Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Laura Kanost / Early in the twentieth century, children’s literature in Spain developed greatly in terms of quality and distribution thanks in large part to the appearance of new publishing houses, illustrators and authors. Additionally, increased demand brought with it new translations of many foreign texts for children. Despite these early developments, children’s literature suffered a dramatic change after the establishment of Francisco Franco’s Nationalist regime; during the post-war period many types of literature were heavily censored, while children’s literature in particular devolved into what was in large part an ideological tool. Many of the texts for children during this period either directly or indirectly propagated a conception of “Spanishness” that excluded non-Catholics, particularly Iberian Muslims and those that supported the Second Spanish Republic that the Nationalists had toppled. Much like the Reconquista fought against the Iberian Muslims centuries earlier, the Spanish Civil War was often represented as a sort of crusade against non-Catholic (and therefore “non-Spanish”) Others. Many texts for children presented the elements of this narrative by means of auto-images (images of the Nationalist conception of “Spanishness”) and hetero-images (typically images of the “Otherly” Republicans and Muslims). The contrasts formed between these two sorts of images reveal how Spanish children were taught to conceive of themselves, as well as the Others of the Nationalist narrative. The texts discussed in this report include two civics texts (Así quiero ser: El niño del nuevo estado [1943] and España nuestra: El libro de las juventudes españoles [1943]), as well as two comic books (El Guerrero del Antifaz [1943-1966] and Flechas y Pelayos [1938-1949]) that were chosen for their representativeness of the sorts of texts widely available to and read by children during the post-war period.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Daniel A. Hoyt / This project is the first three chapters of a young adult novel, The Muses. Lily Bellows is singled out in infancy to become one of the Muses, humans given supernatural powers through enchanted golden masks. The six Muses (Faith, Wisdom, Pride, Obedience, Courage, and Desire) are telepathically linked to Illyria’s king so that he is better able to manage his emotions and thus rule more efficiently. Lily is destined to be the Muse of Faith, but her parents fake her death and keep her abilities secret until she heals her village of a deadly plague and the Muses consequently return for her. As Lily struggles to master fighting arts, healing skills, and the ability to manipulate emotions, she must also befriend the moody Prince Connor who will one day share her consciousness, and she must untangle the complicated feelings she has for Connor’s illegitimate brother, Ronan. While Lily’s fellow Muse initiates have been training since infancy, Lily joins them as a teenager, and she finds it nearly impossible to give up her family, her dreams and her individuality so she can make Prince Connor into a better king. When she has the chance to break the oath she swore to serve her country as its Muse of Faith, she must choose between power and individuality and determine whether she must submit to her destiny or create her own.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Elizabeth Dodd / This thesis analyzes the protagonists’ pursuit of alternatives to traditionally patriarchal value through economic and ecofeminist critical lenses. The female protagonists in Prodigal Summer resist being identified through the social legacy of coverture that is still present in the small Appalachian town they live. Lusa, Deanna, and Nannie demonstrate that their socio-economic independence, acquired mainly due to their educational background, allows them not only to disconnect themselves from societal beliefs that the woman should be in the margins of the male presence, but also to interact with nature differently from others. The women’s separation from the institution of marriage and their embrace of motherhood as a matriarchal structure that mirrors the example of the coyotes’ families are studied as main examples of how they distance themselves from the other characters’ attitudes in the novel. This rejection of old ideologies of womanhood in terms of patriarchal structures and their fight for new spaces in society is also present in their struggle to physically inhabit spaces long considered male domains. Defeating the notion that women belong to the domestic space of the house, the protagonists pursue a feminist identity in much wider settings, including forests and farms. The characters’ choice to consider nature as their home demonstrates that they welcome the concept of ecology and recognize the interconnectedness present in nature. This study shows that because of the protagonists’ feminist views, they can imagine different ways to both manage the land and their families. The land ethics they acquire thus refers to humans and non-humans equally.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Dean G. Hall / Salman Rushdie's 1999 novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet is ostensibly a rock 'n' roll novel, largely set in the 1960s, that traces the commercial rise of Indian rock star protagonists Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama. As their fame and wealth rise to global status and their stage show comes to entail a logistical complexity of military proportions, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern the couple's earlier countercultural ideals within their new established culture status. I argue that despite the change from countercultural to establishment-based values in the novel's protagonists, Rushdie does make a case in The Ground Beneath Her Feet for the possibility of countercultural efficacy against the commodifying culture of global capitalism (which I refer to as the "Frame"). His recipe for combating the exclusive hierarchies produced by the Frame is a combination of the non-totalizing politics of postmodernism and the subversive potential of uncommodified rock music. I pay close attention to establishing the historical templates--John Lennon of the Beatles and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys--of the novel's protagonists in an effort to understand the sort of countercultural alternative Rushdie is proposing. I likewise focus on the novel's depiction of the Beach Boys' Smile album, which as a still commercially unreleased record, reinforces Rushdie's imperative in The Ground Beneath Her Feet for an uncommodifying counterculture and works in tandem with his portrayals of the artistic plights of several minor characters in the novel as well.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow / This thesis recreates the relationship between humans and their physical environment in Fort Scott, Kansas between 1850 and 1920 and uses the poetry of J.S. Penny, a contemporary amateur poet living and writing in Fort Scott, as an essential primary resource. Settlers came to this area in southeastern Kansas in the 19th century for its timber-lined streams, high precipitation, and rich soil. The Missouri River, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad was extended through Fort Scott in December of 1869. The arrival of the railroad transformed the town. The natural resources which had been a mark of identity for the people of Fort Scott became commodities to be sold in national markets. Manufacturing and industry boomed, but population would eventually plateau in the early 20th century, creating a small industrial city that had maintained a strongly rural sense of community. Penny’s poetry provides a personal, emotional response to the rapid changes to the landscape around him. Some of his poems on the local landscape directly note specific changes in the local ecology, while some demonstrate Penny’s religious connection the natural world—a common perspective during his time. Other pieces show us Penny’s observations of how his neighbors reacted to the weather and environment in Fort Scott. Penny, like many Americans in the early 20th century, saw the history of his home as one of agrarian development and westward expansion over an empty landscape; the Jeffersonian and Turnerian roots of his perspective are evident in his poetry. With Penny’s poetry, we can create a more complete environmental history of Fort Scott by understanding how Fort Scott residents related to the land around them.

Master of Arts / Communication Studies / Timothy R. Steffensmeier / This thesis explores the rhetorical function of creative writing being written by queer/two-spirit identified indigenous authors. The rhetorical function being the way these stories politicize the various ways gender and sexuality were foundational tools of settler colonialism in de-tribalizing and assimilating indigenous folks. The literary perspective often elides politics in favor of deconstructing aspects of creative writing such as genre, syntax, and themes instead of the socio-political potential such works produce. The three works I examine all have something to teach rhetorical scholars about the need to politicize the socio-sexual and gendered imaginaries of settler colonialism in discourses of the founding fathers, manifest destiny, westward expansion, land purchase. statehood, American exceptionalism, democracy promotion, and many more. They fundamentally challenge rhetorics that posit static notions of American identity and/or purpose that represses the historical and ongoing genocide of indigenous culture and life. In this way, they intervene in the very notion of communicability itself within the socio-symbolic economy of settler colonialism and its attendant hetero-patriarchal gendered and sexual imaginaries.