• “Yes! We Have No Bananas”: Cultural Imaginings of the Banana in America, 1880-1945 

  Huang, Yi-lun (University of Oregon, 2019-01-11)

  My dissertation project explores the ways in which the banana exposes Americans’ interconnected imaginings of exotic food, gender, and race. Since the late nineteenth century, The United Fruit Company’s continuous supply ...

• Signifying the Childish Adult of Horus Gilgamesh’s Awkward Moments of the Children’s Bible 

  Omuro, Jonathan (University of Oregon, 2018-09-06)

  This project focuses on Horus Gilgamesh’s Awkward Moments of the Children’s Bible, Vol. 1 (2013), an adult picture book that parodies the Bible by illustrating biblical scriptures with child unfriendly images of gore, sex, ...

• Spatial Justice and Environmental Racism in Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex 

  Machuca, Nicholas (University of Oregon, 2018-09-06)

  I examine Sesshu Foster’s 2005 alternate history speculative fiction narrative Atomik Aztex using geographer Edward Soja’s concept of “spatial (in)justice” as an analytical lens, arguing Foster focuses on mobility and its ...

• Lorelei's Guide to a Lady's Luxury: The Secrets of Social Mobility in Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 

  Saeed, Amanda (University of Oregon, 2018-09-06)

  Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes constantly acknowledges tensions between the intentions and actions of its protagonist, Lorelei Lee. Some literary critics and authors have speculated in depth the reasons and/or effects ...

• Postcolonial Cli-Fi: Advocacy and the Novel Form in the Anthropocene 

  Rochester, Rachel (University of Oregon, 2018-09-06)

  Through the filters of postcolonial theory, environmental humanities, and digital humanities, this project considers the capabilities and limitations of novels to galvanize action in response to environmental crises. My ...

• Ring Around the Rosie: Queer Temporality in Narratives of Trauma 

  Muhic, Dina (University of Oregon, 2018-04-10)

  This dissertation employs both traditional and digital tools to analyze fictional texts through the converging lenses of narratology, queer theory, and trauma studies. I am invested specifically in the work fictional ...

• THE MAKING OF A PRINCESS: THE ROLE OF RITUAL IN CREATING COMMUNITY AND IDENTITY IN THE SOCIETY FOR CREATIVE ANACHRONISM 

  Parker, Deborah (University of Oregon, 2018-04-10)

  Every weekend in the Society for Creative Anachronism, people from the far reaches of the globe leave behind the structures of their everyday lives, dress themselves in clothing from the Middle Ages, and construct medieval ...

• Between Us We Can Kill a Fly: Intersubjectivity and Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 

  Macrae, Mitchell (University of Oregon, 2018-04-10)

  Using recent scholarship on intersubjectivity and cultural cognitive narratology, this project explores the disruption and reformation of early modern identity in Elizabethan revenge tragedies. The purpose of this dissertation ...

• The Nature of the Secular: Religious Orientations and Environmental Thought in Nineteenth-Century American Literature 

  Zandstra, Robert (University of Oregon, 2018-04-10)

  My dissertation argues that changes in the structures and orientations of religious thought, changes commonly understood as secularization, have provided the intellectual underpinnings for the modern exploitation and ongoing ...

• Mending the Impossible 

  Blade, Kristine Lynn (University of Oregon, 1979-06)

• By the Will of the King: Majestic and Political Rhetoric in Ricardian Poetry 

  Driscoll, William (University of Oregon, 2017-09-27)

  The stories we tell give meaning and coherence to our political situation; they reproduce, interrogate, and, at times, challenge the discourse of authority. Thus, when the political situation changes so do our narratives. ...

• Rhetoric of Resistance: Social Justice in the Work of Wollstonecraft, Cugoano, and Godwin 

  Crane, Jessica (University of Oregon, 2017-09-27)

  This dissertation examines the rhetoric employed by Wollstonecraft, Cugoano, and Godwin who devise a top-down/bottom-up dialectic of social-justice writing which can be read as grassroots advocacy. The authors write with ...

• Tales of the Hasidim: Martin Buber's Universal Vision of Ecstatic Joy and Spiritual Wholeness 

  Hanna, Charles (University of Oregon, 2017-09-27)

  I will examine Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim, and the limits of his concepts of “ecstatic joy” and “spiritual wholeness.” To Buber, Hasidic legends present the possibility of overcoming tensions between the quotidian ...

• Romanticism's Moving Bodies: Literary Embodiment and Affect 

  McAlvage, Katherine (University of Oregon, 2017-09-27)

  Romanticism’s Moving Bodies examines the centrality of the material body to poetry, prose, and visual culture of the so-called Romantic project in British Literature. In this project, I bring together the movement of body ...

• Funny Business: Women Comedians and the Political Economy of Hollywood Sexism 

  Martinez, Diana (University of Oregon, 2017-09-27)

  In the last five years there has been great public interest in Hollywood’s “gender problem,” namely its unequal representation of women in key creative roles such as director, producer, and studio head. Yet, in the long ...

• Stylish Politics: Long Takes in Post-1945 Cinema 

  Cheney, Zachary (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  This dissertation is a politically conscious, comparative-historical formal analysis of long takes at the intersection of art and mass-market cinemas in the post-WWII era. Given the contemporary fascination with long takes ...

• Weighing in on Wonder Woman: Analyzing Gardner Fox's Writing for Potential Sexism 

  DeRoss, Jennifer (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  Wonder Woman is seen as the embodiment of feminism in the comic world and her placement as the secretary of the Justice Society of America is seen as a crime against her character. Many blame Gardner Fox for this decision, ...

• Beautiful Empire: Race, Gender, and the Asian/American Femme on U.S. Network Television 

  Seid, Danielle (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  Since the earliest days of broadcast television in the 1950s, network television has maintained a keen fascination with Asian/American women, who implicitly helped secure the boundaries of white women’s “empire of the ...

• The Prince, The Punisher, and The Perpetrator: Masculinity in Animal/Monster Groom Tales 

  Kupsch, Mary (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  Feminist scholarship concerning fairy tales is too limited. While relationships between male and female characters have been explored extensively, this thesis focuses on masculinity as it is performed in interactions between ...

• American Modernism's Gothic Children 

  Godwin, Hannah (University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)

  This dissertation delineates a range of literary endeavors engaging the gothic contours of child life in early to mid-twentieth century America. Drawing fresh attention to fictional representations of the child in modernist ...

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