Thesis, PlanA (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2006. / Thesis advisor: Lilián Uribe. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Spanish." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-136). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1995. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 9, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Janice Neuleib (chair), Ronald Strickland, Heather Graves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-228) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1996. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 26, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Janice Neuleib (chair), Douglas Hesse, Dana Harrington. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-218) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2006. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-129). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

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For all the criticism that has been leveled against cultural representations of the American West, ideas of the westward expansion and its significance have remained powerful impulses for the negotiation of history and identity. Such notions of the past, and the cultural symbology with which they can be expressed, are more or less available to writers and other cultural agents for employment in political, cultural, or literary discourse. Understood in this way, the imagined West, to use Richard White's term, has continued to supply material that affirms or contests political and ideological change. The rejection of the conventionally imagined past in the 1970s provided writers with an opportunity to re-formulate historical representation and to make sense of history anew. Thus the imagined West reinforced its paradoxical status in American culture as a symbolic resource that signifies both historical inertia and constant change. This study investigates representations of the West as they appear in the literary discourse of the 1970s. In readings of four non-genre texts, Don DeLillo's Americana (1971), Robert Coover's The Public Burning (1977), Joan Didion's The White Album (1979), and Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff (1979), this study situates the cultural symbology of the West in a historico-political, cultural, and literary context. The study shows how these four writers utilize preconceptions about the meaning of the past, at the same time as they reshape that past to fit their own literary and ideological strategies. They do so by incorporating into the texts elements of historical representation and their ideological constituents, or ideologemes. Taken together, these texts are seen to illustrate the trajectory of the imagined West during a time of critical negotiation of American history.

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts