Nancy Drew is widely recognized as an influential American cultural icon. In this paper I make a detailed examination of Nancy's initial characterization as girl sleuth in the first ten books of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, published in the 1930s. I spend another chapter examining the initial volumes of later Nancy Drew series books, specifically the 1960s rewritten texts, the 1980s-90s Nancy Drew Files series, and the contemporary Girl Detective series. My penultimate chapter discusses Nancy Drew as realized in fanfiction, or stories written by readers and fans. My emphasis is on explaining Nancy's appeal as a cultural icon and the ways fanfiction authors reinvent and appropriate that icon for their own purposes in stories. To this end I cite fanfic writers and readers' response to why they read and write Nancy Drew fanfiction, and I analyze the content and function of a sample of stories written by Nancy Drew fans. I conclude that Nancy's appeal and the basis of her status as cultural icon is due to her unique nature as a figure frozen in transition between adolescence and adulthood, along with her more conventionally admirable traits. Her Everygirl appearance when removed from that unique matrix makes her extremely adaptable to readers for their own purposes, both within the context of fanfiction and without.

In the past few decades, education research has been thriving in the areas of computers and new technologies. Often, teachers turn to what is popular in the technological world for new ideas to use in their classrooms. One such technology that has become extremely popular in Web culture is Web logs, now most often referred to as ?weblogs,? or simply ?blogs.? The present work seeks to further research on weblogs in education by identifying the various ways in which current post-secondary writing course teachers are using them in their courses. This definitional study attempts to answer the question: for what educational, or non-educational, purposes are weblogs in post-secondary writing courses being used? The study looks at the way educators claim to be using weblogs in their courses based on how they explain their blog assignments to students (either on a course syllabus or course blog posting). Adding depth to the analysis, the study also explores survey responses from thirty-two college writing teachers across the country. The eleven main uses for weblogs in writing courses that this study identifies are as follows: 1) as a public space with a broad audience, 2) to post student work, 3) as a journal, 4) to reflect on course-related assignments, 5) for student discussion and interaction, 6) to explore and share ideas, as well as brainstorm, 7) to engage with and respond to assigned readings, 8) for collaborative projects, 9) to link to Web materials, 10) to ask and answer questions related to the course, and 11) to discuss topics not necessarily related to the course. After compiling data as to these current uses of weblogs in college writing courses, this researcher explores the implications of these uses, offering suggestions and drawing conclusions as to how the new technology of weblogs has impacted and will impact college level writing courses.

Until recently, intonational aspects of Mexican American English have received little to no attention. The research that has been conducted (Fought 2003; Penfield and Ornstein-Galicia 1985; Metcalf 1972) is a good start, but needs more precision and rigor. There is a need to describe this prosodic feature in more accurate terms than line drawings accompanied by a narrow number scale (Metcalf 1972). In 1992 Beckman and Hirschberg proposed their solution to this gap with the ToBI Annotation Conventions, which is the current model used for measuring intonation. This thesis uses ToBI conventions in conjunction with Praat spectrograms to compare the intonation of Mexican American English to Anglo American English. Results indicate that speakers of these two groups do typically differ in intonational patterns, most noticeably in final contours and pitch accents. These intonational differences contribute to the distinctness of each variety, which can cause misunderstandings in communication (e.g.: MAE declarative mistaken for interrogative). The results of this study contribute to the understanding of Mexican American English and to the comparative examination of intonation based on natural conversation.

Poetry by Elizabeth Bishop is filled with issues of domesticity and belonging, intimacy and loss, as well as transparent language and local scenes, all of which are types or expressions of ordinariness. Building from the philosophy of Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell proposes that ordinariness ? both ordinary language and everyday life ? presents the greatest challenge to philosophical skepticism. To Cavell, skepticism threatens us with doubt and the inhumanity of disconnection from life and the world. In In Quest of the Ordinary, Cavell describes challenging the skeptical threat with the resettling of the everyday, a domestication of skepticism that makes life a livable place. Cavell?s sense of a need for opposition to skepticism that makes life livable is confirmed by readers of Bishop who find her handling questions, doubts, and the frustration of loss in a way that seems manageable and a way that also emphasizes the significance of ordinariness. Cavell?s work is an opportunity to characterize the recurring patterns and themes as well as the contrasts and the differences in Bishop?s poems as a search for ordinariness. I claim that ordinariness in Bishop?s poetry exists, as in Cavell, in dialogue with skepticism, so that Bishop?s quest for the ordinary is a struggle to protect against as well as preserve skepticism. The quest, as both Cavell and Bishop depict it, is endless because ordinariness is elusive, but a struggle with and for ordinariness is appealing, both in Bishop?s poetry and Cavell?s philosophy, because it alternately allows hope and skepticism. Her poems are widely appreciated because, as Randall Jarrell said, they suggest ?it is barely but perfectly possible? to live in the world.

Throughout the documented history of the teaching of writing, educators have engaged in various methods through which to guide student learning in the textual medium. In recent years, the digital age has provided a plethora of educational opportunities from long-distance learning and virtual courses, to course management systems, blogs, and wikis. The wiki has emerged as a growing technology with the potential to transform the rhetoric of the writing classroom. The present project seeks to further the research available on wikis in the teaching of writing. This study is both definitional and explorational. The questions it seeks to address include: how are wikis being used in educator?s classrooms; to what purposes are the wikis being used; in what ways are wikis being used? To answer some of these questions, various instructor survey responses were evaluated and incorporated into this thesis. The six main purposes for which wikis are being used in education that are identified in this study are 1) collaboration, 2) facilitation of work, 3) audience extension, 4) knowledge building/reflecting, 5) effective writing, and 6) multimodal literacy. After gathering data on the above purposes, this research discusses the results of the data and considers future research for integrating wiki technology into the teaching of writing.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the most popular poets of his day. He was highly regarded for his black dialect poetry, which earned him the title, ?poet laureate of his race.? Dunbar?s second book of poetry, Majors and Minors, was even reviewed by the famous critic William Dean Howells. However, despite Dunbar?s popularity, he has also been widely criticized for his black dialect poetry. Many scholars and African-Americans have argued that it is an unsympathetic portrait of blackness meant to appease his paying white readership. This thesis discusses the conditions and circumstances that influenced Dunbar to write black dialect poetry. It places the poet?s life and career in the social, economic, and critical context of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. My research concludes that Dunbar?s intentions for his dialect poetry were misconstrued by William Dean Howells? racially-biased interpretation of Majors and Minors.

For many postmodern artists, such as Don DeLillo, Adrienne Rich, and Andy Warhol, the human body and identity are constantly challenged, refigured, and re-envisioned. In this thesis, I explore to what extent each of these artists depicts the human body as disempowered or empowered in postmodern American culture. In Chapter One, ?Technology, Death, and Identity in Don DeLillo?s White Noise,? I examine the ways in which White Noise explores the nexus between the body, pop culture, fear, and death. In Chapter Two, ?Adrienne Rich: Toward an Embodied Poetics,? I explore the shifts in emphasis throughout most of Rich?s poetry and how she explores the fate of the female body in a capitalist, patriarchal society. In Chapter Three, ?The Visual Art of Andy Warhol: Fame, Death, and Disaster in American Popular Culture,? I investigate how Warhol explores the human body as image and surface that lack depth or inherent meaning and human identity as a façade manufactured by American culture. In the ?Concluding Remarks,? I discuss the relationship between genre and each artist?s perspectives of the body while also exploring each artist?s conclusions about the empowerment and disempowerment of the human body in postmodern American culture.

In these two novels that involve the Civil War, Faulkner presents varying responses to loss. Rosa Coldfield of Absalom, Absalom! and The Unvanquishedâs Drusilla Hawk are women out of place in their society, without clearly defined roles. Both women attempt to gain control despite their lack of autonomy and refuse to accept their losses. Rosa Coldfield falls into a perpetual state of mourning, and Drusilla Hawk undertakes a series of actions in order to ignore her losses. Rosaâs grief consumes and infuriates her, and Drusillaâs coping mechanisms fail to help her come to terms with her fiancéâs death and her difficulties as a Southern woman who cannot live up to societal expectations. Drusillaâs failure to cope effectively with her losses is emphasized by her cousin Bayardâs ability to recover from the deaths of the two most important people in his life and create an existence without them. Bayardâs responses to loss exhibit how opportunities for mourning work and availability of new roles can help the grieving process be successful. Further, the womenâs use of mourning as a method of attempting to gain control over their lives and surroundings is especially significant in light of the memorial movement after the Civil War. In the post-bellum South, women were proponents of memorialization and commemoration; these activities were also used to keep the âLost Causeâ alive. Through Rosa Coldfield and Drusilla Hawk, Faulkner expresses how grief can cripple those who cannot move on to new roles or find new purposes in life after a significant loss.

This study compares the use of static locative to in the speech of African Americans and European Americans in various regional communities throughout Eastern North Carolina. These communities are located on Roanoke Island, in Hyde County, Harkers Island, Ocracoke Island, Princeville and in Robeson County, North Carolina. Quantitative examination of locative to reveals a marked pattern of ethnolinguistic alignment related to integration patterns. In Hyde County and Roanoke Island, the use of locative to is sharply reduced in the speech of African Americans who first attended integrated schools. However, in Ocracoke, the decreasing use of locative to is gradual across time, marking the role of an active social variable in the divergence of African American speech after integration. By comparing all of these communities, I seek to explain why there is this ethnolinguistic patterning and what social factors have contributed to it. Additionally, I uncover what this language pattern says about the history of race relations on a regional level in North Carolina and what happens to this language feature over time.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the differences between the Cupid and Psyche tale found in Lucius Apuleius?s The Golden Ass and C.S. Lewis?s Till We Have Faces, with particular attention to how Lewis created a didactic non-allegorical mythopoeic Christian fantasy work from the original possibly allegorical pagan myth. The thesis focuses on the development of the Cupid and Psyche myth in Apuleius?s work, then draws comparisons to the significant differences Lewis makes in his own novel. Lewis?s basic Christian beliefs, specifically in relation to mythology, are discussed. This thesis was conceived as there is very little critical work that focuses on Till We Haves Faces and no in-depth research done comparing it to the second century story upon which it is based.