This thesis examines the definition and redefinition of women's images through the music of MC Lyte. My research demonstrates how MC Lyte has emerged from the male-dominated Hip Hop demoralization of women and how MC Lyte uses her music and media to empower young females. This thesis explores the history of Hip Hop and culture, and how MC Lyte has evolved and changed the way women are seen in Hip Hop. The objective of this thesis is to examine MC Lyte and how her music evolved and empowered females in Hip Hop music. This research uses scholarly works of Clenora Hudson Weems (1993). African Womanist, Gwendolyn Pough's (2004) Check it While I Wreck It, as well as the input of Tricia Rose's (1 994) Black Noise Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. These scholarly works, not only delve into the Hip Hop world, but also the issues that plague women, feminism, and the African- American movement. This thesis analyzes lyrics from MC Lyte as a tool to clearly see the struggles and progressions that women have endured within the Hip Hop culture. It is the intent of the researcher to show how black womanhood has been defined and redefined as it emerges in black Hip Hop music and to appreciate the unity of the black female voice through the music of MC Lyte. This paper shows positive and negative attributes of black women in Hip Hop and how they responded to these attributes. This is important because it expresses how the female artists have found a way to communicate their feeling in regards to how they are viewed by larger society, and its affects. They have chosen to identify themselves with and by their music.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the Black Power Movement and black cultural nationalism on the surge of interest in black genealogy that arose in the 1970s and the Black Genealogy Movement that was birthed from this interest. It will also explore the activism of black genealogy groups as and extension of the activism of the Black Power Movement. The Black Genealogy Movement arose from individuals coming together to research, not only their own family histories, but also the stories of black societies, churches, schools, traditions, business and neighborhoods. They used their findings to contribute to the larger black cultural identity.

This research explored Dunbar’s concept of the mask in order to examine why select black male actors, Flip Wilson (as Geraldine), Eddie Murphy (as Rasputia), Martin Lawrence (as Sheneneh), and Tyler Perry (as Madea), have worn the mask of femininity to survive the vicissitudes of the American stage. It explained what factors compelled these selected black male actors to mask their appearance and why the outward signs of femininity are used as vehicles of communication in their artistic expression. The methodology involved a visual deconstruction of media utilizing literary texts as the instrument to analyze the movies and television shows of these actors, and the research centered on the theories of W. E. B. Du Bois’ notions of the veil and double consciousness, Stephen Greenblatt’s idea of self-fashioning and self cancellation, and Franz Fanon’s views on language found in the book Black Skin White Masks. While wearing the mask, Wilson, Murphy, Lawrence, and Perry challenge society’s notion of black manhood, the limitation of the black man’s freedom of speech, and the role of black women in their plight for an uninhibited existence. These actors also tackle crucial matters, namely black female sexuality, classism, obesity, and the black family. These actors achieve their objective and combat the gaze of both black and white America by self-fashioning and self-canceling their identities at will.

This project examines four of Jane Austen's novels, focusing on narrative technique that positions readers to experience ethical dilemmas similar to those which serve to educate the heroines. Jane Austen's texts explore the epistemological issues of how subjectivity and imagination distort perception. Of particular importance is the communication process. Attention to language in all of its forms suggests Austen's acute awareness of the linguistic nature of human experience. Because Austen valued honesty and integrity, her texts demonstrate the necessity of cultivating these qualities to achieve enriching, intimate relationships. Language becomes the means through which characters are able to evaluate each other and to discover 'truth'. While the characters in the novels gain understanding, readers are similarly instructed because the narrative positions readers to become intimates of the characters. Since novels selectively create a textual reality, they become examples of the problems they raise. Characters and readers are taught to value compassion, and to maintain a generous, open-minded attitude in relating to each other. Narrative technique and reader response in Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion, indicate that as Austen's skill developed, her narrative manipulations of reader response gained subtlety. While readers may be aware of the education process occurring within the text, Austen's creation of a mirroring experience for readers may be overlooked.

This project examines four of Jane Austen's novels, focusing on narrative technique that positions readers to experience ethical dilemmas similar to those which serve to educate the heroines. Jane Austen's texts explore the epistemological issues of how subjectivity and imagination distort perception. Of particular importance is the communication process. Attention to language in all of its forms suggests Austen's acute awareness of the linguistic nature of human experience. Because Austen valued honesty and integrity, her texts demonstrate the necessity of cultivating these qualities to achieve enriching, intimate relationships. Language becomes the means through which characters are able to evaluate each other and to discover 'truth'. While the characters in the novels gain understanding, readers are similarly instructed because the narrative positions readers to become intimates of the characters. Since novels selectively create a textual reality, they become examples of the problems they raise. Characters and readers are taught to value compassion, and to maintain a generous, open-minded attitude in relating to each other. Narrative technique and reader response in Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion, indicate that as Austen's skill developed, her narrative manipulations of reader response gained subtlety. While readers may be aware of the education process occurring within the text, Austen's creation of a mirroring experience for readers may be overlooked.

This thesis explores the pervasive role of commerce in Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice, with a particular focus on the characters of Antonio, Bassanio, Shylock, and Portia, and the dual locales of Venice and Belmont. The way in which various characters engage in commerce is a reflection of their individual motives and affiliations. At the same time, the rhetoric of commerce, worth, and value colors the speech of various characters, and influences seemingly extra-commercial considerations such as identity, friendship, religion, socioeconomic status, and love. Ultimately, a close analysis of commercial transaction and language in the play reveals the complex nature of the narrative’s social dynamics and conflicts, and challenges what it means for characters to receive justice and possess agency in the world.

The Romantic Age in literature was a time of change and revision, especially in the world of heroes and the fictional worlds in which they lived and played. Many socalled "heroes" came into play at this time, but this was not enough for the Romantic poets, especially George Gordon, Lord Byron. The Byronic hero became the solution to the problem created by an unsatisfactory hero. In creating the Byronic hero, Byron changed literature, allowing poets and readers alike to participate actively in the processes of writing and reading. This work will examine Byron's development of his hero in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and how other poets, such as Karel Hynek Macha in his Maj, used the Byronic hero as a model that would help them foster a revival of both literature and nationhood. This work explores why the Byronic hero was adopted and embraced by those in England and abroad.

This thesis proposes a more holistic approach to analyzing the films of David Cronenberg with specific emphasis on perduring themes such as the exploration of the body, the split male self and the narrative death drive. The study examines three films from visually distinct periods in his career: Shivers (1975) from the B-horror genre; The Fly (1986) from the Hollywood melodramatic mainstream genre; and Crash (1996) from the highly stylized and intellectually probing hyper-realistic genre. Although the surface of the films varies, all share the following: a concern with the central character's relation to the body, the split Cronenbergian male manifested by two opposing characters, and the narrative death drive. Cronenberg transfers the site of horror from outside of the body to inside the mind, explores the crisis of identity through the split male, and uses the narrative death drive to emphasize the male's dive into the unconscious and inevitable destruction.

The purpose of this study is to explore the reasons for the great outpouring of high-quality supernatural fiction that appeared in late Victorian Britain and how these stories were influenced by contemporaneous technological, sociological and cultural changes. For this purpose, a number of literary works from the period have been chosen for review and analysis. In addition, numerous historical and critical texts have been consulted for their ability to illuminate and comment upon the significance of the fictional works. Results indicate that Victorian supernatural fiction reflected Victorian attitudes toward and anxieties about their changing world, leading to the conclusion that it served Victorians both as a refuge from their anxieties and as an opportunity to confront their problems imaginatively during a time of transition.

The focus of this thesis is Hart Crane’s The Bridge (1930), a work that examines America’s early twentieth-century mechanical advancements. Four inventions are the inspiration behind the poem and have been examined closely in this study: suspension bridges, trains, ships, and airplanes. The modernist era was characterized by rapid cultural changes that resulted from scientific improvements, mechanical progress, mass population shifts, and a world war, —all subjects Crane addresses in The Bridge. Contemporary readers may acknowledge the importance of The Bridge when read through the technological perspective described herein. In the modern world, railways, ships, and airplanes created new frontiers— as well as problems. In poetry, new fields of perception, pathways for individual points of view, and opportunities for artistic endeavors were created when the commotion of the cityscape and machine were incorporated into twentieth century poetry.