Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-94). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Zora Neale Hurston was a Black American writer during the period of the Harlem Renaissance. The purpose of this study is to show that three of her four novels form a protracted discussion of a particular type of freedom which was of especial interest to Hurston. The study seeks to demonstrate that Hurston believed that a person must be free within his own soul before he could enjoy the advantages offered through legal freedoms. In fact, this study will propose and demonstrate Hurston's belief that the importance of soul freedom supercedes any other kind of freedom and that the person who is free in his soul will neither subjugate another nor allow his soul to be subjugated by another. Hurston's novels Their Eyes Were Watching God, Moses, Man of the Mountain, and Seraph on the Suwanee all support the above hypotheses. Hurston's autobiography and essays also provide evidence for this stance. / Graduation date: 1994

Tesis doctoral--Salamanca--Universidad de Salamanca. / Titre provenant du guide.

A strange and enigmatic collection of myths, lyrical storytelling and fantastic folklore, Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica details Hurston's Caribbean travels and journey as initiate into Haitian Voudoun. My thesis engages Hurston's contact with Voudoun as a phenomenon of encounter which begins for her with the complex crossing of rumours, secrets, lies, myths and memories embodied in stories of spirit-possession, secret societies and zombies circulating in Haiti. As Hurston pursues the "truth" of these stories she is caught in an experience of possession which I call "the rumour of Voudoun." This rumour is contagious in that these stories pull her toward the scene of Voudoun ritual and permeate her consciousness. By retracing Hurston's own phenomenon of bodily possession back in and through Voudoun's historicity across the Middle Passage and as a "medium of conspiracy" among the slaves during the rebellious uprisings in colonial Saint Domingue, I will argue that the rumour of Voudoun is a contagious affect by which an insurgent communal consciousness is passed on. The rumour circulates in and through a non-national, affective community in Haiti which continues to survive amid the silent history of anticolonial nationalisms.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Union Theological Seminary, 1983. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography p. 252-258.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2009. / Title from title page (Digital Archive@GSU, viewed July 29, 2010) Thomas McHaney, committee chair; Pearl McHaney, Mary Zeigler, committee members. Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-74).

No description available.

Thèses (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 1999. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 20 juin 2006). Publié aussi en version papier.

This thesis establishes parallel claims about how women’s autobiography as a genreintersects with fiction as a means to share an author’s opinions on issues of race, gender,class, and topics that the publishing industry deems ‘controversial’, using Zora Neale Hurston’s works Their Eyes Were Watching God and Dust Tracks on a Road as points of comparison. Throughout this thesis, I will show that Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that by virtue of its content is a political novel because of how it represents an overlooked demographic of people and the novel’s ripple effect on later black female writers as one of the first novels that celebrates black female joy. TEWWG does the work of literary representation that publishers did not allow DToaR to do because of the fear that the book would not sell as well if it included more of Hurston’s own political perspective. The second claim that I make is that TEWWG is first dismissed because of its lack of ‘seriousness’ in subject matter by Hurston’s peers, but its use of nature metaphors like the horizon and the tree and motifs like desire and dreams allow for issues of gender, race, class, and love to be discussed because they are shrouded in a literary image disguise.

'Making a Way Out of No Way"': Zora Neale Hurston"'s Hidden Discourse of Resistance"u201d explores how Hurston used techniques she derived from the trickster tradition of African American folk culture in her narratives in order to resist and undermine the racism of the dominant discourse found in popular literature published during her lifetime. Critics have condemned her perceived willingness to use racist stereotypes in her work in order to pander to a white reading audience. This project asserts that Hurston did, indeed, don a "u201cmask of minstrelsy"u201d to play into her reading public"'s often racist expectations in order to succeed as an academic and as a creative writer. At the same time, however, she crafted her narratives in a way that destabilized those expectations through use of sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant points of resistance. In this way, she was able to participate in a system that was rigged against her, as a woman and as an African American, by playing into the expectations of her audiences for economic and professional advantages while simultaneously undermining aspects of those expectations through rhetorical "u201cwinks,"u201d exaggeration, sarcasm, and other forms of humor that enabled her to stay true to her personal values. While other scholars have examined Hurston"'s discourse of resistance, this project takes a different approach by placing Hurston"'s material in relation to the publishing climate at the time. Chapter One examines Mules and Men in the context of the revisions Hurston made to her scholarly work to transform her collection of folktales into a cohesive book marketed to a popular reading audience. Chapter Two focuses on Hurston"'s often-maligned anthropological travel book, Tell My Horse, as it forms a counter-narrative to the sensational and surreal travelogue by William Seabrook, The Magic Island. Chapter Three analyzes Their Eyes Were Watching God alongside DuBose Heyward"'s Porgy to demonstrate how Hurston resists the dominant narrative of black womanhood by creating a strong and self-affirming female role model. / Elizabeth A. Kalos-Kaplan