Yupik writers and Yupik subsistence offer valuable challenges, parallels, and alternative models to mainstream nature writings discourse surrounding human relationships to the land, a discourse that carries an inherent agricultural bias. An introduction to western Alaskas Nunivak Island provides context for Chapter 1, which demonstrates the fluidity of cultural, geographical, and historical margins through discussion of the works of Yupik journalist John Active and historian and ethnographer James Clifford. Chapter 2 provides an overview of Yupik subsistence centered around the community of Bethel, Alaska, then subjects mainstream nature writing, represented mostly by Wendell Berry, to critiques supplied by Canadian anthropologist Hugh Brody, who asserts that Western discourse carries traces of the myths of Eden and the curses of the book of Genesis. Chapter 3 returns to the geography and stories of Nunivak Island before detailing the contributions that Yupik writers like Oscar Kawagley and John Active have to offer back to the prevailing discourse, contributions that stress the importance of sharing and kinship and stress the dangers of commodification.

This thesis addresses the Heideggerean notion of dwelling in Anne Brontës The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by analyzing the different ways the novels protagonist, Helen Huntingdon, adapts to the harsh, sublime landscape of Wildfell Hall and the subsequent relationship that develops between her and Gilbert Markham. Escaping her violent and abusive husband, Helen flees to Wildfell Hall and uses her skills as an artist to support both herself and her son. In the first chapter, late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century aesthetics of the sublime and the picturesque are evaluated in relation to the aesthetic spaces of the novel. Helen enjoys an intimate connection to the landscape both at Grassdale and Wildfell Hall, and she finds solace and freedom in nature. But the aesthetics of the picturesque both provide a space for Helen and confine her. In the second chapter, these confines will be explored more fully. Helen remains under the gaze of those around her, both the individual males who wish to control her and the community members who try to judge her. The domestic sphere also confines her; the home becomes a site of imprisonment rather than the safe, nurturing space upheld by Victorian society. The second chapter also develops Helens role as a sublime heroine, which is analyzed more fully in the third chapter, which primarily focuses on how Helen challenges the norms of the Victorian heroine. Gilbert also challenges the norms for the Victorian hero. Their roles in the novel emphasize reciprocal relationships, both with human beings as well as with the land and animals. The narrative structure of the novel suggests this sort of relationality as well and an analysis of its significance will form a part of the concluding chapter of the thesis.

Weltys argument stating the only part of fiction that matters is its integrity is seen in all of her work. When she writes of integrity, she states that the integrity of a novel is its ability to stand the test of time. Welty believes that the writers job is to take life and show it as it really is. There is a shared act of imagination between its writer and reader(Welty 805). This shared act is what allows the writer to take a stand and say something important about life and people. Instead of looking at the generalities of a social cause, Welty looks at the individual involved in the cause, or an individual living in a certain time period. She explores how the social rules effect the people living in that time. She is not exploring the social rules and how they should be changed on a large scale, but only in how it effects certain people in the community. Through this personal exploration, Welty believes that her writing is more powerful than a novelist who takes on a cause head on. This chapter will explore that idea. How does Weltys ability to explore an individual help her to not only connect to her reader, but also show the injustices of certain social problems.

A novel excerpt exploring motherhood and the implications of its loss.

These essays catalog some events and musings of my late adolescence and early adulthood. At times humorous, at times tragic, the writing here reflects my quest for understanding and meaning. Though some essays are related thematically, each piece is intended to stand alone as an individual work.

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A series of poems on the landscape and politics of the American West.

Three Missoula misfits stumble upon a mermaid in an abandoned lot. The mermaid becomes the center of a freak show in which the three misfits perform their individual quirks for a constantly growing audience. Gradually, the repeated performances take their toll and the misfits find themselves physically mutating in unexpected and disturbing ways.

In this study, I examine Salman Rushdies fiction within the critical framework of globalization studies. In particular, I focus on The Satanic Verses (1988) and The Moors Last Sigh (1995) in order to elucidate the specific ways in which Rushdie engages the promises and pitfalls of cultural globalization. In my introduction, I lay necessary important epistemological groundwork through my examination of hybridity and fundamentalism within a globalized context. Both terms, I suggest, describe significant responses to, and conditions brought about by, an increase in cultural contact and exchange in an increasingly interconnected world. In Chapter 1, I delineate the ways in which Rushdie valorizes hybridity in The Satanic Verses. Not only does Rushdie promote hybridity as a capable of assuaging the problems of migrancy, he makes his point through a sustained critique of the dogmatic and fundamentalist propensities of religion, especially Islam. In my second chapter, I explore The Moors Last Sigh for evidence of an ideological revision, on the part of Rushdie, regarding hybridity. His first major literary work following the Rushdie affairan event precipitated by his treatment of Islam in The Satanic VersesThe Moors Last Sigh is in many ways less optimistic than its predecessor. However, I argue that Rushdie does not entirely dispense with his original claims; rather, he is wiser to the hazards of hybridity and multiculturalism, and he deploys modern India as test case for the ways in which these conditions are rendered vulnerable to misappropriation by Hindu fundamentalist regimes and, ultimately, the driving forces of global capitalism. In my conclusion, I briefly investigate a larger tendency, on the part of Rushdie, to resist totalizing views of the world. It is this tendency, I argue, that firmly situates Rushdie as an advocate of hybridity, but it also suggests that Rushdies search for coherence is actually quite similar to the main impetus for religious fundamentalism: an attempt to establish, or restore, a specific worldview to preeminence.