This thesis claims that Shakespeare exaggerated the characterization of two figures in Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence and the apothecary, to make a statement about the conditions of medical treatment in sixteenth century London. These two figures represent two very different approaches to healing, one that is informed with ancient holistic medical theory and one that is driven by economics, and this work attempts to explain the cultural conditions that warranted such a discrepancy in the play. I address these two medical figures in the contexts of the events of the text, of the contemporary medical profession, and of materialism in the profession and in the play. An analysis of these characters' actual counterparts in medical history and a subsequent analysis of the characters' roles in the play show how Shakespeare accurately mirrored and also departed from the history that he knew. This history includes an exploration of the relationship between the spiritual and the physical in ancient medicine, as well as how that relationship was incorporated during the Renaissance by professional physicians and lay healers. In addition, this project studies the history of medical theory in England in order to trace a departure between theory and practice. By placing these characters against their historical counterparts, this project concludes that Shakespeare was critical of the conditions under which people practiced medicine. He approved of the friar's spiritual medical theory and disapproved of the apothecary's detached materialism.

Near the Lewis & Clark Trail is a creative writing thesis that contains two distinct parts. Part one is a short story cycle: a collection of interlinked narratives that together, tell a larger, cohesive story. Many different points of view, narrative techniques, and non-linear time sequences are used in order to provide a pastiche of different voices, points in time, and perspectives, that ultimately form an overall narrative structure. In addition to the stories, there are several fictional documents that are used to separate the work at critical times, and to provide subtext. In between the stories are: a letter to a county judge, a fake police report, and a fictional newspaper article. Because these documents are meant to seem real, they are in different fonts, which offset them from the rest of the text, and are consistent with the fonts used in real life for these documents. The second part of the thesis is an original screenplay titled: After The Gold Rush. This is an adaptation of the first short story in part one, and also incorporates several plot points from the story cycle. The screenplay can be looked at as a singular work, or an exercise in adaptation.

As one might expect from a young poet writing at the turn of a millennium, recurrent in "Caller ID" is the theme of struggle with literary tradition and of seeing it as both necessary and constricting to the project of forging one's own creative identity. The collision between history and the self is visible in the often conflicted references to great philosophers and poets of the past as well as in the call for renewal of the body poetic after an envisioned 'end of history' marked by creative sterility and exhaustion. The proposed renewal does not entail destruction of tradition but rather a replenishment of poetic curiosity, a newfound thirst for restructuring and linguistic play with and within the tropes distilled through the ages. Among the super-objectives of "Caller ID" is the desire to marry the unbridled vigor of post-modernism with the higher stakes of Stevensian poetic inquiry. In attempting this uneasy fusion, the voice slips on a series of masks in order to take on subjects ranging from the mundane to the sublime. What remains consistent throughout this collection of poetry, however, is the voice's unrelenting interest in observing and commenting upon its own creative proceedings.

This study explores power and empowerment in writing center peer conferences. Arguing against the notion of hierarchical and collaborative conference categories, it suggests that because both participants enact power in conference interaction, conferencing power dynamics exist on a continuum. Issues of ownership are also placed on a continuum (and associated with enactments of power); this study argues against idealized notions of tutees owning their texts and conferencing goals. It distinguishes between empowerment in a practical sense (associated with improving writing skills) and in a political sense (associated with increasing critical awareness). The research involved ethnographic methods: it followed two peer tutors through a 3-credit hour, semester-long preparation course and through their first year working as writing tutors; also, 48 conferences involving the two tutors were audio-recorded. Additional methods involved discourse analysis of 8 complete conference transcripts, as well as analysis of several audio tapes and partial transcripts. The two tutors were involved extensively in data analysis; the study emphasizes their involvement, their perceptions of power and empowerment, and their influence on data analysis and coding procedures. Political empowerment was rare in the conferences examined; however, practical empowerment was encouraged within a range of conferencing dynamics. Empowerment, however, could also be hindered within a range of dynamics: more hierarchical exchanges sometimes gave tutees little opportunity to practice concepts or demonstrate learning, while more collaborative exchanges sometimes seemed confusing and frustrating to the tutee. Thus, the study suggested the importance of tutor flexibility in employing and adjusting conferencing approaches. It also suggested that tutors are empowered by conferencing; both tutors planned to become teachers and felt their tutoring experiences would strongly affect their teaching. The writing centers ability to empower students may lie especially in its ability to expose potential teachers to political issues associated with teaching, writing, and language.

At the dawn of time the gods created heaven and earth. The creator of the moon joined with the creator of the sun and together they produced the first Empress. She is the embodiment of all that is good and holy. She is the spiritual guide to all the tribes of man. The tribes are ruled by men. When one man, Baron Stier, rises above the others he is crowned Archduke. He rules in the Empresss name and his dynasty lasts for half a millennia. Upon the discovery of the land beyond the sacred islands the dynasty falls. And tribes enter into a period of civil war. The civil wars represent an unstable time. Barons of the tribes fight among themselves for generations with no real gain. But one day through strong virtue and miraculous fortune young Indar finds the strength to unify a nation. This is the second dynasty. His first order is to strip the people of their weapons. His second order is to redistribute the land so the tribes closest to him are the tribes that are the most loyal to him. It is a bold plan, but it is the order that sews the seeds of revolution. The anger of the disenfranchised smolders for two hundred years. Because the tribes are sealed off from the outside world a strong and popular black market arises. During a certain illegal transaction Baron Reisht comes to possess a flashlight. It is a technology that is so far beyond anything he has seen, he becomes afraid. In a rare and special moment, something akin to genius, he understands that his country, his home, is in grave danger. The creators of this technology could conquer the tribes at their leisure. Baron Reisht will not let that happen. The Baron, with unholy determination, marshals his forces and brings to the people he intends to protect destruction on an order they have never before seen. But he is successful. He captures the throne and establishes the third dynasty. On the day of his triumph his greatest fears come true.

Often referred to as resembling an architectural blueprint, the screenplay is known for its laconic style. Discarding the subjective abstractionism of a more flowery writing, the screenplay's brevity forces the writer to make use of the physical world of the text to display its underlying currents of thought. This trend in artistic representation, of which the influence has been heatedly discussed since the onset of the cinema, is not stagnant but evolving. The screenwriters of today produce their craft with an increased savoir faire not only in relation to plot and form but also in regards to the aesthetics of the composition itself. "Out the Loop" serves as an indicator of the emerging trend of screenplays to be composed with an attention to the aesthetics of writing. The goal is to with the writing add another layer of meaning for the readers of the screenplay and producers of the would be film. Irregardless of whether or not this is achieved, the physical world of the text examines the plight of an emerging class of dispossessed Americans and asks the question: where do they go from here?

This thesis examines Robert Lowell's use of memory in such autobiographical works as Life Studies and Day by Day. In those volumes, Lowell returns to recollect his private past; his act of remembering becomes the poetic process by which Lowell is able to create the retrospective truth of his life. The most important feature of memory in his life-writing is in its role as an imaginative reconstruction. In the first chapter, I review recent models that regard memory as a reconstructive process. Memory involves more than fact, according to these investigations; it also represents a fictionalizing process of self. In 91 Revere Street, Lowell recollects the incidents from his childhood that seem to be essential to the formation of his self. For Lowell, memory is a way of knowing by which his self learns to recognize itself in the world. In Life Studies, he also explores his lost self in memories and situates it within American culture generally, transposing his own case to the national level. Lowell seems to discard the essentialist idea of self and instead adopts an idea of the self recreated by remembering. Lowell's self is culturally constituted and dominated. Finally, memory seems to serve Lowell in knowing not only himself but also others better. In Day by Day, Lowell achieves new images of his parents that represent a revised and reshaped attitude to those formative figures. He comes to understand his parents as humans in light of his evolving recollection. For Lowell, memory is a creative force of the poet's artistic imagination continuously reconstituting the past in the present.

This study of first-person fictive narration analyzes a selection of contemporary American novels so as to understand and describe more fully a literary effect I call immediacy. I employ the term immediacy to define narrative situations in which little durational gap exists between experience and narration and in which little ideological and emotional distance is communicated between the narrating persona and the subject self. The following chapters provide a close examination of narrative techniques employed by writers in the creation of immediacy and argues that both the tone of the novels and their themes of maturation and self-identity are attributable to strategies of narration. The novelists studied here use these strategies to reflect the complex, dichotomous nature of self-identity and to re-envision modes of self-representative writing such as autobiography and Bildungsroman. Each of the texts considered features a narrator-protagonist who faces and overcomes oppressive and restrictive circumstances. As in previous scholarship, this work argues that the act of self-narration is constitutive of a characters achievement of self-actualization. More specifically, I argue that the narrators close proximity to experiences, an aspect of fiction often overlooked, contributes significantly to the impact effected by the narrative voice. By composing a narration that occurs seemingly in conjunction with experience, the writers studied here depict the changing process of identity development rather than a narrators reconstruction of it through reflection. Through the fluidity that results, writers develop protagonists who defy conventional definitions. Thus the immediacy characterizing the narration of these works signifies agency achieved by the marginalized protagonists. Additionally, the flexibility of the form aids novelists in achieving the dual purposes of portraying an authentic-seeming individual voice and conveying social commentary. The concluding chapter examines the salience of narrative immediacy in novels in which a substantial temporal gap exists between narration and experience. This broadening of the study illustrates that narrator proximity is indeed worth study, not only for extending the parameters of narrative theory, but also for enhancing our understanding of the intricate ways in which narrative voice interacts with theme and cultural context.

A young African American adolescent named Lion is forced to leave his hometown of Rivertown, and join the navy. While in the navy, Lion acts an enforcer and collector for another sailor who runs an illegal money-lending operation on the ship. Lion also learns how to box and manages to fight his way to the Fifth Fleet championships. After winning the championship fight, the captain of the ship uses his influence to place Lion in a very competitive commissioning program. With the chance of becoming an officer, Lion changes his behavior, leading to serious conflict with old allies. He escapes the ship, but not unscathed. The psychological effects resonate after he graduates from college. These psychological scars are played out in his relationship with the love of his life, a young woman named Nicole, who comes from a wealthy black family.

Young Adult literature is an important source of information for young readers, and this genre makes a distinct contribution to the cultural and social construction of femininity and female sexuality in its pages. How to Make a Girl: Female Sexuality in Young Adult Literature analyzes representations of female sexuality in more than fifty texts. By examining these texts in relation to each other and in terms of historical development, this project creates a literary history of female sexuality in Young Adult fictions. By depicting young women in varying stages of adolescence and young adulthood, these fictional texts offer unique representations of young female characters. Since adolescence is a life stage that usually includes a growing awareness of sexuality, this genre is replete with issues, images, and ideas connected to sexuality. By analyzing themes and tropes such as body image, lesbianism, pregnancy, and romance, and their relationship(s) to female sexuality, this study reveals the participation of Young Adult literature in the social construction of femininity and female sexuality. Examining these texts with a feminist perspective reveals the complexities of these representations. Each chapter focuses on the various functions of these tropes, such as an imbedded link between body image and sexual responsibility, a critique of compulsory heterosexuality, pregnancy as impetus for separation from the traditional family unit and the idea of romance as a transitional stage for young women. While many texts reinforce traditional gender roles for young women, many more texts challenge received ideas and provide alternative visions of what it means to be young and female in patriarchal culture.