This thesis, titled "Staging Executions: The Theater of Punishment in Early Modern England," attempts to historicize the notion of the public execution and come to a deeper understanding of the spectacle of the condemned man or woman by examining the ways in which it is manifested in printed literature and drama. Public executions were popular occasions of ritual festivity, widely attended by people from all socio-economic backgrounds. Yet despite our modern notions of the brutality of such events, these ceremonies were elaborately staged and exquisitely paced ritual dramas seething with suspense, tension, crisis, reversals, and revelations. Above all, they were breathtaking spectacles. Accounts of murders and executions were sometimes printed and sold for a few pennies, and this genre of cheap print was wildly popular. These published accounts give us great insight into the workings of an early modern execution, and the ways in which the spectators viewed the event. This material is analyzed in my first chapter. In addition to cheap print, the spectacle of the condemned man or woman occurs quite often in the drama of the day. My second chapter deals with Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy as examples of onstage executions and violence that presents itself as entertainment, and this chapter examines more fully the similarities between the scaffold and the stage. My third chapter focuses on the treatment of the "dead" body on the stage. Specifically in Middleton's The Lady's Tragedy and Marston's The Insatiate Countess, the female body is treated as an eroticized object. This chapter centers on the metatheatrical nature of such plays, as well as the early modern curiosity about the inner workings of the body. In the final chapter, dealing with Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, I investigate the effects of the disrupted state spectacle and the play's direct link to the extraordinarily theatrical "execution" of the Main Plotters in 1604. In looking at the event of an execution itself, its publications in cheap printed media, and its representations on the stage, I attempt to understand more fully the extent to which public execution was a part of the daily lives of early modern peoples, as well as how the pamphleteers and dramatists utilized the spectacle to both corroborate and question the nature of authority. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2007. / April 2, 2007. / Execution, Punishment, The Body, Death, Renaissance, Pamphlet Literature, Jacobean Drama, Eroticization, Metatheater, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary Taylor, Committee Member; Celia Daileader, Committee Member.

Atlantic popular theatre culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries circulated stagings of outcast yet admired underclasses. Karl Marx's naming of these characters lent increased visibility to the lumpenproletariat, the object of both audiences' applause and authorities' censure. Theatrical archives reveal numerous performances that helped imagine and define an emerging Atlantic lumpenproletariat. I examine a broad spectrum of interconnected popular performances. The cycle I follow begins with the charismatic piracy of John Gay's Polly (first performed in 1777) and moves to the interracial affiliations and struggles in plays such as John Fawcett's 1800 Obi; or, Three-Finger'd Jack. From there, nautical circulations produce melodramas such as Douglas Jerrold's 1830 Black-Ey'd Susan and urban voyeurism pictures the lumpen in plays like W. T. Moncrieff's 1822 Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London; finally I discuss the re-emergence of Jack Sheppard, the historical model for Macheath, in a spate of plays after 1839. Popular stagings of the lumpenproletariat provided a means of imagining class; urges to protect boundaries competed with cultural transgressions and complications of class. These theatricals also reveal connections to other modes of cultural expression, influencing the work of nineteenth-century artists and authors such as George Cruikshank, James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, and Herman Melville. Such circum-Atlantic and inter-generic cultural productions reveal the importance of cultural continuities and transmissions, the relationships between class and culture, and the unexplored influences of theatre on American and transatlantic literature. / A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2005. / April 20, 2005. / Theatre History, Nineteenth Century, American Literature, Cultural Studies / Includes bibliographical references. / W. T. Lhamon, Jr., Professor Directing Dissertation; Karen A. Bearor, Outside Committee Member; Leigh H. Edwards, Committee Member; Barry J. Faulk, Committee Member.

Beckett's aesthetic sensibility was essentially Romantic. His early work, steeped in irony though it is, remains fundamentally indebted to a vocabulary and a trove of themes that he inherited from a wide array of philosophers and poets writing as early as the seventeenth century, and he goes on in subsequent fiction and drama to develop his two core Romantic themes: the schism between subject and object and the indestructibility of the creative imagination. Beckett critiques the notion that the mechanical-mathematical paradigm of explanation, which necessarily leads to materialism or dualism, is an accurate description of reality. Materialism and dualism, for Beckett, are equally unsatisfactory. His preference, instead, is for the "clair-obscur," the liminal, the indeterminate, the incoherent--each of which runs throughout a number of Romanticisms that were formative in Beckett's own development, thus demonstrating the ultimate futility of classifying Modernist and Postmodernist literature as anything other than indeterminate Post-Romanticisms. In Imagination Dead Imagine and Company, Beckett begins to move away from the solipsistic world of All Strange Away toward a recognition of the external world and, most significantly, to imaginative possibilities that are never absent in Beckett's purgatorial world of movement, flux, and vitality. And in Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstward Ho, he demonstrates, through an unparalleled imaginative and linguistic agility, the dynamism of the artist and his material, thereby effecting what he had long ago referred to as the "ideal real": an "extra-temporal" experiential interplay or oscillation between subject and object, form and content, eye and mind, empiricism and imagination. / A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2005. / October 7, 2005. / German Romanticism, Coleridge, Keats, Eugene Jolas, Modernism, Postmodernism, Mystical Theology, Enlightenment / Includes bibliographical references. / S. E. Gontarski, Professor Directing Dissertation; Mark Pietralunga, Outside Committee Member; R.M. Berry, Committee Member; Hunt Hawkins, Committee Member.

You Can't Forgive What You Can't Forget is a collection of short stories submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Fine Arts. The stories are responses to the various ways Hurricane Katrina devastated not only the Gulf Coast region, but also the inner lives of the region's inhabitants. However, the stories do not always approach the subject directly. Rather, they are thematically connected to the event by raising questions about recovery, progress, and compassion that speak to the universal emotions surrounding any kind of tragedy that might disrupt the structure of a person's daily life. For instance, in "Ogre Battle" a boy comes to recognize the similarities between himself and his parents, and he is led to the epiphany that he is not as strong as he thought. In "Let Me Lay a Truth Bomb on You," a man is faced with the sudden destruction of his home and tries to convince himself that something impossible has happened, because the reality of the situation is too hard to take. In "Survivor," two teens set out from their backwater town and are irretrievably drawn back into the world they wish to escape. In "A Mansion down the Road," the protagonist reaches the symbol of his escape and finds it to be no better than where he came from. Finally, in "Go to Sleep," a man lies in bed with his children, considers his legacy, and recognizes that he must take control of his life because the world will not simply offer him pity. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts. / Summer Semester, 2010. / March 15, 2010. / Hurricane, New Orleans, Short Story, Katrina / Includes bibliographical references. / Mark Winegardner, Professor Directing Thesis; Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Committee Member; Julianna Baggott, Committee Member.

The family unit established by Adam and Eve in the first book of the Bible is often rewritten and resurrected in American literature. This dissertation explores the Genesis lore cycle in American literature as an emblem of changing family dynamics in the past two centuries. The family unit established by Adam and Eve is rewritten in order to address American literary themes such as fratricide, incest, marking, and more. I analyze texts ranging from very canonical American pieces, such as John Steinbeck's East of Eden and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, to contemporary ones like Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog Underdog and Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina. The fall, fratricide, and implied incest evident in Genesis appear in American literature amid new families who fail to mirror the utopian nuclear family set forth in the initial Edenic creation. These new American families maintain the lore cycle and combat the connotation that American families fit the Genesis first family mold. This study also incorporates findings from other disciplines, including history, sociology, and psychology. Utilizing this scholarship, I examine the ways in which American writers have resurrected Genesis amid major American historical changes such as civil rights, feminism, and more. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2008. / April 11, 2008. / American Literature, Family Violence, Family Studies, Lore Cycles / Includes bibliographical references. / W.T. Lhamon, Professor Directing Dissertation; John Fenstermaker, Committee Member; Andrew Epstein, Committee Member; Neil Jumonville, Outside Committee Member.

This study concerns itself with studying the ways in which various texts both examine and display the effects of technology as manifested by automobiles, trains, and computers as well as the change such inventions have brought about socially and economically. Balanced against such considerations is a discussion of nature and the ways in which technology impacts the natural environment. The tension between technology and nature results in industrial tension, which becomes increasingly important in literature. This work posits and examines the pastoral-industrial text, a text that characteristically displays the conflicts and problems of industrial tension. Finally, the study argues that even the ways in which we read texts and that texts ask us to read them not only result from industrial tension but directly reflect specific views towards the industrial and the natural. Chapter one examines the onset of industrialism in eighteenth century England. Chapter two looks at industrialism in nineteenth-century America and the influence of the locomotive and car. Chapter three focuses on the first half of twentieth-century American literature and the continuing impact of the automobile. The final chapter considers hypertextuality in a variety of eras and geographic locations. This study presents itself as an expansive introduction to many literary considerations and representations of industrialism and some of its myriad offshoots rather than as an exhaustive analysis of one author's or genre's handling of a single aspect of industrialism. Consequently, this text is not intended as the final word on these subjects but as a thorough introduction. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2003. / April 8, 2003. / Industrialism / Includes bibliographical references. / David Kirby, Professor Directing Dissertation; Neil Jumonville, Outside Committee Member; Eric Walker, Committee Member; Virgil Suarez, Committee Member.

The notions of maternity and motherhood in late-eighteenth century England are fraught with ambiguity and contradictions. By this period, the cult of idealized motherhood and maternal virtue is beginning to emerge in England in order to protect a seemingly threatened cultural hegemony. However, this ideological project is dependent upon problematic constructs of the overriding "unnatural" aspects of maternity. In order to delineate ideal, normative maternity, examples of dangerous and monstrous motherhood are overwhelmingly emphasized. Although women's reproductive authority was historically granted to them because the female body was viewed as the natural site of reproduction, eighteenth-century England saw an influx in the number of ways motherhood could be rendered unnatural by its very ties to women's bodies, which were represented as being susceptible to (or, more seriously, the source of) all that was uncontrollable and irrational: illicit sexuality, ignorance, passions, madness, disease, and even murderous desires. Maternity as it was understood as the symbolic locus of collective female community and creative agency was effectively effaced, and was instead rendered an "unnatural" pathological condition "naturally" in need of treatment and control by masculine, rational authorities. In this thesis, I interrogate these constructions of maternity through the 1790s fiction of writers Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, and Eliza Fenwick, all of whom, I argue, use their texts to protest the pathologization and mechanization of maternity that had occurred within their culture. In Wollstonecraft's Maria; or The Wrongs of Woman, Hays's The Victim of Prejudice, and Fenwick's Secresy, or The Ruin on the Rock, each writer utilizes popular gothic conventions in their dramatizations of the dangers of various forms of feminine oppression in patriarchal England, not the least of which lies in the removal of maternity from female control. In each of their novels, Wollstonecraft, Fenwick, and Hays appropriate and reproduce much of the dominant negative discourse of unnatural maternity in order to show how it is ultimately these sorts of oppressive ideological fictions (and their patriarchal proponents) that are themselves monstrous, rather than the women whom they demonize and oppress. Furthermore, I argue that by creating and disseminating texts that protest the loss of maternal agency and demand a return of forms of collective female power, these writers are attempting to wrest back control of some form of creative power that was once indelibly linked to the woman's womb. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2007. / March 14, 2007. / Wollstonecraft, Gothic, Eighteenth Century, Motherhood, Maternity, Hays, Fenwick / Includes bibliographical references. / Candace Ward, Professor Directing Thesis; Eric Walker, Committee Member; Meegan Kennedy-Hanson, Committee Member.

Taking the intersection of African American folklore and literature as its focus, this project investigates the conjure woman as a literary figure. African American healing women are prominent in African American literature, but are largely underrepresented in the discourse surrounding African American women, representation, and literary figures. My research reconstructs the negative connotation attached to women healers in the United States which, in part, recounts the life of Tituba, a female slave of African or Indian descent, who figured at the center of the Salem Witch Trials controversy. The historical lives of Marie Laveau, mother and daughter, are also interrogated as evidence of the othering of conjure women by the dominant culture. I examine the lore cycle of conjurers in early African American literature and suggest that a movement away from Eurocentric representations to a more culturally specific rendering of the conjure woman occurred during the twentieth century. Citing Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman as a precursory text and employing Tituba and Marie Laveau as ancestral figures, I argue that contemporary authors like Gloria Naylor, Arthur Flowers, Jewell Parker Rhodes, and Ntozake Shange resurrect the conjure woman by reinscribing the figure into their works in such a way that undermines the negative connotations that have been associated with conjuring and African-based religions. I reference several African American novels to evidence how writers are re-appropriating a once negative image. Specific issues addressed in such an analysis include the community involvement of conjure women, the effectiveness of healing practices, the legitimacy of power, moral character, the influence of Christianity, and the debunking of stereotypes. I also take into account the relationship between conjure and blues music in a discussion that positions African American authors and film-makers as agents in reclaiming conjure women as folk heroes. This dissertation project provides a historiography and an in-depth analysis of conjure women, one that is intended to aid in the critical and cultural understanding of African American women and spirit work within the African American literary tradition. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2006. / June 29, 2006. / African American Novels, African American Literary Figures, Root Work Black Magic, African American Literature, African American Women, Hoodoo, African American Literary Criticism, Blues Music, Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, Conjuring, Conjure Woman, Spirit Work, Black Women's Film, Black Women Writers, Tituba / Includes bibliographical references. / Darryl Dickson-Carr, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Jerrilyn McGregory, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Matt Childs, Outside Committee Member; Tomeiko Ashford Carter, Committee Member.

The following is a collection of poems written between 2003 and 2005. Many of the longer poems leap from place to place and image to image very quickly, much like the mind itself. Oftentimes a casual, conversational voice is utilized to narrate this motion. Other poems are more compressed, both in length and in language. Ideally, regardless of shape, size, and color, all of the work here is meant to connect author to reader via a shared love of words and the lives we make with them. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2005. / April 11, 2005. / Thesis, Narrative, Poetry / Includes bibliographical references. / David Kirby, Professor Directing Thesis; Barbara Hamby, Committee Member; James Kimbrell, Committee Member.

Florida Stories is a collection of short fiction that takes as its setting the most distinctive state in the union. In Miami, a physicist is forced to face his inability to love; in Palm Beach, a girl relates the aftermath of her tragedy and its effect on her parents; in Central Florida, a young man comes to terms with the death of his eccentric father; in South Florida, a boy opens himself up to the adult world of sexuality and betrayal by performing on stage with his father. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2005. / September 23, 2005. / Set Design, Floods, Drowning, Miami, Short Fiction, Short Stories, Stories, Florida, Fiction, Physicists / Includes bibliographical references. / Mark Winegardner, Professor Directing Thesis; Julianna Baggott, Committee Member; Ned Stuckey-French, Committee Member.