Drowning is a frequent mode of death for female literary characters because of the strong symbolic relationship between female sexuality and water. Drowning has long been a punishment for sexually transgressive women in literature. In the introduction, Chapter 1, I describe the drowning paradigm and analyze drowning scenes in several pre-twentieth century works to establish the tradition which twentieth-century women writers begin to transcend. In Chapter 2, I discuss three of Kate Chopin's works which include drownings, demonstrating her transition from traditional drowning themes in At Fault and “Desiree's Baby” to the drowning in The Awakening, which prefigures the survival of protagonists in later works. I discuss one of these in Chapter 3: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Although Janie must rely on her husband to save her from the flood, she survives, though her husband does not. In Chapter 4, I discuss two stories by Eudora Welty, “Moon Lake” and “The Wide Net.” In “Moon Lake,” Easter nearly drowns as a corollary to her adolescent sexual awakening. Although her resuscitation is a brutal simulation of a rape, Easter survives. “The Wide Net” is a comic story that winks at the drowning woman tradition, showing a young bride who pretends to drown in order to recapture the affections of her husband. Chapter 5 analyzes a set of works by Margaret Atwood. Lady Oracle includes another faked drowning, while “The Whirlpool Rapids” and “Walking on Water” feature a protagonist who feels invulnerable after her near-drowning. The Blind Assassin includes substantial drowning imagery. Chapter 6 discusses current trends in near-drowning fiction, focusing on the river rafting adventure stories of Pam Houston.

This study explores six utopias by female authors written at the turn of the twentieth century: Mary Bradley Lane's Mizora (1881), Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant's Unveiling Parallel (1893), Eloise O. Richberg's Reinstern (1900), Lena J. Fry's Other Worlds (1905), Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915), and Martha Bensley Bruère's Mildred Carver, USA (1919). While the right to vote had become the central, most important point of the movement, women were concerned with many other issues affecting their lives. Positioned within the context of the late nineteenth century women's rights movement, this study examines these "sideline" concerns of the movement such as home and gender-determined spheres, motherhood, work, marriage, independence, and self-sufficiency and relates them to the transforming character of female identity at the time. The study focuses primarily on analyzing the expression of female historical desire through utopian genre and on explicating the contradictory nature of utopian production.

Chicago occupies a place in the American imagination as a city of industry and opportunity for those who are willing to hustle. Writers have in no small part contributed to the creation of this mythology; this canon includes Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, and Richard Wright. What is it about these authors that make them the classics of Chicago literature? The “essential” books of Chicago enshrine a period during which the city still held a prominent position in the national economy and culture, and embodied for Americans something of their own identity—the value of individualism, and the Protestant work ethic. Notably absent are the narratives from immigrants, particularly those of color: for a city that was a primary destination for the Great Migration of African Americans from the South and the concurrent immigration of Mexicans in the early part of the 20th century, it is remarkable that these stories have not gained significant attention, with the exception of Richard Wright’s. This dissertation interrogates the discourse of ambition and labor in the Chicago literary tradition from the perspective of three Mexican American authors from Chicago—Carlos Cortez, Ana Castillo, and Sandra Cisneros. These authors, faced with late 20th century deindustrialization and the enduring legacy of segregation, engage with the canonical narratives of Chicago by addressing the intersections of race and citizenship as they affect urban space and labor opportunities. Rather than simply offering a critique, however, the Mexican American authors engage in a re-visioning of the city that incorporates the complexities of a fluid, transnational experience, and in doing so suggest the future of urban life in a post-industrial America. / text

Marta Traba (1923-1983), écrivaine et critique d’art argentino-colombienne, est principalement connue en Amérique latine pour ses écrits critiques, son engagement pour le développement de l’art moderne en Colombie, et plus largement pour sa « théorie de la résistance » qui prône dans les arts plastiques une défense des identités culturelles latino-américaines. Son œuvre littéraire, en revanche, est beaucoup moins connue. Or, elle est non seulement très riche, mais elle forme le pendant narratif à son œuvre critique, un ensemble de récits innervés, de manière plus ou moins profonde, des conceptions et de la culture trabiennes sur l’art. Il s’agit dès lors de reconsidérer ces deux pans de sa production écrite comme un tout cohérent, et de montrer les influences et les interactions entre sa critique d’art et sa littérature, mais également entre les arts plastiques qui forment sa culture artistique et ses écrits fictionnels. Il apparaît alors que Marta Traba conçoit et pratique son écriture critique comme une écriture « littérarisée » et, réciproquement et surtout, sa littérature comme une littérature « artialisée » : la valorisation constante du regard esthétique sur le monde et d’une sensorialité exacerbée dessine un idéal de contemplation tout au long de son œuvre littéraire ; les insertions continues d’une terminologie critique et de références aux œuvres d’art, sur un mode tantôt clairement didactique, tantôt subtilement ludique, invitent le lecteur à lire ses fictions et poèmes au prisme du sous-texte artistique qui enrichit leur sens ; enfin, le récit devient le lieu d’expérimentation des théories trabiennes de la « résistance », entre réaffirmation de la place de l’Amérique latine sur la carte de l’art mondial, mise à distance défensive des influences nord-américaines et réappropriation locale, par « transculturation », des modèles artistiques étrangers. L’étude de l’artialisation de la littérature trabienne est donc loin d’être l’analyse d’un simple procédé formel : elle dégage, nous semble-t-il, un véritable style trabien, miroir de l’écrivaine et de ses convictions. / Marta Traba (1923-1983), an Argentinian-Colombian writer and art critic, is most famous in Latin America for her critiques, her commitment to develop modern art in Colombia, and, more generally, for her “theory of resistance” which advocates the defence of the many cultural Latin-American identities in fine arts. Her literary work, however, is far less well-known. And yet, not only is it very rich, but it also constitutes the narrative counterpart to her critiques – a collection of tales innervated, to different degrees, with Traba’s notions on and knowledge of art. It is consequently about reconsidering these two sides of her written production as a consistent whole, and identifying the influences and interactions between her art critiques and her literary work, as well as between the fine arts which make up her artistic culture and her fictional writings.It then appears that Marta Traba devises and practices her critical writing “literarily” as she does, above all, her literary work “artistically”: the constant enhancement of the aesthetic eye on the world and of an intensified sensory experience shape an ideal of contemplation throughout her literary work; the continuous inserts of a critical terminology and of references to art works, sometimes in a clearly didactic mode, sometimes in a subtly playful manner, invite the reader to read her fiction stories and poems in the light of the artistic subtext which enriches their meaning; finally, the tale becomes the place where Traba’s theories of “resistance” are tested, at the crossroads of the re-affirmation of the place of Latin America on the map of international art, of the defensive distancing from North American influences, and of the local re-appropriation, by “transculturation”, of the foreign artistic models. The study of the artistic mutation of Traba’s literary work is therefore far from boiling down to the analysis of a mere formal process: from our point of view, it reveals an authentic style, Traba’s style, which is the mirror of the writer and her convictions.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Steven Millhauser has been recognized for his abilities as both a novelist and a writer of short fiction. Yet, he has evaded definitive categorization because his fiction does not fit into any one category. Millhauser’s fiction has defied clean categorization specifically because of his regular oscillation between the modes of realism and fantasy. Much of Millhauser’s short fiction contains images of labyrinths: wandering narratives that appear to split off or come to a dead end, massive structures of branching, winding paths and complex mysteries that are as deep and impenetrable as the labyrinth itself. This project aims to specifically explore the presence of labyrinthine elements throughout Steven Millhauser’s short fiction. Millhauser’s labyrinths are either described spatially and/or suggested in his narrative form; they are, in other words, spatial and/or discursive. Millhauser’s spatial labyrinths (which I refer to as ‘architecture’ stories) involve the lengthy description of some immense or underground structure. The structures are fantastic in their size and often seem infinite in scale. These labyrinths are quite literal. Millhauser’s discursive labyrinths demonstrate the labyrinthine primarily through a forking, branching and repetitive narrative form. Millhauser’s use of the labyrinth is at once the same and different than preceding generations of short fiction. Postmodern short fiction in the 1960’s and 70’s used labyrinthine elements to draw the reader’s attention to the story’s textuality. Millhauser, too, writes in the experimental/fantastic mode, but to different ends. The devices of metafiction and realism are employed in his short fiction as agents of investigating and expressing two competing visions of reality. Using the ‘tricks’ and techniques of postmodern metafiction in tandem with realistic detail, Steven Millhauser’s labyrinthine fiction adjusts and reapplies the experimental short story to new ends: real-world applications and thematic expression.