Thesis.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed Apr. 8, 2009) Degree awarded 2007; thesis submitted 2006. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy to the Dept. of Modern Greek, Faculty of Arts. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Plainsong or Polyphony? Australian Award Winning Novels of the 1990s for Adolescent Readers. Using a musical metaphor of plainsong (to allude to monophonic sameness) and polyphony (to allude to multiphonic difference) this thesis seeks evidence of similarity (plainsong) or difference (polyphony). The texts considered are judged to have both literary merit and to meet the particular needs of Australian adolescent readers. Adult concerns about the suitability of particular Young Adult (YA) novels imply that there is an agreed archetype for this genre; an implication that this thesis explores using variety of critical perspectives, chiefly Narrative Theory, Reader Theory, Althusser’s concept of the hail and the work of Pecheux. Bakhtin(1981) applied the musical metaphor of polyphony to describe the novel as a genre in which an author orchestrates its themes through ‘the social diversity of speech types’ and ‘the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions’ (p. 263). This study considers both polyphony and its opposite, plainsong, in its inquiry into two aspects of individual authorial voices. The first relates to the authors’ representations of adolescence as portrayed through their protagonist[s]; the second to the authors’ beliefs about their adolescent readers as reflected in the various ways each author tries to attract and engage their audience. This study finds that whilst patterns of similarity exist in the texts, these patterns shift when the novels are viewed from different critical perspectives. This thesis demonstrates that whilst the authors appear to share similar ideas about adolescence, they have different perceptions about what they can and cannot do in novels addressed to adolescent readers.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 2005. / Title from title page screen, viewed on April 16, 2007. Dissertation Committee: Thomas P. Crumpler (chair), R. Kay Moss, Gary Weilbacher, Amelia Adkins, Sally Parry. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-168) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--Rowan University, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga are widely recognized as three of the most successful recent young adult franchises. Although it may not seem so at first, each of these series has a preoccupation with feminist learning; each series’ author, whether explicitly or implicitly, addresses the extent to which their protagonists and fans can learn feminist lessons within, or from, these texts. Each protagonist does seem to undergo some kind of learning experience, and by measuring these against what feminist education scholars such as bell hooks call a feminist pedagogical model, I show that the reality of what is expressed in these texts does not necessarily align with the ways Hermione, Katniss, and Bella have been discussed by critics and fans. Further, I argue that despite their divergence from the didactic nature of earlier feminist young adult fiction, such as that written by Judy Blume, by making connections between young adult fiction and what fan theorist Henry Jenkins calls “convergence culture”, young readers of Rowling’s, Collins’s, and Meyer’s texts, through their critical and creative engagement with online fan activities, are actually participating in a kind of feminist education that interestingly embodies the aims of feminist pedagogy.

Abstract: This thesis investigates the origins of contemporary fictional constructions of childhood by examining the extent to which current literary representations of children and childhood have departed from their Victorian origins. I set out to test my intuition that many contemporary young adult novels perpetuate Victorian ideals and values in their constructions of childhood, despite the overt circumstantial modernity of the childhoods they represent. The question this thesis hopes to answer therefore is, how Victorian is contemporary young adult fiction? To gauge the degree of change that has taken place since the Victorian period, differences and points of continuity between representations of nineteenth century childhood and twentieth century childhood will be sought and examined in texts from both eras. The five aspects of fictional representation that I focus on are: notions of innocence; sexuality; the child as saviour; the use of discipline and punishment to create the ideal child; and the depiction of childhood and adulthood as separate worlds. The primary theoretical framework used derives from Michel Foucault’s concepts of the construction of subjectivity through discourse, discipline and punishment, and his treatment of repression and power, drawn mainly from The History of Sexuality vol. 1 (1976) and Discipline and Punish; the Birth of the Prison (1977). I have chosen to use Foucault primarily because of the affinity between his work on the social construction of knowledge and the argument that childhood is a constructed rather than essential category; and because Foucault’s work on Victorian sexuality exposes links with current thinking rather than perpetuating assumptions about sexual repression in this period.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Rowan University, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Rowan University, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.