English Dissertations and Theses
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The Rise of the Mechanimal: How Authors of Scientific Romances Imagined Future Vehicles
(University of Kansas, 2020-05-31)Whereas many have surmised that the technological vision for biorobotics originated with science fiction, it actually originated much earlier, in a constellation of science-influenced works of fiction in the romance tradition ... -
Relationship of the Latin Facetus literature to the medieval English courtesy poems
(University of Kansas, 1933-05-31) -
The development of English prose with special reference to ornamentation
(University of Kansas, 1896-05-31) -
“Everything is Here and Now”: The Polyvocal Poetry of Naomi Long Madgett
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)Naomi Long Madgett—poet, editor, professor, and Detroit Poet Laureate—has a poetic career that spans over sixty years. Despite this, her work is rarely engaged critically. This thesis aims to present new scholarship on ... -
Memory in the Apocalyptic Archive: A Literary and Computer Textual Analysis of A Canticle for Leibowitz
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)This thesis analyzes A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. to argue that traditional literary analysis and digital humanities methods are often more effective when used in combination. Beginning with a literary ... -
Rough Forms: Autobiographical Interventions in the U.S. West, 1835-1935
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)Rough Forms analyzes U.S. Western autobiographies from 1835 to 1935, focusing especially on ways that Native and non-Native authors complicate settler-colonial narratives. In doing so, my project deeply engages with two ... -
Exploring ‘Zelmaneship’: Developing Queer Inwardness from Sidney to Stage
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)Zelmane the Amazon, a central character in Philip Sidney’s epic romance The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1590), has often been studied for her transgressive gender and sexuality. Zelmane’s first words in the New Arcadia ... -
sick girl 2005
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)A collection of hybrid pieces that examine the nostalgia of the early 2000’s while working against the narrative that sick girls lack multiplicities, that their only dimension is their sickness. -
Local Histories of Composition and the Student Writer: Women Students Writing Within, Against, and Beyond Required Classroom Genres
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)This study argues for the importance of analyzing individual students’ responses to writing instruction in crafting histories of the field of rhetoric and composition. I engage in an archival study of student writing at ... -
Faith Healers and Latinx Literature: Subversive Medicine and Radical Alternatives
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)This dissertation undertakes representations of faith healing in contemporary Latinx literature in order to argue for and explore the possibilities for radically different realities afforded by holistic, intersubjective ... -
Transnational Feminism in 21st Century Black American Drama and Performance
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)“Transnational Feminism in 21st Century Black American Drama and Performance” explores twenty-first century works from playwrights who I group together loosely under the current transnational moment of playwriting. I include ... -
Aesthetics and Politics of Feminist Tragic Narratives at the Turn of the Nineteenth-Century into the Twentieth
(University of Kansas, 2019-05-31)Abstract My dissertation focusses on American feminist tragic novels between 1890 and 1925, which deal with women’s tragic lives in a patriarchal society. I will show that the thematic and structural similarities among ... -
Sir Thomas Browne and his age: An examination of the life and writings of Sir Thomas Browne with a view to determining their relation to the age in which he lived
(University of Kansas, 1935-05-31)The common conception of Sir Thomas Browne was that he was an antiquarian, a recluse who withdrew from the political and religious controversies of his age to live his own peaceful and uneventful life alone with his thoughts ... -
Intersections of Genre and Assessment: Systems, Uptakes, and Ideologies
(University of Kansas, 2018-05-31)Intersections of Genre and Assessment: Systems, Uptakes, and Ideologies seeks to discover and examine the intersections between rhetorical genre studies and writing assessment. Rhetorical genre studies (RGS) and writing ... -
Reinvigorating Identity: Applying Burkean Identity and Social Identity Theory to Analysis of Identity Formation
(University of Kansas, 2018-12-31)Identity is widely utilized in a variety of ongoing discussions in the composition and rhetoric field. I propose a conception of identity that allows analysis of identity formation, particularly intentional creation or ... -
Degeneration and the Environment in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction
(University of Kansas, 2018-12-31)This dissertation reveals that Victorian degeneration theory—a multivalent concept of individual and evolutionary decay best remembered as the motivation for eugenics—was based partly in fears about the influence of urban ... -
A Genre in Place: The Relationship Between Genre and Place in the City Codes of Delphos, Kansas
(University of Kansas, 2018-05-31)This project combines rhetorical genre theory, place scholarship, and rural scholarship to examine the relationship between genres and physical places. Because genres have been understood as “typified rhetorical action” ... -
Place, Race, and the Topography of American Literature
(University of Kansas, 2017-12-31)This dissertation enters a vibrant conversation in literary criticism and cultural geography about the changing nature of place, race, and identity in American literature. Drawing from a wide range of theoretical models, ... -
Sensational Bodies: Semiotics and Embodiment in the Works of Wilkie Collins
(University of Kansas, 2017-05-31)This project uses the semiotic theories of nineteenth-century philosopher Charles S. Peirce to read embodiment in the sensation fiction works of Wilkie Collins. I argue that a Peircean semiotic reading offers critics a ... -
Stages of Blood: Transformations and Interpretations in Early Modern Drama
(University of Kansas, 2017-05-31)My thesis investigates the transformation of blood both as a physical substance and as a substance portrayed on the stage. During the 16th and early 17th Century, the scientific community moved further from considering ...