This project is an attempt to re-conceptualizes the interaction between memory and the body, specifically the failures and slippages of memory, in the works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. I contend that Beckett's work (following Joyce's examples) explores the moment of interaction between the cognitive mind and the corporeal body as memories become actions—or fail to become actions. I examine moments of memory failure or slippage in light of cognitive science developed by neurophilosophers (from Bergson to recent works by Pinker, Kandel, Ramachandran and Damásio) to discuss how these types of memory-events work in studies of phantom limbs and bodies, neuro and physical memory mapping, and in neuropathies as they materialize in language. To that end, this project takes a two-fold approach: first, to examine how the work on memory that Bergson theorized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is reflected artistically by looking at two texts (Finnegans Wake and Murphy) that develop approaches to memory and cognition similar to Bergson's own, and, second, to examine how cognitive science has finally caught up with the modernist writing that anticipated much of what contemporary neurophilosophers are studying now. Chapter one discusses development of cognitive science and its disavowal of its foundation in Bergson's late nineteenth & early twentieth century work in Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, The Creative Mind, and Creative Evolution. The second chapter then develops a comparative analysis of those current trends and practices in cognitive science, specifically those related to perception, as well as the artistic cognitive projects that Joyce and Beckett develop that are strikingly similar to those that Bergson pioneered in the late nineteenth century. The third chapter deals with Joyce's Finnegans Wake as an attempt to remember and the failure inherent in that process. However, since the design of Finnegans Wake is a model of actual cognition (circuitous and simultaneous rather than sequential), the attempts to remember always imply the process of forgetting. The event of memory in Joyce functions in two ways, first as an inaccessible initial memory but also as a transmutive shift into a new form of memory. This chapter works backwards from the resulting memories to find the triggering memory-event. Chapter four develops a reading of the set-piece of the Murphy's mind which is informed by both Bergson's own development of cognitive zones (based on his reading of Leibniz's monadic model) and Joyce's development of the monad into a dyad in Finnegans Wake. The third and fourth chapters form discussions of where Joyce ends his study on memory and Beckett begins his study (respectively). The conclusion points to where we might look to develop the discussion further by looking at Watt briefly. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: June 18, 2010. / Ramachandran, Damásio, Neuroscience, Deleuze, Synestheisa, Cotard's Syndrome, Memory, Cognition / Includes bibliographical references. / S.E. Gontarksi, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joyce L. Carbonell, University Representative; Barry Faulk, Committee Member; R.M. Berry, Committee Member.

My dissertation research focuses on how students create knowledge in a classroom community, more specifically how taking an online course impacts students' learning and ultimately, students' knowledge making. Since the online course presents a closed community, the Blackboard site is the only "learning site" for the students in the course. Since I am researching online Bb communities, the context of the research invites ethnographical methods, both qualitative data or narratives to describe each online community's "health" and quantitative analysis of the student dialogue threads on the forums. This ethnographic study focuses on the impact of pedagogical styles on the learning processes of online composition students. In the spring semester of 2005, I observed two Blackboard online course sites: one taught as a teacher-centered course and one taught as a student-centered course. I researched the archived course sites looking for evidence of positive communal health in the communication exchanges between student and student, as well as between student and instructor. I also analyzed the discussion board forums for evidence of transformative learning in the student dialogues. This dissertation study compares the pedagogical strategies of teacher-centered and student-centered online courses, reflects the impact of communal health on the online course community, sheds light on how communal health influences the student's ability to move through the transformative learning process, as well as poses questions for further research. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: June 23, 2006. / Student Centered Pedagogy in Distance Education, Online Learning, Dialogue and Learning in Online Composition Course / Includes bibliographical references. / Deborah Coxwell-Teague, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; John Fenstermaker, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Ernest Rehder, 1939-, Outside Committee Member; Bruce Bickley, Committee Member.

This is a collection of stories centering on the lives of the Palestinians living in Deir-Al-Asad, Israel and the United States. Lying With the Saints focuses on the roles of respect and honor within the Arab family. Engagement is about the rituals of courtship and marriage and how the fine the line between love and honor can be. The Boy Who Forgot Arabic deals with identity struggles in post-September 11th America and Guests at the Wedding is about the clash between the close-knit culture of the Palestinian family and that of the American way of life. I chose to tell these interconnected pieces as short stories instead of weaving them together as part of a novel because I believe it is reflective of the fragmented lives of the Palestinians living in Israel. They are not fully accepted in the country of their citizenship – Israel – and they are not fully accepted by the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These "Arabs of '48," as they are called, are caught between worlds and cultures from the moment they are born. They are second-class citizens of Israel, but even so, they enjoy a higher standard of living than the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Neither side fully trusts them and they often feel the tug from both sides, creating a natural division of loyalties. Their voices often go unheard, but their needs and status will need to be addressed in any serious negotiations between Palestine and Israel. The late Edward Said often wrote about the fragmented narrative style in modern Palestinian fiction. For Said, Emile Habibi's novel, Said the Pessoptomist, successfully shows the Palestinian experience because it employs a non-linear method of storytelling that reflects the uncertainty of day-to-day life for the Palestinians as a people. (Said) Filmmaker Elia Suleiman also uses this sort of storytelling device in Chronicle of a Disappearance and Divine Intervention. The dramatic leaps in narration and time may be disconcerting to a Westerner, but they are all too familiar to the Palestinians. While I do not take the same liberties in my storytelling as Habibi and Suleiman, I do see their influence in these stories. I see the search for identity that is core to both men's work. The struggle to define oneself is part of the growing process anywhere, but it is especially true for the Palestinians living in Israel. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: October 29, 2004. / Fiction, Palestinians, Florida / Includes bibliographical references. / Virgil Suarez, Professor Directing Thesis; Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Committee Member; Mark Cooper, Committee Member.

In the United States authors whose work concerns ethnicity face a host of problems, of which the most obvious remains the preconceived notion that ethnicthemed literature is subordinate to Eurocentric literary work. Despite continued racial and ethnic prejudices, many women of color writing within the past thirty years work to triumph over such categorical stereotypes and through their efforts earned Nobel and Pulitzer prizes and tremendous readership loyalties. The African American and Latina women discussed in this dissertation stand up against the ideological, cultural, sociohistorical, and political voices still attempting to repress them, as they write to disseminate and preserve specific ethnic and cultural ideologies and practices. Through rewriting the Freudian family romance into family narratives, they explicitly express cultural identity. By asserting difference concerning families and communities, specifically in a society still largely resistant but more accepting of ethnic and cultural practices, these women insure that values and practices from their own respective backgrounds will survive assimilation attempts from the culture at large. As a result, in addition to identifying with a similar readership, they instruct those from dissimilar backgrounds about cultural ideologies to shrinIn this study I aim to identify and discuss how portrayals of fictional families and communities in contemporary African American and Latina literature serve as valuable pedagogical tools in the advancement of a truly heterogeneous society. To accomplish this end, I utilize selective texts from four authors whose publishing histories range from 1970 to the present: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye 1970; Paule Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow 1984; Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents 1991; and Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban 1992. I focus on the methods each writer engages from her specific cultural heritage to redefine the Eurocentric, middle-class American nuclear family into one that adequately represents our pluralistic culture. In resisting a dominant discourse that protects and promotes a nuclear family ideology, these authors construct paradigmatic narratives that preserve multifaceted family and communal ideologies, specifically extended families and reliance upon communal support, of African American, Dominican American, and Cuban American (Latina/o) value systems. In order to support ethnic variations as positive elements in a multicultural society and to redefine the American family as a varied and inclusive entity where an extended family or one comprised of a variety of nonconsanguine members is just as valid as a nuclear family, we must create additional familial paradigms to the Freudian family romance. Texts that privilege a multiplicity of configurations help readers of all identities achieve a greater sense of ownership in this country that calls itself pluralistic.k the discursive boundaries between "dominant" and "subordinate" groups. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2002. / Date of Defense: October 11, 2002. / Latina families, African-american families, American family / Includes bibliographical references. / Bonnie Braendlin, Professor Directing Dissertation; Donna Nudd, Outside Committee Member; Linda Saladin, Committee Member; Jerrilyn McGregory, Committee Member.

Voices along the Road is a collection of poems that explores the immigrant experience, detailing three worlds that forge a Caribbean-American voice. All three sections of the manuscript examine an identity that comes directly, almost solely, from her surroundings. In the tradition of Louise Bennett, the use of dialect aside, Section I attempts to comprehend a narrow Caribbean existence by scrutinizing a life that is tied to nature, family, and country. Section II sees the world slightly more broadly, but there the speaker is also acutely aware of her identity and the complexity in bridging the two worlds she now finds herself simultaneously occupying, one immediate, the other existing only through reflection. Section III nearly abandons the collection's Caribbean roots and gives voice to a Floridian experience that in many ways echoes some of the disquiet in the earlier poems. Overall, whether detailing a morning in Jamaica or an afternoon in Miramar, the poems are made of imagery and themes keenly observed and lyrically interpreted. Noticeable is the fact that many of the poems are written about small creatures—ants, an iguana, dragonflies, and other small players in the natural world. Whether it is the rendering of lush Caribbean fields or the crackling metropolis of South Florida, the time and effort paid to the pulsings around her underscore the determination of the speaker to make real and ardent sense of landscape. Form too plays an important role in this collection. Certain poems are sonnet-inspired and adhere loosely to the form's strict requirements by playing with meter and rhythm and using off rhymes. One even exchanges end rhymes for anagrams. A villanelle also makes an appearance, but the most apparent form is the prose poem. It emerges as a key element in understanding this collection. Because of the history of Caribbean culture, the art of storytelling is an ingrained traditional method of keeping the culture alive; it carries with it the facts and perceptions of the observer and consequent storyteller. These prose pieces are no different from their verse counterparts as they seek to tell the story of a person, a family, a people, and maybe of times and practices that no longer exist. It is the hope of the poet that, individually, the poems will find homes, and, collectively, they will join with other Caribbean, Caribbean-American, and American voices along the road. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: March 25, 2010. / West Indian, Women's Poetry, Nature Poetry, Jamaica / Includes bibliographical references. / James Kimbrell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Juan Carlos Galeano, University Representative; David Kirby, Committee Member; Jerrilyn McGregory, Committee Member.

THE BLUE HOUSE PARTY, like Hemingway's NICK ADAMS STORIES, follows the development of a character from childhood to adulthood. THE BLUE HOUSE PARTY's chronologically arranged contents, though loosely sutured together, form a mosaic whole. The characters and events in THE BLUE HOUSE PARTY are fictional and should be read as such. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: November 17, 2004. / Blue House Party / Includes bibliographical references. / Virgil F. Suarez, Professor Directing Thesis; James H. Kimbrell, Committee Member; Ned C. Stuckey-French, Committee Member.

Understanding religious imagery and its uses on stage is essential to interpreting drama, beginning as it did in the sacred rituals of ancient Greece. In post-World-War-II America, playwrights divested religious elements of their sacredness, using them as signifiers of secular humanism instead, in order to construct or critique ideological tenets central to the American consciousness. This study examines the relation on the modern stage between religion (both formal and civil) and the concept of "America" in the works of James Baldwin, Bill C. Davis, Christopher Durang, Diane Shaffer, and John Patrick Shanley, who each used religion to create conformity with (or critique of) the sense of American exceptionalism that dominated the post-WWII period. This study focuses on the characteristics of the clergy depicted by these playwrights: pragmatism, marginalization, prescription, and paranoia. While narrow in scope, the thematic concerns these characters represent echo other religious elements such as those of Arthur Miller's Crucible or Edward Albee's Tiny Alice. Each of the playwrights in this study attempt to re-code the religious signs—in this case, their characters—to effect an understanding in the audience that these people represent a larger social commentary. Building on theatre anthropology and semiotics, especially the work of Victor Turner, Peter Brook, and Keir Elam, as well as theorists of American civil religion such as Robert Bellah, this study will demonstrate the ways religion has been used on stage to define American ideology, as well as establish the link between dramatic clergy and the larger societal figures they represent. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: August 5, 2010. / American Exceptionalism, Victor Turner, Communitas, Religious Figures, Civil Religion / Includes bibliographical references. / S.E. Gontarski, Professor Directing Dissertation; Neil Jumonville, University Representative; John Fenstermaker, Committee Member; Karen Laughlin, Committee Member.

This project is an attempt to reexamine the linguistic shifts that memory events force in Beckett and Joyce, specifically how spatialization and mapping affect memory in the work these authors. By considering the headway made by contemporary thinkers and writers, such as Bergson (and later writers such as Deleuze), we can come to understand better the complex and elusive approaches through which these authors transformed the way we use language and read texts today. This study is set up as a companion to how each of these authors deals with memory and its role in language—memory and language are not things, but events. Chapter two focuses on Beckett's engagement with Bergsonian notions of space, time, and duration as they relate to the specific instances or events of memory (or a glissade or slippage) as we might read Beckett informed by both Bergson and Alain Badiou's concept of "evental sites." Chapter three examines the intent and impetus behind Beckett's "language of the unword," and how it relates directly to issues of memory and the brain. We will see how specific language acts (in this case serial repetition) unseat the received meaning or Bergsonian "habit-memory" of the word (in effect, creating a moment of slippage) to find the something or nothing that hides or lurks behind the barrier created by the word. As the memory event occurs, or rather fails to occur in Watt, we see a correlative shift in language. As memory is disturbed, so is Watt's mental capacity to communicate. The operational memory (of words) turns his language into something nearly unintelligible. As a counterpart to Beckett's approach to memory, chapter four discuses a specific (though endemic) instance of Joyce's approach to transformative language, wherein as language is remembered, it becomes literalized first through text, and then through the consumed body as an attempt (and failure) of creating a permanently accurate memory through an act of concretized language, specifically writing. Chapter five, then, turns to Joyce's vastly different approach to spatialized memory (specifically the act of forgetting), as he fraudulently inscribes it on the history of his nation. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: August 23, 2006. / Bergson, Deleuze, Badiou, Memory, Memory Event, Neurology, Neuropathy, Cognition, Beckett, Joyce / Includes bibliographical references. / S.E. Gontarksi, Professor Directing Thesis; Bruce Boehrer, Committee Member; R.M. Berry, Committee Member.

During the nineteenth century, Lydia Maria Child was widely recognized for her contributions to American non-fiction, literature and journalism during a career that spanned six decades. She was an activist, abolitionist, and champion of equal rights for all. Today, Child's accomplishments are known to few but the most ardent scholars of the period, yet her enlightened approaches to issues of race, gender and cultural equality are as vital in our time as they were when she penned them. Much of what Child wrote nearly two centuries ago can be directly applied to the social challenges of the twenty-first century. For this reason, she is the object of study for this thesis, which this author fervently hopes will help to reacquaint the American reading public with messages from another time that must also be heeded in our own. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: June 28, 2005. / Feminist, First Woman of the Republic, Crusader, Nineteenth Century Author / Includes bibliographical references. / John Fenstermaker, Professor Directing Thesis; Bruce Bickley, Committee Member; Anne Rowe, Committee Member.

This thesis is an examination of David Cronenberg's Videodrome. In the course of the thesis I compare a fictional account of terrorist activity to the behaviors and organizational machinery of genuine terrorist organizations such as the Army of God and Al-Qaeda. This is important in establishing the veracity of the film as an expression of terrorism, while allowing consideration for the emotional trauma of 9/11. Although the film was made in 1983 in the waning years of the cold war, Videodrome is surprisingly in tune with the traumas of the post 9/11 audience. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: April 2, 2006. / Cronenberg, Terrorism, Film / Includes bibliographical references. / Kay Picart, Professor Directing Thesis; Barry Faulk, Committee Member; Virgil Suarez, Committee Member.