Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains v, 46 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1996. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 26, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Stanley W. Renner (chair), Ronald Strickland, William W. Morgan, Jr. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-146) and abstract. Also available in print.

Proefschrift Universiteit Maastricht. / Met lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Engels.

Universiẗat, Diss--Paderborn, 2005.

There remain two recurring criticisms of John Updike's fiction. The first comes from feminist critics who condemn his negative portrayal of women, accusing his fiction of denigrating women. The second comes from late twentieth century critics who accuse him of avoiding political and historical discussions in his fiction. However, it is my contention that Updike is willing to address both of these concerns, and I arrive at such an argument by carefully analyzing his collection of short stories compiled in Too Far To Go: The Maples Stories. Within these stories, Updike's female characters illustrate the shifting gender paradigms over the course of the fifties, sixties, and seventies amidst the middle-class, suburban American milieu. Updike's women act as agents of history providing testament to the shifting gender paradigms and historical, cultural, political, and social milestones of a maturing country and its growing pains. / by Cindy M. Rosen. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Zugl.: Paderborn, Univ., Diss., 2005

Zugl.: Mainz, Univ., Diss., 2006

This thesis provides a theory of exceptional sex through close readings of contemporary novels by male British and American writers. I take as my overriding methodological approach Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception, which is a juridico-political state in which the law has been suspended and the difference between rule and transgression is indistinguishable. Within this state, the spatiotemporal markers inside and outside also become indeterminable, making it impossible to tell whether one is inside or outside time and space. Using this framework, I work through narratives of sexual interaction – On Chesil Beach, Gertrude and Claudius, Sabbath’s Theater, and The Act of Love – to conceptualise categories of sexual exceptionality. My study is not a survey, and the texts have been chosen as they focus on different sexual behaviours, thereby opening up a variety of sexual exceptionalities. I concentrate on male writers and narratives of heterosexual sex as most work on sex, time and space is comprised of feminist readings of literature by women and queer work on gay, lesbian or trans writers and narratives. However, in the Coda I expand my argument by turning to Emma Donoghue’s Room, which, as the protagonist has been trapped for the first five years of his life, provides a tabula rasa’s perspective of exceptionality. Through my analysis of exceptionality, I provide spatiotemporal readings of the hymen, incest, adultery, sexual listening and the arranged affair. I also conceptualise textual exceptionalities – the incestuous prequel, auricular reading and the positionality of the narrator, the reader and literary characters. Exceptional sex challenges the assumption in recent queer theory that to be out of time is ‘queer’ and to be in time is ‘straight’. Furthermore, exceptionality complicates the concepts of perversion and transgression as the norm and its transgression become indistinct in the state of exception. In contrast, exceptionality offers a new, more determinate way to analyse narratives of sex.