Graphic texts, or graphic novels, have spent many years on shelves with comic books about superheroes and adventurers. They officially gained notoriety in 1992 with Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and at this time, critics and scholars began to take notice. However, graphic novels have not been fully adapted by academia. Graphic novels have the ability to offer new levels of instruction and learning in upper-level classrooms.The following is a study in the multitude of uses of graphic text in academia. Chapter 1 looks at the history of graphic text to understand the present and future of graphic novels. Chapter 2 focuses on literacy issues to develop a basis for the use of graphic novels in the classroom. Chapter 3 offers a method of using graphic novels to broaden a students’ understanding of plays. Chapter 4 moves on to a study of graphic novels as works of literature. Through this look of historical data and an analysis and discussion of the modern form of graphic novels, we will come to the conclusion that graphic novels can be useful assets in the classroom when they are taken from the shelf of comic books and used to their full potential.

This study argues that the American citizen’s choice to perform or not perform sacrificial national duties has been heavily mediated by sentimental representations of sacrifice in popular narratives. Through an analysis of the American captivity narrative from its origins in the seventeenth century up to its current state in the contemporary period, this project also asserts that race plays a central a role in defining the type of citizen who should perform the most traumatic and costly of national sacrifices. Based on the implied reader’s sentimental identification with the suffering, white female captive, clear racial and cultural demarcations are made between the captor and the captive. These strong demarcations are facilitated through the captive’s choice to perform sacrifices that will sustain her social and racial status as a privileged and authentic identity. Her successful defense of her cultural and racial purity from a racialized threat heightens her ethos, investing her marginalized identity with power and influence. This representation of the suffering, sacrificial female captive who gains legitimacy via her fulfillment of national duty offers a sentimental model of civic duty for American citizenry to emulate. In addition, the sentimental representation of sacrifice in the captivity narrative not only stabilizes an authentic national collective, but also suggests to marginalized persons that national sacrifice can supply legitimacy and privilege. In opposition to this narrative representation of legitimacy gained through sacrifice, Indigenous authors Mourning Dove and Leslie Marmon Silko depict the sentimental performance of sacrificial duty as a dangerous discourse that internally colonizes those who desire legitimacy in the United States. These Indigenous counter-narratives show clearly that the narrativization of sentimentality and sacrifice more often than not defines America and its authentically pure citizens as worth the price of death.

This study argues that the American citizen’s choice to perform or not perform sacrificial national duties has been heavily mediated by sentimental representations of sacrifice in popular narratives. Through an analysis of the American captivity narrative from its origins in the seventeenth century up to its current state in the contemporary period, this project also asserts that race plays a central a role in defining the type of citizen who should perform the most traumatic and costly of national sacrifices. Based on the implied reader’s sentimental identification with the suffering, white female captive, clear racial and cultural demarcations are made between the captor and the captive. These strong demarcations are facilitated through the captive’s choice to perform sacrifices that will sustain her social and racial status as a privileged and authentic identity. Her successful defense of her cultural and racial purity from a racialized threat heightens her ethos, investing her marginalized identity with power and influence. This representation of the suffering, sacrificial female captive who gains legitimacy via her fulfillment of national duty offers a sentimental model of civic duty for American citizenry to emulate. In addition, the sentimental representation of sacrifice in the captivity narrative not only stabilizes an authentic national collective, but also suggests to marginalized persons that national sacrifice can supply legitimacy and privilege. In opposition to this narrative representation of legitimacy gained through sacrifice, Indigenous authors Mourning Dove and Leslie Marmon Silko depict the sentimental performance of sacrificial duty as a dangerous discourse that internally colonizes those who desire legitimacy in the United States. These Indigenous counter-narratives show clearly that the narrativization of sentimentality and sacrifice more often than not defines America and its authentically pure citizens as worth the price of death.

In my thesis, I explored the work of the artist Kanye West as a rejected voice of Generation Y. Why was he rejected? Could he, in fact, be the voice? By examining readings of several of his songs and music videos over the span of his career as well as his public interactions, I attempt to properly place West in American culture. As a result of my research, I found West to be an extremely influential artist and an intriguing representation of the 2000s.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of English Language and Literature, December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 274-283). Also available on the Internet.

Burning Man, a weeklong experience in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, has become an oasis for those looking to escape the corporatized grasp of modern culture. Burning Man serves as a reprieve from judgment and allows participants to embrace and perform their inner identities. The intensions of Burning Man have been widely debated, from scholars concentrating on the rejection of consumerism to analyzing sacred space and religious connectivity for festivalgoers. What deserves further analysis, however, is the utopian nature of the event. I will explore previous utopian attempts--literary, political, etc.--and define what characteristics from those societies were present during the inception and following early years of Burning Man. Using the work of Ernst Bloch I will establish Burning Man as a not-yet-conscious utopia, a product of Larry Harvey's vision, and define the increasingly imminent threats to the event's utopianism. The segregation of ideas at Burning Man, between veteran Burners and newcomers, is attributed to the perpetual struggle to balance and create meaning within a society designed to provide autonomy for its citizens. I will look at how changes in popularity and population have transformed the once utopian retreat into an amalgam of conflicting ethos. I argue that this once thriving counterculture is facing an extreme shift away from the original structure of the event in terms of meaning, experience, and understanding.

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Autobiographical accounts of interracial friendships tend to take on unrealistic Huck-andJim-type dimensions, particularly in southern musicians’ autobiographies, where musical compatibility is often mistaken for a larger sense of harmony. A select few memoirs, however, have dispensed with this master narrative to illustrate instances of overcoming segregation through interpersonal means. In the vein of fellow Alabamian W.C. Handy’s The Father of the Blues, (1941), jazz composer/performer Willie Ruff’s A Call to Assembly (1991) uses the tools of African American respectability politics (ideals of democracy, Christianity and common humanity) to build more balanced relationships with young white contemporaries also enraptured by jazz, in the process shaming segregationists. In this case, music paves the way for whites’ understanding of larger social equality. In Bakhtinian terms, this authorial positioning is “centripetal” (literally meaning “rotation toward the center”), affirming unity and common core values to the reader. By contrast, bebop musician Dizzy Gillespie in his To Be or Not to Bop (1979) takes on more centrifugal proportions, “clowning” his way around segregation like the time-honored trickster figure, finding allies in the jazz counterculture in the west, the north and abroad, beyond the reach of Jim Crow. Like Ruff, though, Gillespie takes advantage of jazz’s strategies to escape the trap of asymmetrical “friendships.” By eschewing the platitudes of the interracialbrotherhood tale, Ruff and Gillespie reveal the reciprocity and sacrifice necessary for white ally ship and establish jazz as a medium for political expression and true collaboration.

Moving beyond familiar myths about moonshiners, bootleggers, and hard­-drinking writers, Southern Comforts explores how alcohol and drinking helped shape the literature and culture of the U.S. South. Edited by Conor Picken and Matthew Dischinger, this collection of seventeen thought-­provoking essays proposes that discussions about drinking in southern culture often orbit around familiar figures and mythologies that obscure what alcohol consumption has meant over time. Complexities of race, class, and gender remain hidden amid familiar images, catchy slogans, and convenient stories. As the first collection of scholarship that investigates the relationship between drinking and the South, Southern Comforts challenges popular assumptions by examining evocative topics drawn from literature, music, film, city life, and cocktail culture. Taken together, the essays collected here illustrate that exaggerated representations of drinking oversimplify the South’s relationship to alcohol, in effect absorbing it into narratives of southern exceptionalism that persist to this day. From Edgar Allan Poe to Richard Wright, Bessie Smith to Johnny Cash, Bourbon Street tourism to post-­Katrina disaster capitalism and more, Southern Comforts: Drinking and the U.S. South uncovers the reciprocal relationship between mythologies of drinking and mythologies of region.

As fandom studies are becoming more popular and important, one fandom yet remains largely unstudied: the fandom surrounding Disneyland. The Disneyland fandom is unique in a number of ways, chief among them the fans’ relationship to the content creators: unlike many other companies in similar positions, Disney seeks to put boundaries on fan participation and to discourage or stamp out behaviors it deems unacceptable. And yet, in spite of this official meddling, the fandom continues to thrive. I propose that the reason for this unique dynamic is the Disney “Magic”—that is, fans’ recognition of a unique emotional experience inherent in visiting the park, composed of a mix of nostalgia, immersion in the park experience, and the unique Disney atmosphere, all of which is often described using quasi-spiritual language. I posit that the Magic is what keeps fans coming back: they feel that something is special about the park, and seek to engage with it more deeply through various fan activities—activities which, paradoxically, seem to threaten that same Magic that inspires such dedication in the first place. In this thesis, I look at three specific fan activities, both to explore this concept of Magic further, and to learn more about this understudied fandom. The first topic is urban legends of ash scatterings in the Haunted Mansion ride, which appear to simultaneously be a commentary on harsh working conditions inside the park, and, more importantly, a perhaps-misguided attempt to pay respect to the deep connections fans have to Disneyland. The second is pin trading, which functions both as a folk activity guests can use to build their public identities, and also as a market for cheap fakes that tarnishe the Magic. The third is Disneybounding, a costuming activity that expresses fans’ love of the park, while carefully stepping around Disney’s regulations preventing such activities. Even in the diverse and fascinating array of fandoms, the Disneyland fandom deserves some additional attention. Disney Magic, and its resultant fan behavior, has no clear parallel elsewhere. Understanding what makes Disneyland fans tick will lead to a better understanding of how fandoms work in general.