Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 113 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-113).

In the present thesis, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, the novel by the Jamaican writer Erna Brodber, is analyzed in the context of post-colonial identity trauma. Analyzing the complex organizational and narrative structure of the novel, the essay author studies how the novel’s rhythmicity and the broken narrative portray the protagonist’s identity fragmentation. Drawing on the work’s connection to the ring game played in the Caribbean and applying the symbolism of the Caribbean folk rhythms, the essay author discusses the subversive intent of Brodber’s novel and her method of rewriting the past as a way of recovering one's identity.

This thesis involves a theoretical study of the dynamics of cultural interaction as represented in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat, Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Ema Brodber's Myal. Specifically, it considers the role that a dialogue between critical theory (post-colonial and feminist) and literary practice can play in the evaluation of two distinct conceptions of cultural difference: identity politics, understood as positing an essential binaristic difference between an ethnic or gendered Self and Other, and hybridity theory, which conceives of Self and Other as mutually constitutive and inescapably interconnected. While this thesis demonstrates some of the ways in which hybridity theory can revise and expand contemporary critical readings of the novels under study, it also demonstrates how literature can problematize the universalizing claims of both hybridity theory and identity politics, thus stressing the importance of sociohistorical and literary/narrative contexts to the evaluation of strategies of resistance to colonial and/or patriarchal regimes. After an introductory chapter dealing with questions of theory, three subsequent chapters discuss themes of hybridity and cultural separatism in the novels by Ngugi, Hurston, and Brodber, respectively. Each of these latter chapters involves a detailed analysis of the colonial and/or patriarchal discourses represented in the particular novel or novels under study. These analyses include discussions of some of the ways in which dominant discourses attempt to co-opt cultural difference and impede equitable intercultural hybridizing exchange by polarizing Self and Other in a binaristic economy. Each chapter also considers the presence of internal contradictions in dominant discourses and the implications of such contradictions for a revolutionary politics. On the basis of these discussions, this thesis considers the relative efficacy of hybridity and identity politics as strategies of resistance, demonstrating that different contexts call for different approaches to revolutionary theory and practice. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2000. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 4, 2006. Dissertation Committee: John Shields (chair), Lucia Getsi, Nancy Tolson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-190) and abstract. Also available in print.

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Not long after the invention of sound recording technology, two phrases arose to describe a host of relationships to this new era of sound: high fidelity and low fidelity. The idea of fidelity when applied to sound was used to describe the accuracy of reproduction – how much did a sound reproduced by phonograph technology sound like the original? While the idea of fidelity continues to serve the function as a way to measure the quality of sound recording, through technical measurements of frequency response, signal-to-noise ratios, and the ability to reproduce extremes of quietude and loudness, fidelity also functions in ideologies of listening. High fidelity ideology, in its never-ending quest for perfect fidelity, insists upon hearing musical records as realistic recordings of original events, obscuring how the majority of musical recordings are assembled in the studio by an unheard engineer. Beyond music, high fidelity ideology insists that sounds can and, indeed, must be heard in certain ways. Low fidelity represents that which is left in high fidelity’s wake: outdated technology, poor sound quality, and the obvious intrusion of the process of recording into the media. What develops is a low fidelity mode of listening that does not listen for the perfect reproduction of an originary event or an imagined ideal. This project examines how experimental Black authors from the 1960s to the 1990s engaged with low fidelity sound recording technology in prose and poetry. The authors and works examined include: Amiri Baraka’s The Dead Lecturer (1964) and The System of Dante’s Hell (1965); Fran Ross’s Oreo (1974); Nathaniel Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook (1986); and Erna Brodber’s Louisiana (1994). The chapters examine how these authors look to sound technologies such as monophonic LPs, tape editing decks in recording studios, cassettes, and early reel-to-reel tape recorders as a grounding for the experimental forms of the texts and their approach to creating literary voice. I conclude that by approaching these texts by close reading through the history of the media presented in each chapter that we can develop a form of low fidelity reading that offers a new approach to the interstices between sound and text.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2011 Aug 15