appealing and unsettling. At such extremes, the potentially positive and negative aspects blur and flatten into a messy text whose meaning resembles the polar extremes and sharp contrasts Jean Baudrillard found so sublime about America itself.
Advisors/Committee Members: Albertini, Bill.
Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Journalism; Literature
Keywords: postmodernism, postmodern, baudrillard, hunter s. thompson, hunter, thompson, fear and loathing, fear and loathing in las vegas, sovereignty, sovereign self, picaresque, postmodern picaresque, american dream
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8.
Dabbs, Ashlie C.
The Invisibility of “Second Sight”: Double Consciousness in American Literature and Popular Culture.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► In this text I examine the metaphor, “second sight,” as a signifier…
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▼ In this text I examine the metaphor, “second sight,” as a signifier of the concept of double consciousness, described in William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903). I observe how the metaphor operates to express various perceptions of double consciousness as intrinsic to the African-American. As such, I provide a close reading of second sight in Pauline Hopkins’s Of One Blood (1902-3), noting the ways in which her portrayal of second sight as a biological inheritance transforms the metaphor from a signifier of double-consciousness to a signifier of blackness. I subsequently move eighty years beyond Du Bois and Hopkins to scrutinize the depiction of second sight in Gene Rodenberry’s popular television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994). In doing so I illuminate the ways in which Du Bois’s metaphor continued to be relevant in popular culture at the end of the twentieth century. I argue that the three texts depict second sight as a racialized knowledge and reveal a concurrence that race is corporeal and fixed. However, while Hopkins’s text asserts that the African-American will, by way of race, inevitably develop “second sight,” Du Bois and Rodenberry articulate that it is not race, but culture that leads to the successful development of such skills. In examining second sight as a racialized and coded signifier relevant beyond its inception, I open doors for the continued exploration of the signifier in the American literature and popular culture of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Advisors/Committee Members: Sheffer, Jolie.
Subjects: African American Studies; American Literature; Literature
Keywords: Du Bois; Double Consciousness; Pauline Hopkins; Of One Blood; Star Trek: The Next Generation; Second Sight
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9.
Dauphin, Matthew J.
No Good Utopia: Desiring Ambiguity in The Dispossessed.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► The concept of utopia is not merely the idea of a good…
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▼ The concept of utopia is not merely the idea of a good place, nor is it simply to be thought of as the no place of imagination. It is instead an ambiguous site of revolt, creating infinite change by challenging the status quo, and landing most frequently in dystopia. In utopia, then, is dystopia, separate but linked elements that revolve around each other in an endless dance of disillusion and inspiration. Utopia is not simply good, but contains within it the ambiguity of hope and despair because of this connection to dystopia. This thesis sets out first to understand these concepts, reviewing recent scholarship in the field of utopian studies and proposing a comprehensive definition with which to approach utopian literature. Establishing a definition of utopia that focuses on the function of utopian desire itself, it then explores Ursula K. Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia as an exemplary text in which to find not only the relationship between utopia and dystopia, but also the necessary ambiguity that so colors each. This exploration centers not on what the utopia of The Dispossessed looks like so much as it considers how the notion of utopia itself threatens the present by connecting it to the future, moving it out of inertia and into the momentum of constant revolution. What Le Guin's novel most importantly reveals through critical inquiry is not a template for social change, but a template for social questioning. This social questioning, in turn, reveals itself not as unique to Le Guin or The Dispossessed, but as a hallmark of speculative fiction which serves to mark the genre as the ideal locus of utopian literature. Defining speculative fiction reveals to be a difficult task, as its subgenres have historically been concerned with their distinctions, rather than their similarities. In their shared exploration of possibility, however, they emerge as more similar than not, united in their ability to express the desires so essential to utopia, either optimistically or not, upholding the concept of ambiguity as a whole.
Advisors/Committee Members: Labbie, Erin.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: utopia; speculative fiction; genre; Ursula K. Le Guin; The Dispossessed; ambiguity
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10.
Farghaly, Nadine.
Patriarchy Strikes Back: Power and Perception In Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► Primetime heroine Buffy Summers conquered the hearts of layman and scholars alike.For…
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▼ Primetime heroine Buffy Summers conquered the hearts of layman and scholars alike.For years audience members have debated about almost everything that happens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; from opening credits to wardrobes over music choices to gender issues. This thesis focuses on patriarchal power structures inside Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On the surface, BtVS proposes all the ingredients for a truly matriarchal show; it could have been the perfect series to offer a glimpse at what a female-dominated society could look like. Unfortunately, however, the series creator, Joss Whedon, fails to create a female character liberated from patriarchal influences. He not only reintroduces patriarchal figures and apparatuses again and again, but he also constrains his heroine to adopt the same power structures his male characters employ. Despite the fact that almost every member of the patriarchy embodies certain flaws, that make it possible to partially dismantle their authority, Whedon continues to introduce these problematic figures. This thesis illustrates how patriarchal institutions and their members assert power over the female body in BtVS by synthesizing examples from both the television series and the graphic novel series with the critical cultural theories of Michel Foucault, Max Weber, and John Bowlby.
Advisors/Committee Members: Wester, Maisha.
Subjects: American studies
Keywords: Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Patriarchy; Matriarchy; Sexuality; Power; Authority; Power relations
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11.
Fleitz, Elizabeth J.
TROUBLING GENDER: BODIES, SUBVERSION, AND THE MEDIATION OF DISCOURSE IN ATWOOD'S THE EDIBLE WOMAN.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2005, Bowling Green State University
► This study focuses on the role of the body as a central…
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▼ This study focuses on the role of the body as a central factor in subverting gender norms. Hypothesizing a model based in Judith Butler’s work on sex and gender performance that places the body in an integral position as mediator of discourse and creator of identity, I posit that bodily disruptions occur when the body re-cites patriarchal discursive assumptions of gender in such a way as to emphasize the constructedness of gender identity. By looking at the body as a type of subversive space, I uncover the hidden methods texts use to undercut gender norms. Using Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, I apply this theory to analyze the ways the body is able to re-cite discourse to question the stability of gender identity. I explore the ways the text plays with the construction of gender through the use of bodies.
Advisors/Committee Members: Albertini, Bill.
Keywords: Margaret Atwood; The Edible Woman; Judith Butler; Bodies; discourse; subversion; recitation; gender; gender identity; mimesis; abjection; eating disorders; performance; performativity
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12.
Gill, Patrick W.
The Expatriate Experience, Self Construction, and the Flâneur in William Carlos Williams’ A Voyage to Pagany.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis looks at the representation of expatriation in American literature and…
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▼ This thesis looks at the representation of expatriation in American literature and questions the extent to which it encompasses the various types of experience for American expatriate authors in the 1920s. In this project, I look at A Voyage to Pagany, a fictional expatriate account from the devotedly American William Carlos Williams and set it apart from other works of that era. I argue that Williams reappropriates the figure of Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur in his work to show that the true expatriate experience is not specific to milieus inhabited by artists but is contingent upon the act of writing. By excavating the tradition of the flâneur in his work, Williams questions the idea that the flâneur is specifically a Parisian figure. As opposed to theorists, such as Walter Benjamin, who are adamant in their stance that the flâneur must be Parisian, Williams prioritizes the wandering artist’s occupation with writing over the artist’s national allegiance. In Williams’ novel, the expatriate must move away from the writing circles of Paris in order to fully engage the imagination and enact the process of writing.
Advisors/Committee Members: Coates, Kim.
Subjects: Literature, American
Keywords: Flaneur; Flanerie; Pagany; A Voyage to Pagany; Williams; William Carlos; Expatriation; Milieu; Expatriate; Dandy; Bohemian; Baudelaire; Americanism; Travel Writing
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13.
Grujić, Ana.
Her Impenetrable Prose: Disobedient Poetics and New Erotic Collectivities in Experimental Women's Writing.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► The driving anxiety of this analysis is to trace the possibilities of…
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▼ The driving anxiety of this analysis is to trace the possibilities of attaining utopian consciousness in ontological and political actuality by means of interactions of feminist body, text and desire. I attempt to uncover the feminist body and text both as a material reality and a utopian locus of the poetic desire for the other, as they already live in the political here and now. This I perform in a set of co-created experimental feminist texts which are induced by and induce certain ontological and epistemological practices, lifestyles and modes of relating that do not identify with the values of dominant cultures. The pieces I try to unfasten are by Hélène Cixous, Mireille Calle-Gruber, Carole Maso and Jeanette Winterson. I show how from the encounter with the aesthetic features of feminist experimental (inter)texts ensue certain epistemological changes. They enable us to perceive and enter the queer intersubjective collectivities broadly established all about this textual space. Here begins the structuring of a progressive utopian feminist ethics around the principle of displacing/tearing myself in the position of otherness. By systematic engagement with experimental texts' queer poetics and ethics, we are actually required to practice relating to the other in me and in us (me and you). Thus we reinforce utopian feminist collectivities and continue their embodiedness by entering them imaginatively and affectively.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berry, Ellen.
Subjects: Comparative literature; English literature; Gender; Literature; Womens studies
Keywords: feminism; utopia; queer; experimental writing; theory fiction; poetic theory
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14.
Guo, Shuqing.
Magic, Power, and Knowledge: Technological Reproducibility in Chinese and American Animations.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► Whether we are considering Eastern or Western embodiments of technology, it is…
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▼ Whether we are considering Eastern or Western embodiments of technology, it is clear that in both cases artistic products and technology are inseparable. Their mutual correspondence is seen most clearly in the production of narratives that relate power to knowledge. What is the relationship between technology and the arts and culture, and how is this manifested in Chinese and American animated films that attempt to produce narratives of hope, dreams, and magic? This thesis seeks to understand the magic promise that technology offers within and across cultural and temporal locations. Technology is a means of maintaining authority. Cultural discourse and the culture industry rely on the reproduction of technology to produce narratives and sublimely influence readers and viewers. In China, animated films produced in association with Disney, or those produced independently, seek to create a similar form of magic that returns the viewer to a process of searching for secrets concealed by the authority to formulate power structures. Globally, the Disney Enterprise has dominated an industry that distributes and spreads cultural myths that tell children about social interactions and that create magical dreams that are appealing to such an audience. Disney’s Mulan is a new world Mulan who transcends time and space but only with her last name added as Disney. The present inquiry into technology reviews considerations of art and mechanical reproduction in culture by members of the Frankfurt School, including Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer; my thesis examines the past to imagine a future of technological reproducibility by considering the effects of the culture industry on late-capitalism and popular culture by considering the works of Disney as read by Frederic Jameson and Jack Zipes, among other scholars of Disney. Finally, through discussion on Umberto Eco’s semiotics and his popular novel The Name of the Rose, the thesis comes to an end in hoping that we as readers could decode the dominant discourses and authoritative ideologies manifested in magic and technologies in popular culture.
Advisors/Committee Members: Labbie, Erin.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: magic power; Disney; technology; Chinese animation; semiotics; knowledge
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15.
Hurford, Emily M.
Gender and Sexuality in Shoujo Manga: Undoing Heteronormative Expectations in Utena, Pet Shop of Horrors, and Angel Sanctuary.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► This study examines how gender and sexuality operate within English-language translations of…
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▼ This study examines how gender and sexuality operate within English-language translations of shoujo manga, the genre of Japanese comic books that are marketed for young female audiences. This study uses the theoretical work of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Judith Halberstam to do an explicitly queer, feminist close reading of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Pet Shop of Horrors, and Angel Sanctuary, three manga titles whose protagonists perform their own genders and sexualities in ways that run counter to or subvert heterosexual expectations. It argues that dislocating shoujo manga titles from their Japanese context, which constructs gender and sexuality in ways that are different from how gender and sexuality are constructed within theUnited States, provides a space in which heteronormative constructions of gender and sexuality are challenged or questioned, and suggests that English translations of Japanese manga titles provides rich grounds for rethinking gender and sexuality.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berry, Ellen.
Subjects: Gender; Literature; Womens studies
Keywords: manga; gender; sexuality; shoujo; heteronormativity
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16.
Kavetsky, Jennifer A.
Men Behaving (not so) Badly: Interplayer Communication in World of Warcraft.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► Because of the level of social interaction available to players, MMORPGs (Massively…
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▼ Because of the level of social interaction available to players, MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games) have become an important part of on-line culture. Their increasing sophistication and the addition of such tools as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) have made these games attractive to an ever-expanding segment of Internet users. A common oversight in current scholarly research of MMORPGs is a lack of attention to how gaming culture affects players' in-game relationships. To help address this gap in game studies, this thesis examines how members of an end-game guild communicate over VoIP while playing World of Warcraft, currently the largest MMORPG on the market. I draw on Deborah Tannen's work on gendered speech styles and Judith Butler's theories on the performativity of gender to examine how game culture affects the ways male players perform their gender within the game.By focusing on a small, close-knit group of men, I hope to determine what is changing in the ways they build communities and how those constructions are shaped by the virtual environment of World of Warcraft. Employing a quantitative approach, I use Deborah Tannen's studies of male linguistic behavior to establish that this group of players is using gendered speech in atypical ways. To consider the significance of these findings, I incorporate Judith Butler's theory that gender is performative in my analysis. I argue that the nature of on-line games forces players to inhabit a postmodern self and perhaps offers a way out of a system of gender which depends on unified subjects. This increased identity flexibility challenges how gendered behavior is categorized and reveals the artificial nature of "masculine" and "feminine." It is through the virtual environment's challenges to identity as a unified concept that normative definitions of gender can begin to be unraveled. These games, with their potential for gender play, perhaps provide spaces where young men can redefine masculinity. Although postmodernists have argued for years that the self is multiple and fractured, on-line games, especially World of Warcraft, are bringing this concept into the homes of millions of people outside of academia.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Communication; Gender; Linguistics; Literature; Mass media; Philosophy; Womens studies
Keywords: World of Warcraft; MMORPG; Butler; Tannen; gender; performative; linguistics; computer mediated communication; games; Internet; CMC
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17.
Liu, Xiaodong.
Collaborative Orientalism: From Hollywood’s “Yellow Perils” to Zhang Yimou’s “Red Trilogy”.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► Cultural hegemony is not a set of theories or academic disciplines confined…
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▼ Cultural hegemony is not a set of theories or academic disciplines confined within the scholarly circle or philosophical sphere; nor is it being created to make Europeans feel good or superior. It is, in fact, a very practical means to gain control over the Other politically, economically and culturally. In a way, it is a crucial complementary aid to the military and political powers of Europeans. But how can European powers maintain their cultural hegemony after all of the former colonies have gained their independence? By exploring Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism as well as Robert Young’s Postcolonialism, this thesis proposes that cultural hegemony with its cultural values has never ceased to be an integral part of European dominance, and it continues to exercise its power even after decolonization. Both Said and other post-colonial theorists emphasize that Orientalism or cultural hegemony is a discourse between the West and the Rest. It is therefore a two-way traffic: a collaboration, either consciously or unconsciously, of the recipients of cultural hegemony. The study of Orientalism should not only focus on how the West uses different measures to gain control over the Rest, but also should examine how the recipients react to cultural hegemony. The author of this thesis provides a comparative study of the practice of cultural hegemony through an analysis of films produced by directors from both the West and East, namely D. W. Griffith in the U.S. and Zhang Yimou from China aiming in order to explore why cultural hegemony not only lingers in the post-colonial era, but can also be discerned among those who were colonized.
Advisors/Committee Members: Begum, Khani.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: Orientalism; cultural hegemony
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18.
Lupold, Eva Marie.
Literary Laboratories: A Cautious Celebration of the Child-Cyborg from Romanticism to Modernism.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► Constructions of children and constructions of cyborgs in literature and other textual…
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▼ Constructions of children and constructions of cyborgs in literature and other textual representations are very similar; both identities are liminal since they exist outside the realm of adult human experience and both identities also serve as vehicles through which adults can experiment with their own conscious or unconscious fantasies or fears. Because of these similarities, the figure of the child and the figure of the cyborg frequently become linked in popular culture. Although the figure of the cyborg offers many liberating opportunities for alternative hybrid identity formations (as posthumanist Donna Haraway has pointed out), linking the figure of the child with regressive constructions of the cyborg can have many harmful consequences. Often, the figure of the cyborg becomes a site for the fears and phobias of adults afraid of the future. And since children are already sometimes marginalized in adult texts, or get used as adults experiment with their own anxieties about the present or the future, linking the figure of the child with the figure of the cyborg in some situations can theoretically create a doubly-differentiated “other.” Arguing that the merging of the figure of the cyborg and the figure of the child has become much more popular in recent decades, this project will attempt to analyze the evolution of the child-cyborg from Romanticism to Modernism by discussing representations of the “child-animal cyborg,” the “preternatural child-cyborg,” and the “mechanized (or robotic) child-cyborg.” It will then conclude by interrogating from a sociological perspective how regressive representations of child-cyborgs may affect real child bodies, positing that more progressive constructions of child-cyborgs are both possible and desirable.
Advisors/Committee Members: Labbie, Erin.
Subjects: American History; American Literature; Animals; Art History; British and Irish Literature; Early Childhood Education; Ethics; European History; Evolution and Development; Families and Family Life; Film Studies; Gender Studies; History; Individual and Family Studies; In
Keywords: children; cyborgs; donna haraway; romanticism; william blake; songs of innocence and experience; victorians; henry james; the turn of the screw; carlo collodi; the adventures of pinocchio; aldous huxley; brave new world; orson scott card; ender's game
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19.
Matthews, Michelle M.
MAGICIAN OR WITCH?: CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE'S DOCTOR FAUSTUS.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► This project looks closely at Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and its relationship…
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▼ This project looks closely at Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and its relationship to the witchcraft and magic debates in the Renaissance. During this time, witches were considered a manifestation of diabolical evil, which caused massive witch hunts. This same period saw a Neoplatonic revival among humanists who believed that by dedicating their lives to contemplation and God, they could access benevolent magic allowing them to improve the world. Doctor Faustus is unique because it presents the dreams of the Neoplatonists at the same time as it portrays the behaviors associated with witches. By comparing the text with orthodox treatises, popular beliefs, and Neoplatonic writings, I argue that Faustus turns his back on God. Ultimately, this paper concludes that because he participates in the events of a witches’ sabbat, he fails to achieve the magic of occult philosophers, and he performs maleficium, Doctor Faustus is a witch not a magician.
Advisors/Committee Members: Morgan-Russell, Simon.
Subjects: Literature, English
Keywords: Christopher Marlowe; Doctor Faustus; magic; witchcraft
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20.
McIntyre, Heather Dawn.
Mystical Motherhood: Blending Ecstatic Religious Experience with Feminist Discourse in Appalachian Fiction.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► Appalachia is a region steeped in religious tradition. Religious discourse permeates the…
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▼ Appalachia is a region steeped in religious tradition. Religious discourse permeates the way Appalachians think and speak and the stories they tell; for many, it shapes their sense of Self within their families and culture, influencing their understanding of what it means to be moral, functioning members of society. Furthermore, religious discourse is often used as a rhetorical tool to help problematize specific political and cultural practices within Appalachian communities. It is not surprising, then, that author Bobbie Ann Mason weaves ecstatic and mystical religious experiences into her work as she addresses the concept of gender roles in Appalachian society. Mason’s novel Feather Crowns highlights ecstatic religious experience in its depiction of how ecstatic religious experiences and mountain faith structures can be exploited to keep women defined by rigidly-determined gender roles. How does Mason craft ecstatic religious experience in ways that emphasize its double-edged nature as both a reification of women’s entrapment within gender norms and a tool that allows individual women’s defiance of specific gendered expectations? Furthermore, how do these works frame women’s sense of Self within their communities? How do they call into question long-held cultural stereotypes concerning Appalachia and its citizens. I utilize research into gender identity, feminism, and the positive and negative aspects of ecstatic religious experience in order to answer questions. As I demonstrate by doing a close reading of the works of Louis Althusser, Amy Hollywood, George Bataille, and Bobbie Ann Mason, literary depictions of ecstatic religious experience in Appalachia can be used to make palpable and question the religious and familial ideologies concerning women’s gendered position in society. Mason’s work, in particular, brings into dramatic light the pain, frustration, and helplessness felt by women whose ecstatic religious experience comes into conflict with familial and/or social expectations
Advisors/Committee Members: Labbie, Erin.
Subjects: English literature
Keywords: Appalachia; ecstasy; feminism; gender; religion; Bobbie Ann Mason
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21.
Moelders, Britta Maren.
Modernism's Madwomen: A Feminist and Foucauldian Reading of Emily Holmes Coleman's The Shutter of Snow and Antonia White's Beyond the Glass.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► “Madness” has fascinated theorists, writers, and readers for a long time. Elaine…
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▼ “Madness” has fascinated theorists, writers, and readers for a long time. Elaine Showalter’s publication of The Female Malady revealed the close connection between women and madness; however, I argue that our understanding of female madness remains somewhat elusive. With its intense emphasis on subjectivity, modernist fiction helps the reader gain insight into what it means to be mentally ill and confined in a mental institution. These fictional accounts of madness function as institutional critiques and can be opposed to “official” legal, administrative, and historical accounts that portray mental institutions of the 1920s as places of recovery and entertainment. Through a close reading of Emily Holmes Coleman’s The Shutter of Snow and Antonia White’s Beyond the Glass, this Master’s thesis offers an analysis of the representation of modernism’s madwomen and their critique of mental institutions and the patriarchal culture at large. In short, this thesis discusses the intersection between madness, modernism, and gender. Advancing Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, other relevant theory on madness, as well as trauma theory, I contend that the madwomen in Coleman and White’s fiction enhance our understanding of madness, mental institutions, and, compellingly, patriarchy at large. While both novels offer a feminist Foucauldian critique of the confining nature of mental institutions, they also suggest that, counterintuitively, madwomen have more agency in mental institutions than in the patriarchal culture at large. Offering a respite from potentially traumatizing female experiences such as childbirth, motherhood, and marriage, mental institutions allow women sexual and creative freedom. Illuminating madwomen’s agency through an emphasis on interiority and the protagonist’s fantastic imaginations and metamorphoses, Coleman and White’s fiction complicates Marta Caminero-Santangelo’s claim that madness is not subversive. While the madwomen in Coleman and White’s fiction are subversive regarding their critique of mental institutions and patriarchy at large, the novels do not celebrate madness. Ultimately, Coleman and White’s novels offer a feminist critique of the oppressive patriarchal nature of society and the limiting experiences and gender roles it assigns women. In women’s accounts of madness, modernist characteristics such as an emphasis on interiority, fragmentation, and metamorphoses can function as a feminist critique of patriarchy.
Advisors/Committee Members: Coates, Kimberly.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: madness; modernism; gender
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22.
Monea, Alexander Paul.
Dissemination Rhizome: How to Do (Political) Things With Affect.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis sets out to articulate a theory and method for criticism…
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▼ This thesis sets out to articulate a theory and method for criticism of ethico-politico-aesthetic conjunctions in what has been termed a ‘post-hegemonic’ and ‘post-modern’ ‘digital age’. It begins by making the case for the use of affect theory by demonstrating the capacity for political agency in affective transductions to, from, and amongst the masses. While many declared the death of rationality and linguistic communication, and from this declaration concluded that the inertia of the masses would eventually lead to an implosion, I argue that politics is alive and well at the level of affective transduction, and thus operative below, between, or alongside linguistic and rational exchanges. I further argue that the need for a rigorous theory and methodology for affect is made more urgent by the catalysis of affective transduction brought about by the rise of the digital. As such, I set out to develop a methodology for criticizing such affective transductions and then to apply this theory and methodology to concrete cases. In particular, I attempt to correct the current trajectory of scholarly appropriation of affect theory by pointing out ontological misconstructions. Having developed an ontologically sound articulation of affect, I set out to apply it to the case of the revolutionary and the capitalist. In the case of the revolutionary, I attempt to provide a rigorous defense of the popular assertion that affective production must always occur externally to capital, and can only then be appropriated afterwards. I show that the necessarily fiscally damaging and unscrupulous aspects of affective engineering defy commodity fetishism, the operative logic of capital, and thus that capital, even if it were capable of engineering affects, would have no interest in doing so. For capital, I trace the way in which affective refrains are continually systematized, rigidified, and deployed by capitalist structures in a normative fashion. In particular, I look at the case of Google search to demonstrate the ways in which control structures disseminate refrains in such a way that bodies become increasingly stratified and bounded. In closing, I suggest theoretical and practical areas of affect in need of future development.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berry, Ellen.
Subjects: Aesthetics; American Studies; Communication; Ethics; Literature; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Philosophy; Political Science
Keywords: Affect Theory; Aesthetics; Public Sphere; Gilles Deleuze; Baruch Spinoza; Google; PageRank; AdWords; Pierre Bourdieu; Paul Virilio; Jean Baudrillard
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23.
Nicholson, Debra.
“Spelling”: Alice Munro and the Caretaking Daughter.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► Alice Munro, the renowned Canadian short story writer, has written, over the…
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▼ Alice Munro, the renowned Canadian short story writer, has written, over the course of her long career, no fewer than seventeen stories that feature an ill mother as the primary or tangential theme in a daughter’s narrative. While some critics focus on uncovering autobiographical elements of the stories (Munro’s mother endured early-onset Parkinson’s disease), and others vaguely complain that Munro is merely re-writing the same story again and again, no critic has investigated the range and depth of affect produced by maternal illness proffered in her stories, a topic that appears to be a major concern of Munro’s creative life. This thesis serves to initiate this critical discussion. An analysis of Munro’s story, “Spelling,” provides fruitful material for the discussion of the discourse of caretaking. Women are socialized to provide caretaking via the cultural ideal of the good mother; daughters are socialized to be good daughters by caring for their elderly ill mothers. Middle-aged daughter Rose returns home to care for her stepmother Flo. I track Rose’s caretakingjourney by first discussing her entrapment in the gendered norms of caretaking. Then, I argue that Rose capitulates to the discourse of sacrificial caretaking by desiring to care for Flo in a full-time capacity. I submit that Rosebegins to reclaim her subjectivity after she arrives home when she realizes she cannot become the perfect caretaker. After Flo moves into the County Home, Rose resists the stereotype of the non-caretaking daughter by deploying certain strategies to justify her role of the non-caretaking daughter. I argue that Rose’s focus on combating the stereotype of the non-caretaking daughter overshadows her subjective response to caretaking. Her thoughts and actions, therefore, re-inscribe the polarized norms of the good daughter/bad daughter binary. I conclude that Munro’s story illuminates a daughter’s affective difficulty in claiming subjectivity when attempting to legitimize her caretaking position in the situation created by maternal illness.
Advisors/Committee Members: Albertini, Bill.
Subjects: Canadian literature; English literature; Families and family life; Gender; Gerontology; Health; Personal relationships; Sociology; Womens studies
Keywords: Alice Munro; daughters; ill mothers; caretaking; good daughter/bad daughter discourse
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24.
Obernesser, Scott.
Searching For the Wild: The Changing Post-War Conceptions of Environmentalism and Gender.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► Throughout the course of contemporary environmentalism, activists have found voice within practices…
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▼ Throughout the course of contemporary environmentalism, activists have found voice within practices of civil disobedience. Similarly, movements to reassess traditional constructions of gender have been entrenched in disobedient practices in hopes of upsetting dominant discourse. Through disobedience, distinct ties have been drawn between shifting gender ideologies and treatment of the environment. This work looks to examine two 1990's manifestations of disobedience in terms of environmentalism and gender: Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild (1996) and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996). Through inspection of the text's two main characters, Chris McCandless and Tyler Durden, we are able to examine links inherent in environmental and gender activism and thereby prompt reassessment of gender and environmental praxis
Advisors/Committee Members: Sheffer, Jolie.
Subjects: English literature
Keywords: Environment; Gender; Disobedience; Into The Wild; Fight Club
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25.
Price, Ellen E.
Recognition: Ethics and Cultural Work in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► Through this project, I argue that it is time to take Harper…
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▼ Through this project, I argue that it is time to take Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to a more complex level based on ethics and recognition. I first discuss ways in which the text has already been studied, such as in terms of tolerance or empathy, and then discuss how and why it should be taken further. Throughout my argument, I use Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of ethics to demonstrate ways in which characters in Lee’s text moved beyond mere tolerance or ethics. By using Erving Goffman’s Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity as well as Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of ethics, scholars can begin to look at this book in new ways. When read through a new lens, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has the potential to contribute more to literary study than simply a lesson of tolerance; instead, it can be interpreted as having new implications for the study of ethics and recognition.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berry, Ellen E.
Subjects: Literature, American
Keywords: To Kill a Mockingbird; Ethics; Recognition; Emmanuel Levinas; Erving Goffman
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26.
Sharp, Kellie Jean.
Convex Children: The Queer Child and Development in Nightwood and the Member of the Wedding.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis seeks to challenge the current relationship between traditional psychoanalysis and…
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▼ This thesis seeks to challenge the current relationship between traditional psychoanalysis and queer theory by using the novels Nightwood and The Member of the Wedding to demonstrate the ways in which notions of sexual development that underpin psychoanalysis tend to be normative. Also, these novels expose discrepancies in “straight” narratives of development and self-formation by troubling fixed notions of identity. The characters of these two texts are queer children or child-like queer people who are at odds with the ways in which they have been categorized by the world around them. In order to explore the development of the queer children in these novels, I argue in Chapter One for a queered vision of Lacan's mirror stage that does not see these children as flat, but convex. The convex mirror stage allows for precarious sexual development that does not adhere to normative notions of linearity and progression. This convex mirror stage also deconstructs the relationship between mind, body, and culture by using Gilles Deleuze's concept of the fold. The marriage of the fold and the mirror stage in the convex mirror allows for psychoanalysis to interrogate queerness beyond subjectivity and fixed identity. The second chapter of this thesis explores utopian possibilities using Lacan's Agency of the Letter. Because normative structures like psychoanalysis obscure sites for queer utopian possibility, this project also uncovers the ways in which Barnes and McCullers hint at queer utopia despite its seeming impossibility. By working within the worlds that oppress them, the queer children in these novels gesture towards queer utopias. The final chapter of this project is devoted to exploring the ways in which queer children circumvent the normative structures upheld by psychoanalysis in order to create their own paths towards queerness. Privileging “becoming” rather than “being” this chapter interrogates the relationship between queer child and notions of animalism, wildness, and primitivism. By revaluing wildness and beastliness, Nightwood and The Member of the Wedding reveal how queer children can map their own sexual development despite of psychoanalysis. As a whole, this project is concerned with development but resists any fixed notions of identity or a narrative of development. Instead, I argue for a precarious relationship between psychoanalysis and the queer child one in which the child is constantly interrogating our notions of growth, gender, and sexuality.
Advisors/Committee Members: Coates, Kim.
Subjects: English literature
Keywords: Djuna Barnes; Nightwood; Carson McCullers; The Member of the Wedding; Psychoanalysis; Queer; Development
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27.
Sherwood, Elizabeth A.
Sublime Surrender: Constructing My Self and Navigating Patriarchy Using My Vampire Boyfriend.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► The plot in contemporary gothic texts such as True Blood, the Underworld…
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▼ The plot in contemporary gothic texts such as True Blood, the Underworld series, and the Twilight series center around a new gothic heroine navigating through a relationship with her supernatural boyfriend. Although these texts are clearly popular, can they tell us anything else? Why are these same stories, and the action that occurs within them, repeated in an almost obsessive fashion? Not unlike traditional gothic texts that were primarily written in the late 18th Century or early 19th Century, the repetition and ritualistic nature of these tales hint at a trauma that must be worked through. The trauma that one can see in both contemporary and traditional gothic texts results from erasure of the feminine, and the continuance of pervading acts of misogyny throughout. However, many contemporary gothic texts do not stop at simply recognizing this trauma, or working through it. Indeed, these texts have begun to imagine a new social contract between the sexes—which is the very relationship in which the original trauma occurs. The goal of this working through and formulation of a new contract is to recognize such trauma—instead of ignoring it or pretending it does not exist—and imagine a way in which women and men can move beyond thinking in terms of master/slave. The way this new contract is constructed, and the method in which the gothic heroine navigates the patriarchal powers that be, are similar to Deleuzian masochism. By utilizing this interpretation, one can see how each heroine tries to make a space for her self that moves toward the recognition of an identity in which she is free and content.
Advisors/Committee Members: Pal-Lapinski, Piya.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: Vampire, Deleuze, Masochism, True Blood, Underworld, Twilight
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28.
Slobtseva, Yelena.
DRAWING IN THE MARGINS.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis offers a discussion of doodling as a marginal activity and…
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▼ This thesis offers a discussion of doodling as a marginal activity and the subjects involved in it with the implications of marginality that are borrowed from psychoanalysis, deconstruction, textual and cultural studies. A subject in the margins lacks agency and eludes introspection and retrospection, since margins are thought in relation to the center, which gives them meaning and justifies their being. Drawing on several theoretical perspectives and psychological approaches represented by Sigmund Freud, Anton Ehrenzweig and Alfred Adler, Jacques Derrida, Christine Clement, Julia Kristeva, and others I will try to explore the specificity of resistance of the doodling practice and its subject(s). It will be argued throughout the paper that drawing in the margins involves several subjects, several resistances and submissiveness, none of which can be viewed as the central and or the true one. Speaking of the psychology of doodling practice the following charactersitics will be discussed: the possible presence of gestalt-free elements in doodling and the freedom from requirements of representation, repetition that renders doodling a childhood activity and yet possibly a dangerous one, and ornamental characteristics that can be found in many doodles and can be attributed either to the work of the conscious rational subject or to the intricate patterns and designs of the unconscious. Resistance then bears several meanings within the discussion in the paper as resistance of the conscious subject to its other, also resistance understood as deferral and repetition that works to defer dangerous presences. And finally as resistance of the subject and its intimacy to the pressures of civilization. A specific context for resistance/rebellion in drawing in the margins is created by writing/drawing relationship inherent, it is argued in the paper, in the situation of doodling.
Advisors/Committee Members: Labbie, Erin Felicia.
Keywords: doodles, margins, modernity, literature, art, painting
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29.
Sundvall, Scott David.
HOMO CYBERIAN DOEDIPUS: ON THE PRIMACY AND POTENTIAL OF TECHNOLOGY, LANGUAGE AND DESIRE.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2011, Bowling Green State University
► This thesis argues that technology is not something to be apprehended from…
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▼ This thesis argues that technology is not something to be apprehended from without, but rather is something primary to our proper ontological constitution, and which needs to be re-cognized from within. Following Martin Heidegger’s line of thought, this project finds a primacy in the technology of language; and following Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia project, it also finds a primacy in the technologies of desire (desiring-machines). In this sense, the primacy of language and desire are reflexive: there is no language without the impetus of desire; there is no “desire,” meaningful as such, without the inauguration of language. In addition, this thesis argues that both language and desire are not only primary and primarily technological, but inherently multiplicative. By way of post-structural and deconstructive semiotics, we find the multiplicity of language; and by way of Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoid-rhizomatic-becoming, we find the promise of the multiplicity of desire. Finally, and most importantly, this thesis looks towards the manner in which new media technologies, as well as trans- and post-humanist discourse, have complicated and compounded these theoretical claims and suppositions.
Advisors/Committee Members: Labbie, Erin.
Subjects: Literature
Keywords: Deleuze and Guattari; rhizome; new media; technology; desire; semiotics; posthuman; internet; schizoanalysis
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30.
Whitney, Janelle L.
KAYLA WILLIAMS' LOVE MY RIFLE MORE THAN YOU AND THE NEGOTIATION OF THE FEMALE SOLDIER.
Degree: MA, English/Literature, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► This project discusses the effect of postmodern war on women’s wartime writing…
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▼ This project discusses the effect of postmodern war on women’s wartime writing through Kayla Williams’ Love My Rifle More than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army. This thesis examines how Williams’ text negotiates itself among normative restraints that deem female war writing as marginal and the female soldier as “unreal.” I argue that Williams’ text presents a subject that is as able to “speak” about the masculine experience of war without forfeiting a female identity by exhibiting an awareness of the limits of its genre and inability to present absolute truth and by presenting a liminal subject that avoids the oppression of binary categories. Ultimately, I argue that Williams’ text portrays a subject who does not conform to the category of soldier in order to gain acceptance. Instead, her text performs a liminal, fluid subjectivity that allows it to stretch normative restrictions that attempt to render it “illegible.”
Advisors/Committee Members: Albertini, William.
Subjects: Literature, American
Keywords: women's war writing; war literature; identity
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