PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This dissertation is a postcolonial study of selected writings of the Palestinian intellectual, journalist, political activist, and author, Ghassan Kanafani. Using postcolonial theory to create a single framework for the study of selected writings of Kanafani, this dissertation will also contribute to the analysis of the postcolonial Palestinian novel. This study hopes to achieve these goals by investigating the ways in which Kanafani's literary works can serve as means to explore the importance that Palestinians attach to the history of their struggle for freedom and cultural preservation. It is within this postcolonial context that Men in the Sun (1963), All That's Left to You (1966), and Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories (1969) will be discussed in this dissertation. The novellas and short stories are prime examples of traumatic experiences that Palestinian refugees faced during Kanafani's lifetime. The writings reflect Kanafani's understanding of the permanent exile, fear, isolation, loneliness, and despair that he and many Palestinians experienced during major parts of the twentieth century as results of Zionist occupation of Palestine. Kanafani's realistic depictions of these harsh situations are key factors that make his works ideal for postcolonialist analysis.

Committee: Babacar M’Baye Dr. (Committee Chair); Ali Erritouni Dr. (Committee Member); Ryan Miller Dr. (Committee Member); Joshua Stacher Dr. (Committee Member); Ann Heiss Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Middle Eastern History; Middle Eastern Literature; Middle Eastern Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2009, English

This dissertation traces a distinctive form of literary citation in the late twentieth century and proposes that a number of important late twentieth century works reuse essentialist and possibly racist discourse to create more humane and ethical concepts of selfhood. The texts in this dissertation “play” with and critically engage with the notion of the “other” through intense allusion and citation of dominant literary and cultural narratives in order to resist the exclusionary, dominant ideology of American selfhood. My project focuses on four such novels – Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey, Thomas King's Green Grass Running Water, Percival Everett's Erasure, and Robert Coover's The Public Burning – which redeploy narratives that represent ethnic minorities in racist and essentialist ways. For example, Maxine Hong Kingston builds her novel around the writings and performances of Walt Whitman, Sui Sin Far, Frank Chin, and the nineteenth century “Siamese Twins,” Chang and Eng Bunker. Alluding to Far's idealized Eurasian “one family,” Chin's authentic ethnic self, and the exotic “other” represented by the Bunker twins, Kingston critiques and reformulates essentialist discourse to produce an anti-racist subject. The chapter on Percival Everett's Erasure traces a similar critique of resistance as Everett draws on aspects of both sides of an historical African American dialectic between separatism and universalism. The third chapter considers the imperialist narratives that Thomas King uses to build his novel, Green Grass Running Water, and shows how his allusive storytelling reimagines the traditional form of the Western, linear story. Robert Coover in The Public Burning parodies the narrative of Manifest Destiny and the repression of dissent on the American's journey to the apotheosis of his self. This dissertation proves that one can ironically engage with the very discourse that might erase one as a “legible” subject in order to reformulate discourses of ex (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Timothy Melley (Advisor); Dr. Stefanie Dunning (Committee Member); Dr. Madelyn Detloff (Committee Member); Dr. Marguerite Shaffer (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Canadian Literature; Native Americans

Bachelor of Arts, Walsh University, 2021, Honors

Culture and society in the ancient world were shaped by the mythological beliefs of individual civilizations. The Watchers tradition, an Ancient Near Eastern myth present in the Hebrew Bible as well as in non-canonical books such as The Book of the Watchers, contains some of the least understood elements within the mythology of the Jewish people. These sources reveal myths to be dynamic reflections of changing cultural values. Between the first references to the Watchers in Hebrew mythology and their elaboration during the Hellenistic period six centuries later, the Watchers tradition developed from a reference in passing in the Book of Genesis to an in-depth exploration of Good and Evil in The Book of the Watchers. This development warrants discussion, as do its cultural and historic contexts. If the transformation of the Watchers myth was influenced by Jewish experience of Hellenistic rule, that invites further reflection on how the idea of supernatural evil entered into Judaism and would influence the later idea of fallen angels in Western civilization.

Committee: Chris Seeman (Advisor) Subjects: Folklore; History; Literature; Middle Eastern History; Middle Eastern Literature; Regional Studies; Religion

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2021, Law, Justice & Culture (College of Arts and Sciences)

Israel and Palestine have been the subject of debate and controversy for decades. Israel settlement activity has displaced, oppressed and killed Palestinians on their native land, resulting in settler colonialism and the denial of water resources. The deliberate and violent pattern of restricting water serves to demonstrate the settler colonial intent of Israel. Though there have been many pleas and negotiations for Israel to withdraw and end settlement activity, and restore access to water under international law, none have resulted in a resolution. Through textual analysis, I demonstrate how the international framework of occupation that the UN HRC has adopted, has perpetuated a routinized, ritualized maintenance of the status quo and entrenched Palestine in violent subjugation. Further, any attempt at a resolution between Israel and Palestine must involve a reckoning with uncommon goals of the two nations, as well as the various positionings of power and understanding of the settler colonial regime. I show how literature is a tool of resistance, survival and imagining for Palestinians by providing a platform for collective memory and perspective to be voiced. This project highlights the necessity of naming settler colonial violence for what it is, if Palestinian suffering is to cease.

Committee: Haley Duschinski Dr. (Advisor); Kirstine Taylor Dr. (Committee Member); Andrew Ross Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: International Law; Law; Natural Resource Management

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Arts and Sciences: Romance Languages and Literatures

Abstract This work is a comparative analysis of four postcolonial novels by Caribbean writers that resist Western power domination and dictatorships: Texaco (1992) by Patrick Chamoiseau, Le cri des oiseaux fous (2000) by Dany Laferri¿¿¿¿re, El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (1998) by Da¿¿¿¿na Chaviano, and Nuestra se¿¿¿¿ora de la noche (2006) by Mayra Santos-Febres. My study incorporates authors from both the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean, signaling a shared intense critique in literature that links these authors directly to their nations' political control. My principal task in this dissertation is the examination of characters' creation of non-violent strategies of resistance. I argue that, even though their maneuvers do not alter the course of history in each society, they question, destabilize, and undermine the autocratic governments in which they evolve. My theoretical framework draws from a wide, trans-regional variety of critics in Spanish, French, and English. Using in particular the critical thinking developed by Michel De Certeau and ¿¿¿¿¿douard Glissant, the study explores how characters are subjects always “in motion”—in both the literal and figurative sense—who simply do not accept the physical and mental limitations imposed by the autocratic regimes, and take rebellious detours that allow them to produce their own rules that seem troublesome for some, but inspiring for others, who decide to imitate them. As a result, characters become the opposite of what their dominants had in mind: they become dynamic, flexible, and complex subjects. Even though the literary works were written at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century, the past moment of narrativization allows me to demonstrate how political oppression is represented through situational constraints, such as racial discrimination, class distinction, and gender inequality in four distinct historical eras: The French departmentalization of Martinique in 1946, th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Patricia Valladares-Ruiz PhD (Committee Chair); Therese Migraine-George PhD (Committee Member); Michele Vialet PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Caribbean Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, English

This project examines how black women writers, specifically by writing scenes of violence, explore the sociopolitical, racial, economic, and gender exploitation through the abuse of black women within their texts. Part of the goal of this project is to reclaim the literature of black women from the clutches of a black masculinist understanding and reject these superficial readings in an effort to make sense of the black-on-black violence documented in the works of black women authors. To be more specific, the intent of this study is to investigate the ways in which collective emotional trauma and individual physical and sexual abuses against black women exist as power performances. These violences enacted against black women in black women's writing serve as a way for socially, economically, and culturally disempowered bodies to claim power by overpowering a body even more marginalized. The extensive pattern in the work of black women writers who write about the violence experienced by black women prompts a series of questions: Why do texts written by these black women overwhelmingly contain scenes of emotional, physical and sexual abuse? What purposes do black women authors have in constructing these scenes of abuse predominantly at the hands of black men? How complicit do these authors suggest that the black community is in allowing acts of violence to occur? How effective are these texts in breaking the silence of abuse beyond any fictional realm, and what kind of power does this attainment of voice give African American women readers of these texts? Can we read these texts' exposure of violence against black women as resistance narratives? What is lost or gained through such a reading? Scenes of emotional trauma and of physical and sexual abuse proliferate in each of the primary texts chosen for this study: Sherley Anne Williams' Dessa Rose, Gayl Jones' Corregidora and Eva's Man, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Valerie Lee (Committee Chair); Debra Moddelmog (Committee Member); Adeleke Adeeko (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American Literature; Womens Studies

BA, Oberlin College, 1996, Comparative Literature

I ask the question: is it possible to posit a Return that is historically informed by the disjunctive, fractured narratives of the Caribbean, one which both challenges and negotiates what Spivak has termed the neo-colonial "structures of violence?" Likewise, can the Caribbean subject articulate a space for communal identity, self-representation, and historical agency, in opposition to the disempowering dissection of the (neo-)colonizing gaze? I would argue that such a discursive project is possible, indeed necessary, in order to continue developing the insurgent narrative of resistance to colonialism that traces its roots back to the arrival of the first white colonizers in the islands. For it is important to remember that although we are discussing these questions of identity and agency at the level of language and culture, they cannot simply be viewed allegorically, somehow divorced from political systems of domination. Ultimately, the question is one of political power, a struggle against neo-colonial hegemony and oppression. The two works I have chosen to study in this thesis as a means of answering these questions highlight the tremendous diversity of literary production in the Caribbean, while also exhibiting many examples of the recurring patterns and linkages that form the noisy networks of the Caribbean meta-archipelago. The criteria for selection can only be described as arbitrary at best, as there is so much to choose from. I have managed to include works by two major (meaning better-known) authors from two of the major linguistic traditions: the Martinician Aime Cesaire, and the St. Lucian Derek Walcott. Both works deal in some way with questions of Caribbean identity, and both are written from a strongly anti- colonialist framework. I would not consider these works representative of any particular literature, although they do share certain relations. Most of all, I simply view them as particular points of entry into the tangled web of signals that cons (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Anthony Stocks PhD (Committee Chair); Médoune Gueye PhD (Committee Member); James Millette PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative Literature

MA, Kent State University, 2009, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

A great deal of scholarship has been written and published on the topic of radical pedagogy and has had a large influence on educators at all levels, whether in public schools or in universities. This type of scholarship has generally placed some type of social inequity or institution, such as globalization, heteronormativity, governments, universities, public schools, racism, or commodification of students, as a social construction that it would like to see changed. However, since its inception, while a great deal of progress has been made, the advances, when compared to the effort, seems minimal. The issue, as I see it, revolves around the fact that radical pedagogy sets these abstract ideas and institutions as the focal point of change instead of the people that produce it. The problem is that inequity is produced through inequitable relationships between individuals opposed than created by these theories and institutions and then forced on a people in any given society. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to theorize and demonstrate a new form of radical pedagogy which will insert service, or community engagement, into classroom curriculum and, through this, seek to transform the inequitable relationships which individuals and groups of people participate on the local level. In order to do this, this thesis will combine the theories of Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, and Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality to construct a pedagogy, rhizomatic resistance, which will transform these relationships which will in turn ultimately help to transform the social system.

Committee: Masood Raja PhD (Committee Chair); Babacar M'Baye PhD (Committee Member); Mark Bracher PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; African Literature; American Literature; Curricula; Education; Educational Theory; Gender; Language Arts; Literacy; Literature; Personal Relationships; Philosophy; Social Research; Social Structure; Teacher Education; Teaching; Theater

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Popular Culture

Invasion is ubiquitous in popular culture, and while they may be fictional, marauding hordes play on very real human fears. Invaders evoke deep cultural anxieties and challenge our identities on both a personal and national level. This theme has been readily adopted by shooter video games, where players gleefully blast through hordes of foreign invaders, human or otherwise. Most of the scholarly attention given to video games has focused on attempting to find a correlation between video game violence and real world violence, while little attention has been given to the forms this violence takes. This thesis attempts to correct this deficiency by analyzing the theme of invasion in video games. Linking these games to earlier invasion narratives, such as George Tomkyns Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (1871) and H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898), I argue that the aliens in these narratives are linked to cultural anxieties concerning Otherness. Brought into a contemporary, post 9/11 setting, I argue that video games in series such as Halo and Call of Duty portray Muslim and Arab peoples as invading Others and play into conservative political rhetoric concerning the “War on Terror” that renders Otherness inhuman and an object of fear. The games thus attempt to validate American foreign policy since September 11 by guiding players toward specific subjectivities. I ultimately explore the medium and genre as tools for maintaining imperialist power while also exploring methods of resistance to that power.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Committee Chair); Jeffrey Brown PhD (Committee Member); Esther Clinton PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Artificial Intelligence; Communication; Cultural Anthropology; Ethnic Studies; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2013, American Culture Studies

Considering the function of Vodou as subversive force against political, economic, social, and cultural injustice throughout the history of Haiti as well as the frequent transcultural exchange between the island nation and the U.S., this project applies an interpretative approach in order to examine how the contextualization of Haiti's folk religion in the three most widespread forms of American popular culture texts – film, music, and literature – has ideologically informed the U.S. counterculture and its rebellious struggle for change between the turbulent era of the mid-1950s and the early 1970s. This particular period of the twentieth century is not only crucial to study since it presents the continuing conflict between the dominant white heteronormative society and subjugated minority cultures but, more importantly, because the Enlightenment's libertarian ideal of individual freedom finally encouraged non-conformists of diverse backgrounds such as gender, race, and sexuality to take a collective stance against oppression. At the same time, it is important to stress that the cultural production of these popular texts emerged from and within the conditions of American culture rather than the native context of Haiti. Hence, Vodou in these American popular texts is subject to cultural appropriation, a paradigm that is broadly defined as the use of cultural practices and objects by members of another culture. One form of cultural appropriation is cultural exploitation, a concept that is central to the chapter on film and manifests itself as a mode of misrepresentation. Following in the wake of the early twentieth century, when the U.S. occupation of Haiti denounced Vodou as violent anti-white cult and widespread media frenzy in America sought to demonize the Nation of Islam by relating it to the distorted version of Haiti's folk religion, Hollywood perpetuated Vodou's disrepute to an extent that it can be read as a means to further denigrate growing black r (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Maisha Wester (Committee Chair); Ellen Berry (Committee Member); Tori Ekstrand (Committee Member); Dalton Jones (Committee Member); Katerina Ruedi Ray (Other) Subjects: African American Studies; American History; American Literature; American Studies; Black History; Caribbean Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Literature; Mass Media; Motion Pictures; Multimedia Communications; Political Science; Religion; Spirituality