Thesis (M.A.)--Cleveland State University, 2008. / Abstract. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Mar. 23, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-45). Available online via the OhioLINK ETD Center. Also availabe in print.

The purpose of this project centered on the influential literary magazine Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. Using Bruno Latour’s network theory as well as the methods put forth by Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman to study modernist little magazines, I analyzed the influence McSweeney’s has on contemporary little magazines. I traced the connections between McSweeney’s and other paradigmatic examples of little magazines—The Believer and n+1—to show how the McSweeney’s aesthetic and business practice creates a model for more recent publications. My thesis argued that The Believer continues McSweeney’s aesthetic mission. In contrast, n+1 positioned itself against the McSweeney’s aesthetic, which indirectly created a space within the little magazines for writers, philosophers, and artists to debate the prevailing aesthetic theories of the contemporary period. The creation of this space connects these contemporary magazines back to modernist little magazines, thereby validating my decision to use the methods of Scholes and Wulfman.

My dissertation, Kinship Cross-Talk: Love and Belonging in Contemporary Comparative Literatures, examines contemporary models of kinship as expressions of relationality, resistance, responsibility, witnessing, and love. I ask: how do literary texts depict “never-easy kinship[s]” (Grosz 128) that bind the self to others and the world in particular expressions of love and responsibility, inseparable from familial, national, transnational, and/or trans-Indigenous modes of belonging? Specifically, my dissertation looks at Indigenous, queer, and human rights-based literary texts that articulate shared kinships and intimacies, and facilitate a “critical re-imagining” of “being-together” (Mackey 168) in global contexts. My research methodology emphasizes the historical and cultural contingencies of contemporary models of kinship by engaging the epistemological traditions I encounter on their own terms. Often this means a turn away from Euro-American humanist approaches to subjectivity and relation to attend to other modes (critical or wry humanist, diasporic, spiritual, ecological, gustatory) and materials or environments (water, salt, ocean, for example) that shape kinship beliefs and practices. This dissertation studies three primary literary texts: the fictional autobiography What Is the What authored by Dave Eggers, Monique Truong’s novel The Book of Salt, and The Salt-Wind / Ka Makani Pa‘akai, a collection of poetry by Hawaiian author Brandy Nālani McDougall. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)