This thesis includes a novel of eight short stories and a critical preface. The preface begins with a section placing the stories in their literary historical context in regards to masculinity theory. It goes on to discuss the craft of fictionalizing autobiographical stories. Finally, the preface talks about the choice of a first person narrator. Each of the stories should stand alone, though they follow the narrator's life for a number of years. Todd Welles is the narrator of all the stories, with the exception of a few. In the stories where Todd does not do all of the narration, he is interrupted by the narration of his "friend," Percy 2 Hard Welles, III.

<p> This dissertation explores the unhomely nature of the slave system as experienced by fugitive and captive slaves within slave and neo-slave narratives. The purpose of this project is to broaden the discourse of migration narratives set during the antebellum period. I argue that the unhomely manifests through corporeal, psychological, historical, and geographical descriptions found within each narrative and it is through these manifestations that a broader discourse of identity can be generated. I turn to four slave and neo-slave narratives for this dissertation: Solomon Northup&rsquo;s <i>Twelve Years a Slave</i> (1853), Frederick Douglass&rsquo;s <i>My Bondage and My Freedom</i> (1855), Octavia Butler&rsquo;s <i>Kindred </i> (1979), and Toni Morrison&rsquo;s <i>Beloved</i> (1987). </p>

James Fenimore Cooper’s work as a political activist is the underlying subject of this monograph. This study looks at how Cooper used his political writing to disseminate the ideology of the radical enlightenment. Cooper’s specific support for the independence of Poland is examined within its historical context. This work explores Cooper’s relationship to the Polish cause. It is an aspect of Cooper scholarship that is necessary to understand his political activity. This study is primarily interested in Cooper’s use of the political writing to disperse the tenets of American political and social life into European populations. Cooper’s critical heritage is examined in this study. The personal relationship between Cooper and Walter Scott is examined. This relationship grew to personify the cultural war that divided England and America. Cooper’s literary reputation was harmed by English critics that resented his political activism. Bibliographical analysis supplied the quantitative data needed to develop Cooper’s imprint distribution frequencies. The data from Cooper’s enumerative bibliography allowed contrasts to be made between political and non-political fiction and non-fiction. Analysis of distribution frequencies supplied answers to questions concerning the popularity of Cooper’s political novels compared to his non-political novels. Bibliographical data in this study supplies facts about the distribution of Cooper’s texts. Cooper’s activism and political ideology is placed in the context of American philosophy as proto-pragmatism. Resistance to hereditary monarchy and European political systems is indicative of an evasion of European philosophy that characterized American intellectual circles. Cooper is placed in the tradition of American thought that founded the philosophy of pragmatism. / A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / February 13, 2017. / bibliography, Book History, Cooper, Fenimore, Literature, politics / Includes bibliographical references. / Francois Dupuigrenet Desroussilles, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joseph R. Hellweg, University Representative; Barry Faulk, Committee Member; S. E. Gontarski, Committee Member.

Orientador: Maria Clara Bonetti Paro / Banca: Maria das Graças Gomes Villa da Silva / Banca: Maria Lúcia Outeiro Fernandes / Banca: Ramiro Giroldo / Banca: Neil Besner / Resumo: Esta tese aborda o período francês da produção literária de Henry Miller, que se estende de sua chegada à Paris em 1930 até seu retorno aos Estados Unidos em 1940, de forma a reapresentar as quatro principais obras deste período: Trópico de Câncer (1934), Primavera negra (1936) e Trópico de Capricórnio (1939), que nomeamos trilogia francesa, e o volume de cartas entre Henry Miller e Michael Fraenkel intitulado Hamlet Letters (1939-1941). É verificado como tais obras se diferenciam daquelas escritas após o retorno aos Estados Unidos com uma discussão do livro que demarca uma "virada mística", O Colosso de Marússia (1940). A partir do embasamento teórico nas obras de Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari, Susan Sontag e Philippe Lejeune e da discussão da primeira recepção crítica das obras citadas, as obras de Miller são examinadas a partir de outra perspectiva que não as já privilegiadas pela fortuna crítica, que expressa preocupação exagerada com elementos contextuais mais do que com a discussão das obras do autor. Privilegiando a questão da pornografia, sexualidade e autobiografia, a fortuna crítica acabou debatendo mais os efeitos que tais obras tiveram no contexto histórico em que foram publicadas do que em suas características narrativas distintas da produção da época. Sendo assim, esta reapresentação é uma forma de trazer à discussão o período mais prolífico do autor estadunidense e também fornecer outras possibilidades teóricas de análise de sua obra / Abstract: This dissertation addresses Henry Miller's French period of literary production, that is, from his arrival in Paris in 1930 till his return to the United States in 1940. It aims to reintroduce his three major novels of this period: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939), here named French trilogy, and a volume of letters exchanged between Henry Miller and Michael Fraenkel, titled Henry Miller's Hamlet Letters (1939-1941). It is verified how such works differ from those written after the author's return to the United States by comparing them with The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), a book that marks a "mystical turn" in Miller's literary career. Mainly based on ideas, and concepts expressed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Susan Sontag and Phillippe Lejeune, this research abandons contextual issues explored by most of the traditional critical reception of the mentioned novels and examines them from another perspective. Instead of prioritizing pornographic, sexual and autobiographical aspects related to Miller's production, and by so doing, focusing more on the effects of the texts rather than on the texts themselves, this investigation discusses some of his innovative narrative techniques and compares them with the production of some of his contemporary fiction writers. Thus, besides reintroducing Miller's French trilogy so as to bring forward a discussion of his literary achievements, this research aims at providing other theoretical possibilities of analysis of his work / Doutor

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This thesis consists of a critical study, ‘“A Noisy Situation”: The Feminine and Feminist New Absurd in Twenty-first Century British and American Poetry’, followed by a poetry collection, 'Send Shells'. The critical study is a guidebook to the New Absurd, and thereby informs the reading of 'Send Shells'. Chapter One introduces the New Absurd as a descendant of male-dominated Absurdism; feminine and feminist humour is explored through Sam Riviere, Heather Phillipson, Selima Hill and Luke Kennard. Chapters Two, Three and Four focus on individual poets: Jennifer L. Knox’s 'A Gingo Like Me', Emily Berry’s 'Dear Boy' and Caroline Bird’s 'The Hat-Stand' 'Union' and 'In These Days of Prohibition'. The following themes are investigated: culture, class, and elitism; reality and imagination; feminine humour and sadness. Chapter Five explores apocalypse and technology through Maxine Chernoff, Jane Yeh, and Anne Carson. Chapter Six analyses failures to communicate through Rebecca Perry, Crispin Best, Rachael Allen, and Sara Woods. In conclusion Kayo Chingonyi, Rishi Dastidar, Mona Arshi and Anne Boyer are read to explore poets utilising the New Absurd, a prominent and influential movement in modern poetry, which does not have a specific membership, and might be seen as an aesthetic rather than a school.

Magister Artium - MA / The literature of the Chinese diaspora in America is marked by a tension between ancestral Chinese traditional culture and the modernity of Western culture. This thesis explores diaspora theory, as elaborated by Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Gabriel Sheffer and others to establish a framework for the analysis of key Chinese American literary works. Maxine Hong Kingston's seminal novel, The Woman Warrior (1975), will be analysed as an exemplary instance of diasporic identity, where the Chinese cultural heritage is reinterpreted and re-imagined from the point of view of an emancipated woman living in the West. A comparative analysis will be undertaken of Jade Snow Wong's The Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950) and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club (1989) to identify links between the writers who have grappled with various forms of diasporic identity in their works. An important part of this analysis is the representation and adaptation of Chinese folklore and traditional tales in Chinese American literary works.

The Parrot and the Cannon. Journalism, Literature and Politics in the Formation of Latin American Identities explores the emergence of literary journalism in Latin America as a central aspect in the formation of national identities. Focusing on five periods in Latin American history from the post-colonial times until the 1960s, it follows the evolution of this narrative genre in parallel with the consolidation of professional journalism, the modern Latin American mass media and the formation of nation states. In the process, this dissertation also studies literary journalism as a genre, as a professional practice, and most importantly as a political instrument. By exploring the connections between journalism, literature and politics, this dissertation also illustrates the difference between the notions of factuality, reality and journalistic truth as conceived in Latin America and the United States, while describing the origins of Latin American militant journalism as a social-historical formation.

This dissertation traces the evolution of a formalist literary strategy through the twentieth century in both Yiddish and English, through literary and historical analyses of poets and poetic groups from the turn of the century until the 1980s. It begins by exploring the ways in which the Yiddish poet Yehoash built on the contemporary interest in the primitive as he developed his aesthetics in the 1900s, then turns to the modernist poetic group In zikh (the Introspectivists) and their efforts to explore primitive states of consciousness in individual subjectivity. In the third chapter, the project turns to Louis Zukofsky's inclusion of Yehoash's Yiddish translations of Japanese poetry in his own English epic, written in dialogue with Ezra Pound. It concludes with an examination of the Language poets of the 1970s, particularly Charles Bernstein's experimental verse, which explores the way that language shapes consciousness through the use of critical and linguistic discourse. Each of these poets or poetic groups uses experimental poetry as a lens through which to peer at the intersections of language and consciousness, and each explicitly identifies Yiddish (whether as symbol or reality) as an essential component of their poetic technique.

This dissertation examines the avant-garde as one of the last significant cultural manifestations in Latin America that attempted to offer an alternative to capitalism in the twentieth century. My study redefines the avant-garde as a global critique of modernity whose emergence can only be explained from a geopolitical perspective. During this time, the world order dictated that metropolitan areas like Western Europe be engaged in a mutual economic dependence with peripheral regions such as Latin America. Consequently, a revolutionary socialist impulse originated from within secondary economic areas in the world like Russia and Latin America. Movements such as Dada and Cubism conveyed the necessity for art to break from the autonomous status attributed to it by the bourgeoisie; but ultimately, these aesthetic projects did not address an essential component of the changing social picture, namely the articulation of collective fantasies directed at the emerging masses. The avant-garde was able to articulate these dreamworlds only after art intersected with socialism. With this convergence art claimed a different kind of autonomy, one not based on innocuous insularity but on a socially conscious critical capacity. The revolutionary discourse that resulted from the combination of political and artistic realms aimed at addressing the masses as an integral part of a new modern society. The chapters include muralism (Diego Rivera), periodicals (Amauta), and poetry (Vallejo). Building upon local and global geopolitical perspectives, these works constructed socialist dreamworlds, expressions of utopian desires to transform the world, against the backdrop of art's tendency toward new modes of production and aesthetic sensibilities in the early twentieth century. Sifting through the ruins of these cultural artifacts, I discuss topics such as the figure of the intellectual and the history of radical ideas in Latin America; Marxism; public art and state sponsorship; iconography of revolution and spectrality; and the autonomy of art at the intersection of politics and aesthetics.