This dissertation assesses rage and its utility for fictional Black girls and adolescents in asserting their humanity, accessing their voices, and developing strategies of resistance that contribute to their identity formation. Through analyses of six novels: 1) God Bless the Child, 2) Breath, Eyes, Memory, 3) The Hate U Give, 4) The Bluest Eye, 5) Daddy Was a Number Runner, and 6) The Poet X, this research presents rage as a canonical theme in Black women’s coming-of-age narratives and presents connections between rage, rights, and resistance. The connections, revealed through stimuli and adaptations associated with rage, frame an argument for North Americas as an arbiter of anger. The novels construct an “arc of anger” that places them in conversation about Black girl rage and presents a tradition of Black women crafting Black girl protagonists who are conduits for counternarratives of rage. This dissertation also examines how history, memory, and culture contribute to Black girls’ frustrations and knowledge bases. By looking to works published between the angry decade (the 1960s) and the age of rage (the 2010s), the research presents ways Black women novelists and their characters return to rage to combat social institutions and critique social constructions of Black girlhood and womanhood.

While John Keats never traveled to America and only wrote a handful of admittedly hostile lines about it in his poetry, American writers and readers have consistently regarded Keats as one of the greatest and most influential poets of the past two centuries. His critical reputation in America has been stable since the 1840s, enduring throughout changing tastes and movements, and his biography and work have been utilized in manifold appropriations by American poets and writers. I examine Keats’s attitude toward the United States—which was in conflict with the general feeling regarding the country by his fellow Romantic poets—and briefly review the American reception of Keats’s poetry in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries before considering quintessential appropriations of Keats and the Keats biography in works by three American poets: Amy Clampitt, Stanley Plumly, and B.H. Fairchild.

Bharati Mukherjee’s 1989 novel Jasmine and Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2003 novel The Namesake both feature immigrant protagonists, who experience name changes and identity transformations in the meeting space of Indian and American cultures. Using the theory of cultural translation to view translation as a metaphor for identity transformation, I argue that as these characters alter their identities to conform to cultural expectations, they act as both translators and translated texts. Although they struggle with the resistance of untranslatability via their inability to completely assimilate into American culture, Jasmine and Gogol ultimately gain the ability to bypass the limitations of a foreigner/native binary and enter a space of negotiation and growth.

This thesis aims to explore the theme of isolation in the dramatic works of Tennessee Williams using his essay “The Catastrophe of Success” as the base theory text. The essay attacks the American idea of success though an in-depth examination of the “Cinderella myth” that Williams claims is so prevalent in both Hollywood and American Democracy. Williams’ deconstruction of this myth reveals that America’s love for stories like it results the isolation of three groups: homosexuals, women and the physically disabled and terminally ill. Williams passes no judgment on his characters, instead showing their lives as they truly are. Through The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Orpheus Descending (1957) and Vieux Carre (1977), Williams gives readers and audiences a glimpse into the lives of isolated individuals, and the struggles each group faces.

American Indian author Susan Power’s novel The Grass Dancer is often categorized as magical realism, yet Power has stated the novel is a representation of her reality and that it is not a magical realist text. The term magical realism was first applied to the work of Latin American authors such as Gabriel García Márquez whose writing depicts magical events in a matter-of-fact narrative tone. It has since expanded to include other cultures. The question is whether it is a term that can readily be applied to the literary work of all cultures. The closest Wendy B. Faris, one of the most prominent experts on magical realism, comes to discussing the term in relation to the work of American Indian authors is by simply acknowledging Ojibwe writer Louise Erdrich’s label as a magical realist author. In order to aid Power in her rejection of the association, I delve into both her Dakota heritage and her life through the lens of biographical criticism in order to obtain a working image of her reality. By locating and examining the seeds of truth in her fiction, I explain the magical qualities of her novel in a rational and logical manner.

This thesis intends to demonstrate that, because of the unusual circumstances of its writing - a semi-journalistic piece produced during a period of crisis in the real-life community fictionally depicted - Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series stands as an unusually accurate and reliable ethnographic source for information concerning the gay male subculture of San Francisco in the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, not only the practice and behavior themselves, but also reflecting their personal and communal function. The methodology employed in demonstrating this thesis is necessarily subjective. Like gay folklore scholar Joseph P. Goodwin in More Man Than You'll Ever Be, the seminal study of the folklore of gay men in the United States, I am a gay man, who, to some degree, draws on personal knowledge and observation to recognize and identify elements of gay folklore depicted in the fictional milieu I have chosen to study. This is unavoidable to an extent: ethnographic work within the gay communities has been limited by a number of factors, including the covert nature of the group, the biases of exoteric analysts, and the lack of observations informed by insiders' perspectives. Nonetheless, the groundwork that has been accomplished by Goodwin and a handful of other scholars provides an adequate basis for comparison between the "real" world, professional folk study, and the fictive domain of Armistead Maupin. In addition to an examination of gay oral folklore in the novels - including how gay oral tradition informs both the content of the novels and Maupin's authorial voice - this thesis also considers aspects of gay customary folklore and gay material culture, including how the content of the novels chronicles some of those folkloric forms and how the novels themselves have become a significant part of gay customary and material tradition. To a large degree, folklore functions in gay folk culture to encourage communication and cohesion and to divulge important psychological insights into the minds of many group members.

Every American knows some of Stephen Collins Foster's songs, but not everyone who sings My Old Kentucky Home and Old Folks at Home realizes that it was he who wrote those songs. Of the two hundred songs and compositions which Foster published, at least fifteen are constantly sung. Since these songs voice emotions which are fundamental to mankind, they have become more important than the composer himself. For this reason they may be called folk-songs, and because they voice so truly the spirit of America, America is proud to claim them as her own. The title of this thesis, Stephen Collins Foster & His Folk-songs, aptly describes the objective of the work, namely, to present the life of the man as a key to his works and to point out his distinctive contributions to the folk-song of America. To the text illustrations have been added that are intimately related to the subject-matter of the chapters in which they appear. Although much intensive and splendid research has been done by the Foster Hall staff in this field, the writer has no knowledge of an individual work which treats the subject in the manner that she has chosen. The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter I considers the life of the composer as a background for his works and the influences which were predominant in molding his melodies. His works form an autobiography of the man himself, representing him in his different moods. The laughing, buoyant song Oh! Susanna depicts the Foster who loved the minstrel show and the serenading parties with friends. The homesick songs Old Black Joe, Old Kentucky Home and Old Folks at Home are probably the greatest of his works because they speak of the emotion that was deepest in the heart of their creator, the love for home. Chapter III takes up an individual treatment of the world-sung melody The Old Kentucky Home, Goodnight. Chapter IV points out the Foster shrines in America. Chapter V undertakes to summarize his distinctive contributions to American music and represents him as the creator of songs strictly American in origin, nature and treatment.

Zara Neale Purston has re-emerged as an author of promise due to the re-appraisal of her works led by Alice Walker and Robert Hemenway. In both literary and folklore academic circles, Hurston's work has been reclaimed by African-American female scholars and writers, but still a significant study has yet to be done about her ethnographic contributions to folklore and her farsightedness in fieldwork methodology. This thesis seeks to validate her work as a folklorist, thereby dismissing the charges of popularization and amateurishness by re-examining her work. Mules and Men and Jonah's Gourd Vine are Hurston's two most influential folklore texts and will be evaluated for their approach and contribution to the study of ethnography.

Biography of Alice Hegan Rice, author from Louisville, Kentucky.

Several books have been written about the various natural resources of the state of Kentucky. A number of excellent histories of the state have been published with descriptions of the pioneer and outlaw days when the state numbered its inhabitants by the very few thousands. The industrial, economic, and social activities of the Kentucky people have been written about for several years. But Kentucky literature has had practically no recognition. The average person has known very little about Kentucky writers who probably have deserved to be placed among those in the Hall of Fame. From the pen of Kentucky writers one may see a realistic picture of Kentucky life, people, customs, and history.