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Dissertations from 2023 2023

In Search of Middle Paths: Buddhism, Fiction, and the Secular in Twentieth-Century South Asia , Crystal Baines, English

Save Our Children: Discourses of Queer Futurity in the United States and South Africa, 1977-2010 , Jude Hayward-Jansen, English

Epistemologies of the Unknowable in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature , Maria Ishikawa, English

Revenge of the Nerds: Tech Masculinity and Digital Hegemony , Benjamin M. Latini, English

The Diasporic Mindset and Narrative Intersections of British Identity in Transnational Fiction , Joseph A. Mason, English

A 19TH CENTURY ETHNOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT UN/CAGED: NARRATIVES OF INFORMAL EMPIRE, AFROLATINIDAD, AND CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC (RE)FRAMINGS , Celine G. Nader, English

Dissertations from 2022 2022

Writing the Aftermath: Uncanny Spaces of the Postcolonial , Sohini Banerjee, English

Science Fiction’s Enactment of the Encouragement, Process, and End Result of Revolutionary Transformation , Katharine Blanchard, English

LITERARY NEGATION AND MATERIALISM IN CHAUCER , Michelle Brooks, English

TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL AND LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: THE IDEA OF AMERÍKA IN ICELANDIC FICTION, 1920–1990 , Jodie Childers, English

When Choices Aren't Choices: Academic Literacy Normativities in the Age of Neoliberalism , Robin K. Garabedian, English

Redefining Gender Violence: Radical Feminist Visions in Contemporary Ethnic American Women’s Fiction and Women of Color Activism 1990-2010 , Hazel Gedikli, English

Stories Women Carry: Labor and Reproductive Imaginaries of South Asia and the Caribbean , Subhalakshmi Gooptu, English

The Critical Workshop: Writing Revision and Critical Pedagogy in the Middle School Classroom , Andrea R. Griswold, English

Racial Poetics: Early Modern Race and the Form of Comedy , Yunah Kae, English

At the Limits of Empathy: Political Conflict and its Aftermath in Postcolonial Fiction , Saumya Lal, English

The Burdens and Blessings of Responsibility: Duty and Community in Nineteenth- Century America , Leslie Leonard, English

No There There: New Jersey in Multiethnic Writing and Popular Culture Since 1990 , Shannon Mooney, English

Ownership and Writer Agency in Web 2.0 , Thomas Pickering, English

Combating Narratives: Soldiering in Twentieth-Century African American and Latinx Literature , Stacy Reardon, English

“IT DON’T ‘MEAN’ A THING”: TIME AND THE READER IN JAZZ FICTIONAL NARRATIVE , Damien C. Weaver, English

SATURNINE ECOLOGIES: ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD, 1542-1688 , John Yargo, English

Dissertations from 2021 2021

"On Neptunes Watry Realmes": Maritime Law and English Renaissance Literature , Hayley Cotter, English

Theater of Exchange: The Cosmopolitan Stage of Jacobean London , Liz Fox, English

“The Badge of All Our Tribe”: Contradictions of Jewish Representation on the English Renaissance Stage , Becky S. Friedman, English

On Being Dispersed: The Poetics of Dehiscence from "We the People" to Abolition , Sean A. Gordon, English

Echoing + Resistant Imagining: Filipino Student Writing Under American Colonial Rule , Florianne Jimenez, English

When Your Words Are Someone Else's Money: Rhetorical Circulation, Affect, and Late Capitalism , Kelin E. Loe, English

Indigenous Impositions in Contemporary Culture: Knotting Ontologies, Beading Aesthetics, and Braiding Temporalities , Darren Lone Fight, English

NEGRITUDE FEMINISMS: FRANCOPHONE BLACK WOMEN WRITERS AND ACTIVISTS IN FRANCE, MARTINIQUE, AND SENEGAL FROM THE 1920S TO THE 1980S , Korka Sall, English

Negotiating Space: Spatial Violation on the Early Modern Stage, 1587-1638 , Gregory W. Sargent, English

Stranger Compass of the Stage: Difference and Desire in Early Modern City Comedy , Catherine Tisdale, English

Dissertations from 2020 2020

AFFECTIVE HISTORIES OF SOUTHERN TRAUMA: SHAME, HEALING, AND VULNERABILITY IN US SOUTHERN WOMEN’S WRITING, 1975–2006 , Faune Albert, English

Materially Queer: Identity and Agency in Academic Writing , Joshua Barsczewski, English

ANGELS WHO STEPPED OUTSIDE THEIR HOUSES: “AMERICAN TRUE WOMANHOOD” AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY (TRANS)NATIONALISMS , Gayathri M. Hewagama, English

WRITING AGAINST HISTORY: FEMINIST BAROQUE NARRATIVES IN INTERWAR ATLANTIC MODERNISM , Annaliese Hoehling, English

Passing Literacies: Soviet Immigrant Elders and Intergenerational Language Practice , Jenny Krichevsky, English

Lisa Ben and Queer Rhetorical Reeducation in Post-war Los Angeles , Katelyn S. Litterer, English

Daring Depictions: An Analysis of Risks and Their Mediation in Representations of Black Suffering , Russell Nurick, English

From Page to Program: A Study of Stakeholders in Multimodal First-Year Composition Curriculum and Program Design , Rebecca Petitti, English

Forms of the Future: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Visioning Work of Aesthetics in U.S. Poetry, 1822-1863 , Magdalena Zapędowska, English

Dissertations from 2019 2019

Black Men Who Betray Their Race: 20TH Century Literary Representations of the Black Male Race Traitor , Gregory Coleman, English

“The Worlding Game”: Queer Ecological Perspectives in Modern Fiction , Sarah D'Stair, English

Afrasian Imaginaries: Global Capitalism and Labor Migration in Indian Ocean Fictions, 1990 – 2015 , Neelofer Qadir, English

Divided Tongues: The Politics and Poetics of Food in Modern Anglophone Indian Fiction , Shakuntala Ray, English

Globalizing Nature on the Shakespearean Stage , William Steffen, English

Gilded Chains: Global Economies and Gendered Arts in US Fiction, 1865-1930 , Heather Wayne, English

“ÆTHELTHRYTH”: SHAPING A RELIGIOUS WOMAN IN TENTH-CENTURY WINCHESTER , Victoria Kent Worth, English

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Sex and Difference in the Jewish American Family: Incest Narratives in 1990s Literary and Pop Culture , Eli W. Bromberg, English

Rhetorical Investments: Writing, Technology, and the Emerging Logics of the Public Sphere , Dan Ehrenfeld, English

Kiskeyanas Valientes en Este Espacio: Dominican Women Writers and the Spaces of Contemporary American Literature , Isabel R. Espinal, English

“TO WEIGH THE WORLD ANEW”: POETICS, RHETORIC, AND SOCIAL STRUGGLE, FROM SIDNEY’S ARCADIA TO SHAKESPEARE’S THEATER , David Katz, English

CIVIC DOMESTICITY: RHETORIC, WOMEN, AND SPACE AT HULL HOUSE, 1889-1910 , Liane Malinowski, English

Charting the Terrain of Latina/o/x Theater in Chicago , Priscilla M. Page, English

The Politics of Feeling and the Work of Belonging in US Immigrant Fiction 1990 - 2015 , Lauren Silber, English

Turning Inside Out: Reading and Writing Godly Identity in Seventeenth-Century Narratives of Spiritual Experience , Meghan Conine Swavely, English

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Tragicomic Transpositions: The Influence of Spanish Prose Romance on the Development of Early Modern English Tragicomedy , Josefina Hardman, English

“The Blackness of Blackness”: Meta-Black Identity in 20th/21st Century African American Culture , Casey Hayman, English

Waiting for Now: Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time , Amanda Ruth Waugh Lagji, English

Latina Identities, Critical Literacies, and Academic Achievement in Community College , Morgan Lynn, English

Demanding Spaces: 1970s U.S. Women's Novels as Sites of Struggle , Kate Marantz, English

Novel Buildings: Architectural and Narrative Form in Victorian Fiction , Ashley R. Nadeau, English

CATCH FEELINGS: CLASS AFFECT AND PERFORMATIVITY IN TEACHING ASSOCIATES' NARRATIVES , Anna Rita Napoleone, English

Dialogue and "Dialect": Character Speech in American Fiction , Carly Overfelt, English

Materializing Transfer: Writing Dispositions in a Culture of Standardized Testing , Lisha Daniels Storey, English

Theatres of War: Performing Queer Nationalism in Modernist Narratives , Elise Swinford, English

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Multimodal Assessment in Action: What We Really Value in New Media Texts , Kathleen M. Baldwin, English

Addictive Reading: Nineteenth-Century Drug Literature's Possible Worlds , Adam Colman, English

"The Book Can't Teach You That": A Case Study of Place, Writing, and Tutors' Constructions of Writing Center Work , Christopher Joseph DiBiase, English

Protest Lyrics at Work: Labor Resistance Poetry of Depression-Era Autoworkers , Rebecca S. Griffin, English

From What Remains: The Politics of Aesthetic Mourning and the Poetics of Loss in Contemporary African American Culture , Kajsa K. Henry, English

Minor Subjects in America: Everyday Childhoods of the Long Nineteenth Century , Gina M. Ocasion, English

Enduring Affective Rhetorics: Transnational Feminist Action in Digital Spaces , Jessica Ouellette, English

The School Desk and the Writing Body , Marni M. Presnall, English

Sustainable Public Intellectualism: The Rhetorics of Student Scientist-Activists , Jesse Priest, English

Prosthetizing the Soul: Reading, Seeing, and Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Devotion , Katey E. Roden, English

Dissertations from 2015 2015

“As Child in Time”: Childhood, Temporality, and 19th Century U.S. Literary Imaginings of Democracy , Marissa Carrere, English

A National Style: A Critical Historiography of the Irish Short Story , Andrew Fox, English

Homosexuality is a Poem: How Gay Poets Remodeled the Lyric, Community and the Ideology of Sex to Theorize a Gay Poetic , Christopher M. Hennessy, English

Affecting Manhood: Masculinity, Effeminacy, and the Fop Figure in Early Modern English Drama , Jessica Landis, English

Who Do You Think You Are?: Recovering the Self in the Working Class Escape Narrative , Christine M. Maksimowicz, English

Metabolizing Capital: Writing, Information, and the Biophysical World , Christian J. Pulver, English

Audible Voice in Context , Airlie S. Rose, English

The Role of Online Reading and Writing in the Literacy Practices of First-Year Writing Students , Casey Burton Soto, English

Dissertations from 2014 2014

RESURRECTION: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BLACK CHURCH IN CONTEMPORARY POPULAR CULTURE , Rachel J. Daniel, English

Seeing Blindness: The Visual and the Great War in Literary Modernism , Rachael Dworsky, English

HERE, THERE, AND IN BETWEEN: TRAVEL AS METAPHOR IN MIXED RACE NARRATIVES OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE , Colin Enriquez, English

Interactive Audience and the Internet , John R. Gallagher, English

Down from the Mountain and into the Mill: Literacy Sponsorship and Southern Appalachian Women in the New South , Emma M. Howes, English

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma in U.S. War Fiction , Ruth A.H. Lahti, English

"A More Natural Mother": Concepts of Maternity and Queenship in Early Modern England , Anne-Marie Kathleen Strohman, English

Dissertations from 2013 2013

Letters to a Dictionary: Competing Views of Language in the Reception of Webster's Third New International Dictionary , Anne Pence Bello, English

Staging the Depression: The Federal Theatre Project's Dramas of Poverty, 1935-1939 , Amy Brady, English

Our Story Has Not Been Told in any Moment: Radical Black Feminist Theatre From The Old Left to Black Power , Julie M Burrell, English

Writing for Social Action: Affect, Activism, and the Composition Classroom , Sarah Finn, English

Surviving Domestic Tensions: Existential Uncertainty in New World African Diasporic Women's Literature , Denia M Fraser, English

From Feathers to Fur: Theatrical Representations of Skin in the Medieval English Cycle Plays , Valerie Anne Gramling, English

The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama , Nathaniel C. Leonard, English

The World Inscribed: Literary Form, Travel, and the Book in England, 1580-1660 , Philip S Palmer, English

Shakespearean Signifiers , Marie H Roche, English

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Digital Commons @ USF > College of Arts and Sciences > English > Theses and Dissertations

English Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Of Mētis and Cuttlefish: Employing Collective Mētis as a Theoretical Framework for Marginalized Communities , Justiss Wilder Burry

What on earth are we doing (?): A Field-Wide Exploration of Design Courses in TPC , Jessica L. Griffith

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study of Cortez, Florida , Karla Ariel Maddox

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Using Movie Clips to Understand Vivid-Phrasal Idioms’ Meanings , Rasha Salem S. Alghamdi

An Exercise in Exceptions: Personhood, Divergency, and Ableism in the STAR TREK Franchise , Jessica A. Blackman

Vulnerable Resistance in Victorian Women’s Writing , Stephanie A. Harper

Curricular Assemblages: Understanding Student Writing Knowledge (Re)circulation Across Genres , Adam Phillips

PAD Beyond the Classroom: Integrating PAD in the Scrum Workplace , Jade S. Weiss

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Social Cues in Animated Pedagogical Agents for Second Language Learners: the Application of The Embodiment Principle in Video Design , Sahar M. Alyahya

A Field-Wide Examination of Cross-Listed Courses in Technical Professional Communication , Carolyn M. Gubala

Labor-Based Grading Contracts in the Multilingual FYC Classroom: Unpacking the Variables , Kara Kristina Larson

Land Goddesses, Divine Pigs, and Royal Tricksters: Subversive Mythologies and Imperialist Land Ownership Dispossession in Twentieth Century Irish and American Literature , Elizabeth Ricketts

Oppression, Resistance, and Empowerment: The Power Dynamics of Naming and Un-naming in African American Literature, 1794 to 2019 , Melissa "Maggie" Romigh

Generic Expectations in First Year Writing: Teaching Metadiscoursal Reflection and Revision Strategies for Increased Generic Uptake of Academic Writing , Kaelah Rose Scheff

Reframing the Gothic: Race, Gender, & Disability in Multiethnic Literature , Ashely B. Tisdale

Intersections of Race and Place in Short Fiction by New Orleans Gens de Couleur Libres , Adrienne D. Vivian

Mental Illness Diagnosis and the Construction of Stigma , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Rhetorical Roundhouse Kicks: Tae Kwon Do Pumsae Practice and Non-Western Embodied Topoi , Spencer Todd Bennington

9/11 Then and Now: How the Performance of Memorial Rhetoric by Presidents Changes to Construct Heroes , Kristen M. Grafton

Kinesthetically Speaking: Human and Animal Communication in British Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century , Dana Jolene Laitinen

Exploring Refugee Students’ Second Language (L2) Motivational Selves through Digital Visual Representations , Nhu Le

Glamour in Contemporary American Cinema , Shauna A. Maragh

Instrumentalization Theory: An Analytical Heuristic for a Heightened Social Awareness of Machine Learning Algorithms in Social Media , Andrew R. Miller

Intercessory Power: A Literary Analysis of Ethics and Care in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon , Alice Walker’s Meridian , and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child , Kelly Mills

The Power of Non-Compliant Logos: A New Materialist Approach to Comic Studies , Stephanie N. Phillips

Female Identity and Sexuality in Contemporary Indonesian Novels , Zita Rarastesa

"The Fiery Furnaces of Hell": Rhetorical Dynamism in Youngstown, OH , Joshua M. Rea

“We developed solidarity”: Family, Race, Identity, and Space-Time in Recent Multiethnic U.S. American Fiction , Kimber L. Wiggs

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Remembrance of a Wound: Ethical Mourning in the Works of Ana Menéndez, Elías Miguel Muñoz, and Junot Díaz , José Aparicio

Taking an “Ecological Turn” in the Evaluation of Rhetorical Interventions , Peter Cannon

New GTA’s and the Pre-Semester Orientation: The Need for Informed Refinement , Jessica L. Griffith

Reading Rape and Answering with Empathy: A New Approach to Sexual Assault Education for College Students , Brianna Jerman

The Karoo , The Veld , and the Co-Op: The Farm as Microcosm and Place for Change in Schreiner, Lessing, and Head , Elana D. Karshmer

"The weak are meat, and the strong do eat"; Representations of the Slaughterhouse in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature , Stephanie Lance

Language of Carnival: How Language and the Carnivalesque Challenge Hegemony , Yulia O. Nekrashevich

Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature , Elan J. Pavlinich

Because My Garmin Told Me To: A New Materialist Study of Agency and Wearable Technology , Michael Repici

No One Wants to Read What You Write: A Contextualized Analysis of Service Course Assignments , Tanya P. Zarlengo

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Beauty and the Beasts: Making Places with Literary Animals of Florida , Haili A. Alcorn

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature , Timothy M. Curran

Seeing Trauma: The Known and the Hidden in Nineteenth-Century Literature , Alisa M. DeBorde

Analysis of User Interfaces in the Sharing Economy , Taylor B. Johnson

Border-Crossing Travels Across Literary Worlds: My Shamanic Conscientization , Scott Neumeister

The Spectacle of The Bomb: Rhetorical Analysis of Risk of The Nevada Test Site in Technical Communication, Popular Press, and Pop Culture , Tiffany Wilgar

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Traveling Women and Consuming Place in Eighteenth-Century Travel Letters and Journals , Cassie Patricia Childs

“The Nations of the Field and Wood”: The Uncertain Ontology of Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , J. Kevin Jordan

Modern Mythologies: The Epic Imagination in Contemporary Indian Literature , Sucheta Kanjilal

Science in the Sun: How Science is Performed as a Spatial Practice , Natalie Kass

Body as Text: Physiognomy on the Early English Stage , Curtis Le Van

Tensions Between Democracy and Expertise in the Florida Keys , Elizabeth A. Loyer

Institutional Review Boards and Writing Studies Research: A Justice-Oriented Study , Johanna Phelps-Hillen

The Spirit of Friendship: Girlfriends in Contemporary African American Literature , Tangela La'Chelle Serls

Aphra Behn on the Contemporary Stage: Behn's Feminist Legacy and Woman-Directed Revivals of The Rover , Nicole Elizabeth Stodard

(Age)ncy in Composition Studies , Alaina Tackitt

Constructing Health Narratives: Patient Feedback in Online Communities , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Rupturing the World of Elite Athletics: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Suspension of the 2011 IAAF Regulations on Hyperandrogenism , Ella Browning

Shaping Climate Citizenship: The Ethics of Inclusion in Climate Change Communication and Policy , Lauren E. Cagle

Drop, Cover, and Hold On: Analyzing FEMA's Risk Communication through Visual Rhetoric , Samantha Jo Cosgrove

Material Expertise: Applying Object-oriented Rhetoric in Marine Policy , Zachary Parke Dixon

The Non-Identical Anglophone Bildungsroman : From the Categorical to the De-Centering Literary Subject in the Black Atlantic , Jarad Heath Fennell

Instattack: Instagram and Visual Ad Hominem Political Arguments , Sophia Evangeline Gourgiotis

Hospitable Climates: Representations of the West Indies in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , Marisa Carmen Iglesias

Chosen Champions: Medieval and Early Modern Heroes as Postcolonial Reactions to Tensions between England and Europe , Jessica Trant Labossiere

Science, Policy, and Decision Making: A Case Study of Deliberative Rhetoric and Policymaking for Coastal Adaptation in Southeast Florida , Karen Patricia Langbehn

A New Materialist Approach to Visual Rhetoric in PhotoShopBattles , Jonathan Paul Ray

Tracing the Material: Spaces and Objects in British and Irish Modernist Novels , Mary Allison Wise

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Representations of Gatsby: Ninety Years of Retrospective , Christine Anne Auger

Robust, Low Power, Discrete Gate Sizing , Anthony Joseph Casagrande

Wrestling with Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry , Paul T. Corrigan

#networkedglobe: Making the Connection between Social Media and Intercultural Technical Communication , Laura Anne Ewing

Evidence of Things Not Seen: A Semi-Automated Descriptive Phrase and Frame Analysis of Texts about the Herbicide Agent Orange , Sarah Beth Hopton

'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home , Rondrea Danielle Mathis

Relational Agency, Networked Technology, and the Social Media Aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing , Megan M. Mcintyre

Now, We Hear Through a Voice Darkly: New Media and Narratology in Cinematic Art , James Anthony Ricci

Navigating Collective Activity Systems: An Approach Towards Rhetorical Inquiry , Katherine Jesse Royce

Women's Narratives of Confinement: Domestic Chores as Threads of Resistance and Healing , Jacqueline Marie Smith

Domestic Spaces in Transition: Modern Representations of Dwelling in the Texts of Elizabeth Bowen , Shannon Tivnan

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Paradise Always Already Lost: Myth, Memory, and Matter in English Literature , Elizabeth Stuart Angello

Overcoming the 5th-Century BCE Epistemological Tragedy: A Productive Reading of Protagoras of Abdera , Ryan Alan Blank

Acts of Rebellion: The Rhetoric of Rogue Cinema , Adam Breckenridge

Material and Textual Spaces in the Poetry of Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld, and Robinson , Jessica Lauren Cook

Decolonizing Shakespeare: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in Three Adaptations of Three Plays by William Shakespeare , Angela Eward-Mangione

Risk of Compliance: Tracing Safety and Efficacy in Mef-Lariam's Licensure , Julie Marie Gerdes

Beyond Performance: Rhetoric, Collective Memory, and the Motive of Imprinting Identity , Brenda M. Grau

Subversive Beauty - Victorian Bodies of Expression , Lisa Michelle Hoffman-Reyes

Integrating Reading and Writing For Florida's ESOL Program , George Douglas Mcarthur

Responsibility and Responsiveness in the Novels of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley , Katherine Marie McGee

Ghosts, Orphans, and Outlaws: History, Family, and the Law in Toni Morrison's Fiction , Jessica Mckee

The "Defective" Generation: Disability in Modernist Literature , Deborah Susan Mcleod

Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Representation of Ethnic Futurity , Joy Ann Sanchez-Taylor

Hermes, Technical Communicator of the Gods: The Theory, Design, and Creation of a Persuasive Game for Technical Communication , Eric Walsh

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Rhetorical Spirits: Spirituality as Rhetorical Device in New Age Womanist of Color Texts , Ronisha Witlee Browdy

Disciplinarity, Crisis, and Opportunity in Technical Communication , Jason Robert Carabelli

The Terror of Possibility: A Re-evaluation and Reconception of the Sublime Aesthetic , Kurt Fawver

Unbearable Weight, Unbearable Witness: The (Im)possibility of Witnessing Eating Disorders in Cyberspace , Kristen Nicole Gay

the post- 9/11 aesthetic: repositioning the zombie film in the horror genre , Alan Edward Green, Jr.

An(other) Rhetoric: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Rhetorical Tradition , Kathleen Sandell Hardesty

Mapping Dissertation Genre Ecology , Kate Lisbeth Pantelides

Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics in a Posthuman Age , Daniel Patrick Richards

"Of That Transfigured World" : Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature , Benjamin Jude Wright

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Home > ARTSSCI > English > dissertations

English Dissertations and Theses

The English Department Dissertations and Theses Series is comprised of dissertations and thesis authored by Marquette University's English Department doctoral and master's students.

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Lifting the Postmodern Veil: Cosmopolitanism, Humanism, and Decolonization in Global Fictions of the 21st Century , Matthew Burchanoski

Gothic Transformations and Remediations in Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Wendy Fall

Milton’s Learning: Complementarity and Difference in Paradise Lost , Peter Spaulding

“The Development of the Conceptive Plot Through Early 19th-Century English Novels” , Jannea R. Thomason

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Gonzo Eternal , John Francis Brick

Intertextuality and Sociopolitical Engagement in Contemporary Anglophone Women’s Writing , Jackielee Derks

Innovation, Genre, and Authenticity in the Nineteenth-Century Irish Novel , David Aiden Kenney II

Reluctant Sons: The Irish Matrilineal Tradition of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Flann O’Brien , Jessie Wirkus Haynes

Britain's Extraterrestrial Empire: Colonial Ambition, Anxiety, and Ambivalence in Early Modern Literature , Mark Edward Wisniewski

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Re-Reading the “Culture Clash”: Alternative Ways of Reading in Indian Horse , Hailey Whetten

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

When the Foreign Became Familiar: Modernism, Expatriation, and Spatial Identities in the Twentieth Century , Danielle Kristene Clapham

Reforming Victorian Sense/Abilities: Disabilities in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Social Problem Novels , Hunter Nicole Duncan

Genre and Loss: The Impossibility of Restoration in 20th Century Detective Fiction , Kathryn Hendrickson

A Productive Failure: Existentialism in Fin de Siècle England , Maxwell Patchet

Inquiry and Provocation: The Use of Ambiguity in Sixteenth-Century English Political Satire , Jason James Zirbel

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity , Justice Hagan

The City As a Trap: 20th and 21st Century American Literature and the American Myth of Mobility , Andrew Joseph Hoffmann

The Fantastic and the First World War , Brian Kenna

Insane in the Brain, Blood, and Lungs: Gender-Specific Manifestations of Hysteria, Chlorosis, & Consumption in 19th-Century Literature , Anna P. Scanlon

Reading Multicultural Novels Melancholically: Racial Grief and Grievance in the Joy Luck Club, Beloved, and Anil's Ghost , Jennifer Arias Sweeney

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

The Ethos of Dissent: Epideictic Rhetoric and the Democratic Function of American Protest and Countercultural Literature , Jeffrey Lorino Jr

Literary Cosmopolitanisms of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy , Sunil Samuel Macwan

The View from Here: Toward a Sissy Critique , Tyler Monson

The Forbidden Zone Writers: Femininity and Anglophone Women War Writers of the Great War , Sareene Proodian

Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots , Adrianne A. Wojcik

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Changing the Victorian Habit Loop: The Body in the Poetry and Painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris , Bryan Gast

Gendering Scientific Discourse from 1790-1830: Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet , Bridget E. Kapler

Discarding Dreams and Legends: The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty , Katy L. Leedy

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Saving the Grotesque: The Grotesque System of Liberation in British Modernism (1922-1932) , Matthew Henningsen

The Pulpit's Muse: Conversive Poetics in the American Renaissance , Michael William Keller

A Single Man of Good Fortune: Postmodern Identities and Consumerism in the New Novel of Manners , Bonnie McLean

Julian of Norwich: Voicing the Vernacular , Therese Elaine Novotny

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Homecomings: Victorian British Women Travel Writers And Revisions Of Domesticity , Emily Paige Blaser

From Pastorals to Paterson: Ecology in the Poetry and Poetics of William Carlos WIlliams , Daniel Edmund Burke

Argument in Poetry: (Re)Defining the Middle English Debate in Academic, Popular, and Physical Contexts , Kathleen R. Burt

Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England , Steven A. Hackbarth

The Creation of Heaven in the Middle Ages , William Storm

(re)making The Gentleman: Genteel Masculinities And The Country Estate In The Novels Of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, And Elizabeth Gaskell , Shaunna Kay Wilkinson

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Brides, Department Stores, Westerns, and Scrapbooks--The Everyday Lives of Teenage Girls in the 1940s , Carly Anger

Placed People: Rootedness in G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and Wendell Berry , David Harden

Rhetorics Of Girlhood Trauma In Writing By Holly Goddard Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Sandra Cisneros, And Jamaica Kincaid , Stephanie Marie Stella

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

A Victorian Christmas in Hell: Yuletide Ghosts and Necessary Pleasures in the Age of Capital , Brandon Chitwood

"Be-Holde the First Acte of this Tragedy" : Generic Symbiosis and Cross-Pollination in Jacobean Drama and the Early Modern Prose Novella , Karen Ann Zyck Galbraith

Pamela: Or, Virtue Reworded: The Texts, Paratexts, and Revisions that Redefine Samuel Richardson's Pamela , Jarrod Hurlbert

Violence and Masculinity in American Fiction, 1950-1975 , Magdalen McKinley

Gender Politics in the Novels of Eliza Haywood , Susan Muse

Destabilizing Tradition: Gender, Sexuality, and Postnational Identity in Four Novels by Irish Women, 1960-2000 , Sarah Nestor

Truth Telling: Testimony and Evidence in the Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell , Rebecca Parker Fedewa

Spirit of the Psyche: Carl Jung's and Victor White's Influence on Flannery O'Connor's Fiction , Paul Wakeman

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Performing the Audience: Constructing Playgoing in Early Modern Drama , Eric Dunnum

Paule Marshall's Critique of Contemporary Neo-Imperialisms Through the Trope of Travel , Michelle Miesen Felix

Hermeneutics, Poetry, and Spenser: Augustinian Exegesis and the Renaissance Epic , Denna Iammarino-Falhamer

Encompassing the Intolerable: Laughter, Memory, and Inscription in the Fiction of John McGahern , John Keegan Malloy

Regional Consciousness in American Literature, 1860-1930 , Kelsey Louise Squire

The Ethics of Ekphrasis: The Turn to Responsible Rhetoric in Mid-Twentieth Century American Poetry , Joshua Scott Steffey

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Cognitive Architectures: Structures of Passion in Joanna Baillie's Dramas , Daniel James Bergen

On Trial: Restorative Justice in the Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley Family Fictions , Colleen M. Fenno

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

What's the point to eschatology : multiple religions and terminality in James Joyce's Finnegans wake , Martin R. Brick

Economizing Characters: Harriet Martineau and the Problems of Poverty in Victorian Literature, Culture and Law , Mary Colleen Willenbring

Submissions from 2008 2008

"An improbable fiction": The marriage of history and romance in Shakespeare's Henriad , Marcia Eppich-Harris

Bearing the Mark of the Social: Notes Towards a Cosmopolitan Bildungsroman , Megan M. Muthupandiyan

The Gothic Novel and the Invention of the Middle-Class Reader: Northanger Abbey As Case Study , Tenille Nowak

Not Just a Novel of Epic Proportions: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man As Modern American Epic , Dana Edwards Prodoehl

Recovering the Radicals: Women Writers, Reform, and Nationalist Modes of Revolutionary Discourse , Mark J. Zunac

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

"The Sweet and the Bitter": Death and Dying in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , Amy M. Amendt-Raduege

The Games Men Play: Madness and Masculinity in Post-World War II American Fiction, 1946-1964 , Thomas P. Durkin

Denise Levertov: Through An Ecofeminist Lens , Katherine A. Hanson

The Wit of Wrestling: Devotional-Aesthetic Tradition in Christina Rossetti's Poetry , Maria M.E. Keaton

Genderless Bodies: Stigma and the Myth of Womanhood , Ellen M. Letizia

Envy and Jealousy in the Novels of the Brontës: A Synoptic Discernment , Margaret Ann McCann

Technologies of the Late Medieval Self: Ineffability, Distance, and Subjectivity in the Book of Margery Kempe , Crystal L. Mueller

"Finding-- a Map-- to That Place Called Home": The Journey from Silence to Recovery in Patrick McCabe's Carn and Breakfast on Pluto , Valerie A. Murrenus Pilmaier

Emily Dickinson's Ecocentric Pastoralism , Moon-ju Shin

The American Jeremiad in Civil War Literature , Jacob Hadley Stratman

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Literary Art in Times of Crisis: The Proto-Totalitarian Anxiety of Melville, James, and Twain , Matthew J. Darling

(Re) Writing Genre: Narrative Conventions and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison , Jennifer Lee Jordan Heinert

"Amsolookly Kersse": Clothing in Finnegan's Wake , Catherine Simpson Kalish

"Do Your Will": Shakespeare's Use of the Rhetoric of Seduction in Four Plays , Jason James Nado

Woman in Emblem: Locating Authority in the Work and Identity of Katherine Philips (1632-1664) , Susan L. Stafinbil

When the Bough Breaks: Poetry on Abortion , Wendy A. Weaver

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Heroic Destruction: Shame and Guilt Cultures in Medieval Heroic Poetry , Karl E. Boehler

Poe and Early (Un)American Drama , Amy C. Branam

Grammars of Assent: Constructing Poetic Authority in An Age of Science , William Myles Carroll III

This Place is Not a Place: The Constructed Scene in the Works of Sir Walter Scott , Colin J. Marlaire

Cognitive Narratology: A Practical Approach to the Reader-Writer Relationship , Debra Ann Ripley

Theses/Dissertations from 2004 2004

Defoe and the Pirates: Function of Genre Conventions in Raiding Narratives , William J. Dezoma

Creative Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century Courtship Novel , Michelle Ruggaber Dougherty

Exclusionary Politics: Mourning and Modernism in the Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew , Donna Decker Schuster

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

Toward a Re-Formed Confession: Johann Gerhard's Sacred Meditations and "Repining Restlessnesse" in the Poetry of George Herbert , Erik P. Ankerberg

Idiographic Spaces: Representation, Ideology and Realism in the Postmodern British Novel , Gordon B. McConnell

Theses/Dissertations from 2002 2002

Reading into It: Wallace Stegner's Novelistic Sense of Time and Place , Colin C. Irvine

Brisbane and Beyond: Revising Social Capitalism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America , Michael C. Mattek

Theses/Dissertations from 2001 2001

Christians and Mimics in W. B. Yeats' Collected Poems , Patrick Mulrooney

Renaissance Roles and the Process of Social Change , John Wieland

'Straunge Disguize': Allegory and Its Discontents in Spenser's Faerie Queene , Galina Ivanovna Yermolenko

Theses/Dissertations from 2000 2000

Reading American Women's Autobiography: Spheres of Identity, Spheres of Influence , Amy C. Getty

"Making Strange": The Art and Science of Selfhood in the Works of John Banville , Heather Maureen Moran

Writing Guadalupe: Mediacion and (mis)translation in borderland text(o)s , Jenny T Olin-Shanahan

Writing Guadalupe: Mediacion and (Mis)Translation in Borderland Text(o)s , Jenny T. Olin-Shanahan

Theses/Dissertations from 1999 1999

Setting the Word Against the Word: The Search for Self-Understanding in Richard II , Richard J. Erable

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Home > ACADEMIC-UNITS > College of Arts and Sciences > Department of English Language and Literature > ENGLISH_ETD

MA in English Theses

Theses/dissertations from 2018 2018.

Implementing Critical Analysis in the Classroom to Negate Southern Stereotypes in Multi-Media , Julie Broyhill

Fan Fiction in the English Language Arts Classroom , Kristen Finucan

Transferring the Mantle: The Voice of the Poet Prophet in the Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson , Heidi Brown Hyde

The Effects of Social Media as Low-Stakes Writing Tasks , Roxanne Loving

Student and Teacher Perceptions of Multiliterate Assignments Utilizing 21st Century Skills , Jessica Kennedy Miller

The Storytellers’ Trauma: A Place to Call Home in Caribbean Literature , Ilari Pass

Post Title IX Representations of Professional Female Athletes , Emily Shaw

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

“Not as She is” but as She is Expected to Be: Representations, Limitations, and Implications of the “Woman” and Womanhood in Selected Victorian Literature and Contemporary Chick Lit. , Amanda Ellen Bridgers

The Intrinsic Factors that Influence Successful College Writing , Kenneth Dean Carlstrom

"Where nature was most plain and pure": The Sacred Locus Amoenus and its Profane Threat in Andrew Marvell's Pastoral Poetry , James Brent King

Colorblind: How Cable News and the “Cult of Objectivity” Normalized Racism in Donald Trump’s Presidential Campaign , Amanda Leeann Shoaf

Gaming The Comic Book: Turning The Page on How Comics and Videogames Intersect as Interactive, Digital Experiences , Joseph Austin Thurmond

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

The Nature, Function, and Value of Emojis as Contemporary Tools of Digital Interpersonal Communication , Nicole L. Bliss-Carroll

Exile and Identity: Chaim Potok's Contribution to Jewish-American Literature , Sarah Anne Hamner

A Woman's Voice and Identity: Narrative Métissage as a Solution to Voicelessness in American Literature , Kali Lauren Oldacre

Pop, Hip Hop, and Empire, Study of a New Pedagogical Approach in a Developmental Reading and English Class , Karen Denise Taylor

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Abandoning the Shadows and Seizing the Stage: A Perspective on a Feminine Discourse of Resistance Theatre as Informed by the Work of Susanna Centlivre, Eliza Haywood, Frances Sheridan, Hannah Cowley, and the Sistren Theatre Collective , Brianna A. Bleymaier

Mexican Immigrants as "Other": An Interdisciplinary Analysis of U.S. Immigration Legislation and Political Cartoons , Olivia Teague Morgan

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

"I Am a Living Enigma - And You Want To Know the Right Reading of Me": Gender Anxiety in Wilkie Collins's The Haunted Hotel and The Guilty River , Hannah Allford

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Gender Performance and the Reclamation of Masculinity in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns , John William Salyers Jr.

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

"That's a Lotta Faith We're Putting in a Word": Language, Religion, and Heteroglossia as Oppression and Resistance in Comtemporary British Dystopian Fiction , Haley Cassandra Gambrell

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Mirroring the Madness: Caribbean Female Development in the Works of Elizabeth Nunez , Lauren Delli Santi

"Atlas Shrugged" and third-wave feminism: An unlikely alliance , Paul McMahan

"Sit back down where you belong, in the corner of my bar with your high heels on": The use of cross-dressing in order to achieve female agency in Shakespeare's transvestite comedies , Heather Lynn Wright

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Between the Way to the Cross and Emmaus: Deconstructing Identity in the 325 CE Council of Nicaea and "The Shack" , Trevar Simmons

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English Department Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Muscadine: Poems , Albert Hosia Jerriod Avant

MIDDLE CHILDREN OF HISTORY: MALE-AUTHORED POST-1960s FICTION & THE NIHILISM OF WHITE MALE PROTAGONISTS , Emma C. Baughman

THE (MIS)FORMATION OF IDENTITY IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S NOVELS: IDEOLOGY, COMMUNITY, AND THE SELF , Youngji Cho

COMPUTATIONAL CLOSE READING: A CRITIQUE OF DIGITAL LITERARY METHODOLOGY , Damiano Consilvio

DIAGNOSTIC BRAINS, EXPERIENTIAL MINDS AND METAMODERNISM: MCEWAN, SELF, AND MCCARTHY AS CASE STUDIES , Mohamed Anis Ferchichi

RESISTING ARREST: AN (AUTO-THEORETICAL) ESSAY ON PRISON LITERATURE , James A. Ferry

WAITING TOO LONG TO MOVE AT GREEN LIGHTS , Michael Landreth

IS IT FREEDOM YOU WANT?: FEMINIST MORMON HOUSEWIVES “DEAR FMH” COLUMN AS A PARTICIPANT IN THE ETHICS OF CARE IN AMERICAN WOMEN’S ADVICE COLUMNS , Julia Unger

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

THE TEXT(TILES) OF ADINKRA SYMBOLS: WEST AFRICAN ART, GENDER, & POETIC TRANSLATIONS , Rachel A. Ansong

BLACK FEMINIST AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: HOW IDENTITY CAN AFFECT PEER REVIEW PRACTICES IN THE COLLEGE WRITING CLASSROOM , Eileen M. James

TO SCALE DRAGONS: COMPRISING THINGS LOST AND TWO ESSAYS ON FANTASY , André V. Katkov

THE ALICE ATOM COMPENDIUM , Nick Mendillo

BROKEN DOZER, HAUNTED VALE: THE ECOPOETICS OF AMBIENT LANGUAGE , Andrew Merecicky

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

TRUE CRIME, WOMEN, AND SENSATIONALIZED REPRESENTATIONS IN THE ITALIAN AMERICAN IMAGINARY , Francesca Borrione

FANTASIZING REPRODUCTION: THE BIOLOGIZATION OF THE DESIRE FOR PROGRESS IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE , Xinqiang Chang

GENDERED & GENREFIED BODIES: HEROISM AS PRODUCTION AND PERFORMANCE IN SWORD & SORCERY FANTASY , Anthony Conrad Chieffalo

INTIMATE DISTANCES: AN ARCHIPELAGO , Elizabeth Foulke

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

PREPARING FOR DEATH: CANNIBALISM, CONSUMPTION AND INCORPORATION IN WOMEN’S SHIPWRECK NARRATIVES , Danielle Cofer

FEMALE COMIC GROTESQUE CHARACTERS IN VICTORIAN NOVELS: INVESTIGATING THE POSSIBILITIES OF LIMINALITY , Barbara A. Farnworth

READING THE READER: ANALYZING DEPICTIONS OF MALE READERS IN SERIAL VICTORIAN FICTION , Ashton Foley-Schramm

REORIENTING THE FEMALE GOTHIC: CURIOSITY AND THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE , Jenna Guitar

ECOLOGIES OF MATERIALITY AND AESTHETICS IN BRITISH MODERNIST WAR-TIME LITERATURE, 1890-1939 , Molly Volanth Hall

FICTIONS OF CAPTIVITY: RACIALIZING RELIGION IN EARLY U.S. LITERATURE AND CULTURE , Serap Hidir

BETWEEN SIBLINGS: HOW THE SIBLING METAPHOR REIMAGINES AFFECTIVE ENTANGLEMENTS IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL , Beth Leonardo Silva

OPENING CEREMONY: A WRITING PRACTICE TOWARDS QUEER FUTURITY , Laura Marie Marciano

“THE SKIPPING KING”: MASCULINITY AND EFFEMINACY IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA , Danielle Johanna Sanfilippo

THE MARK OF THE VANISHING READER: INTRADIEGETIC INTERACTION IN MULTIMODAL NARRATIVE , Catherine Ann Winters

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

PRACTICING TRANSLINGUALISM: FACULTY CONCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES , Adrienne Jones Daly

TO BE CONTINUED: SERIALITY IN NEW MEDIA , Ryan Engley

CONSTRUCTING TRANSGRESSION: CRIMINALITY IN EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE , Charles Kell

WELCOME TO THE CLUB: AN ARCHIVAL INQUIRY INTO THE DEWEY LABORATORY SCHOOL AS RHETORICAL EDUCATION , Krysten Manke

“THERE IS NO RACISM IN CUBA”: A FIELD STUDY OF THE “POST-RACE” RHETORIC OF MODERN CUBA , Clarissa J. Walker

CHARMED MODERNISMS: FANTASIES OF SOCIALITY AND DIFFERENCE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE , Kara Watts

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

THE NEW SINCERITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE , Matthew J. Balliro

Understanding Reading Sponsorship Through Analysis of First-Year Composition Students’ Literacy Narratives , Nancy A. Benson

Widening the Sphere: Mid-to-Late Victorian Popular Fiction, Gender Representation, and Canonicity , Anna J. Brecke

Demonstrating Feminist Metic Intelligence Through the Embodied Rhetorical Practices of Julia Child , Lindy E. Briggette

The Men That Sleep Built , Samuel Simas

Questing Feminism: Narrative Tensions and Magical Women in Modern Fantasy , Kimberly Wickham

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Writing Irish America: Communal Memory and the Narrative of Nation in Diaspora , Beth O'Leary Anish

Speaking Truth to Power: Stand-Up Comedians as Sophists, Jesters, Public Intellectuals and Activists , Jillian Belanger

Architectures of Captivity: Imagining Freedom in Antebellum America , Rachel Boccio

Virginia Woolf's Pedagogical Art , William R. Bowden

Undergraduate Student Perspectives on Electronic Portfolio Assessment in College Composition Courses , Bridget Fullerton

Metadata and Relational Architecture: Advancing Arrangement, Agency, and Access with New Methodology , Jenna Morton-Aiken

Agency in Eating Disorders: American Literary and Visual Memoirs of Anorexia and Bulimia , Jenny Platz

To Start, Continue, and Conclude: Foregrounding Narrative Production in Serial Fiction Publishing , Gabriel E. Romaguera

"You Will Hold This Book in Your Hands": The Novel and Corporeality in the New Media Ecology , Jason Shrontz

Exploring the Use of NoRedInk as a Tool for Composition Instruction , Alyson Snowe

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

You Are What You Eat: Investigating Food Discourse and Digitally-Mediated Identities , Katelyn Leigh Burton

Exquisite Clutter: Material Culture and the Scottish Reinvention of the Adventure Narrative , Rebekah C. Greene

“A Peculiar Power of Perception”: Scottish Enlightenment Rhetoric and the New Aesthetic of Language , Rosaleen Greene-Smith Keefe

Absurdity and Artistry in Twentieth Century American War Literature , Brittany B. Hirth

The Color of Grammar and the Surface of Language: 20th Century Avant-Garde Poetics in Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, and Blaise Cendrars , Sarah E. Kruse

Consent Puzzles: Narrative Ambiguities of Girls' Sexual Agency in Literature and Film from the 1990s , Michele Meek

John Dewey's Letters from Asia: Implications for Redefining "Openness" in Rhetoric and Composition , Karen Pierce Shea

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Automated Essay Evaluation and the Computational Paradigm: Machine Scoring Enters the Classroom , Catherine M. Barrett

Bringing the World Inside: British Modernism and Taste – Gustatory, Social, and Aesthetic , Michael David Becker

Permeable Boundaries: Globalizing Form in Contemporary American and British Literature , Nancy Caronia

AT HOME IN THE DIASPORA: DOMESTICITY AND NATIONALISM IN POSTWAR AND CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN-BRITISH FICTION , Kim Caroline Evelyn

AN EXAMINATION OF ARGUMENTATION IN UNDERGRADUATE COMPOSITION TEXTBOOKS , Wendy Lee Grosskopf

Stories That Shape: The Work of Writing Program Administration , Marcy Isabella

OFF THE HIP: A THERMODYNAMICS OF THE COOL , Rebecca Kanost

INSOMNIA AND IDENTITY: THE DISCURSIVE FUNCTION OF SLEEPLESSNESS IN MODERNIST LITERATURE , Sarah Kingston

TEMPERANCE IN THE AGE OF FEELING: SENSIBILITY, PEDAGOGY, AND POETRY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY , Sarah Hattie Maitland

UNCONSCIOUS STATES: A NOVEL , Rachel May

Life vs. Unlife: Interspecies Solidarity and Companionism in Contemporary American Literature , Barnaby McLaughlin

TOWARD A PSYCHOSOCIAL UNDERSTANDING OF SUICIDE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE OF THE 1990’S , Sara E. Murphy

THE SENTINELLE AFFAIR: A STUDY IN MULTILINGUAL LANGUAGE PRACTICES , Jason Peters

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Firefighters’ Multimodal Literacy Practices , Timothy R. Amidon

ARGUMENT, RHETORIC, AND TRANSCENDENCE: “THE ADHERENCE OF MINDS” WITHIN THE DISCOURSE OF SPIRITUALITY , Gavin Forrest Hurley

OPTING-IN ONLINE: PARTICIPANTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC FORUM COMMUNITIES , Jennifer C. Lee

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

LIGHTNING-ROD MEN, MAGNETIC LIVES, BODIES ELECTRIC: ELECTROMAGNETIC CORPOREALITY IN EMERSON, MELVILLE, & WHITMAN , James Patrick Gorham

Women's Historiography in Late Medieval European Literature: Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan , Eva M. Jones

SAVING PRINCE PEACH: A STUDY OF “GAYMERS” AND DIGITAL LGBT/GAMING RHETORICS , M. William MacKnight

Affective Reconfigurations: A New Politics of Difference , Laurie Rodrigues

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

Manifestoes: A Study in Genre , Stevens Russell Amidon

Making the Grade: Academic Literacies and First-Generation College Students in a Highly Selective Liberal Arts College , Theresa Perri Ammirati

Theses/Dissertations from 2000 2000

The Colors and Shadows of My Word(s) , Lydia A. Saravia

Theses/Dissertations from 1999 1999

Toni Morrison: Rethinking the Past in a Postcolonial Context , Hanan Abdullatif

Theses/Dissertations from 1998 1998

(Re)Envisioned (Pre)History: Feminism, Goddess Politics, and Readership Analysis of The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of the Horses , Glenna M. Andrade

Theses/Dissertations from 1997 1997

Indicated Silences in American Novels , Catherine Adamowicz

Cynics, Spaces, and Subjects: Toward a Tactical Ethics of Rhetoric , Kristen Francis Kennedy

Theses/Dissertations from 1995 1995

Our Beloved Lizzie; Constructing an American Legend , Gabriela Schalow Adler

My Cambodian Son: Another Race: Another Culture , Patricia Russell

Theses/Dissertations from 1994 1994

An NEH Fellowship Examined: Social Networks and Composition History , Stephanie A. Almagno

The "Fine Line" of Otto Rank , Philip J. Hecht

Theses/Dissertations from 1993 1993

REWRITING THE BODY POLITIC: THE ART OF ILLNESS AND THE PRODUCTION OF DESIRE IN THE DIARIES AND JOURNALS OF ALICE JAMES AND ACHSA SPRAGUE , Susan Grant

Theses/Dissertations from 1992 1992

*Baby Shoe Tattoo*: A Film Script and Critical Preface , Anthony R. Amore Jr.

Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Approach to Understanding the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft , James A. Anderson

Lilacs in November , Marjorie L. Briody

The Jeovah Imperative: Images of Incest and Blood Sacrifice in Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" and Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood" , Penelope Hope Goff

Theses/Dissertations from 1988 1988

Sub-Versions of History in Three Twentieth-Century Novels , Gabriella Schalow Adler

Joyce and the Dialogical: Literary Carnivalization in Ulysses , Stephanie A. Almagno

Home Before Morning: A Teleplay , Susan E. Apshaga

"Dear Uncle George" Ezra Pound's Letters to Congressman Tinkham of Massachusetts , Philip J. Burns

Theses/Dissertations from 1984 1984

Style in Children's Literature: A Comparison of Passages from Books for Adults and for Children , Celia Catlett Anderson

Theses/Dissertations from 1978 1978

Robert Frost: A Twentieth Century Poet of Man and Nature , Pauline Elaine Allen

Theses/Dissertations from 1977 1977

CHAUCER AND THE GAME OF LOVE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS, THE HOUSE OF FAME AND THE PARLIAMENT OF FOWLES , Stephen Hyginus Murphy

Theses/Dissertations from 1972 1972

Man's Relationship to Nature and Society in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter , Sherry E. Adams

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• Dissertation

What Is a Dissertation? | Guide, Examples, & Template

A dissertation is a long-form piece of academic writing based on original research conducted by you. It is usually submitted as the final step in order to finish a PhD program.

Your dissertation is probably the longest piece of writing you’ve ever completed. It requires solid research, writing, and analysis skills, and it can be intimidating to know where to begin.

Your department likely has guidelines related to how your dissertation should be structured. When in doubt, consult with your supervisor.

You can also download our full dissertation template in the format of your choice below. The template includes a ready-made table of contents with notes on what to include in each chapter, easily adaptable to your department’s requirements.

Download Word template Download Google Docs template

• In the US, a dissertation generally refers to the collection of research you conducted to obtain a PhD.
• In other countries (such as the UK), a dissertation often refers to the research you conduct to obtain your bachelor’s or master’s degree.

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Table of contents

Dissertation committee and prospectus process, how to write and structure a dissertation, acknowledgements or preface, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review, methodology, reference list, proofreading and editing, defending your dissertation, free checklist and lecture slides.

When you’ve finished your coursework, as well as any comprehensive exams or other requirements, you advance to “ABD” (All But Dissertation) status. This means you’ve completed everything except your dissertation.

Prior to starting to write, you must form your committee and write your prospectus or proposal . Your committee comprises your adviser and a few other faculty members. They can be from your own department, or, if your work is more interdisciplinary, from other departments. Your committee will guide you through the dissertation process, and ultimately decide whether you pass your dissertation defense and receive your PhD.

Your prospectus is a formal document presented to your committee, usually orally in a defense, outlining your research aims and objectives and showing why your topic is relevant . After passing your prospectus defense, you’re ready to start your research and writing.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
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• Style consistency

See an example

The structure of your dissertation depends on a variety of factors, such as your discipline, topic, and approach. Dissertations in the humanities are often structured more like a long essay , building an overall argument to support a central thesis , with chapters organized around different themes or case studies.

However, hard science and social science dissertations typically include a review of existing works, a methodology section, an analysis of your original research, and a presentation of your results , presented in different chapters.

Dissertation examples

We’ve compiled a list of dissertation examples to help you get started.

• Example dissertation #1: Heat, Wildfire and Energy Demand: An Examination of Residential Buildings and Community Equity (a dissertation by C. A. Antonopoulos about the impact of extreme heat and wildfire on residential buildings and occupant exposure risks).
• Example dissertation #2: Exploring Income Volatility and Financial Health Among Middle-Income Households (a dissertation by M. Addo about income volatility and declining economic security among middle-income households).
• Example dissertation #3: The Use of Mindfulness Meditation to Increase the Efficacy of Mirror Visual Feedback for Reducing Phantom Limb Pain in Amputees (a dissertation by N. S. Mills about the effect of mindfulness-based interventions on the relationship between mirror visual feedback and the pain level in amputees with phantom limb pain).

The very first page of your document contains your dissertation title, your name, department, institution, degree program, and submission date. Sometimes it also includes your student number, your supervisor’s name, and the university’s logo.

Read more about title pages

The acknowledgements section is usually optional and gives space for you to thank everyone who helped you in writing your dissertation. This might include your supervisors, participants in your research, and friends or family who supported you. In some cases, your acknowledgements are part of a preface.

Read more about acknowledgements Read more about prefaces

The abstract is a short summary of your dissertation, usually about 150 to 300 words long. Though this may seem very short, it’s one of the most important parts of your dissertation, because it introduces your work to your audience.

Your abstract should:

• State your main topic and the aims of your research
• Describe your methods
• Summarize your main results
• State your conclusions

Read more about abstracts

The table of contents lists all of your chapters, along with corresponding subheadings and page numbers. This gives your reader an overview of your structure and helps them easily navigate your document.

Remember to include all main parts of your dissertation in your table of contents, even the appendices. It’s easy to generate a table automatically in Word if you used heading styles. Generally speaking, you only include level 2 and level 3 headings, not every subheading you included in your finished work.

Read more about tables of contents

While not usually mandatory, it’s nice to include a list of figures and tables to help guide your reader if you have used a lot of these in your dissertation. It’s easy to generate one of these in Word using the Insert Caption feature.

Read more about lists of figures and tables

Similarly, if you have used a lot of abbreviations (especially industry-specific ones) in your dissertation, you can include them in an alphabetized list of abbreviations so that the reader can easily look up their meanings.

Read more about lists of abbreviations

In addition to the list of abbreviations, if you find yourself using a lot of highly specialized terms that you worry will not be familiar to your reader, consider including a glossary. Here, alphabetize the terms and include a brief description or definition.

Read more about glossaries

The introduction serves to set up your dissertation’s topic, purpose, and relevance. It tells the reader what to expect in the rest of your dissertation. The introduction should:

• Establish your research topic , giving the background information needed to contextualize your work
• Narrow down the focus and define the scope of your research
• Discuss the state of existing research on the topic, showing your work’s relevance to a broader problem or debate
• Clearly state your research questions and objectives
• Outline the flow of the rest of your work

Everything in the introduction should be clear, engaging, and relevant. By the end, the reader should understand the what, why, and how of your research.

Read more about introductions

A formative part of your research is your literature review . This helps you gain a thorough understanding of the academic work that already exists on your topic.

Literature reviews encompass:

• Finding relevant sources (e.g., books and journal articles)
• Assessing the credibility of your sources
• Critically analyzing and evaluating each source
• Drawing connections between them (e.g., themes, patterns, conflicts, or gaps) to strengthen your overall point

A literature review is not merely a summary of existing sources. Your literature review should have a coherent structure and argument that leads to a clear justification for your own research. It may aim to:

• Address a gap in the literature or build on existing knowledge
• Take a new theoretical or methodological approach to your topic
• Propose a solution to an unresolved problem or advance one side of a theoretical debate

Read more about literature reviews

Theoretical framework

Your literature review can often form the basis for your theoretical framework. Here, you define and analyze the key theories, concepts, and models that frame your research.

Read more about theoretical frameworks

Your methodology chapter describes how you conducted your research, allowing your reader to critically assess its credibility. Your methodology section should accurately report what you did, as well as convince your reader that this was the best way to answer your research question.

A methodology section should generally include:

• The overall research approach ( quantitative vs. qualitative ) and research methods (e.g., a longitudinal study )
• Your data collection methods (e.g., interviews or a controlled experiment )
• Details of where, when, and with whom the research took place
• Any tools and materials you used (e.g., computer programs, lab equipment)
• Your data analysis methods (e.g., statistical analysis , discourse analysis )
• An evaluation or justification of your methods

Read more about methodology sections

Your results section should highlight what your methodology discovered. You can structure this section around sub-questions, hypotheses , or themes, but avoid including any subjective or speculative interpretation here.

Your results section should:

• Concisely state each relevant result together with relevant descriptive statistics (e.g., mean , standard deviation ) and inferential statistics (e.g., test statistics , p values )
• Briefly state how the result relates to the question or whether the hypothesis was supported
• Report all results that are relevant to your research questions , including any that did not meet your expectations.

Additional data (including raw numbers, full questionnaires, or interview transcripts) can be included as an appendix. You can include tables and figures, but only if they help the reader better understand your results. Read more about results sections

Your discussion section is your opportunity to explore the meaning and implications of your results in relation to your research question. Here, interpret your results in detail, discussing whether they met your expectations and how well they fit with the framework that you built in earlier chapters. Refer back to relevant source material to show how your results fit within existing research in your field.

Some guiding questions include:

• What do your results mean?
• Why do your results matter?
• What limitations do the results have?

If any of the results were unexpected, offer explanations for why this might be. It’s a good idea to consider alternative interpretations of your data.

Read more about discussion sections

Your dissertation’s conclusion should concisely answer your main research question, leaving your reader with a clear understanding of your central argument and emphasizing what your research has contributed to the field.

In some disciplines, the conclusion is just a short section preceding the discussion section, but in other contexts, it is the final chapter of your work. Here, you wrap up your dissertation with a final reflection on what you found, with recommendations for future research and concluding remarks.

It’s important to leave the reader with a clear impression of why your research matters. What have you added to what was already known? Why is your research necessary for the future of your field?

Read more about conclusions

It is crucial to include a reference list or list of works cited with the full details of all the sources that you used, in order to avoid plagiarism. Be sure to choose one citation style and follow it consistently throughout your dissertation. Each style has strict and specific formatting requirements.

Common styles include MLA , Chicago , and APA , but which style you use is often set by your department or your field.

Create APA citations Create MLA citations

Your dissertation should contain only essential information that directly contributes to answering your research question. Documents such as interview transcripts or survey questions can be added as appendices, rather than adding them to the main body.

Read more about appendices

Making sure that all of your sections are in the right place is only the first step to a well-written dissertation. Don’t forget to leave plenty of time for editing and proofreading, as grammar mistakes and sloppy spelling errors can really negatively impact your work.

Dissertations can take up to five years to write, so you will definitely want to make sure that everything is perfect before submitting. You may want to consider using a professional dissertation editing service , AI proofreader or grammar checker to make sure your final project is perfect prior to submitting.

After your written dissertation is approved, your committee will schedule a defense. Similarly to defending your prospectus, dissertation defenses are oral presentations of your work. You’ll present your dissertation, and your committee will ask you questions. Many departments allow family members, friends, and other people who are interested to join as well.

After your defense, your committee will meet, and then inform you whether you have passed. Keep in mind that defenses are usually just a formality; most committees will have resolved any serious issues with your work with you far prior to your defense, giving you ample time to fix any problems.

As you write your dissertation, you can use this simple checklist to make sure you’ve included all the essentials.

Checklist: Dissertation

My title page includes all information required by my university.

I have included acknowledgements thanking those who helped me.

My abstract provides a concise summary of the dissertation, giving the reader a clear idea of my key results or arguments.

I have created a table of contents to help the reader navigate my dissertation. It includes all chapter titles, but excludes the title page, acknowledgements, and abstract.

My introduction leads into my topic in an engaging way and shows the relevance of my research.

My introduction clearly defines the focus of my research, stating my research questions and research objectives .

My introduction includes an overview of the dissertation’s structure (reading guide).

I have conducted a literature review in which I (1) critically engage with sources, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of existing research, (2) discuss patterns, themes, and debates in the literature, and (3) address a gap or show how my research contributes to existing research.

I have clearly outlined the theoretical framework of my research, explaining the theories and models that support my approach.

I have thoroughly described my methodology , explaining how I collected data and analyzed data.

I have concisely and objectively reported all relevant results .

I have (1) evaluated and interpreted the meaning of the results and (2) acknowledged any important limitations of the results in my discussion .

I have clearly stated the answer to my main research question in the conclusion .

I have clearly explained the implications of my conclusion, emphasizing what new insight my research has contributed.

I have provided relevant recommendations for further research or practice.

If relevant, I have included appendices with supplemental information.

I have included an in-text citation every time I use words, ideas, or information from a source.

I have listed every source in a reference list at the end of my dissertation.

I have consistently followed the rules of my chosen citation style .

I have followed all formatting guidelines provided by my university.

Congratulations!

The end is in sight—your dissertation is nearly ready to submit! Make sure it's perfectly polished with the help of a Scribbr editor.

If you’re an educator, feel free to download and adapt these slides to teach your students about structuring a dissertation.

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Home > FACULTIES > English > ENGLISH-ETD

English Theses and Dissertations

This collection contains theses and dissertations from the Department of English, collected from the Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Theses/Dissertations from 2024 2024

The Ecology of American Noir , Katrina Younes

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Poetics in Transit: Indigenous, Diasporic, and Settler Women’s Contemporary Writing in Canada , Christine Campana

Bodies of Silence and Space: Victimhood, Complicity, and Resistance in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale , Sana H. Mufti

Capacious Feminism: Intimacy and Otherness in Mina Loy's Poetry , Elise Ottavino

Romantic Citation and the Receding Future , Andrew Sargent

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Love-Worlds: Performance of Love as Decolonial Worldmaking in India and in Indigenous Theatre on Northern Turtle Island , Sheetala Bhat

Diaspora and Abjection of a Nowhere in Particular: Theorizing the Hyphen in Iranian-Canadian Narratives , Mahdiyeh Ezzatikarami

Nostalgic Metafiction: The Adventure Fiction of Stevenson, Kipling, and Conrad , Hanji Lee

Men under Microscopes: “Medical Gaze” and Homeostasis in Victorian Realist Literature , Nida Rashid

The Time Helix: Nonlinear Narrative Structures and the Paradox of Delayed Simultaneity , Jaclyn A. Reed

Representing Women and the 1947 Partition in Hindi Cinema and Television (1948-Present) , Nidhi Shrivastava

Buried Feelings, Standing Stones: Secularity, Animism, and Late-Victorian Pagan Revivalism , Jeff Swim

Speaking Chastity: Female Speech, Silence, and the Strategic Performance of Chaste Identity in Early Modern Drama and Women's Writing , Lisa Templin

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Unsettling Sympathy: Indigenous and Settler Conversations from the Great Lakes Region, 1820-1860 , Erin Akerman

Unmade and Unmanned Men: Reading Traumatized Masculinity in Late Nineteenth-Century British Adventure Fiction through the Lens of the Indian “Mutiny” of 1857 , Madison A. Bettle

Artificial Frontiers, Simulated Indigeneity: Western Big-Budget Open World Games and the Settler Colonial Imaginary , Adam Bowes

Bible Translations And Literary Responses: Re-reading Missionary Interventions In Africa Through Local Perspectives , Chinelo Ezenwa

Capital Distress: Productive Citizenship and Mental Health in Adolescent Literature , Jeremy TL Johnston

Refusing Interpretation: Waste Ecologies in Victorian Fiction and Prose , Nahmi Lee

Resonances: An Examination of Republication Through Four Case Studies , F S. Nakhaie

“The seal set on our nationhood”: Canadian Literary Responses to the South African War (1899-1902) , Alicia C. Robinet

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Exquisite Corpses: Markedness, Gender, and Death in Video Games , Meghan Blythe Adams

Critiquing Psychiatry, Narrating Trauma: Madness in Twentieth-Century North American Literature and Film , Sarah Blanchette

Duration and Depravity: Religious and Secular Temporality in Puritanism and the American Gothic , Taylor Kraayenbrink

Sacred Mnemonics in Late Medieval England: ars memoria in the Hagiography of Osbern Bokenham , Erica C. Leighton

Malory, Chivalric Medievalism, and New Imperialist Masculinity , Andrew LiVecchi

Land, Water, and Stars: Relationality in Anishinaabe and Diasporic Literature , Maral Moradipour

Atmosphere and Religious Experience in American Transcendentalism , Thomas Sorensen

Material Witness: Occult Affects in the Mystery Fiction of the Fin de Siècle , Thomas Matthew Stuart

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Semantic Shift in Old English and Old Saxon Identity Terms , David A. Carlton

Financial Frictions: Money and Materiality in American Literary Naturalism, 1890-1925 , Patricia Luedecke

Criminal Masculinities and the Newgate Novel , Taylor R. Richardson

Everywhere, Animals Appear: Species, Race, and the State in Literature from the Raj to Global India , Jason Sandhar

Antichrist in the Shadows: Biblical Allusion in Richard III and Macbeth , Curtis J. Simpson

Georgic Political Economy: Emergent Forms of Order and Liberal Statecraft in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry , Jonathan Stillman

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Agnotologies of Modernism: Knowing the Unknown in Lewis, Woolf, Pound, and Joyce , Jeremy Colangelo

Species Panic: Interspecies Erotics in Post-1900 American Literature , David Huebert

Unread: The (Un)published Texts of Romanticism , Marc D. Mazur

Narrative Immunities: The Logic of Infection and Defense in American Speculative Fiction , Riley R. McDonald

Buddhism in Progress: Ecstasy, Eternity, and Zen Sickness in the English Romantics , Logan M. Rohde

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Romantic Metasubjectivity: Rethinking the Romantic Subject Through Schelling and Jung , Gord Barentsen

The Hermetic Enigma of a Protean Poet: Gnosis and the Puritanical Error in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis , Luke Jennings

Literary Language Revitalization: nêhiyawêwin, Indigenous Poetics, and Indigenous Languages in Canada , Emily L. Kring

The Unknown Soldier in the 21st Century: War Commemoration in Contemporary Canadian Cultural Production , Andrew Edward Lubowitz

Islam's Low Mutterings at High Tide: Enslaved African Muslims in American Literature , Zeinab McHeimech

Appearing Live: Spectatorship, Affect, and Liveness in Contemporary British Performance , Meghan O'Hara

Spaces of Collapse: Psychological Deterioration, Subjectivity, and Spatiality in American Narratives , Andrew Papaspyrou

No Delicate Flower: Victorian Floral Symbolism’s Mediation of Social Issues in Selected Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, John Ruskin, and Isabella Bird Bishop , Christine Penhale

Waiting for God: John Milton’s Millenarianism Reconsidered , Rainerio George Ramos

Terrorism, Islamization, and Human Rights: How Post 9/11 Pakistani English Literature Speaks to the World , Shazia Sadaf

Crossing the Line: Censorship, Borders, and the Queer Poetics of Disclosure in English-Canadian Writing, 1967-2000 , Kevin T. Shaw

Imagining the Unimagined Metropolis: Privilege, Liminality, and Peripheral Communities in the Contemporary Urban Situation , Colton R. Sherman

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Rhetorical Ductus in Chaucerian Ekphrasis , Emily Laura Pez

"The Sense of An Ending": The Destabilizing Effect of Performance Closure in Shakespeare's Plays , Megan Lynn Selinger

Of the Last Verses in the Book: Old Age, Caregiving, and Early Modern Literature , Emily M. Sugerman

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Reading the Canadian Battlefield at Quebec, Queenston, Batoche, and Vimy , Rebecca Campbell

Turning to Food: Religious Contact and Conversion in Early Modern Drama , Fatima F. Ebrahim

Reading Boredom in Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Christina Rossetti , Rebekah Ann Lamb

Creating Difference: The Legal Production of Race in American Slavery , Shaun N. Ramdin

About Telling: Ghosts and Hauntings in Contemporary Drama and Poetry , Leif Erik Schenstead-Harris

The Aesthetics of Romantic Hellenism , Derek Shank

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

The Luminous Detail: The Evolution of Ezra Pound's Linguistic and Aesthetic Theories from 1910-1915 , John J. Allaster

"Rank Corpuscles": Soil and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Representations , Nina Patricia Budabin McQuown

The Romantic Posthuman and Posthumanities , Elizabeth Effinger

Transnational Conversations: The New Yorker and Canadian Short Story Writers , Nadine Fladd

The Book Beautiful: Aestheticism, Materiality, and Queer Books , Frederick D. King

Graphic Drama: Reading Shakespeare in the Comics Medium , Russell H. McConnell

Diffuse Connections: Making Sense of Smell in Canadian Diasporic Women's Writing , Stephanie Oliver

“Companions of the Flame”: Concealment and Revelation in H.D.’s Trilogy , Cam Riddell

Dirty Modernism: Ecological Objects in American Poetry , Michael D. Sloane

EECOLOGY: (pata)physical taoism in e. e. cummings’s poetry , Nathan B. TeBokkel

Fatal Attraction: The Fetishized Image of the Fatal Woman as Gothic Double , Margaret Anne Young

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Storied Truths: Contemporary Canadian and Indigenous Childhood Trauma Narratives , Michelle Coupal

Feeling With Imagination: Sympathy and Postwar American Poetry , Timothy A. DeJong

After Dark: Reading Canadian Literature in a Light-Polluted Age , David S. Hickey

Dark Sympathy: Desiring the Other in Godwin, Coleridge, and Shelley , Jeffrey T. King

Strata, Soma, Psyche: Narrative and the Imagination in the Nineteenth-Century Science of Lyell, Darwin, and Freud , Pascale M. Manning

Uncommon Ecology: Reading the Romantic Oikos , Shalon Noble

"Radiant Imperfection": The Interconnected Writing Lives of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky , Kostantina Northrup

Preposterous America: The Language of Inversion in Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne , Rasmus R. Simonsen

Metaphor and Metanoia: Linguistic Transfer and Cognitive Transformation in British and Irish Modernism , Andrew C. Wenaus

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Hazardous Experiments: The Elusive Prefaces of William Godwin, Mary Hays, William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley , Jeffrey W. Miles

Architectures of the Veil: The Representation of the Veil and Zenanas in Pakistani Feminists' Texts , Amber Fatima Riaz

Miscegenation in the Marvelous: Race and Hybridity in the Fantasy Novels of Neil Gaiman and China Miéville , Nikolai Rodrigues

Broken Passages and Broken Promises: Reconstructing the Komagata Maru and Air India Cases , Alia Rehana Somani

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Residues of the Cold War: Emergent Waste Consciousness in Postwar American Culture and Fiction , Thomas J. Barnes

Biological Inheritance and the Social Order in Late-Victorian Fiction and Science , Sherrin Berezowsky

Life Among the Machines: James Joyce's Ulysses and Early Twentieth-Century Technology , Patrick Casey

Social Money: Literary Engagements with Economics in Early Modern English Drama , Myungjin Choi

States of Insurgency: Dismemberment and Citizenship in the American 1848 , David J. Drysdale

Re-forging the smith: an interdisciplinary study of smithing motifs in Völuspá and Völundarkviða , Leif Einarson

Touching Bodies/Bodies Touching: The Ethics of Touch in Victorian Literature (1860-1900) , Ann M.C. Gagne

Feeling Better: The Therapeutic Drug in Modernism , Philip Glennie

Corporeal Returns: Theatrical Embodiment and Spectator Response in Early Modern Drama , Caroline R. Lamb

Seeking the Self in Pigment and Pixels: Postmodernism, Art, and the Subject , Selma Purac

Total Men!: Literature, Nationalism, and Mascuilinity in Early Canada , Aaron J. Schneider

Alternative Be/longing: Modernity and Material Culture in Bengali Cinema, 1947-1975 , Suvadip Sinha

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Graphomania: Composing Subjects in Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction and Technology , Gregory D. Brophy

The Burdens of Body's Beauty: Pre-Raphaelite Representations of the Body in William Morris's the Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858) and Algernon Swinburne's Poems , Thomas A. Steffler

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Harvard University Theses, Dissertations, and Prize Papers

The Harvard University Archives ’ collection of theses, dissertations, and prize papers document the wide range of academic research undertaken by Harvard students over the course of the University’s history.

Beyond their value as pieces of original research, these collections document the history of American higher education, chronicling both the growth of Harvard as a major research institution as well as the development of numerous academic fields. They are also an important source of biographical information, offering insight into the academic careers of the authors.

Spanning from the ‘theses and quaestiones’ of the 17th and 18th centuries to the current yearly output of student research, they include both the first Harvard Ph.D. dissertation (by William Byerly, Ph.D . 1873) and the dissertation of the first woman to earn a doctorate from Harvard ( Lorna Myrtle Hodgkinson , Ed.D. 1922).

Other highlights include:

• The collection of Mathematical theses, 1782-1839
• The 1895 Ph.D. dissertation of W.E.B. Du Bois, The suppression of the African slave trade in the United States, 1638-1871
• Ph.D. dissertations of astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (Ph.D. 1925) and physicist John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (Ph.D. 1922)
• Undergraduate honors theses of novelist John Updike (A.B. 1954), filmmaker Terrence Malick (A.B. 1966),  and U.S. poet laureate Tracy Smith (A.B. 1994)
• Undergraduate prize papers and dissertations of philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson (A.B. 1821), George Santayana (Ph.D. 1889), and W.V. Quine (Ph.D. 1932)
• Undergraduate honors theses of U.S. President John F. Kennedy (A.B. 1940) and Chief Justice John Roberts (A.B. 1976)

What does a prize-winning thesis look like?

If you're a Harvard undergraduate writing your own thesis, it can be helpful to review recent prize-winning theses. The Harvard University Archives has made available for digital lending all of the Thomas Hoopes Prize winners from the 2019-2021 academic years.

Accessing These Materials

How to access materials at the Harvard University Archives

How to find and request dissertations, in person or virtually

How to find and request undergraduate honors theses

How to find and request Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize papers

How to find and request Bowdoin Prize papers

• email: Email
• Phone number 617-495-2461

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Resources to Find Dissertations: Home

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This page provides links to databases and websites to find dissertations. This includes links to general databases to find dissertations, databases focused on the humanities, foreign dissertations, dissertations on religion, and dissertations hosted by other universities.

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Humanities dissertations, foreign dissertations, religion dissertations, dissertations of universities, yale divinity library.

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• Last Updated: Aug 22, 2023 5:35 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.yale.edu/dissertations

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