The paradoxical principle I explore in the fiction of Dickens and O'Connor is perhaps best expressed this way: the archetype of the child reveals that isolation, smallness, and apparent insignificance can create connectedness, expansiveness, and meaning. The archetype surfaces in any character that suffers these first three fates, be it the solitary child or the seemingly insignificant, outcast adult (or "little man," in O'Connor's words). Central to the study is my suggestion that the small, often childlike narrative consciousness O'Connor describes as fundamental--even exclusive--to the short story can exist in the novel, as well. The "little man" of the short story, O'Connor writes, "impose(s) his image over that of the crucified Jesus" (The Lonely Voice 16). I believe that by looking at the way in which O'Connor characterizes the paradoxical rhythm of smallness and expansiveness, as well as the way that rhythm manifests itself mythologically, we can open up new avenues (through the small portal of the childlike figure) to larger works of fiction, as well. The fiction of Charles Dickens, which includes some of the most sprawling novels in all of literature, becomes illuminated in the context of the myth and the short story. Dickens's short installments (a feature of the literary tradition of nineteenth-century England); his oral, fireside narrative voice; and his extensive depiction of small and childlike characters all reveal the explosion of events in tiny but potent milieus.

My dissertation considers the ways in which African/African Diasporan women creatively and politically address and respond to the public communal and societal narratives around being Black, as a result of how Blackness is received and often perceived in a very essential way, in American and European societies. This study notes and complicates how African and Black Diasporic women create and sustain a space that evokes a combative discourse, as they recreate and represent themselves in literary and visual texts. The framework of my dissertation articulates three core objectives: to redefine and re-envision "Black" as it applies to creative and theoretical writing about African and African descended women writers and visual artists; to define/discuss the concept of an African Diaspora and a "Black Diasporan " consciousness that adequately represents the complexities of Black women's identities in different geopolitical and cultural locations; and to situate the significance of the cultural and literary production of Black women writers and artists as combative discourse. This study situates and argues that being Black and being a woman are important sites of critical inquiry. These sites of inquiry must therefore be assessed and analyzed by considering the specific historical positionalities and truths that appear and live in the texts of Black women writers and artists. The idea of "uncovering" points to a specific interdisciplinary method of reading the symbolism and imagery of these women's texts that employs an intersectional analysis and considers diverse Black feminist, art historical, cultural studies, and African Diaspora epistemological standpoints. I argue that specific literary and visual texts posit a very particular and diverse Black woman's history and culture as well as presenting counter narrative(s) to the mainstream narrative(s) that negate Black women. This study addresses the specificities of Black women as creators and cultural producers, their texts, and their representative images by considering a multi-level analysis; therefore, no one narrative or text privileges another. My dissertation establishes an intellectual and creatively political kitchen space of sorts where the texts and images of Black women meet, impart wisdom, and hold court. I argue that this sacred intellectual and artistic space is where these texts not only address being Black and Blackness, but also proffers an important Africana body-politics and autonomy. This project begins with a discussion that considers writers Yvonne Truque America, Charmaine Gill, and artists Deborah Roberts and Lezley Saar (to name a few) and the ways in which their texts converge as combative discourse. My study then focuses on Sonia Sanchez and a selection of her texts as the creative and theoretical core of the combative discourse. Sanchez represents an important foundation and beginning of this discourse as she is a genre-crosser and cultural practitioner who illustrates a crucial allegiance to the identity and representative voices of Black women, the Black communal collective, and a global political aesthetic. Sanchez embodies activism as well as an important Africana aesthetic blending that further complicates the combative discourse. Further, Sanchez represents a legacy of Black women's texts and functions as a foremother to poets and performers such as Jill Scott and Ursula Rucker as indicated by a close reading of their texts. These writers further the poetic and dramatic spheres of the combative discourse and also provide a complexly layered political and cultural aesthetic. The combative discourse therefore illustrates the complexities and politics of context, text, subtext, voice, image, and representation, while situating the ways in which the particular cultural, historical, and socio-political lenses impact Black women's literary and visual texts.

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No description available.

A collection of poems.

This thesis compares two perspectives on the production of Holocaust memory: a novel that leads up to The Holocaust in Britain and one that reflects the hindsight perspective of a liberator in the Soviet Union. The novels are Virginia Woolf’s BETWEEN THE ACTS and Vasily Grossman’s LIFE AND FATE. The analysis offers a locus of analysis for the diasporic literary energy created by the catastrophe in the 20th and 21st centuries. The project offers a theorized standpoint on the role of literature on official historical archives. Proposing a method through which contemporary readers can engage the diasporic event of The Holocaust, the project adopts both the extended metaphor and literal expression of soundscapes. Soundscapes encompass the immaterial processes of memorialization and the literal sonic textures developed in Holocaust novels. The critical perspective incorporates contemporary notions of narratology, archival practices, and cultural manifestations of language into the notion of literary ethnomusicology.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the psychological development of South Asian masculinity in a diaspora that is depicted in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. Together, Kureishi and Naipaul construct a complete understanding of masculinity through childhood, adolescent, young adult, and adulthood. Chapter 1 explores the need to displace their father’s masculinity and seek better masculine models that align with the social norms of the diaspora. Chapter 2 establishes the motivation behind seeking peers to define the meaning of masculinity in a diaspora and the disadvantage of this pathway. Chapter 3 demonstrates two possible outcomes for South Asian men attempting to construct a secure masculinity. The difficulties these characters encounter when developing their identity is both a product of their diasporic environment and the lingering effect of colonization through the presence of hegemonic masculinity. They attempt to rectify the inadequacies in their masculinity by refuting a portion of their identity tied to being South Asian in order to better assimilate to the ideals of their diaspora. Ultimately, there are two possible consequences for South Asian men in a diaspora: one is to attempt to negotiate their position as a mixture of both the ideals of the diaspora and South Asian culture and the second is to continue to live a fragmented life of denying aspects of their identity tied to either the diaspora or South Asian culture.

Through examining the positionality of Hayashi Fumiko as well as the changing socio-political, economic and historical contexts in which she lived in, I look to better understand how Hayashi navigated through the patriarchal systems of society as a woman writer. This thesis includes a survey of the Meiji, Taisho and Showa periods as well as a comparative analysis of Hayashi's prewar, interwar and post-war works.

<p>“War Worlds” reads twentieth-century British and Anglophone literature to examine the social practices of marginal groups (pacifists, strangers, traitors, anticolonial rebels, queer soldiers) during the world wars. This dissertation shows that these diverse “enemies within” England and its colonies—those often deemed expendable for, but nonetheless threatening to, British state and imperial projects—provided writers with alternative visions of collective life in periods of escalated violence and social control. By focusing on the social and political activities of those who were not loyal citizens or productive laborers within the British Empire, “War Worlds” foregrounds the small group, a form of collectivity frequently portrayed in the literature of the war years but typically overlooked in literary critical studies. I argue that this shift of focus from grand politics to small groups not only illuminates surprising social fissures within England and its colonies but provides a new vantage from which to view twentieth-century experiments in literary form.</p> / Dissertation

This study examines trauma, particularly in the thematic contexts of the individual and the community as reflected in her novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. By utilizing the specific theoretical modes of new historicism and trauma theory, the veil of double consciousness imposed on African Americans is explicated and exposes various forms of trauma in the individual and the community. The unspoken atrocities experienced as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, and physical and sexual violence in many of Morrison’s novels, suggest the common thread of trauma. The particular traumas depicted in Morrison’s novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, damage agency, lead to detachment and paralysis in the individual. The scope of this study is limited to the novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved as they best illustrate trauma in Morrison’s characters and the damage it causes to agency, leading to detachment and paralysis in the individual. The literary theories of new historicism and psychoanalysis provide cultural and literary context for the novels and allow for a deeper rendering of the characteristics of trauma and provide the context for the term dynamic trauma. of oppression as a mean of dysfunction in the thematic These novels reveal a pathology of trauma disguised as normalcy in the African American community, which leads to disrupted lives, relationships, and communities. Morrison not only depicts these dysfunctional behaviors due to traumatic circumstances but also offers a remedy for the dysfunction—acceptance without acquiescence.