Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1973. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--University of Missouri, School of Mines and Metallurgy, 1878. / The entire thesis text is included in file. Holograph [Handwritten and illustrated in entirety by author]. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed September 12, 2008) L. R. Grabill determined to be Lee R. Grabill from the "1874-1990 MSM-UMR Alumni Directory".

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "August, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 185-194). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis advisor: Cynthia L. Lyerly / The forty year fight to reform the 1879 Comstock statute that prohibited the use of birth control in Connecticut began in 1923. When the 1879 measure was originally enacted, it was in response to the bustling market for pornography and reflected that part of the Victorian moral reform movement which classified all things that referenced sex as obscene. Throughout the lengthy struggle, several court cases were pursued and numerous bills were introduced in the state legislature to various degrees of support. Every decade had a different set of arguments for and against the legalization of birth control, spanning from economic and social to medical and moral. The law was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1965 based on the burgeoning right to privacy. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Anthony Comstock was a moral crusader who abhorred all things lewd and obscene, and who was successful in introducing the Comstock Law to help his fight against it. His lifelong battle against vice at the end of the nineteenth-century had an impact on literature and the literary world as it transitioned from Victorian prudery to modernist realism. Comstock’s influence negatively affected publishers, distributers, and writers, in particular, canonical Americans Walt Whitman and Theodore Dreiser. His methods were unconventional, and in the name of morality, Comstock often behaved immorally to achieve his goals of protecting youth from being corrupted by obscenity. The question of the value of censorship was present then, as it still endures today, and centered on the potential harm of viewing or reading obscene materials. Although Comstock presented an impressive record of confiscations and arrests, his crusade did not have a lasting effect beyond the fin de siècle. / vi, 99 leaves ; 29 cm

This essay investigates the prospect of Romantic Irony’s potential resurgence in contemporary poetics and discusses its relevance and likeness with metamodernism. The internet has by now not only seeped into, but fully permeated, the process of literary production and distribution. The effect of this has been the birth of a new kind of poetic discourse which can broadly be called metamodernism, The New Sincerity or Alt-lit. This movement is characterized by its self-reflexive metacommentary, fragmentary nature and an oscillation between of irony and sincerity. Vermeulen and Akker, among others, have hinted at metamodernism’s relation to Romanticism, but research into the specifics of its tendency towards Romantic Irony is scarce. By viewing the writings of Steve Roggenbuck (a central figure in the new poetic movement), alongside the philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel, I propose a comparative framework for discussion of sincerity, irony and the instrumentalization of contemporary metamodernist writing. I demonstrate that Roggenbuck’s writing displays narratological, tropological and thematic tendencies commonly associated with both Romantic Irony and metamodernism. Apart from broader structural comparison, I attempt a comparative analysis between Roggenbuck’s poetry (2010-2015) and Thomas Carlyle’s novel “Sartor Resartus” (1833-1834) in order to provide a visualisation of the rhetorical and narratological strategies of Romantic Irony. I aim to frame Romantic Irony as a sensibility, or mode of discourse - rather than a strict system of thought - which may still be at work today. In extension, the sensibilities of Romantic Irony may shed further light into the philosophical potential of the seemingly incomprehensible and contradictory tendencies of metamodernism. By ironicizing its poetic form, literary ambition and desire for sincerity in a post-postmodern era, Roggenbuck’s poetry celebrates ambiguity and literary failure, ultimately framing irony as a constructive and potentially democratic operation.