Master of Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

What can readability studies tell us about the novel genre? By tracing both the history of readability studies, a partially abandoned field located at the intersection of education and literacy studies, and the history of the English language novel, this project makes a case for the validity of conversations around readability within literary circles. One of the primary outcomes of readability studies is a number of formulas that measure various elements of a text, such as vocabulary and sentence structure. However, few formulas were created with fiction, or more specifically, the novel genre, in mind. To determine the possible applications of classic readability formulas for the novel genre, this project uses a digital readability formula to measure the readability of a corpus of 127 English language novels from 1800 to 1922. However, the resulting data highlights the difficulty of measuring such a wide-ranging, unique literary genre. Finally, this project proposes a framework for using a statistical analysis of novels to identify potential lines of inquiry favorable to close reading. By approaching novels through a quantitative lens, this project highlights how considering the bigger picture can help us determine which specific elements may lead to a richer understanding of the text.

Committee: Collin Jennings (Committee Chair); Tim Lockridge (Committee Member); Mary Jean Corbett (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; British and Irish Literature; Literacy; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

This dissertation explores the representative works of several contemporary Iraqi women's writing and the themes of war and exile employed in their narratives. Iraqi women focus their fictional narrative discourse and themes on the Iraqi war(s) and the political situation their nation faced over the past thirty years. The writers chosen for this study are a mere representation of the many Iraqi writers who focus their efforts and their writings on the war story. I argue that the themes of war and exile, and the historical and pragmatic vein that they write from, have come to dominate the discourse of Iraqi women. It has become the focal point of their themes which has come to serve as their national narrative. The framework Iraqi women articulate, this national narrative, is an embodiment of the violence they witness in their quotidian life in war and exile. They write this experience from a feminist impulse as well as through a maternal instinct to articulate the voice of the voiceless subaltern members of their society. They depict their national war story through the sub-narratives of the tumultuous experience of Iraqis. Women novelists, through their powerful depiction of the reality Iraqis experience, deliver a significant and necessary voice to their contemporary national narrative of war.

Committee: Joseph Zeidan Dr. (Advisor); Morgan Liu Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Literature; Middle Eastern History; Middle Eastern Literature; Middle Eastern Studies; Modern Language; Modern Literature; Near Eastern Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation explores Spanish autobiographies in the form graphic narratives, together with my own autobiography. It addresses mental and physical health in three Spanish graphic novels through two queer autobiographies, Roberta Marrero's 2016 El bebe verde (The Green Baby, 2016) and Juan Naranjo's 2020 Mariquita (Sissy, 2020), and a “special needs' parents' memoir” entitled Una posibilidad (A Chance, 2016). While chapter 1 addresses the authors' experiences during childhood through early adulthood to come to terms with the incapacitating heteronormative ideal, chapter 2 tackles the difficulties in understanding and sharing the perspective of a three-year-old with a cognitive disability such as cerebral palsy. Eventually, my autobiography pays attention to, on the one hand, gender and sexuality, and illness and disability, on the other. As I approach my gender and sexual identities, I explore how these intersect with different diagnoses, including, but not limited to, depression and Cystic Fibrosis in COVID-19 times. This dissertation shows the importance of understanding how society influences how people identify themselves, in addition to proving that there is an expectation of being cis and heterosexual (Rich), and able-bodied (Ruer). In the analysis of these visual and verbal representations of gender, sexuality, and disability, as well as in the autobiography, I demonstrate that these given situations are worsened through the incapacitating society that rejects queer and disabled populations. As I address many instances of repudiation, I can exemplify how these lived experiences are dismissed and aggravated.

Committee: Eugenia Romero (Advisor); Jorge Pérez (Committee Member); Ana del Sarto (Committee Member); Laura Podalsky (Advisor) Subjects: European Studies; Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Literature; Mental Health

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2024, English

Modernist artist novels by and about women complicate traditional understandings of the kunstlerroman genre by challenging the definition and status of the “artist” and presenting a broader range of options for women interested in the arts. Beginning with Wyndham Lewis's Tarr and with specific attention to the character of Bertha Lunken, an art student, and continuing with readings of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Mina Loy's Insel, and Jessie Fauset's Plum Bun, the dissertation analyzes representations of the female artist. Through their artist protagonists, these authors explore their ambivalence regarding the importance of talent, vision, and marketability. Their portrayals of amateur artists, students, and models focus on the social and material conditions that women in the period had to navigate in order to come to their own understanding of artistic success. Such portrayals also speak to the ways women participated in various modernist movements, both as visual artists and as writers. Ultimately, a reexamination of the female artist figure in these novels allows for an expanded definition of modernism by finding continuities between the Modernist period and the late Victorian period, interrogating regionalist specificity and transatlantic communication, and considering ways that high modernist experimental fiction relates to a commonly feminized and dismissed mass-market literature.

Committee: Keith Tuma (Committee Chair); Erin Edwards (Committee Member); Elisabeth Hodges (Committee Member); Madelyn Detloff (Committee Member); Mary Jean Corbett (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2023, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This paper written in French examines the works of two female comic artists, Zeina Abirached and Brigitte Findakly, who grew up in the Middle East during periods of political instability and social tension. Abirached's book Le Piano Oriental combines her own life with that of her great-grandfather, while Findakly blends her childhood and adult experiences with a broader portrait of her country and society in Coquelicots d'Irak. Both artists incorporate their personal stories into the historical context of their native and adopted countries. Through their use of autofiction, autobiography and captivating visual storytelling, these two graphic novels demonstrate the transformative power of Art in bringing together and unifying fragmented identities, facilitating healing and reconciliation, and commemorating destroyed and/or forgotten pasts. Art is showcased as a means of expression for bicultural identities and as a vital need. By exploring personal experiences, Abirached and Findakly use original narrative techniques and exploit the rich linguistic and visual elements of their medium to express the transformative power of art in unique ways, offering powerful critiques of war, sexism, prejudice, and inequality.

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

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation is a conglomerate of three distinct, yet related, studies each exploring the question: How do the gendered experiences of a man elementary school teacher as well as portrayals of fictional men teachers in middle-grade novels contribute to the conceptualization of the gendered identities and masculinities of men who teach in the predominantly female environment of an elementary school? The first study is a content analysis of 85 middle-grade school stories using gender theory to analyze the gendered identities of 357 fictional teachers across the text set. In this analysis, I found that 40.34% of these 357 fictional teachers were constructed as men, with no transgender or nonbinary teachers in the text set. Over 90% of the teachers were constructed as White, and when they had an identified sexuality, they were most likely to be heterosexual, with only four teachers constructed as homosexual. Men teachers were most likely to be portrayed teaching P.E. or after-school classes. The teaching roles they were most likely to be shown performing included the delivery of content, the disciplining of students, and the daily management of the classroom. They were more likely than women teachers to be portrayed as fun and to give their students life advice. The second study in the dissertation is another content analysis with a much smaller text set, this time comprised of 10 middle-grade books. In this second analysis, I employ masculinity theory to examine various patterns of masculinity in the portrayals of 10 fictional teachers, each constructed as a man. In this analysis, I found that most of the fictional men teachers were constructed as successfully navigating between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. At the same time, half of the teachers also operate to an extent within marginalized masculinities, two as gay men, two as Latinx men, and one as a Black man. These portrayals promote some gendered stereotypes of men teachers, specifically portra (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Linda Parsons (Advisor); Petros Panaou (Committee Member); Lisa Pinkerton (Committee Member); Jonda McNair (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2022, Journalism (Communication)

This thesis explores the online communities on YouTube and TikTok dedicated to books, known as BookTube and BookTok, which have given literature a sustained relevance in the age of the Internet and caused skyrocketing success for many books and authors. The first research question of this study seeks to investigate the motivations behind the young adult community who read books for pleasure, and the second posits whether motivations for reading among this audience are hedonistic or eudaimonic in nature. Finally, the third research question explores how YouTube and TikTok have shaped the cultural discourse on reading books in the Digital Age. The theoretical basis for this study is grounded in uses and gratifications theory, mood management theory, and eudaimonic effects. I collected a total of 611 videos and comments from YouTube and TikTok and conducted a textual analysis and critical discourse analysis, grouping videos and comments into themes to understand the content of both platforms. Results showed that there were several primary motivations for young adult readers, including achievement, escapism, and social interaction. There was a consistent measure of hedonistic motivations for reading, such as the desire for aesthetic beauty and comforting stories, as well as eudaimonic motivations, including catharsis and connection with others. Additionally, YouTube was shown to have higher numbers of subscribers to individual YouTube channels, while TikTok had higher general audience numbers for its videos. These results supported the premise of uses and gratifications theory, while showing evidence of both hedonistic and eudaimonic motivations. Furthermore, while there was overlap in communication styles and content themes for YouTube and TikTok, each community had unique features that allowed users to discuss and interact with stories in different ways.

Committee: Victoria LaPoe (Committee Chair); Rosanna Planer (Committee Member); Kelly Ferguson (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Journalism; Mass Communications

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2022, Educational Leadership

The purpose of this study was to find a way to increase low literacy skills for 5th- grade students in a charter school. The research explored the relationship between the attitudes, behaviors, standardized test scores, and perceptions related to student reading; parents' attitudes and perceptions related to their student's reading; and teachers' experiences and perceptions related to their students' reading. The study addressed the following research questions: What are Midwest Charter 5th graders' attitudes, behaviors, standardized test scores, and perceptions related to reading? What are Midwest Charter parents' attitudes and perceptions about their student's reading? What are Midwest Charter 5th grader teachers' experiences and perceptions of their students' reading? The study's research design was a mixed method, consisting of quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate how to increase student literacy rates. For the quantitative portion, surveys were given to one hundred and fifty-one students and parent participants to analyze the attitudes, behaviors, and behaviors regarding literacy. The qualitative research method focused on individual teacher interviews and student focus groups to determine commonalities. The most important conclusion drawn from the study is a connection between student perceptions and literacy rates. The research identified a relationship between a visual text and increasing literacy rates for students and providing training for teachers to increase their knowledge to promote differentiating the type of reading structures and genres in any classroom setting. In conclusion, implementing graphic novels may increase student perceptions of reading and literacy rates.

Committee: James Olive (Committee Chair); Frederick Aldama (Committee Member); Mary Ziskin (Committee Member) Subjects: Elementary Education; Reading Instruction

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Education and Human Services

The English Language Arts (ELA) canon has been continuously replicated in K-12 education due to the tendency that teachers frequently teach what was taught to them. Current national and state curricula as well as the Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate guidelines and suggestions do not dictate specific texts to be taught, yet many of the suggestions given to high school English teachers perpetuate the use of the Western canon. Outside of the classroom, the world in which our students live is becoming increasingly multimodal which is a contrast to “verbcentric” classrooms. Graphic novels are one answer to integrating the increasingly multimodal world into the classroom; however, they have not been systematically embraced, especially in advanced-level, high school English classrooms. The purpose of this study is to use a qualitative case study to explore perceptions and practices relating to the use of graphic novels in advanced-level high school English classrooms. When teachers persist in using curricular choices such as graphic novels that may not be widely accepted, they are also reshaping how the ELA canon is used in classrooms. By challenging the ELA canon, teachers become change agents by providing students with more diverse literature and creating new pathways of cultural capital.

Committee: Tachelle Banks (Committee Chair); Katie Clonan-Roy (Committee Member); Molly Buckley-Marudas (Committee Member); Jeff Karem (Committee Member); Stacey Steggert (Committee Member) Subjects: Language Arts; Literature; Secondary Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, French and Italian

The primary goal of this dissertation is to conceptualize a phenomenology of `closet trauma'. In order to develop this concept, I bring together Sara Ahmed's queer approach to phenomenology with literary trauma theory. While the latter has been largely dominated by psychoanalytic theory, I use queer phenomenology to analyze the experience of being closeted. However, throughout my work I distinguish between being in the closet and experiencing closet trauma. While being closeted involves performing a constructed identity, private spaces offer the possibility to discover one's closeted self. Closet trauma, on the other hand, is the result of the shattered absolutism that one is safe to explore one's queerness. Identity formation is therefore stifled. I place this concept in the context of the French Republic because of its emphasis on universalism, which encourages self-suppression of identities contrary to the normative `universal'. I begin by outlining a phenomenology of queer sexual awakening as experiencing disorientation: a blossoming away from normativity. Remaining in this state leads to emotional dissonance: inescapable discomfort in one's environment and distress in regard to one's potential future. I extend the concept of closet trauma to seropositivity, as diagnosis is portrayed as an experience similar to disorientation linked to self-perception. Throughout each chapter, in my analyses of film and bandes dessinees, I use the term `visual empathy' to describe the ways authors, illustrators, and filmmakers create a phenomenological reading/viewing experience through formal techniques that are useful in ways beyond witnessing to help the reader/viewer experience disorientation and dissonance. I intend for this to contribute to recent scholarship in terms of visual narratives of trauma as witnesses. While others such as Roger Hallas, Hillary Chute, Harriet Earle use psychoanalytical approaches to documentary trauma narratives, visual empathy takes a phenom (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Margaret Flinn (Advisor); Dana Renga (Committee Member); Lucille Toth (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies; Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, English

The police have a literary history. By the Book canvasses a broad range American novels that depicted many of the organizational developments and institutional operations of municipal law enforcement in United States cities from the late-nineteenth through the early-twentieth century. I examine the rise of the police procedural as a literary genre in the true-crime fiction of Julian Hawthorne and the detective novels of Anna Katharine Green that promote the investigative processes of the New York Police Department and its specialized crime units. I examine the futurist fiction of J. W. Roberts and Frederick Upham Adams, which pushed back against debates about law enforcement's own future in their explorations of interpersonal crime, criminal enterprise, and riot control in metropolises such as Boston, Chicago, and New York. Finally, I examine social problem novels by Sutton E. Griggs that tackle the Jim Crow police state created in Southern cities like Richmond and Nashville through police abuse and neglect toward black Americans. Ultimately, the story that emerges in By the Book is about competing civic narratives -- of the police as collective protagonist and collective antagonist in American society.

Committee: Elizabeth Hewitt (Advisor); Molly Farrell (Committee Member); Andrea N. Williams (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Literature

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: English

Stories about the AIDS crisis in the United States nearly always feature white cisgender gay men. Queerness and diversity, however, are a more accurate descriptors of the AIDS crisis. To help create a more accurate account of this medical event, I analyze comics and graphic novels from during the AIDS epidemic and after medication to treat the infection was created. Comics become an ideal medium to address the absence of stories about people of color, people who use drugs, sex workers, and the poor because they are relatively cheap to make and do not require formal training to produce. Additionally, the hybrid nature of comics, blending images and texts, is ideal for representing the illness, trauma, and loss of the American AIDS epidemic. I first establish that white gay men used their middle-class respectability to affirm their humanity in the face of a religious majority who argued they were aberrations and AIDS was God's punishment for their homosexuality. Though white gay men's strategy was ultimately effective in pushing for a treatment, the stories of other groups were eclipsed. To make the lives of comics artists who were not middle-class and/or white more visible, I show how several of these individuals drew themselves into existence. Comics artists communicated their unique experiences by embracing monstrosity and queer negative modes of living that reject productivity and consumption as defining worth. Ultimately, this manuscript describes how embracing respectability and emphasizing sameness allowed white gay men to fight for a treated for HIV infection, while also arguing that a queer critique of heteronormativity is essential if all human beings are to have worth and access to medical care.

Committee: Beth Ash Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jennifer Glaser Ph.D. (Committee Member); Deborah Meem Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, Mass Communication (Communication)

The following study uses a feminist ethnographic approach to explore the relationship between the romance genres, feminism, and fandom, as well as how women are experiencing and sharing romance novels in their everyday lives. Furthermore, this study tackles the nature of the cultural stigma against the romance genres, and how readers and writers navigate and respond to said stigma. The goal of this study was to highlight and explore the significance of gynocentric narratives in popular culture, as well as the nature of gynocentric participatory culture. Readers and writers understand the cultural stigma that surrounds romance novels in the context of cultural misogyny and literary elitism in the publishing world. The enduring appeal of romance novels for readers and writers is characterized by romance novels as spaces of hope, optimism and escape; as spaces of feminist resistance within an increasingly neoliberal, or individualistic, patriarchal culture; and as texts that explore and celebrate female subjectivity and sexuality. Furthermore, romance novels, as gynocentric participatory spaces, resist publishing industry standards and literary elitism, blur the producer-consumer binary, and champion a model of feminist ethics and care over a competitive hierarchal value system.

Committee: Eve Ng Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Literature; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, Theatre

This thesis develops a new adaptational technique for visual media, such as comics and graphic novels, into live performances. By rooting adaptational practice in the theory of distributed cognition, I propose that adaptors can consider the cognitive task and distributed system of source materials. The adaptor can then also consider the distributed system of the host medium to ensure staged adaptations that both seek to replicate the cognitive experience of the source material, and account for the differences in cognitive tasks across media and in host media. Through this cognitive understanding of the adaptational processes, theatre makers can produce works that engage human imagination in unique ways; drawing on the cognitive engagement systems of comics and live theatre. To build this theory, I primarily draw on visual language theorist Neil Cohn as well as distributed cognition theorist Evelyn Tribble.

Committee: Christiana Molldrem-Harkulich Dr. (Advisor); Melanie Mortimore (Advisor); Patrick Murphy Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Cognitive Psychology; Comparative Literature; Literature; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, German

This thesis highlights the ways in which Bertolt Brecht's concept of epic theatre pertains to video games, more particularly, visual novels. Digital drama and romance genres (aka “dating simulators”) are known for their “realism” for their ability to make the player feel as if they are interacting with real people. Yet, the deceptiveness is their apparent inability to replicate fully the kinds of social interactions a person can have. The plot structure oftentimes is also rather simplistic: the goal of these games is that the player gets the girl of their dreams, despite any hardships. The horror game Doki Doki Literature Club (2017) by game developer Dan Salvato challenges these genre shortcomings and aspire to make productive, I will argue, a Brechtian notion of epic theatre. Salvato had a love-hate relationship with visual novels. To him, visual novels were nothing more than “cute girls doing cute things” where any tragic backstory or character arc is just another objective the player must overcome to make the girl of their dreams fall in love with them. Like Brecht, Salvato wants to destroy the illusions created by visual novels and shock people into reflecting about such illusions. He created Doki Doki Literature Club, a horror game disguised as a dating simulator, which takes a critical look at issues such a mental health that visual novels often gloss over and treat as plot points in the story.

Committee: Edgar Landgraf Ph.D. (Advisor); Kristie Foell Ph.D. (Committee Member); Clayton Rosati Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

This three-fold dissertation examines the semiotic and textual ways that childrens literature is mediated by fifth-grade student conceptualizations of normal childhoods. Through a nested case study, I examined the discourses of a small group of fifth-grade girls, narrowed to the specific interactions of three focal students who have a personal connection to disability, to answer the following question: How does critical literacy mediate the reception of texts/covers that include characters with disabilities? Critical literacy theory provided a platform for conversations with students about the representation of childhood on the covers of books and in the books themselves. Students were encouraged to critique texts and participate in redesigning them in favor of a more accurate depiction of disability. Across the course of a year, I collected information about student interactions with the literature using ethnographic methods through audio/video recordings, semi-structured interviews, field notes and artifact collection (i.e. drawings and writings in student sketchbooks). Using discourse analysis, I analyzed this data to uncover the indexical methods that students utilized to index normal childhoods in relation to their discussions of middle grade novels. These findings were partnered with a content analysis and visual social semiotic/visual rhetoric analysis of book covers of the inclusion of disability in three middle grade novels (Rules, Waiting for Normal, and Short) read by the girls across the course of the year-long study. I found that the book covers consistently portray either a normal childhood or an overemphasized abnormal representation that both hide the reality of disability. In conversation with students, images were often rejected in favor of personal understandings of the disability. They did this by redesigning the covers to use semiotic resources that they connected to personally. Additionally, these students used their own experiences to aid in t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michelle Abate (Advisor); Michiko Hikida (Committee Member); Margaret Price (Committee Member); Mindi Rhoades (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism; Education; Elementary Education; Literacy; Literature; Multicultural Education; Pedagogy; Reading Instruction; Social Research

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, English/Literature

Comics featuring LGBTQ children have the burden of challenging cis/heteronormative versions of childhood. Such examples of childhood, according to author Katherine Bond Stockton, are false and restrict children to a vision of innocence that leaves no room for queer children to experience their own versions of childhood. Furthermore, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community has taken a “progressive”-based approach to time, assuming that newer generations have avoided the trauma of the past because ideas about sexual orientation and gender have advanced with time. Newer generations of the LGBTQ community forget that many have struggled for change to occur, instead choosing to forget the wounds of the past. By analyzing two comic works—Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home and Sophie Labelle's web comic series Assigned Male—I argue that we must let go of our suspicion towards LGBTQ child characters and open ourselves up to what can be learned from them. I also argue that both the past (with its wounds and trauma) and the future must be accepted into the present in order to give children the childhood they desire, rather than the childhood we recall. Both Fun Home and Assigned Male demonstrate that childhood is far from the simplistic happy time of life and can be just as fraught with complication as adulthood. Rather than try to protect children from this, these authors argue that we should empower children to locate their own sense of authenticity, in terms of both gender and sexuality. I argue that children are full of possibility and wisdom to guide current populations and change the future for the better through their struggles.

Committee: William Albertini Dr. (Advisor); Erin Labbie Dr. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

In my dissertation, I develop a combination of structural and critical theories for the medium-specific analysis of comics for children and young adults. I begin by laying a historical foundation of the medium of comics and a visual culture analytic framework to delineate my specific methodology of research, a contextualized graphic narratology. As of the writing of this dissertation, this work is the only extended, single-authored exploration into the construction and implications of comics for children and young adults. Within the following chapters, I combine the medium specific tools of a formalist comics study with the field-based knowledge of the function of children's and young adult narratives. I use these combined analytic tools to not only further the growth of a new comics scholarship but also to investigate how comics for children and young adults are using the implied reader to push the boundaries of the definition of “child.” Looking at two comics series for young readers, Lumberjanes and the March trilogy, I explore how what I call tools of disruption are woven into the visual constructions in order to play with reader's experiences and expectations, provoke them into questioning the texts they are reading and the world around them, and push them to lay the foundation for imagined alternatives. I conclude by discussing the importance of my framework as a means of generative dialogic interdisciplinarity in the fields of children's literature, literacy education, and youth culture studies in their efforts to teach, read, and write for social justice.

Committee: Patricia Enciso (Advisor); Michelle Ann Abate (Committee Co-Chair); Melinda Rhoades (Committee Member); Caroline Clark (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Literacy; Literature

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

This project contributes to the field of comics studies by extending its range of investigation into the early modern period. If comics are to be defined as sequential art, scholars of comics must contend with a vast historical archive reaching at least to the origins of print. The first chapter argues that there is warrant to study sequential images from early modern England as “comics,” first because historiographical prohibitions against the study of images from early modern England are no longer acceptable, and second because multiple sequential images from early modern English presses exhibit the qualities of “sequential art.” The second chapter considers “sequential art” might mean, other than panels and strips, for the early modern English. Contemporary conventions of sequential images, regulated by existing theories, tend to presume both a black rectilinear panel as well as a linear, non-recursive, non-random strip; whereas early modern English sequential images were organized by naturalistic formats. Chapter two introduces six alternatives to the panel-strip convention of sequential images: processions; steps; wheels, calendars; decks; and curtains. If comics are alternately defined as image-text, then scholars of comics must contend with an even greater archive of early modern art. Chapter three addresses inclusive, integrated, and exclusive criteria for the combination of image and text, and ultimately demonstrates that early modern examples are coherent with the most exclusive standards. Furthermore, sustained attention to the integration of image and text reveals an emergent practice at work during the English republican period. This move to historical relevance invites the analysis of chapter four, which considers the persistent influence of caricature from the early modern period. Specifically, a definite lineage of racial caricature reveals the unbroken aesthetic influence of early modern English caricatures of blackness from that crucial period of r (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Frederick Aldama Dr. (Advisor); Jared Gardner Dr. (Committee Member); Jenny Robb (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; British and Irish Literature; Comparative Literature; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, EDU Teaching and Learning

This year-long, ethnographic study documents the use of comics and graphic novels as academic literature across the curriculum in a suburban middle school. Because the use of this medium in classrooms is relatively new, it is a process that has not been extensively documented. While comics and graphic novels can provide a complex and valuable experience for readers, they can also be challenging to both students and teachers. In particular, this dissertation documents the tensions that surfaced as comics and graphic novels were integrated into a curriculum. This study is situated in a middle school entrenched in neoliberal ideologies, with focuses on high-stakes testing, a standardized curriculum, and individual, rather than collaborative work. Yet, the faculty in this middle school was also inviting nontraditional texts into classrooms, and operating in tension with a neoliberal agenda. By focusing on teaching and learning literacy practices with comics and graphic novels and talk about those practices, this study also addresses negative assumptions and hesitancies around such texts being used for academic purposes. Participants included seventh grade teachers and students engaged in working with and talking about comics. This research considers how comics and graphic novels were welcomed into this school, as well as impacts around time and space, and positioning. All of these themes point back to how comics and graphic novels were working within and against normative structures in this school. This study is positioned to consider conventional literacy practices and how teaching and learning with comics and graphic novels supports and disrupts those practices. Serving as an example and a starting point for bringing this dynamic medium into classrooms, this study fills a significant gap, supporting and challenging traditional literacies practices and analyzing potential for new ways of operating in a school.

Committee: Caroline Clark PhD (Advisor); Mollie Blackburn PhD (Committee Member); Mindi Rhoades PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Language Arts; Literacy; Literature; Middle School Education; Science Education; Social Studies Education; Teaching