Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, English

The power and intimacy of Wallace's narrative voices allow him to affect his readers powerfully on multiple levels: cognitively, linguistically, and affectively. The Voices of David Foster Wallace: Comic, Encyclopedic, and Sincere offers a systematic analysis of Wallace's poetics of voice, identifying a dominant voice for each, pinpointing its techniques and influences, and casting it in a career arc of Wallace's evolving novelistic purposes. The careful shaping of voice is central to Wallace's distinctive prose and its impact on contemporary American fiction. The project identifies Wallace's three dominant voices—comic, encyclopedic, and sincere—and shows how voice identifies not just the particular agent communicating with the reader but creates a global atmosphere in texts, deeply shaping our experiences and interpretations. Drawing on and refining James Phelan's model of voice for Wallace's fiction, I define voice as the synthesis of values, tone, style, and rhythm, elements that come together in complex ways to create the gestalt effect of narrative voice. I develop tools for examining the micro elements that create the macro quality of the reading experience—helping illuminate how Wallace uses voice to “rewire” the way readers see and feel, changing our relation to language and to the world. Further, I emphasize the sonic dimension of reading whereby Wallace's sentence and paragraph rhythms impact the cognition of readers, thus joining the recent turn in literary studies toward reading with the grain, by advancing and synthesizing approaches to rhetoric, affect, formalism, and literary phenomenology. The picture of Wallace that emerges from my analysis is one of uncertainty (and ambition) regarding his place in the literary world, a restless desire to add more voices to his repertoire. Adopting comedy, knowledge, and finally emotional depth as his purposes, Wallace progressively widens his ideal audience, reaching readers in a variety of ways in his ongoing pr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Brian McHale (Advisor); James Phelan (Committee Member); Sandra Macpherson (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Language; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Art Education

This study addresses two research questions: What are Latinx visitors' experiences of their conflicted subjectivity, in experiencing both enjoyment and alienation, within the context of encyclopedic art museums? Furthermore, how do Latinx visitors enact belonging within encyclopedic art museums? These questions redress a gap in the museum literature that discounts the impact of race and ethnicity on visitor experience and subjectivity in favor of universalized models of visitor learning and motivation. The study draws from the theorization of Latinx scholars and artists who have noted the dual experience of pleasure and alienation due to the museum's inattention to their racial and ethnic identity to further a culturally responsive study of Latinx visitor experience. Through this intervention, I advance theorization of how Latinxs both participate in, and contest, the Eurocentric narratives of national heritage that are proposed by encyclopedic art museums. I argue that the conflicted subjectivity experienced by Latinx visitors to encyclopedic art museums is a manifestation of an epistemic and ontological conflict: the ways in which encyclopedic art museums represent Latinidad does not accord with the ways in which some Latinx visitors figure their own subjectivity. By exploring how Latinx museum visitors experience this epistemic and ontological conflict the dissertation offers practical and theoretical guidelines for institutional change that will foster museum visitor inclusion and work toward the decolonization of the encyclopedic art museum. I also question the significance of belonging as a museum aim for its visitors, as well as suggest that the topic requires further study, and propose that welcome might be a more relevant type of experience for Latinx visitors.

Committee: Karen Hutzel (Committee Co-Chair); Theresa Delgadillo (Committee Co-Chair); Joni Acuff (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Ethnic Studies; Hispanic American Studies; Hispanic Americans; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Museum Studies; Museums