A key term in the cultural criticism of Walter Benjamin is his notion of "reception in distraction" as an antidote to ideology's domination over the mass society in the modern age. This dissertation attempts to illuminate this idea by offering case studies of three projects that summon into existence a new kind of reader, one capable of a trained apperception we may describe as "distracted."; One objective of the mass society according to a Frankfurt model of culture is the erasure of the subject; reception in distraction serves at once to create a space for the social dream and to re-inscribe the subject at the moment of reception through an insistence on its unruly, embodied presence. "Reception in Distraction" creates a cognitive space for disengagement from ideology, modeling what Michael Denning called the "dream work of the social." Critical theory is thus available to the mass public in the form of the "dream of history" that is solely accessible to a distracted apperception and whose subject is the faint possibility that the crisis of the present may be redeemed and repaired in the future. This project attempts to locate this dream of history in the autobiographical writings of Gertrude Stein, the detective fiction of Kenneth Fearing and the late silent cinema of Charlie Chaplin, each of which illustrates clearly the manner in which "distraction" functions to generate contradiction in the face of ideology's mass cultural form. Stein's experiments with the autobiographical form call for exactly this manner of reception, for which "Alice B. Toklas" becomes a key model. Similarly, Kenneth Fearing's Marxist detective novel The Big Clock and Modern Times , Charlie Chaplin's final silent film, reflect on the possibility of a productive reception-in-distraction that may co-opt the social forms of capitalism into a project of resistance and counter-discourse. "Distraction" is therefore more than merely an attitude of reception: it occasions a cognitive distance from ideology that is a key form of critical theory in the modern period.

Doctor of Philosophy / This is a study of the composition of three Modernist first editions: Ulysses (1922), The Making of Americans (1925) and A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930). The bibliographical and figurative commitments made to being in print by Ulysses, A Draft of XXX Cantos and The Making of Americans set a coherent program for reading Modernist texts in their perfected form: in print. The editorial reception of the Modernist book has proceeded, however, with reference to the editorial and bibliographical principles established by the New Bibliographers. In deferring to the authors and manuscripts of Modernist books as the highest source of textual authority, the vital significance of being in print to literary Modernism is obscured. The figure of the ideal Book concentrates the central aesthetic, intellectual and bibliographic problem posed the Modernist book: the making of literature. The rhyme with The Making of Americans is appropriate: this book intensifies and consolidates the propositions made about objective and autonomous composition made more hesitantly by Ulysses and A Draft of XXX Cantos. These three books display a gradual refusal to equate inscription and intention; their composition effaces all traces of a sovereign creative subjectivity. The vision of the book guides Modernist composition, and requires a critical distinction be drawn between manuscripts and printed letters. Modernism must be read in print. The vestigial nostalgia for Romantic modes of textual production and creation in Ulysses is repeated on the placards and proof-pages for the book. Printed drafts are revised and reformed by the pen of the author. The finality asserted by the printed letter is only reluctantly ceded on the publication of Ulysses. The composition of A Draft of XXX Cantos represents a further transition away from the script economy of Romanticism. The interplay between authorial typescripts, early publications and the first edition of A Draft of XXX Cantos assert an intermediate order of Modernist textuality which takes the printed page as its foundation. The Making of Americans relies on the absolute objectivity and anonymity of its composition for the effect of its narrative. Objectivity is the intellectual and aesthetic strategy which produces literature rather than the personality and memory of the author. The impersonality of the apparently automatically written manuscripts and scarcely revised typescripts for The Making of Americans severs the visible links between the writing author and her page. In their unwillingness to corroborate the modes of textual generation described by the New Bibliographers, these three books thematise their own composition as the exemplary Modernist and modern mode of textual generation. The Modernist book attenuates or denies a Romantic connection between the creative hand of the author and the surface image of the page: the mechanisms of print deliberately detach the author from the literary text. The distance of the author from the scene of textual reproduction is measured by the printed book. The composition of this analytical object is not a fallacy but an actuality, commemorated in the archive, enacted by the book. Modernism is the literature of the imprimatur rather than of authorial inscription and accordingly it is towards the first editions of Modernist texts that the attentions of editors and textual scholars must be directed.

<p>This dissertation intervenes in the fields of modernist criticism and new media studies to examine an under-appreciated reciprocity between them. I argue that this reciprocity has not yet been adequately incorporated into a critical reckoning of the modernist period, a literary age too often neglected by new media studies as an epoch of "old media" productions. Even if modernist poets did create works largely intended for traditional book-bound channels, the imaginations that produced those works were forged in the combustible mix of new media and technologies that emerged in the early 20th century.</p><p>The argument focuses on the poetics of Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, innovative poets who composed some of the most prescient, insightful writings on record about the connections linking technological and poetical developments. Through an examination of these poets' speculative writings, I argue that their experimental poetic methods emerged from their understanding of the challenges posed by new media and technologies. Among these challenges were new velocities of signification that emerged with the proliferation of the telegraph, new capacities for the storage of information that arrived with the introduction of the phonograph, an altered relationship to language itself with the externalized alphabet of the typewriter, and a new feel for how meaning could be generated through the montage logic of the cinema.</p><p>Drawing on a critical perspective derived from Martin Heidegger, pragmatist philosophers, Frankfurt School theorists and new media scholars such as Friedrich Kittler and Marshall McLuhan, I examine how modernist poetry, when framed as a media event, can help us understand how technological and media shifts influence our conceptions of our own inner and outer domains.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-216). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

In this dissertation, I explore a writing center tutor training model based on the theories and practices of Gertrude Buck, a nineteenth-century teacher and scholar. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Buck was among the few offering an alternative to the dominant view of writing as a tool to reflect existing ideas objectively and correctly. She instead held a Deweyan view of language as a practice that allowed students to explore knowledge and come to a better understanding of themselves, others, and their communities.I examine evidence that effects of prescriptive nineteenth century trends linger in our contemporary writing center setting at Ball State University; next, I describe the process of creating a tutor training model over the course of a semester as I introduce Buck's ideas, observing how Buck's principles are discussed and implemented in writing center sessions and staff training situations. Specifically, I ask the following questions for the descriptive study that I conduct: What practices emerge as a result of using the principles of Gertrude Buck in writing center tutor training? What are the relationships among this tutor training process, tutors' perceptions of writing, and their resulting practices and approaches toward tutoring writing?Findings from the descriptive study demonstrate that the use of Gertrude Buck's principles in our writing center enabled tutors to openly, productively discuss the complexities of writing and language and to more confidently meet the needs ofdiverse writers in a range of situations. The use of Gertrude Buck's principles, which emphasize collaboration, an inductive approach to learning, and continuous reflection on the relationship between practice and theory, in fact have a broader application beyond writing centers. Writing center administrators, tutors, and teachers of writing can benefit from Buck's principles as a guide for examining their own practice and theory connections and creating models for teaching and tutoring to fit their specific contexts. / Department of English

Doctor of Philosophy / This is a study of the composition of three Modernist first editions: Ulysses (1922), The Making of Americans (1925) and A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930). The bibliographical and figurative commitments made to being in print by Ulysses, A Draft of XXX Cantos and The Making of Americans set a coherent program for reading Modernist texts in their perfected form: in print. The editorial reception of the Modernist book has proceeded, however, with reference to the editorial and bibliographical principles established by the New Bibliographers. In deferring to the authors and manuscripts of Modernist books as the highest source of textual authority, the vital significance of being in print to literary Modernism is obscured. The figure of the ideal Book concentrates the central aesthetic, intellectual and bibliographic problem posed the Modernist book: the making of literature. The rhyme with The Making of Americans is appropriate: this book intensifies and consolidates the propositions made about objective and autonomous composition made more hesitantly by Ulysses and A Draft of XXX Cantos. These three books display a gradual refusal to equate inscription and intention; their composition effaces all traces of a sovereign creative subjectivity. The vision of the book guides Modernist composition, and requires a critical distinction be drawn between manuscripts and printed letters. Modernism must be read in print. The vestigial nostalgia for Romantic modes of textual production and creation in Ulysses is repeated on the placards and proof-pages for the book. Printed drafts are revised and reformed by the pen of the author. The finality asserted by the printed letter is only reluctantly ceded on the publication of Ulysses. The composition of A Draft of XXX Cantos represents a further transition away from the script economy of Romanticism. The interplay between authorial typescripts, early publications and the first edition of A Draft of XXX Cantos assert an intermediate order of Modernist textuality which takes the printed page as its foundation. The Making of Americans relies on the absolute objectivity and anonymity of its composition for the effect of its narrative. Objectivity is the intellectual and aesthetic strategy which produces literature rather than the personality and memory of the author. The impersonality of the apparently automatically written manuscripts and scarcely revised typescripts for The Making of Americans severs the visible links between the writing author and her page. In their unwillingness to corroborate the modes of textual generation described by the New Bibliographers, these three books thematise their own composition as the exemplary Modernist and modern mode of textual generation. The Modernist book attenuates or denies a Romantic connection between the creative hand of the author and the surface image of the page: the mechanisms of print deliberately detach the author from the literary text. The distance of the author from the scene of textual reproduction is measured by the printed book. The composition of this analytical object is not a fallacy but an actuality, commemorated in the archive, enacted by the book. Modernism is the literature of the imprimatur rather than of authorial inscription and accordingly it is towards the first editions of Modernist texts that the attentions of editors and textual scholars must be directed.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Nancy Armstrong. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-190). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Baylor University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 190-198).

Doktorarbeit--Katholisch-theologische Fakultät--Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i. Br., 1990.