The purpose of this study was to examine the academic leadership as portrayed in the American academic novel from 1950 to 1990. Leadership positions from higher education (president, vice-president, dean, and chairperson) were examined in this analysis of 40 academic fiction novels. The leader behavior of the selected characters was classified, using the following categories: autocratic (telling), democratic (selling), participative (participating), delegative (delegating), situational (varying) and "other" (unclassifiable due to lack of information or criteria variance). The finding was that the majority of academic leaders, in the novels studied, behaved using an autocratic (telling) leadership behavior. Also, the majority of the selected novels were written from the viewpoint of a professor; however, the autocratic image of the administrators was considered accurate from the professorcharacter's point of view. The results of this study should prove useful to educational institutions in deciding the usefulness, choice, planning, and implementation of leadership training for academic administrators. The introduction of leadership methods in education would be warranted to effect the future leadership performance of educators and, eventually, improve the leadership image of academic administrators.

viii, 94 p. / My thesis examines Star Wars fan fiction about Anakin Skywalker posted on the popular blogging platform LiveJournal. I investigate the folkloric qualities of such posts and analyze the ways in which fans through narrative generate systems of meaning, engage in performative expressions of gender identity, resistance, and festival, and create transformative works within the present cultural milieu. My method has been to follow the posts of several Star Wars fans on LiveJournal who are active in posting fan fiction and who frequently respond to one another's posts, thereby creating a network of community interaction. I find that fans construct systems of meaning through complex interactions with a network of cultural sources, that each posting involves multiple layers of performance, and that these works frequently act as parody, critique, and commentary on not just the official materials but on the cultural climate that produced and has been influenced by them. / Committee in charge: Dr. Dianne Dugaw, Chair; Dr. Lisa Gilman, Member; Dr. Debra Merskin, Member

xii, 251 p. / Sedimentations of transformations and experiences empowered the 20th century writers Sata Ineko and Hirabayashi Taiko as writers. Because of their mutual belief in the early principles of the proletarian literary movement--writing the reality of the working class from their perspectives--both produced works centered on daily life. In not only delineating but also examining the daily occurrences, their stories and critiques acutely exposed the issues, the conditions, and the exploitation of the working class under capitalism, particularly the unfair and unreasonable treatment of women and women workers under the patriarchal slogan "Good Wives and Wise Mothers" and the discrimination of women workers and writers even within the proletarian movement. The café proved the best site for both to offer keen analyses. Materializing the actual working experiences of jokyû (café waitresses), they exposed the superficiality of Japanese modernity in the 1920s and 30s, the suppression and oppression of women under patriarchy, commodification and exploitation of working women under capitalism, and the ultimate consequences--social myopia and deterioration of human life. While the café was for jokyû a site of exploration and challenge by overturning the dominant power hierarchy practiced in society, for Sata and Hirabayashi, writing about the café challenged the prejudice and confinement of existing categorizations such as "women," "women workers," " jokyû ," "women writers," and "proletarian writers." Both Sata and Hirabayashi treated the café and jokyû as realistic and multifaceted. To strengthen this realism, both writers relied on their own corporeal experiences and sensations, supporting honest illustrations of power dynamics and the dual-system oppression of women at play within and beyond the café environment. Both acknowledged the body as a site of complication and possibility. Through their acknowledgments beyond the surface inscriptions that restrict and limit who and what lies within, both Sata and Hirabayashi contended that the body was an interactive and potentially productive catalyst for change. For them, the corporeal experience proved more effective for gaining consciousness, obtaining class-consciousness, and eventually achieving ideological resolution than through doctrinal readings and teachings. / Committee in charge: Stephen Kohl, Chairperson; Alisa Freedman, Member; Tze-Lan Sang, Member; Jeffrey Hanes, Outside Member

xviii, 216 p. : ill. (some col.) / The focus of this dissertation is on how language experience shapes perception of a non-native prosodic contrast. In Tokyo Japanese, fundamental frequency (F0) peak and fall are acoustic cues to lexically contrastive pitch patterns, in which a word may be accented on a particular syllable or unaccented (e.g., tsúru 'a crane', tsurú 'a vine', tsuru 'to fish'). In English, lexical stress is obligatory, and it may be reinforced by F0 in higher-level prosodic groupings. Here I investigate whether English listeners can attend to F0 peaks as well as falls in contrastive pitch patterns and whether training can facilitate the learning of prosodic categories. In a series of categorization and discrimination experiments, where F0 peak and fall were manipulated in one-word utterances, the judgments of prominence by naïve English listeners and native Japanese listeners were compared. The results indicated that while English listeners had phonetic sensitivity to F0 fall in a same-different discrimination task, they could not consistently use the F0 fall to categorize F0 patterns. The effects of F0 peak location and F0 fall on prominence judgments were always larger for Japanese listeners than for English listeners. Furthermore, the interaction between these acoustic cues affected perception of the contrast by Japanese, but not English, listeners. This result suggests that native, but not non-native, listeners have complex and integrated processing of these cues. The training experiment assessed improvement in categorization of Japanese pitch patterns with exposure and feedback. The results suggested that training improved identification of the accented patterns, which also generalized to new words and new contexts. Identification of the unaccented pattern, on the other hand, showed no improvement. Error analysis indicated that native English listeners did not learn to attend specifically to the lack of the F0 fall. To conclude, language experience influences perception of prosodic categories. Although there is some sensitivity to F0 fall in non-native listeners, they rely mostly on F0 peak location in language-like tasks such as categorization of pitch patterns. Learning of new prosodic categories is possible. However, not all categories are learned equally well, which suggests that first language attentional biases affect second language acquisition in the prosodic domain. / Committee in charge: Susan Guion Anderson, Chairperson; Melissa A. Redford, Member; Vsevolod Kapatsinki, Member; Kaori Idemaru, Outside Member

xi, 266 p. / This dissertation employs recent developments in the cognitive sciences to explicate competing social and religious undercurrents in Beowulf. An enduring scholarly debate has attributed the poem's origins to, variously, Christian or polytheistic worldviews. Rather than approaching the subject with inherited terms which originated in Judeo-Christian assumptions of religious identity, we may distinguish two incongruous ways of conceiving of agency, both human and divine, underlying the conventional designations of pagan and Christian. One of these, the poly-agent schema, requires a complex understanding of the motivations and limitations of all sentient individuals as causal agents with their own internal mental complexities. The other, the omni-agent schema, centralizes original agency in the figure of an omnipotent and omnipresent God and simplifies explanations of social interactions. In this concept, any individual's potential for intentional agency is limited to subordination or resistance to the will of God. The omni-agent schema relies on social categorization to understand behavior of others, whereas the poly-agent schema tracks individual minds, their intentions, and potential actions. Whereas medieval Christian narratives, such as Bede's Life of St. Cuthbert and Augustine's Confessions, depend on the omni-agent schema, Beowulf relies more heavily on the poly-agent schema, which it shares with Classical and Norse myths, epics, and sagas. While this does not prove that the poem originated before the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, it suggests that the poem was able to preserve an older social schema which would have been discouraged in post-conversion cultures were it not for a number of passages in the poem which affirmed conventional Christian theology. These theological asides describe an omni-agent schema in abstract terms, though they accord poorly with the representations of character thought and action within the poem. This minimal affirmation of a newer model of social interaction may have enabled the poem's preservation on parchment in an age characterized by the condemnation, and often violent suppression, of non-Christian beliefs. These affirmations do not, however, tell the whole story. / Committee in charge: James W. Earl, Chairperson; Louise Westling, Member; Lisa Freinkel, Member; Mark Johnson, Outside Member

viii, 214 p. / In this study, I examine the various techniques used by poets to provide consolation. With Tennyson's In Memoriam, I explore the relationship between formal and thematic consolation, i.e., the ways in which the use of formal elements of the poem, particularly rhyme scheme, is an attempt by the poet to attain and offer consolation. Early in his laureateship after the Duke of Wellington's funeral, Tennyson wrote "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," but this poem failed to meet his reading audience`s needs, as did the first major work published after Tennyson was named Poet Laureate: Maud. I argue that form and theme are as inextricably linked in Maud as they are in In Memoriam, and in many ways, Maud revises the type of mourning exhibited in In Memoriam. Later, I examine in greater detail the hallmarks of Victorian mourning. Although most Victorians did not mourn for as long or as excessively as Queen Victoria, the form her mourning took certainly is worth discussion. I argue that we can read Tennyson's "Dedication" to Idylls of the King and his "To the Mourners" as Victorian funeral sermons, each of which offers explicit (and at times, contradictory) advice to the Queen on how to mourn. Finally, I discuss the reactions to Tennyson's death in the popular press. Analyzing biographical accounts, letters, and memorial poems, I argue that Tennyson and his family were invested in the idea of "the good death"; Tennyson needed to die as he had lived--as the great Laureate. / Committee in charge: Richard Stein, Chair; Tres Pyle, Member; Deborah Shapple, Member; Raymond Birn, Outside Member

xv, 256 p. : ill. / This dissertation stages a reciprocal critique between traditional and marginal philosophical approaches to language on the one hand and interdisciplinary studies of speech-accompanying hand gestures on the other. Gesturing with the hands while speaking is a ubiquitous, cross-cultural human practice. Yet this practice is complex, varied, conventional, nonconventional, and above all under-theorized. In light of the theoretical and empirical treatments of language and gesture that I engage in, I argue that the hand gestures that spontaneously accompany speech are a part of language; more specifically, they are enactments of linguistic meaning. They are simultaneously (acts of) cognition and communication. Human communication and cognition are what they are in part because of this practice of gesturing. This argument has profound implications for philosophy, for gesture studies, and for interdisciplinary work to come. As further, strong proof of the pervasively embodied way that humans make meaning in language, reflection on gestural phenomena calls for a complete re-orientation in traditional analytic philosophy of language. Yet philosophical awareness of intersubjectivity and normativity as conditions of meaning achievement is well-deployed in elaborating and refining the minimal theoretical apparatus of present-day gesture studies. Triangulating between the most social, communicative philosophies of meaning and the most nuanced, reflective treatments of co-speech hand gesture, I articulate a new construal of language as embodied, world-embedded, intersubjectively normative, dynamic, multi-modal enacting of appropriative disclosure. Spontaneous co-speech gestures, while being indeed spontaneous, are nonetheless informed in various ways by conventions that they appropriate and deploy. Through this appropriation and deployment speakers enact, rather than represent, meaning, and they do so in various linguistic modalities. Seen thusly, gestures provide philosophers with a unique new perspective on the paradoxical determined-yet-free nature of all human meaning. / Committee in charge: Mark Johnson, Chairperson; Ted Toadvine, Member; Naomi Zack, Member; Eric Pederson, Outside Member

The objective of this study was to develop a profile of writing centers in twelve community colleges governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents. This profile included how they were established, how they are funded and staffed, what services are provided and to whom, how training is provided for staff, and how technology is incorporated. More important than the profile itself, however, was an analysis of successful and unsuccessful practices, especially those related to governance, structure, and training of staff, as revealed through the perceptions and experiences of writing center directors. Because electronic technology has transformed the craft of writing, and its teaching, the analysis extended to the ways in which this technology should be integrated into writing center programs. To construct a profile of current writing center structure and practice, a survey instrument was created and administered by telephone during the spring of 1998. The survey was followed by on-site interviews with four writing center directors which focused on strategies for improving campus support for services, recruiting and training tutors, and providing services electronically. Tennessee community college writing centers vary in their primary clientele with almost half providing comprehensive services to all writers on campus and half serving primarily developmental writers. Perhaps because of this developmental orientation there continues to be a stigma attached to writing centers. Community colleges in Tennessee could enhance the stature of their writing centers by conferring faculty and full-time status on the director, offering more comprehensive services, especially tutorial services, to writers of all levels of ability and from all departments. While a substantial body of literature on writing center philosophy and practice has developed during the last twenty years, much of it failed to address the limitations inherent in community colleges pertaining to admissions policies, non-residential and part-time students, and length of time required to complete a degree. This study identified assumptions, practices, and goals which are universal as well as those which are unique among community college writing centers within the Tennessee Board of Regents system and attempted to anticipate future needs as these centers continue to evolve into the new millennium.

xviii, 210 p. : ill. (some col.) / The current dissertation investigated segmental and prosodic aspects of first- (L1) and second-language (L2) speech production. Forty Korean-speaking adults and children varying in L2 experience (6 months-inexperienced vs. 6 years-experienced) as well as twenty age-matched native English speaking adults and children participated. Experienced children born in the U.S. were first exposed to English much earlier than inexperienced children. Group differences were investigated for insight into the effect of differing language experience on speech production. For segmental aspects, spectral quality and duration of English and Korean vowels (Chapter II), the effect of English coda consonant voicing on vowel and consonant closure duration (Chapter III), and language-specific voice onset time (VOT) in English and Korean stops (Chapter IV) were examined. All Korean groups except the experienced children differed from the native English speakers in vowel spectral quality and coda voicing production. The experienced children showed native-like production of both English and Korean vowels and also used VOT to distinguish Korean aspirated and English voiceless stops. These results suggest that the experienced children have separate phonological representations for their two languages. For prosodic aspects, stressed and unstressed vowels in English multisyllabic words (Chapter V) and Korean four-syllable phrases (Chapter VI) were elicited. The results of stressed and unstressed vowel production revealed that the Korean adults were able to acquire English prosody in a native-like manner, except for reduced vowel quality. Contrary to the little L1-L2 interaction in prosody for adults, Korean experienced children's production suggested a strong influence of English acquisition on the development of Korean prosody in terms of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration patterns. Different degrees of L1-L2 interaction between Korean experienced children's production of segments and prosody are discussed from the developmental standpoint of simultaneous bilingual children's language shift from the mother tongue to English. In addition to children's greater plasticity of language acquisition, external (e.g., peer pressure, language input) and internal (e.g., ethnic self-identity) factors are likely to have created a language learning environment different from that of the Korean adults. As a result, the degree and direction of L1-L2 interaction varied by linguistic domains, depending on the age of the learner and the language experience. / Committee in charge: Susan Guion-Anderson, Chairperson; Melissa Redford, Member; Vsevolod Kapatsinski, Member; Kaori Idemaru, Outside Member

ix, 203 p. : ill. / As critic Jonathan Gottschall notes, "The literary scholar's subject is ultimately the human mind - the mind that is the creator, subject, and auditor of literary works." The primary aim of this dissertation is to use modern cognitive science to better understand the early modern mind. I apply a framework rooted in cognitive science--the interdisciplinary study of how the human brain generates first-person consciousness and relates to external objects through that conscious framework--to reveal the role of consciousness and memory in subject formation and creative interpretation, as represented in period drama. Cognitive science enables us as scholars and critics to read literature of the period through a lens that reveals subjects in the process of being formed prior to the "self-fashioning" processes of enculturation and social discipline that have been so thoroughly diagnosed in criticism in recent decades. I begin with an overview of the field of cognitive literary theory, demonstrating that cognitive science has already begun to offer scholars of the period a vital framework for understanding literature as the result of unique minds grappling with uniquely historical problems, both biologically and socially. From there, I proceed to detailed explications of neuroscience-based theories of the relationship between the embodied brain, memory, and subject identity, via detailed close reading case studies. In the primary chapters, I focus on what I consider to be three primary elements of embodied subjectivity in drama of the period: basic identity reification through unique first-person memory (the Tudor interlude Jake Juggler ), more complex subject-object relationships leading to alterations in behavioral modes (Hamlet ), and finally, the blending of literary structures and social context in the interpretation of subject behavior (Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One ). / Committee in charge: Lisa Freinkel, Chairperson; George Rowe, Member; Ben Saunders, Member; Lara Bovilsky, Member; Ted Toadvine, Outside Member