The textbook, an important factor in public school education, is nowhere so wonderfully developed as in the United States. It occupies a more important position in our educational system than it does in the systems of many foreign countries. In fact, most of the teaching in our schools today revolves around the textbook - the cause of much criticism by many writers. They deplore the fact that both our teachers and pupils are dependent on textbooks.

Throughout the Spanish poetic production of the 20th century, cities have developed a relevant role as a recurring space at the same time as society urbanized and an exodus took place from agricultural areas to the work centers offered by the cities. Since the second half of the 19th century the city has been the meeting place for people from different backgrounds where the poet found, from his exclusive point of view, a new universe to develop in his work. However, the evolution of capitalist society sponsored the poet's transition from an artist to a worker in the service sector, now able to describe the everyday life through that "other voice" that Octavio Paz so well exhibited in his work (Paz 1990). This way, I argue that with the passage of time and the disappearance of the romanticized figure of the poet, writers who describe the daily commute of the inhabitants of the cities emerged among the working classes through a simple style that has come to be related with other transcultural artistic movements such as Minimalism or Dirty Realism. My dissertation studies the representation of the urban working class in three contemporary Spanish poets: Karmelo C. Iribarren, Itziar Mínguez Arnáiz, and Fernando del Val. I analyze their shared poetics of the city with a focus on the omnipresent common objects that seem to represent the urban everyday life. In Chapter One, I develop a conceptual “trialectic” lens through which to approach all three poets based on the convergence of urban studies, the analysis of poetic form in relation to the artistic current of Minimalism, and the imprint that U.S. author Raymond Carver-as both literary persona and style-left on Spain since his publication in translation in the late 1980s. In Chapter Two, I analyze how the processes of gentrification and privatization of public spaces reflect an experience of suffering by the working class in Iribarren's poetry. In Chapter Three, I study gender-space relations as I analyze what it means for working class women to walk the city and occupy public spaces traditionally reserved for men in Mínguez Arnáiz’ poetry. In Chapter Four, I follow Spanish expatriates across the Atlantic Ocean in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to explore resistance movements against spatial exploitation that force working classes into geographical oblivion in Del Val's “New York trilogy.” To carry out this project, I propose to analyze the works of these three authors emphasizing not only the common characteristics that each one of them presents but also those that make them unique. With this, I intend to find out the paths Spanish poetry is taking and how this realist-style poetry differs from the realistic trends of "the poetry of experience" and the "dirty realism" so popular in the 80s and 90s. I argue that with the entry of the new millennium and especially with the extensive implementation of neoliberal policies that led to the economic crisis of 2008, there is a boom in the poetry of resistance that seeks to prove that an egalitarian right to the city is more urgent than ever.

This thesis is an analysis of Ralph Ellison’s use of color terminology in his novel, Invisible Man. By taking an in depth look at the circumstances in which Ellison uses specific color terms, the reader can ascertain the author’s thoughts on various historical events, as well as the differences between characters in the novel such as Ras, Dr. Bledsoe, and Rinehart.

John Gardner’s Grendel examines the ways in which humans make meaning out of their lives. By changing the original Beowulf monster into a creature who constantly questions the conflicting narratives set before him, Gardner encourages us to confront these tensions also. However, his emphasis on Grendel’s alienation helps us realize that community is essential to creating meaning. Most obviously, community creates relationships that foster a sense of moral obligation between its members, even in the face of the type of uncertainty felt by Grendel. Moreover, community cannot exist without dialogue, which perpetually stimulates the imagination to respond to the tensions contained in a plurality of viewpoints. Gardner encourages us to question narratives which no longer serve us and to use our imagination to tell new stories that cultivate positive ideals such as love and hope.

This thesis examines three male characters from Willa Cather's writing that epitomize the American Dream of professional and material success but they find no contentment once they achieve it. This disillusionment is particularly so with Cather's driven male professionals, Bartley Alexander (an architectural scholar), and Clement Sebastian (a critically acclaimed, international opera singer). Cather situates these characters at middle age and at the peak of their professional careers, which makes the examination of them an interesting study as to the effects of the encroaching modern age on successful men. This thesis begins with a brief overview of Cather's work, including scholarly criticism of each novel, progresses to the examination of her successful male characters, and concludes with the investigation of Cather as a Modernist writer.

The purpose of this thesis is to show that Charles Brockden Brown was influenced by the American Revolution and the incidents that come after it. It is suggested that Brown created a gothic fiction that was intended to be a critique on the American Revolution by using murder narrratives present during the time to create his characters. Gothic fiction consists of many elements such as setting arechetypal characters, terror, emotion, psychological turmoil and language use.

In The Song of the Lark (1915), Willa Cather does something extraordinary by presenting a well-rounded and likeable Mexican character. This is quite different from her contemporaries’ stereotypical depictions of minorities. To include immigrants in a modern novel was avant-garde and radical subject matter; and presenting a realistic, likeable Mexican character was unheard of because the colonized and immigrants were largely ignored in American literature, or deliberately overlooked. When they were included, persistent demeaning views and unflattering Mexican stereotypes were the norm. This paper seeks to explain how positively Cather depicts Mexican characters, decades before Civil Rights. Cather includes the plight of Mexicans in her novel and gives voice to those that were silenced and ignored. Even though she was a bestselling author and considered one of the best American writers of the era, she has not been properly credited for how progressive she was in her treatment of minorities. It is well documented that Cather used juxtaposition and absences in her writing to convey meaning; I build on these absences to add in rhetorical silence and connect her use of silence to the academic conversation about speech in post-colonial analyses. By contextualizing her writings within the period, I demonstrate how progressive her novels are. Even though most depictions of minorities at the turn of the century were stereotypical, Cather diverges from the racism, which makes her decades ahead of her contemporaries in including good immigrants and minorities in American literature.

My dissertation, titled “I’ve Known Rivers”: Representations of the Mississippi River in African American Literature and Culture, uncovers the impact of the Mississippi River as a powerful, recurring geographical feature in twentieth-century African American literature that conveys the consequences of capitalist expansion on the individual and communal lives of Black Americans. Recent scholarship on the Mississippi River theorizes the relationship between capitalism, geography, and slavery. Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism examine how enslaved black labor contributed to the expansion of capitalism in the nineteenth century, but little is known about artistic representations of the Mississippi in the twentieth century. While scholars point primarily to the Mississippi River’s impact on slavery in the nineteenth century, I’ve Known Rivers reveals how black writers and artists capture the relationship between slavery, capitalism, and the Mississippi River. I consider a wide variety of texts in this study, from Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children and early 20th century Blues music, to late 20th century novels such as Toni Morrison’s Sula. This broad array of interdisciplinary texts illustrates a literary tradition in which the Mississippi’s representation in twentieth-century African American literature serves as both a reflection of the continuously changing economic landscape and a haunting reminder of slavery’s aftermath through the cotton empire. Furthermore, I’ve Known Rivers demonstrates how traumatic sites of slavery along the river are often reclaimed by black artists as source of empowerment, thereby contributing a long overdue analysis of the Mississippi River in African American literature as a potent symbol of racial progress.

This thesis examines Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s writing published between 1920 and 1932. To date, biographers and scholars have largely failed to carefully examine and understand Zelda’s publications. During this period Zelda critiques the materialism and generational lack of respect she finds in the North in her articles, while using her imagination to discuss the possibilities of the South in her short stories. All of her works during these years culminate in her novel, Save Me the Waltz, in which much of her life and return to the South is mirrored by her heroine, Alabama Knight. This thesis examines Zelda’s publications in this 1920 to 1932 period in order to reveal her perception of the society she had become a part of when she married F. Scott Fitzgerald and to understand the transition in her desire to at first fit in to the Northern society that expected her to be the flapper and celebrity wife, and then later to find success and self-expression in a return to the South.

There is an aversion within the field of Appalachian Studies to addressing the cultural formulations of the Appalachian/hillbilly/mountaineer as an icon of aggressive resistance. The aversion is understandable, as for far too long images of the irrationally and savagely violent mountaineer were integral to the most gross popular culture stereotypes of Appalachia. Media consumers often take pleasure or comfort in these images, which usually occur in a reactionary context with the hillbilly as either a type of nationally necessary savage OR as an unregenerate barbarian against whom a national civilization will triumph and benefit by the struggle. I bookend my study with two artifacts of Appalachian representation, linked in specific subject matter, but separated by twenty years. The 1991 West Virginia Public Television-produced documentary film The Dancing Outlaw quickly became an underground cult classic—an object of both absurdist delight and cultural identification within the punk subculture, particularly among those with both a punk sensibility and personal connections to the Appalachian region (birth, upbringing, residency, ancestry). In 2009, MTV and the resources of its wildly popular Jackass franchise revisited the locale and family featured in this earlier documentary and produced the sophisticated and polished film The Wild, Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. The core purpose of this project, however, is to examine why Appalachia and/or the hillbilly, as constructed within and across these subcultures, possessed such appeal during this historical moment. My hypothesis is that such appeal lies primarily (but not exclusively) in the negative characteristics of the region and its inhabitants that are represented throughout a variety of subcultural texts: documentary film, art house cinema, niche regional literature, and independent zine publishing and early blogging. For both those identifying themselves as Appalachians/hillbillies (or some related variation thereof) and those “playing” as Appalachians/hillbillies, these images become statements of resistance and survival to challenge the national mass culture and the political ideologies supporting it.