Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, EDU Teaching and Learning

This paper centers on a ten week teacher-research inquiry study in which I taught a high school English Children's Literature elective course at a local independent school. Unlike most secondary English teachers, I made my theoretical framework explicit, and sought to scaffold the terms and concepts of rhetorical narrative theory with our classroom texts. Data are drawn from student journals, essays, and creative projects during this class, as well as my teacher-researcher journal. The research objective was to investigate what happens when secondary students engage with rhetorical narrative theory and use this approach to interpret literature. Data analysis indicates that students were able to translate and integrate this particular interpretive language, and that quite often, I as their teacher merely provided the vocabulary for their pre existing familiarity with the function and form of narrative. Additionally, the data suggest that using children's literature in a secondary classroom allows for independent, deep, thematic textual analysis, which, in turn, is a space primed for narrative theory pedagogy. This study suggests that rhetorical narrative theory, at least when combined with children's literature, is a symbiotic pedagogical and critical match for secondary English students.

Committee: Barbara Kiefer (Advisor); Mollie Blackburn (Committee Member); David Herman (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Language Arts; Literature; Pedagogy; Secondary Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, EDU Teaching and Learning

English language arts (ELA) classrooms have been increasingly centered as locations where students may challenge oppression and inequity. While this has led to the inclusion of diverse texts, perspectives, and stories in ELA curricula, literary reading, or closely attending to words and meaning in texts, is rarely discussed in relationship to these critical ends. In this dissertation, I work in this gap to investigate the critical potential of students' talk about literary language in a high school English classroom. I draw data from a year-long ethnographic study of an 11th grade English class in a public high school in a large midwestern city to explore a) how students talked about language in their literary reading, b) how this talk developed over the course of the school year, and c) how these discussions changed students' interpretations of texts and their larger social worlds. I ground this investigation in Black feminist literary theories and sociocultural theories of literacy, and I use tools from microethnographic discourse analysis to analyze eight total events from this classroom. I first describe four events from the start of the school year to demonstrate how an attention to language was cultivated by the teacher and students in this context. I then describe how students extended this attention to language into their discussions of Jesmyn Ward's text Salvage the Bones (2011). I examine how this focus on words and meanings shifted students' readings of both characters in the text and situations and stereotypes from their experienced social worlds. I conclude by arguing that, in this class, a literary attention to language in texts was fundamental to students' critical work, a claim that calls into question normative notions of how and why we teach literature in school.

Committee: Patricia Enciso (Advisor); Mollie Blackburn (Committee Member); George Newell (Committee Member); Cynthia Lewis (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Secondary Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Educational Theory and Practice

This study examines the intertexual relationship between select young adult (YA) African American womens literature and literature within the broader African American womens literary tradition. Given that many secondary teachers are committed to teaching works by and about African American women, particularly those written for an adult audience, it is necessary that scholars discuss the connection that exists between African American womens literature written for adults and literature classified as YA literature. One of the goals of this study was to contribute to this discussion. The study examined select works by Angela Johnson, Rita Williams-Garcia, and Jacqueline Woodson from a black feminist perspective in an effort to situate the novels within the already established African American womens literary tradition. The following six novels, two by each author, were analyzed: Angela Johnsons Toning the Sweep (1994) and Heaven (1998), Rita Williams-Garcias Blue Tights (1988) and Like Sisters on the Homefront (1995) and Jacqueline Woodsons The Dear One (1991) and I Hadnt Meant to Tell You This (1994). The novels were analyzed to see if the works illustrate any of the tenets of black feminist thought, with emphasis on tenets related to individual or cultural identity (i.e., multiple oppressions of race, class, and gender in the lives of young African American women, cultivating sisterhood, discovering voice and subjectivity, etc.). The data gathered for this study included: six YA novels, published interviews, book reviews, biographical sketches of each author, and articles written by and about authors of the books in this study. The data were analyzed through content analysis. Literary analysis revealed that there were indeed thematic connections between the novels listed above and select literature within the African American womens literary tradition. Literary analysis demonstrated that three themes, in particular, are shared: family, African American expressive cul (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Caroline Clark (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Secondary

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2008, English/Rhetoric and Writing

This study explores undergraduate creative writing instruction with regard to the complex issue of audience in the three areas that converge in the creative writing classroom: rhetoric and writing theory, literary theory, and creative writing pedagogy. After an overview of the project in Chapter One, Chapter Two reviews scholarship specific to creative writing pedagogy. The core of the study, Chapter Three explores the theoretical approaches to audience from both rhetorical theory and literary theory and creates a theoretical lens in which to examine audience in undergraduate creative writing. Chapter Four shows the methodological approach and the data analysis methods used in a pilot study of undergraduate creative writing syllabi and textbooks. Included in this chapter is a table listing terms that suggest audience developed from the theory built in Chapter Three. This table informs the pilot study. Chapter Five provides the results of the pilot study, offering evidence of how audience manifests itself within twenty-seven syllabi and twenty-four currently used creative writing textbooks. By tabulating the references to audience and analyzing their contexts, I offer a look into how the reader is considered in undergraduate creative writing instruction. The distinct and interesting patterns that emerged are explained in Chapter Six. Besides revealing the ways and contexts in which audience surfaces in the teaching of creative writing, I offer suggestions on how this important concern to writers can be more transparent. This chapter uncovers the ways in which audience functions-or perhaps can function-within the creative writing classroom. Given that some creative writing instructors are admittedly apprehensive about having a theoretical foundation for their instruction, this dissertation argues that taking on the single issue of audience may create a more critical approach to student writing, and may create avenues to examine other important writerly matters within (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard C. Gebhardt (Committee Chair); Sue Carter Wood (Committee Member); Wendell Mayo (Committee Member); Vincent Corrigan (Committee Member) Subjects: Higher Education; Rhetoric; Teacher Education; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

Knowledge-Making in Early Modern Englishwomen's Literary Writings, 1570-1650 investigates early modern Englishwomen's exploration of scientific ideas and epistemological inquiries in several literary forms, arguing that their chosen literary conventions significantly influenced their epistemic exploration of science, and vice versa. The literary works of Englishwomen writers, rich with valuable scientific insights, have often been neglected in the field, and their contributions have yet to be fully integrated into the canon of English scientific history. In this dissertation, I rectify the historical oversight regarding Englishwomen's contributions by demonstrating their active participation in scientific and epistemological thinking of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through their literary productions. This dissertation analyzes four literary works from the 1570s to the 1650s: Isabella Whitney's anthology A Sweet Nosegay (1573), Elizabeth Cary's closet drama The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), Lady Mary Wroth's prose romance The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (1621), and Hester Pulter's poetry collection Poems Breathed Forth by the Noble Hadassa (1640s-50s). I trace how these women writers deployed and reshaped epistemological inquiry to suit their creative endeavors, which reveals that literary forms served as vehicles for their investigation of scientific epistemologies, actively contributing to the scientific conversations of their time. Women writers critiqued, reinterpreted, and navigated theoretical knowledge, demonstrating a dynamic intersection between science, literature, and cultural narrative. In this way, literary forms provided these women with the means to question and reshape prevailing knowledge systems, offering diverse perspectives that are essential for fully historicizing women's knowledge-making in the early modern period. My project ultimately challenges the idea that science and art exist separately and highlights how creative and intellec (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sarah Neville (Advisor); Elizabeth Kolkovich (Committee Member); Alan B. Farmer (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Literature; Science History; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Medical Humanities and Social Sciences

In this thesis, I use a close reading of two memoirs by existential psychiatrist Irvin Yalom to develop a narrative approach to psychiatry. This approach treats each patient's story as a unique work of literature. It involves the psychiatrist's listening for literary elements such as tone, incongruity, and figurative speech in patient stories. It also requires the psychiatrist's engagement in cooperative acts of storytelling and interpretation, which, I suggest, provide insight into the patient's inner and outer life. This insight helps the psychiatrist to understand the patient's needs, whether these needs are psychosocial, neurobiological, medical, or otherwise. Ultimately, I argue that this approach prepares psychiatrists to respond creatively to the complex challenges of mental illness.

Committee: Aaron Friedberg (Committee Co-Chair); James Phelan (Committee Chair) Subjects: Literature; Medicine; Mental Health; Psychotherapy

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2021, English

In Antinatalist Sexual Dissidence in Decadent Literature, my primary aims are to establish the ubiquity of antinatalist philosophical sentiments in a wide array of Decadent literary texts and to examine this phenomenon in relation to the representations of various modes of sexual dissidence which are frequently interconnected with the invocations of this philosophy. The forms which antinatalist sexual dissidence takes are numerous and disparate, including same-sex couplings, voyeurism, various fetishisms, masochism, asceticism, and necrophilia, each functioning in distinct ways and serving various functions, but with the common element among them being that they all contribute toward a critique of the hegemony of normative sexuality and the concomitant phenomenon of human reproduction. While cataloguing expressions of antinatalism and the closely associated depictions of sexual dissidence, I investigate a number of the implications and workings of antinatalist sexual dissidence, including the possibilities of feminist and queer liberation, reproductive rights, and the meaningful subversive potentialities which can emerge from these texts, as well as their more troubling or outright dangerous elements, such as their substantial overlap with eugenicist ideology or the pervasive and virulent misogyny which is implicit within many representations of antinatalist sexual dissidence.

Committee: Mary Jean Corbett PhD (Committee Chair); Erin Edwards PhD (Committee Member); Anita Mannur PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

BA, Oberlin College, 2021, History

My thesis examines the fluid boundaries between French historical and literary writing in the 19th century, and the shifts in “historical consciousness” that occurred in both fields as the century progressed. I examine three exemplary French writers—Jules Michelet, a historian, and Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola, both novelists—considering each primarily as a historical thinker, regardless of whether they considered themselves to be one. I argue that as the 19th century progressed, the broad shift in French institutions towards positivist epistemological and explanatory frameworks was reflected in literature, as well as in history. Both disciplines, one increasingly academic and one primarily cultural, were affected in strikingly similar ways by the influence of positivism and scientism, providing a distinct aesthetic and rhetorical lens through which the impact of post-1848 positivism can be understood. As positivism infiltrated the practice of history, pushing the discipline farther into the realm of science, so too did it affect the historical thinking of prominent novelists. Additionally, I argue that the shift in historical consciousness reflects broader social fragmentation as France vacillated between various forms of government and their attendant social ideologies across the century. As political regimes and ideologies came and went, novelists, like historians, turned to rationalist frameworks, rather than idealistic or metaphysical ones, to explain their rapidly evolving political, social, and cultural moments. In addition to analyzing the impact these shifts had on historical consciousness in France, my thesis attempts to understand how historical thinking changes in response to shifts in institutional authority and ideology.

Committee: Annemarie Sammartino (Advisor); Leonard V. Smith (Advisor) Subjects: European History; European Studies; History; Literature; Philosophy

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

The unique efficacy of the lyric lies in its ability to describe moments that everyday language cannot, as seen in the popularity of love poems and elegies. Yet, such usage of poetic language overlooks the complex relationships between the self and other which make the signifying power of such language possible. In turn, how is one to understand the relationship to this other, and what are the ethical implications of such a connection? In response to this question, this project examines poetic signification, the relationship between the self and Other, and its ethics. To do so, the project offers an analysis of both the poem “La Mort de Cleopatre” by nineteenth century Polish French poet, Marie Krysinska, and a line of theoretical arguments to elucidate the ethical relationship between self and other seen in the lyric. The analysis also turns to the works of; Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes, Adrianna Cavarero and Emmanuel Levinas to address the signifying nature of the lyric and the relationship between language, being, and otherness. As a result of this discussion, the project proposes a defense of Krysinska's style and an ethic of the lyric based on the interconnectivities of being.

Committee: Jonathan Strauss (Committee Chair); Audrey Wasser (Committee Member); Elisabeth Hodges (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Romance Literature

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

Refracted Realism and the Ethical Dominant in Contemporary American Fiction offers three linked pursuits, at once literary-historical and theoretical: (1) a study of the rhetorical dynamics of literary realism, (2) a study of the literary period after postmodernism and the identification of the aesthetic dominant at work in contemporary literature, and (3) a systemic analysis of a distinct mode of realist representation in contemporary American fiction, which I describe as “refracted realism.” At the intersection between literary realism's longevity and flexibility, I explore three questions: What interests and engagements drive the interactions between authors and audiences in literary realism? What are the “dominant” features and interactions at work in the literary period after postmodernism? How has literary realism changed under the influence of the new aesthetic dominant? My project combines Roman Jakobson's and Brian McHale's concept of the “dominant” with Peter J. Rabinowitz's and James Phelan's rhetorical narrative theory to develop a rhetorically-inflected approach to literary history. In this analytical framework, I identify characteristic and uncharacteristic rhetorical properties, purposes, interests, resources, processes, and engagements in particular works of literature, literary movements, and aesthetic dominants or literary periods and track change and/or continuity accordingly. When theorizing literary realism, I emphasize how representative authors foreground their audiences' interests and engagements with narrative's mimetic and thematic components. When conceptualizing the new aesthetic dominant, I point to an ethical one, oriented towards and engaged in various questions and inquiries about value and power. Then when characterizing “refracted realism,” I define its minimal conditions in terms of the foregrounding of the mimetic and thematic components and the ethical aesthetic dominant, even as “refraction”—representative authors' redeployment (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Phelan PhD (Advisor); Brian McHale PhD (Committee Member); Frederick Aldama PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Literature; Rhetoric

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, English/Literature

The Star Wars epic has been important for popular culture since its emergence in 1977; it is relevant for film and popular culture analysis (both of which I tend to in this thesis), and it is a crucial epic tale that contributes to a model of literary and psychoanalytical history. In the four decades in Star Wars' debut, fans and scholars alike have been interested in the saga's ostensible depiction of incest and the Skywalker family romance, but I maintain that incest has become a more palatable metaphor for the characters' respective narcissisms, and that these narcissistic affects in fact provide evidence of little-to-no erotic interest in one another and do not support the incestuous metaphor that is common to readings of the films. In this thesis, I engage the original Star Wars film trilogy as well as the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and other prominent psychoanalysts to offer my own critique of psychoanalysis's overreliance on the Oedipal complex: In order to effectively de-Oedipalize psychoanalysis, we need to first recognize and reconcile the problem and ugliness of narcissism. I apply this paradigm to examine the character of Luke Skywalker and his relationships with his father, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, and his twin sister, Princess Leia Organa, though this framework can be used to de-Oedipalize other literary and filmic texts. Part I of this thesis traces Luke's relationship with Darth Vader through Lacan's concept, the “Name-of-the-Father,” to argue that Luke's superficially Oedipal desire to become his idealized father is a disguise for his narcissistic desire to turn his father into a facsimile of himself. Similarly, Part II examines Luke's relationship with Princess Leia through Lacan's “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious” to argue that the twins rely so heavily on the signs and signifieds of sexual difference that they fail to recognize that they are in a narcissistically competitive dialogue.

Committee: Erin Labbie Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jeff Brown Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Teaching and Learning

Peer literary discussions can be a powerful vehicle for students to create their own understandings of text in the classroom; however, some teachers do not utilize this method very often, perhaps due to a lack of understanding about what students are actually talking about during their conversations. For this case study, I videotaped a series of discussions between a pair of middle school students in my own classroom as they talked about a class novel. I then used grounded theory to create a complex coding system to examine the patterns of discourse that emerged. My results showed that students engaged in four different types of talk throughout the conversation and that differences existed regarding the ways students used language when engaging in these different types of discourse. From these results, I generated three grounded theoretical hypotheses: 1) content talk is structurally different than non-content talk, 2) students may tend to engage in particular types of discourse sequences during peer conversations, and 3) students may tend to engage in self-assigned discursive roles during peer conversations. This study constitutes an initial foray into the nature of paired student discussions about literature in the middle school classroom; future research may include other classroom contexts and an incorporation of the students' perspective.

Committee: David Bloome Dr. (Advisor); George Newell Dr. (Committee Member); Antoinette Errante Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Theory; Secondary Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, English

Feeling Real: Emotion in the Novels of William Dean Howells and Henry James argues that emotion is an important aspect of American literary realism, revising received wisdom in American literary studies that locates emotion in sentimentalism. As canonical examples of American literary realism, William Dean Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes and Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors offer compelling evidence of how realist authors deployed emotion in their narrative progressions. This project demonstrates—through rhetorical narrative readings of these novels—that the emotional dimension of their narratives has remained under-examined and under-theorized. The long-established scholarly view that American literary realism emerged in large part as a reaction to sentimentalism has nevertheless obscured realism's own significant investment in the representation and evocation of emotion. This dissertation adds to recent work on emotion in American literary realism, complicating the conventional narrative that realism is anti-emotional or unconcerned with emotion, by suggesting that emotion in these novels is portrayed as complex, uncertain, and difficult and by arguing that character emotion affects the authorial audience in ways that can lead to ambivalence and frustration but also pleasure. This project contributes to the growing scholarly interest in the emotions represented and provoked by American realist novels by demonstrating the importance of emotion as a crucial component of the rhetorical narrative experience. The novels of Howells and James offer particularly rich examples of the complications of portraying and evoking emotion as a part of their respective projects to create narrative realism. Close narrative readings demonstrate that James's and Howells's well-known disdain for sentimentalism offers a paradoxical clue to their own commitment to examining and evoking emotion in the novel, albeit in a variety of un (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Phelan (Advisor); Steven Fink (Committee Member); Robyn Warhol (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Literature; Gender Studies; Literature; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, English

American Cinematic Novels and their Media Environments, 1925-2000 shows that a famous group of twentieth-century American novels asserted their cultural relevance through their responses to transitional moments in Hollywood film history. I select five well-known novels that engage with different transitional moments, including Hollywood's transition to sound cinema and its response to New Hollywood: The Great Gatsby, The Day of the Locust, Lolita, Gravity's Rainbow, and Underworld. By using narrative theory to analyze the content and form of such cinematic novels and by attending to the evolution of Hollywood cinema itself, I reveal the synergistic relations between film history, media history, and narrative techniques. Because I also grant considerable attention to how the larger “media environment” (including such forms as radio, television, video recorders, and the internet) afforded routes of exchange between cinema and the novel, my dissertation takes a new approach to the task of combining American media history with literary criticism and film history. Based on this evidence, I also intervene in recent debates about the fate of the American novel in new media environments. I argue that even if aggregate sales of print novels continue to fall in the future, influential American novelists will win both readers and cultural prestige by shaping our understanding of new media environments and the novel's evolving positions in them.

Committee: James Phelan PhD (Committee Chair); Brian McHale PhD (Committee Member); Jared Gardner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Teaching and Learning

Peoples and cultures have been interacting since the dawn of history, but global conflict, recent advances in technology, and the changing demographics of the United States make peaceful coexistence in a multicultural world a matter of urgency for this and future generations. Although education is often cited as the key to the global village of tomorrow, little research has been done to explore how the lifeblood of literacy—the books of childhood that teach and entertain—can bridge cultures to connect worlds. This study seeks to address that very question by comparing the literary and lived experience of Australian culture with five pre-service teachers from the Midwestern United States. Children's literature was the foundation for the project, first as the focus of pre-departure readings in the home country, and then as the basis for a researcher-led three-week study tour where participants met with authors, illustrators, students, teachers, and others as they experienced Australian culture first-hand. Reflective journaling, class discussions, participant observation, and a post-program debriefing yielded data that were analyzed through grounded theory. The developmental model of intercultural sensitivity, and its associated inventory, was used to contextualize response to the phenomenological experience of culture in both literary and lived experience. Results of the study show that children's literature can be an enjoyable and dynamic means to facilitate cross-cultural learning, serving as common ground and catalyst for intercultural exchange through each phase of the program. Theoretical benefits were argued then demonstrated for children's literature as a tool in furthering global education with pre-service teachers. A five-stage model for cultural relativity is proposed that reflects the disparate ways in which culture is reflected in children's literature, thus laying the groundwork for further study on national identity and cultural imperialism in global pub (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barbara Lehman (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, English

The Victorian and Edwardian sages were authors who worked, following the decline of organized religion among the educated classes in Britain, to restore a sense of unitary meaning to the world. As George Landow observes, the sage's system is, by its very nature as a philosophy that attempts to explain the entire world, unprovable, and the sage's authority is thus derived from his ability to interpret the world vividly, plausibly, and as a whole. Since the sage's authority cannot be established by conventional means, it ultimately derives, as Susan Morgan notes, from the sage's “lived experience.” This dissertation analyzes the implications of sage rhetoric for the genre of autobiography. The sage autobiographer must show that every aspect of his life serves as proof of his theories and, being a public figure, he invariably has experienced incidents—primarily lost literary controversies and poor textual reception—that seem to refute his theories. The premise of this dissertation is that these literary disasters constitute “intertextual traumas” that disrupt the sage's literary authority and textual identity, that serve as signs that the sage seemingly cannot interpret. Sage autobiographies, I argue, are elaborately intertextual attempts to narrate, and thus to interpret and to control, such incidents of intertextual trauma. Unlike most autobiographers, the sage references and interprets preexisting biographies of himself and other rival accounts of his life because to do otherwise would be to permanently cede his authority to interpret the world.

Committee: David Riede (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, English

Bachelor of Arts, Miami University, 2011, College of Arts and Sciences - English

Throughout his papacy, John Paul II delivered a series of 129 audiences about the body, sex, and the meaning of life; his exegesis was later published as the text titled Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. His work is not only a reaction against the sexual revolution, but also against modernity's neo-Manichaean culture and ethics in general. At the core of his theological anthropology are the truths that the body is an expression of the person; that the human person is most fulfilled in the gift of self; and that together, in mutual self-giving, the male and female bodies constitute a spousal analogy through which we may come to an understanding of the Trinity on earth. This project aims to condense the text and apply it as a literary theory to elucidate three novels: The Handmaid's Tale, A Clockwork Orange, and Written on the Body.

Committee: Dr. Katharine Gillespie PhD (Advisor); Dr. Laura Mandell PhD (Committee Member); Dr. William H. Hardesty III PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Divinity; Ethics; Gender; Language; Literature; Modern Literature; Philosophy; Spirituality; Theology; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2011, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This paper, in French, explores the theory of authorship behind the controversy surrounding Houellebecq's use of Wikipedia articles in his last novel, La Carte et le Territoire (2010). The alleged plagiarism participates in and is revelatory of an aesthetics of borrowing: from the narrative voice (borrowed from a fictional future posterity) and proverbial, trite speech to the works of art inside the novel (mere reproductions of other works). The notion of cliche, both linguistic (in the style) and artistic (in the plot), questions the very concept of originality of the work of art. Be it a reproduction of the world (mimesis) or of other productions (imitatio), its author's importance is consistently undermined, and the work acquires a full autonomy: a production of language speaking itself, instead of being spoken. The novel thus constructs a complete disappearance of the author, in keeping with theories built by Borges, Foucault or Baudrillard.

Committee: Jonathan Strauss PhD (Advisor); Elisabeth Hodges PhD (Committee Member); Anna Klosowska PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Language; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2003, Educational Leadership

The purpose of this study was to deconstruct the representations of women's agency in the text Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This study used critical theory, feminist literary criticism, and critical literacy, as theoretical foundations. A matrix for analyzing agency was created as an analytical tool; this consisted of a 2 X 2 matrix, with dimensions of agency (identity and attitude) and strategies used to achieve agency (attitude and voice). Using this matrix I first described each scene wherein a female character displayed agency. Using critical discourse analysis, I then interpreted and explained these constructions of agency, placing them in a broader social and historical context. My interpretation/explanation emphasized five themes: rule following/breaking, intelligence, validating/enabling, mothering, and “bounded” resistance. Embedded within these themes were binary oppositions, gender boundaries, and woman as the “other”. Traditional gender constructions of both men and women were found throughout the text. Ultimately, the adventure in the book is highlighted through active male characters, while passive/invisible female characters exist only as bodies in the background or enablers of male action. When the female characters do resist, their resistance is “bounded” by traditional gender conventions. Ironically, while the female characters resist evil, they never resist gender stereotypes. The study ends with implications for the development of school curricula that enable children to critically deconstruct texts.

Committee: Sally Lloyd (Advisor) Subjects:

PHD, Kent State University, 2012, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This dissertation situates the emergence of the science fiction literary genre in the biology of the human brain and its evolved cognitive abilities and it specifically investigates the fiction of three renowned, twentieth-century writers—Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and William Gibson—published between 1940 and 1988. While grounded in literary history, this dissertation is an interdisciplinary project that also draws on neuroscientific topics and science and technology studies. Beginning with what I call a cognitive approach to science fiction, I argue that a combination of effects—the brain's adaptation for narrative and imagination, humanity's co-evolution with technology, and technology's rapid and largely unanticipated change—led to the emergence of science fiction in the early part of the twentieth century. While this approach to the origins of the science fiction genre is new, I demonstrate that its functional aspects are rooted in the ideas of the genre's arguably most influential editors: Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell, Jr. Unlike the majority of scholarly discussions and critiques on Asimov's, Dick's, and Gibson's fictions, I examine their work from a perspective that emphasizes the brain's physicality over the psychology of mind by deploying my cognitive approach. In the chapter on Asimov's fiction, I argue that while many of his works give prominence to robots, these fictions are primarily about their human counterparts and the human brain. I argue in the chapter on Dick that while he emphasizes the centrality of the human brain to our recreation and experience of reality within our consciousness, he vacillates between the good and ill of technology's influence on our realization of the self and our empathy for others. In the chapter on Gibson's writing, I argue that while he focuses on the fetishistic technologies of computer hacking, he carefully constructs cyberspace as a representation projected and perceived interactively within the human brai (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Donald Hassler M (Committee Chair); Tammy Clewell (Committee Member); Kevin Floyd (Committee Member); Eric Mintz M (Committee Member); Arvind Bansal (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Evolution and Development; Literature; Technology