Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [108]-119).

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [108]-119).

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [108]-119).

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As an alternative to print media, digital media make us newly aware of the materiality of experimental poetic texts and require us to account for their media-specific differences. Although already several theoretical models have been put forward to define these differences, so far few poems have been analyzed in terms of their media-specific textual materiality. This thesis seeks to fill this gap in the applied media-specific analysis of experimental poetry. It combines traditional close reading with a media-specific approach in order to investigate the relationship between the physical characteristics and signifying strategies of four experimental poetic texts in various digital and non-digital media. It critically interrogates the specific use of the given medium in each poem, and illustrates that their respective textual materiality cannot be specified in advance based on general assumptions concerning the medium in question. A digital poem is not inherently more innovative than a non-digital poem. Rather, a poem is perceived as innovative if it resists conventional reading strategies by establishing a particularly complex, dynamic, and effectively anomalous sense of textual materiality, which necessarily only emerges from the direct interplay among text, object, and reader.

This thesis concerns the violation of the right to a fair trial by the appointment of ineffective public defenders. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees the right to appointed counsel if a defendant cannot afford it. The first section of the thesis focuses on how the history of the case law which constitutionally mandates effective appointed counsel for all United States citizens who cannot afford otherwise. However, this right is not being fulfilled for millions of American citizens. The judicial system is structured so that many indigent accused criminals are convinced by their overworked and underpaid public defenders to plead guilty. This "meet and plead" style of representation expedites the trial process at the expense of indigent defendants. The second section covers the epidemic of fair trial rights violations in the United States. In order to fix this problem there are solutions that the Supreme Court, trial courts, and the legislature can address. The third and final section concludes the thesis with a discussion of possible remedies for the deficiencies of the American public defender conglomerate.