In The Eight of Swords, a novel, Meredith Sutton finds herself a single mother with no job and no place to live after her husband pleads guilty to several types of theft, leaving her to return to the bank their mobile home and the land on which it rests. Her mother-in-law is Sister Pearl, a well known tarot card reader and psychic in the town, generally regarded as "The Dragon Lady." Nevertheless, Sister Pearl takes in Meredith and her four-year-old son. Meredith's old friendships from high school have fallen apart, but she makes new friends when she finds a job in a beauty salon. Sister Pearl then decides to quit her psychic counseling business, leaving the town bereft of her services. Meredith overcomes her superstitious fear of the cards and, in search of answers to her own questions, learns to read them herself, eventually taking over her mother-in-law's former business, housing it in the back room of the salon rather than in Pearl's old office in the enclosed garage of her home. Meredith soon grows uncomfortable in her new role as advisor and uncomfortable with the pressure her clients put on her to be psychic rather than just interpret the cards they draw. Predictable community criticism and a bit of backlash occur. Meanwhile, Sister Pearl seems to regain her powers and begins to resume some degree of involvement in counseling again. Meredith begins to consider more solid options for her future through education and technical training. She reconciles with her husband when he finally can admit to her what he had done and attempt to explain why. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2008. / February 6, 2008. / Southern Literature, Tarot, Novel / Includes bibliographical references. / Virgil Suarez, Professor Directing Dissertation; Susan Nelson Wood, Outside Committee Member; R. M. Berry, Committee Member; Deborah Coxwell-Teague, Committee Member.

This novel attempts to marry the aesthetics of grit lit with the elements of noir crime-novels and -films. Set against the backdrop of one of our country's first Civil Rights demonstrations—the Biloxi beach wade-in, Easter 1959—this historical fiction dramatizes the protests and subsequent riots. However, it also adds a twist: a plot that reveals that the burning of the historically black part of the city was far more heinous than just racism. In fact, the white supremacists in this novel are also exploited into action by powers greater yet more sinister and silent than their simple, racist hearts could imagine. Loosh, the black community and its leaders, the police department, the New Orleans Mafia, the local government, and HUD all have their own stories here, which are in turn both noble and selfish. Further, they all exist within a much larger plot, and all will eventually be caught up in its web and used beyond their reckoning. And in the end, only Loosh will have the chance to make things right. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2009. / December 1, 2008. / Mississippi, Civil Rights, Noir, Historica, l Dixie Mafia, Mafia, Crime / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert Olen Butler, Professor Directing Dissertation; Elna Green, Outside Committee Member; David Kirby, Committee Member; Virgil Suarez, Committee Member.

"Can't Knock the Hustle": Performances of Black Hustler Masculinity in African American Literature and Culture, reinterprets the African American social movements of the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s, emphasizing how the controversial performances of black men as black hustlers contributed to them. Reading the Black Power movement as a youth-driven reaction not only to the elders in the Civil Rights movement but also to the 1965 Moynihan Report that defined black men in terms of criminal deviance, I demonstrate how young black men sought to retain the masculinity, which they felt their elders had been stripped of, by becoming hustlers themselves. This study also claims that the selected texts should be privileged as hustler narratives, drawing attention to the function of the hustler as participating in a wider American tradition of upward class mobility. In the process, the black hustler hyperbolically emulates, criticizes, and rejects or restructures such concepts of individual 'rags-to-riches' capitalism and/or middle class respectability in order to achieve his own status and define his own terms for the construction of alternative black masculinities. Chapter One reconnects the black hustler to the badman, a hero in the African American folk tradition, and interrogates how the federal government and the film industry respectively demonized and commodified it. Chapters Two and Three illustrate how hustler masculinity in Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land and Malcolm X's The Autobiography serves as a social critique of race and class in the inner-city and argue that the (re)establishment of cultural, political, and/or spiritual communities are necessary for black males performers to transcend hustler masculinity. Chapter Four examines Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power and discusses how and to what extent she could lead the Black Panther Party when hustler masculinity plays a large role in the organization and function of relationships in the party. Chapter Five demonstrate how the commodification of the black hustler in the semi- autobiographical and fictional narratives of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines along with the presentation of the hustler figure in Blaxploitation films contributed its present denigration and sensationalism. The Epilogue addresses how hip hop performers such as Ice Cube, NWA, Nas, Jay-Z, and 50 cent, amongst others, are recovering and recuperating the figure of the black hustler to its representation prior to the early 1970s. Such work is needed because it assists in developing an understanding of how young black men learn to perform masculinity in particular kinds of urban communities and also to complicate how we understand black masculinity in terms of what Michael Eric Dyson called the "politics of respectability." / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall, Semester, 2009. / August 20, 2009. / Donald Goines, Blaxploitation Films, Badman, Hip Hop, Iceberg Slim, Elaine Brown, Claude Brown, Black Hustlers, Black Masculinity, Malcolm X, Hustler Narrative / Includes bibliographical references. / Jerrilyn McGregory, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Christopher Shinn, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Maxine Jones, University Representative; Maxine Montgomery, Committee Member.

This study concentrates on the misunderstood and maligned figure of the black hustler to re-assess the 1960s constructions of black masculinity as they inform the politics of race and class mobility in the United States during and after the Civil Rights period. Whereas critics such as David Dudley, Lawrence Goodheart, Patrick Daniel Moynihan, and Terri Hume Oliver, amongst others, have read the black street hustler in terms of psychopathology and criminality, I argue that Claude Brown, Malcolm X, and Iceberg Slim enlarge the urban and folkloric roots of the black hustler in order to critique the very foundations of American capitalism itself as well as to challenge the social norms of white middle-class masculinity by mimicking these concepts through hyperbolic performances, which negate both the supposed psychopathology and criminality associated with the black hustler. Although the hustler figure is nearly omnipresent in Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, Malcolm X's The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Iceberg Slim's Pimp: The Story of My Life, these selected works tend to be read as autobiographies that rely on conventions of social realism, black nationalism, and/or confessional narratives, focusing exclusively on the negative aspects of the black hustler. Instead, this study claims that the selected texts should be privileged as hustler narratives, drawing attention to the function of the hustler as participating in a wider American tradition of upward class mobility. In the process, the black hustler hyperbolically emulates, criticizes, and rejects or restructures such concepts of individual 'rags-to-riches' capitalism and/or middle class respectability in order to achieve his own status and define his own terms for the construction of alternative black masculinities. Chapter One shows how Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land utilizes the presentation of the hustler to destabilize prevalent articulations of the North as Promised Land in migration narratives and rebuilds community through jazz musicianship and the male-centered community that it creates. Chapter Two posits the hustler in The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a developmental stage that articulates or reproduces itself on the streets, in prison, and within the Nation of Islam and leads Malcolm to an emerging Pan-Africanism through his reliance on, and questioning of, unstable male-centered communities. Chapter Three discusses Iceberg Slim's presentation of the hustler in Pimp: The Story of My Life by highlighting the critical similarities between the pimp and the standard managerial capitalist and reveals how false contrition gains him entry into middle-class status. The Epilogue discusses the work of Nathan McCall and the "strained position of the middle class" as seen through the black male figure, which speaks to the ineffectiveness and lack of functionality that traditional capitalist advancement offers for poor urban settings. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2005. / October 21, 2005. / Black Masculinity, Iceberg Slim, Malcolm X, Claude Brown, Hustler Narratives, Hustlers / Includes bibliographical references. / Christopher Shinn, Professor Directing Thesis; Tomeiko Ashford, Committee Member; Maxine Jones, Committee Member.

This study, using Michelle Cliff's Abeng and Paule Marshall's Brown Girl Brownstones, explores these novels as coming of age narratives that challenge the bildungsroman genre and these novels are therefore placed in a new theoretical model termed Yere-wolo. Cliff and Marshall illuminate the need for a reevaluation of the bildungsroman genre. The construction of, Toward a Theory of Yere-wolo, emerges out of the unsettling disposition of black female development within the bildungsroman genre. The critics within this genre have failed to adequately address obstacles that are specific to black female identity construction. This study illustrates how a theory of Yere-wolo offers a space for a diverse reading of the coming of age novels of black women. Toward a Theory of Yere-wolo offers a space in which differences in the identity construction of various black women is shared. If identity constitutes a variety of meanings, including race, gender, and class, then it is imperative that authors writing about identity construction have a space to do so. Cliff's construction of Clare's identity differs greatly from Marshall's construction of Selina's. Under the umbrella of bildungsroman, black bildungsroman, and female bildungsroman, the protagonist's development is universalized as woman or black, with little room for different subject positions. A marginal and monolithic view of black women has been the tendency amongst essentialist, and female bildungsroman scholars. However, the construction of a theory of Yere-wolo is centered on the experiences of black women and it opens a space for various aspects of black female development that have been erased from contemporary scholarship. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2004. / September 23, 2002. / Black Bildungsroman, Female Bildungsroman, Bildungsroman, Coming Of Age / Includes bibliographical references. / Jerrilyn McGregory, Professor Directing Thesis; Maxine Montgomery, Committee Member; Chanta Haywood, Committee Member.

Within the traditional Christian discourse of love, redemption is most often available through an act of self-sacrifice. This project aims to examine alternate models of redemption within contemporary black women's fiction that both critique, and alleviate the necessity for, a gendered act of self-sacrifice. The collected writings of bell hooks explore an interfaith dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, which proposes a "worldwide love ethic" that is centered on the assimilation of self and an emerging global community. Gayl Jones' Corregidora critiques the notion of slave redemption through maternity, and blues music opens a space of collective catharsis and salvation. Jones' Song for Anninho creates a space for healing and redemptive love in the face of violence and geographic dislocation by merging African religious beliefs and Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. Similarly, in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day, an alternative to self-sacrifice appears through a merging of masculine and feminine will and desire and a privileging of the natural world through the African American conjure tradition. All of these texts seek to examine how black women progress from fragmentation to wholeness through spirituality, sexuality, and a connection to the global community. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 2007. / May 14, 2007. / Sexuality, Gender, Religious Studies, African-American Literature, Women's Studies / Includes bibliographical references. / Christopher Shinn, Professor Directing Thesis; Maxine Montgomery, Committee Member; Kathleen Yancey, Committee Member.

According to Terry Eagleton's reading of Castle Rackrent, "if an ironic reading of [Thady] Quirk's servility is plausible, then the hegemony which failed in his case was a Gaelic one; and there seems little reason to suspect that an Anglo-Irish project would fare any better." Certainly, while Edgeworth repeatedly offers a sympathetic portrayal of the Anglo-Irish gentry, her Irish tales are full of their failure to maintain well-managed estates while retaining the loyalty of their tenants. Her solution then is the creation of a new race of native Irish citizens, trained by the enlightened Anglo-Irish in order to secure an harmonious relationship between the two groups while leaving the Anglo-Irish some measure of control over the future of the nation, whatever the long term effects of the Union are. By applying historical analysis, a study of literary trends, and Edgeworth's own templates of good and bad agents and landowners found in her Irish novels, I hope to contextualize some of the ambiguities surrounding Castle Rackrent's Jason Quirk and the issues of class, religion, estate management, and Irish identity that are so crucial to Edgeworth's Irish writings. The following thesis breaks out in three parts. In Part One, "Jason Quirk: Middleman?" I argue that the ambiguous Jason Quirk from Castle Rackrent does not conform to the definitions of "middleman" offered by Kevin Whelan and Maria Edgeworth but instead is an early representative of an Anglicized emergent Catholic middleclass and a starting point for Edgeworth's use of the land agent as a mediator of the class and religious tensions exacerbated by the prospect of the Union and Catholic emancipation. In Part Two, "Improvements: Community and Union," I expand on Jason Quirk's potential for becoming a model land agent by focusing on the theme of estate development in other Romantic novels, first comparing Jane Austen's and Mary Wollstonecraft's treatment of paternalism and patronage to Edgeworth's critique of indiscriminate charity and her use of the land agent to promote social improvements of the lower class, and then comparing Sir Walter Scott's allegory for class and community in The Bride of Lammermoor with Edgeworth's treatment of absenteeism's effect on Irish society and the divisiveness of religion in the years surrounding the Union, with land agents acting as intermediaries between Anglo-Irish landowners and their lower-class tenantry. In Part Three, "Gaelic Tradition: Language, Humor, and National Identity," I argue that Edgeworth uses humorous portrayals of peasants, with their quaint (read ignorant) use of the Irish idiom, and the laudable figure of the Good Agent, typically doubling as a benevolent schoolmaster in her Irish novels, to promote an educational program that aims to secure the success of the Union and preserve Anglo-Irish authority by undermining the Irish language and Gaelic traditions in favor of creating a new homogenized Irish identity. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts. / Summer Semester, 2006. / June 2, 2006. / Castle Rackrent, Jason Quirk, Maria Edgeworth, Land Agents / Includes bibliographical references. / Eric Walker, Professor Directing Thesis; Helen Burke, Committee Member; Meegan Kennedy, Committee Member.

This collection of seven short stories is in fulfillment of the Florida State University MA thesis requirement. Each of the stories, set during the off-season in the fictional gulf coast town of Mossy Key, can stand on their own. Jointly, the stories hinge on life in a small, self-supported fishing village. Each story, told by different residents of the town, addresses the town's concern to expand while also preserving its roots. The stories are arranged sequentially beginning with Labor Day and running through Spring Break. The stories render a world where land development for the sake of commerce does not necessarily facilitate the expansion of the resident's wallets. The stories center around the verge of a full-blown tourist economy, but this theme is not the major driving force behind each story. Each centers on emotional ambivalence: anguish over unrequited love, grief created by unstable family situations, breaking the habit of believing one's own lies, and accepting the bittersweet taste of loss. "Meeting Jim Cantore" and "Potted Plants" illustrates two women's unrealistic yet desperate grasp of woman/man love relationships should be. "Sweet Loretta" and "Washed Ashore" both address the trappings of mother/daughter-type relationships, expressively the balance between loving and controlling. "Concrete Chickens" explores the break-up of a couple and the unrelenting man who cannot take it like a man. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2002. / December 13, 2002. / Short Stories, Moss Key / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Professor Directing Thesis; Mark Winegardner, Committee Member; Janet Burroway, Committee Member.

In exploring the degree to which Romantic legacies persist, this study concerns a particular type of poet and novelist. Typical Romantic themes – such as those of nature, solitude, or the sublime – surface in numerous nineteenth and twentieth century writers, such as the poetry of usual suspects like Emerson or Thoreau, but also in the poetry of less usual but notable poets like Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, or Wendell Berry. Although they would be worthy poetic subjects, this study does not concern those poets. I am more interested in the less obvious examples of poets who derive their poetics partially from Romantic elements in ways that one might not suspect, and in ways that the poet herself might not suspect. This study concerns those less obviously Romantic writers who yet show signs that Romanticism has infiltrated their thought processes – their poetics – even despite their inclination to veer away from Romantic traditions. Such writers – in this case, Denise Levertov, William Carlos Williams, and Vladimir Nabokov – are studied primarily against the context of Wordsworthian and Keatsian poetics or against European Romanticism through Rousseau's The Confessions. Thus, the nuance in Levertov and Williams' poetics emerges more keenly when explored through the lens of Wordsworthian poetics; and, Nabokov's Lolita provides ample territory for exploring Romantic "autobiography" in the context of claims that both Nabokov's protagonist and Rousseau make – that they will tell nothing but the "truth." In some ways, Romanticism has infiltrated poetic thinking long after its time, and continues to persist in poetic language, philosophy, and practices; it persists even in the poetic thinking of writers who strive to create entirely new literary movements, or who define themselves against past Romantic poetics. In understanding and gaining awareness of how and why these legacies persist, we gain an understanding of how our own writing works and the effects it can have. We also appreciate what it is that impels a literary period to persist sometimes against our own will, or our own expectations. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2009. / May 14, 2009. / Romanticism, Modernism, Wordsworth, Keats, Rousseau, Williams, Levertov, Nabokov / Includes bibliographical references. / James O'Rourke, Professor Directing Dissertation; Lauren Weingarden, Outside Committee Member; Eric Walker, Committee Member; Helen Burke, Committee Member.

Selections from Inventions in the Key of C is a collection of essays about cancer and issues related to cancer. Books on the topic of cancer are plentiful. There are a number of narrative memoirs including The Red Devil, by Kathryn Russell Rich, and It's Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong. In the self-help/inspirational area are numerous books ranging from nutrition to positive thinking to navigating the practicalities of living with cancer; I believe I have noticed on the bookstore shelves Cancer For Dummies. Susan Sontag's Illness as a Metaphor looks critically at how cancer, and people with cancer are perceived, as do significant portions of some thoughtful memoirs, such as Arthur Frank's At the Will of the Body, and Ken Wilbur's Grace and Grit. This work in it's present state might be most closely compared to another collection, Anatole Broyard's Intoxicated by My Illness. Broyard, in a series of essays and journal entries, entertains a number of subjects related to his cancer: from the nature of illness, to relationships with doctors, his friend's reactions, and his thoughts on other illness-related literature. While I believe that some of my essays will stand alone and be of interest to literary readers, it is my feeling that the eventual work will appeal to an audience that is in both broader—comprised of people who read popular literature--and narrower –those who have an existing interest in cancer. The essays in this collection range in style from the personal with small amounts of information embedded in the conversation, to the journalistic merely accented with a personal sensibility. This diversity was deliberate. In terms of process, the "journalistic" pieces marked the greatest departure from my previous work and proved to be the most challenging, perhaps because in my preparation I did not find models specifically for this type of writing, which would perhaps have revealed strategies for balancing dense information and tone. For the future, I would like to spend more time reading authors who successfully present specialized material to a lay audience, especially with a first person point of view. Further development of this work would definitely include a concluding section for "Sure it's Killing Us," and I would also like add a few more personal essays for the purpose of balance. Here are some ideas: A speculation (humorous) on how the 1960's television series, Star Trek might influenced my core beliefs about gender roles and the universe, and ultimately contributed to my "cancer personality" ("Star Trek Gave Me Cancer"). A humorous/confessional essay about my "celebrity cancer curiousity," perhaps incorporating results from an informal survey of other cancer survivors and their relationship to celebrity cancer in the news ("But I'm Not a Stalker or Anything"). A personal experience/information piece about Buddhism, studies in mindscience and the pros and cons of meditation ("How Cancer Made Me a Quasi-Buddhist"). / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. / Summer Semester, 2008. / June 12, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. / Diane Roberts, Professor Directing Thesis; Ned Stuckey-French, Committee Member; Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Committee Member.