Challenging those who have mistakenly reduced racial identities to an unchanging, fixed category, Paul Beatty encourages his audience to grasp the intersectional process of identity formation in his novel The White Boy Shuffle. Beattys creative imagination and high-academic vocabulary illustrate via the protagonist, Gunnar Kaufman, how to teach and motivate people to be agents of change in the communities, especially with educational opportunities. Beatty illustrates the successes and shortcomings of black leadership and the ways in which the leaders of the black community influence individuals and institutions. Depicting how minorities are marginalized in the educational system, media profits from the homogenization of blacks, and American political apparatus restricts dissenting opinions from minorities, Beattys text covers a variety of issues pertaining to how minorities are treated as second-class citizens in America. The White Boy Shuffle captures how the absence of racial identity discussion by minority leaders and dominant white society in education and leadership is a fatal flaw to achieving change. In an effort to learn and appreciate the complex historical evolution of race awareness, this thesis offers a critique of white America who have unfortunately reduced these multi-layered topics to a simple, inadequate conversation on race in literature. I argue that we must fully comprehend how the presence of institutional racism in the educational system impacts and influences minority youth. In doing so, I explore how minority leadership can positive impact racial identities and make effective strides toward equality in the 21st century.

Simon Stow warns that the influence of political readings of literary texts could be harmful to political discourse. In particular, he cautions against the growing popularity of political readings over political arguments. Compared with traditional arguments, readings are, Stow argues, poorly suited for liberal political discourse. To demonstrate this point, Stow challenges the political character of Richard Rortys reading of Pale Fire. In this essay, I dispute Stow's criticism of Rorty. My basic argument is that literary criticism (or "readings") can be politically significant and that Rorty's acknowledgement of this fact ties him to rather than separates him from, both the political and literary arenas. To make my point, I reconsider the reading of Pale Fire Rorty offers relative to the kind of reading of Don Quixote offered by Nabokov. By arguing that even the most "literary" of writers reads for political purposes, I hope to situate Rorty within a cultural space where the literary and political converge.

<p>The purpose of the research has been to develop a theory of unity between Fred Chappell?s prose and poetry. His works thematically range from Southern gothic, regional Appalachian, magical realist, and science fiction. One application of this theory of unity has been explored through the idea of a common heroic character. Another application of this theory of unity has been explored through the reliance on fantasy during the hero?s journey in the search for truth. But there is a danger in fictive realities ? they can both hinder and help the hero reach his goal. Ultimately Chappell?s more regional works predominately use fantasy to allow a protagonist to gain truth in self-knowledge while his more gothic and science fiction works tend to use fantasy in order to lead the hero away from truth.</p>

Most modern theories of responding to student writing typically advocate a meaning-centered, whole text holistic approach (as opposed to an analytic mode of response, which allows for the separate evaluation of different criteria). In a holistic assessment, certain criteria may be considered together on one descriptive scale, which renders a final assessment that allows for broader judgments on the quality of particular writing products. As a result, a holistic assessment is usually not quite as rigid as an analytic assessment. This study examined a non-traditional writing program that was highly traditional in its emphasis on stressing the rules of writing mechanics (an analytic method). It specifically focused on instructor familiarity with the program?s required citation format. My research questions: how well would instructors score if given the task of finding deliberately inserted errors? What is instructor perception of format in writing evaluation? And, what, if any, influence does instructor training and experience have on the ability to apply citation format? In addition to being asked to detect 33 deliberately inserted errors in documentation format in a typical student paper, ten instructors at the program, an adult accelerated degree completion program, were also asked to complete a demographic survey. As predicted, except for two notable exceptions, average instructor scores were low (68%). In the follow-up survey, most indicated that they were satisfied with the program?s required APA citation format, and finally, neither length of experience nor discipline-specific training proved to be significant factors in the average of the instructors? scores. As part of the project, the program?s director and the two highest scorers (an English instructor and an accounting instructor) were interviewed to gain insight into how writing requirements fit into the program?s overall curriculum. The director of the program felt that stressing the importance of documentation format helped provide the students in the program with a solid academic grounding. And, despite my intuitive notion that the English instructor would provide the most insightful views on how to promote better student writing, it was the accounting instructor who provided the most helpful feedback (which included a recommendation for the use of other documentation styles in the program). It is hoped that this study offers implications for more in-depth study of instructor response to actual student writing, and more study of other non-traditional writing programs.

"Suspended in Mid-Air while Looking under the Bed" begins and loosely foreshadows this collection of poetry and short stories. I am a storyteller, pulled by both family and place in my life. In this thesis, I play impresario and follow each short story with poems which resonate with that story. The first poems and short stories speak from places in my life: Ireland, Prague, and Malawi. Then my storytelling comes closer to family with a fictional account of my great-grandparents Wilhelm and Ana Krane, who immigrated to Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, in the 1880's. My story of family continues through relationships, reunions, my parents, and ends with the contemporary world when my translation of Charles Baudelaire merges into a poem about Iraq.

Literary scholarship has largely ignored the genre of medieval fantasy, dismissing its library as derivative, formulaic and repetitive. In this thesis, I argue that medieval fantasy is more productively framed as myth and folklore, and that what some call ?repetition? would be better named ?iteration.? By functioning via the folkloric process of incremental repetition, various fantastic tale-types adapt to individual novels? purposes in the way that the ancient oral tale once adapted to audience. The advent of the literary fairy tale, which has culminated in the work of Walt Disney, has halted the natural storytelling process and ?frozen? many traditional tales in place. Medieval fantasy actively fights such narrative distillation?which inevitably leads to dogmatic didacticism?by rejecting master narrative and regenerating the active, meaning-making relationship between author and reader. A particular type of fantasy, called ?metafantasy,? makes calling attention to the process of story its primary aim. In so doing, metafantasy fights the tendency to Disneyfication and the appropriation of myth by dominant ideologies. I explicate the folkloric processes of three metafantasy novels here: The Last Unicorn, by Peter Beagle; The Princess Bride, by William Goldman; and Phillip Pullman?s His Dark Materials series.

The Satanic self is the autonomous, linguistically constructed subject who cannot support itself but who rebels against any external support. According to Foucault, the autonomous subject should be reconsidered as a function of discourse. This anxiety over the autonomous and autonymous subject is not new, but has antecedents far back in literary history. Chaucer?s The Pardoner?s Tale, The Parson?s Tale, Milton?s Paradise Lost, and Beckett?s The Unnamable recapitulate the historical progress of the development and decline of the self-authoring subject, a progress of dislocation of significance from?in order?objects, language, and finally the subject itself. The first two writers show how to avert what Anthony Low calls the ?disastrous fall into nihilistic subjectivity,? while the third can present no such redemption. The withdrawl of meaning through profane kenosis is inextricably linked to the long, slow disappearance of God from Western European cultural consciousness. The rejection of God is the rejection of the traditional grounds of Western subjectivity.

Many critics find that female characters in detective fiction are never entirely successful as either women or detectives. They argue that authors find it impossible to portray women properly in both roles?one persona always eclipses the other. The conflict is generally attributed to the traditionally ?masculine? and conventional nature of the detective genre. This study proposes that the recent combination of detective fiction with the conventionally ?feminine? genre of romance fiction offers hope for a feminist rewriting of the detective genre. A set of guidelines to subtly re-script detective fiction?s conventions is derived from suggestions by several critics, and is heavily influenced by typical elements of romance fiction. The usefulness of this framework in identifying the characteristics of more empowered and fully developed female detectives is tested by a close reading of three representative works from various points in the history of detective fiction. The three works, which include Wilkie Collins?s The Woman in White, Carolyn Keene?s Nancy Drew series, and Janet Evanovich?s Stephanie Plum series, each incorporate a combination of romance and detective fiction and feature a female investigator. The framework proves useful in assessing the achievements and failures in the characterization of female detectives in these novels. It also offers guidelines that could be considered by authors of future detective works to re-script the most conservative elements of the detective fiction genre so that they no longer prevent the emergence of successful, empowered female detectives.

In the past few years, composition theorists have become increasingly interested in the role of computers in the first-year writing classroom. This explorative, case study investigates the use of Web conferencing software as a medium for student-teacher writing conferences. Using qualitative methodology, this researcher conducted out-of-class Web conferences with three first-year writing students about their performance on the first major writing project of the spring 2006 semester. The researcher was also the students? English 101 instructor. Following the Web conferences, the researcher used in depth interviewing techniques to discuss the students? experiences. Data from the recorded Web conferences and transcripts of the post-conference interviews were analyzed to determine answers to the following two research questions: What benefits and challenges do students and teachers find with online Web conferencing and how do these benefits and challenges affect the cyber replication of a face-to-face conference? The results of this study indicate that it is possible to replicate a face-to-face student-teacher conference through Web conferencing technologies. Some of the benefits of Web conferencing include (but are not limited to) the constant availability for students and instructors to have conferences (outside of the traditional business hours that most university buildings are available) and the ability to have an oral discussion in place of a text-based discussion, where it is often difficult for instructors to encapsulate their overall response. Additionally, this study investigates some of the challenges to Web conferencing, such as the lack of a physical presence of the two participants and the inability to conduct global writing revisions due to the lack of screen space available on the computer monitor. Finally, this study has important implications for conferencing in the first-year writing classroom and opens the door for future Web conferencing studies to be conducted on a larger scale with different population samples.

This thesis examines the state of Islamic feminism in Iran through Iranian fiction and film and supporting Islamic texts. In this study I shall examine Dariush Mehrjui?s Leila, Tahminah Milani?s The Hidden Half, and Shahrnush Parsipur?s Women Without Men, along with Azar Nafisi?s Reading Lolita In Tehran in order to limn the tension of female experience and female oppression in a religiously controlled environment and the innate desire for intellectual, emotional, and physical freedom. Though they do not speak for all women, these three works do offer a compelling breadth of the female experience in Iran. I shall likewise examine the complexities of the experience of female oppression in Iran. Through the examination of these works, a conversation begins in which begins with the fact of female oppression and ends with possibilities for female freedom, a freedom that comes from writing.