This dissertation demonstrates how poetry about Appalachia expanded American considerations of democracy, ethnicity, and cultural values. I argue that poetry is profoundly communal in its construction and investigate how the value of poetry changes based upon its transfer through varying networks of production, circulation, and reception. Informed by theories of cultural capital and rhetoric, the chapters trace three books of poetry from their composition and publication to their reception and influence, noting how central political and social institutions and individuals shaped that process. The dissertation establishes how the poets crafted their writing to sway specific interpretive communities attitudes on pluralism. In Hounds on the Mountain (Viking, 1937), James Still sang about the erosion of the quiet earth for the liberal, middleclass readers of The Atlantic. In U. S. 1 (CoviciFriede, 1938), Muriel Rukeyser wrote about the deaths of migrant and African-American miners, the Spanish Civil War, and the threat of fascism for popular-front readers of The New Republic, Poetry, and the New Masses. In Clods of Southern Earth (Boni and Gaer, 1946), Don West catalyzed resistance in an interracial readership of southern (and mountain) sharecroppers and factory workers. In each case, the complex interrelations between history, authors, and readers show their mutually transformative effects on pluralism. Within American pluralism from1900 to 1948, my work reveals the vital relations between established ethnicitiesAfrican-American, Jewish, Anglo, American Indian, and Southernand Appalachia. My account follows the concrete connections of pluralism from Plessy vs. Fergusons judicial theory of racial purity, through a cultural pluralism based on national origins during WWI, to the Harlem Renaissance, and ends with an examination of regional pluralism in the 1930s. Appalachia was then often understood as preserving remnants of a premodern America, and the authors about whom I write used it to authenticate the values of community, which they felt to be endangered by the threats of modern dissociation, industrial exploitation, and fascist culture. Through close readings of poems in the three books, I establish Appalachias role in the discourse of modern American pluralismthe poetics of region and race.

The exegesis accompanies a thesis, the latter being the portfolio of work consisting of two parts, each being a completed first draft of a novel written during the Masters of Creative Writing course: Part 1: ‘Sandcastles’ - a 'closed' text novel Part 2: ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ - an 'open' text novel These two works are separately bound with a thesis cover sheet and numbered. They are embargoed until 30 June 2011. The exegesis covers the writer’s motivation for writing these works, reflections on the course of development and changes in thinking that occurred during research and the act of writing. It shows the changing perspectives of the writer’s two thesis works in context and in contra-distinction to each other. It includes the writer’s academic and creative goals as they developed and the result achieved in terms of those goals. It highlights the writer’s developing interest in literary theory including suggesting an ephemeral adjunct to Reader-Response theory which is described as 'Collapse'. It shows the development of the writer’s deep interest in reality in fiction versus the lie in fiction and in the differences between writing and reading a creative work produced primarily for entertainment versus work of a literary nature, identifying some of the differences in features the writer has perceived.

The exegesis accompanies a thesis, the latter being the portfolio of work consisting of two parts, each being a completed first draft of a novel written during the Masters of Creative Writing course: Part 1: ‘Sandcastles’ - a 'closed' text novel Part 2: ‘The Postmodern Rules For Family Living’ - an 'open' text novel These two works are separately bound with a thesis cover sheet and numbered. They are embargoed until 30 June 2011. The exegesis covers the writer’s motivation for writing these works, reflections on the course of development and changes in thinking that occurred during research and the act of writing. It shows the changing perspectives of the writer’s two thesis works in context and in contra-distinction to each other. It includes the writer’s academic and creative goals as they developed and the result achieved in terms of those goals. It highlights the writer’s developing interest in literary theory including suggesting an ephemeral adjunct to Reader-Response theory which is described as 'Collapse'. It shows the development of the writer’s deep interest in reality in fiction versus the lie in fiction and in the differences between writing and reading a creative work produced primarily for entertainment versus work of a literary nature, identifying some of the differences in features the writer has perceived.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2001. / Submitted to the Dept. of English. Adviser: John M. Fyler. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-196). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Scott Romine; submitted to the Dept. of English. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jul. 31, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-178).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-163). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-163). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (MA)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2010. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert Bennett. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 63).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2010 Jun 10.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2000. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 31, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Charles B. Harris (chair), William W. Morgan, Douglas D. Hesse. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-212) and abstract. Also available in print.