This thesis is a study of resonant things in Victorian writers’ houses/museums – a reading of those material objects that seem especially fit to presence the writer to whom they once belonged. Through the study of a selection of autographic objects in the houses/museums of Victorian writers, this thesis considers the following questions: What is resonance? How do things presence the absent individual with whom they are associated? Why do some categories of things – objects seemingly ‘imbued with a lasting sediment of their owners’ (Pascoe 3) – seem especially fit for the task of presencing, and how have we described or understood this phenomenon through narrative? Through a reading of things, categories of things, images, novels, life writing, cultural and critical theory and the house/museum space, this thesis will examine the relationship between presencing things, material metonymy, and remembrance. It will suggest that certain categories of things have qualities that allow them to serve as remembrancers, standing-in-for and eliciting a sense of the absent individual with whom they were once connected. Chapter one lays the ground for this reading of resonant things by contextualizing writers’ houses/museums as sites of literary pilgrimage and introducing and defining some of the key concepts and terms employed in this study such as autographic object, authenticity, contiguity and resonance. Chapter two moves inside the writer’s house/museum in order to demonstrate how things can ‘world’ via a reading of Marion Harland’s late nineteenth-century description of a tour of the Carlyle’s House alongside Martin Heidegger’s concept of worlding. Chapters three, four, five, and six look at different types of museum things, beginning with hair – the object most closely associated with the writer’s body – and then moving on to clothing, writerly tools such as desks and chairs, and ending with handwriting. Through assessing the particular qualities of each categorical thing alongside the concepts we meet these things with and the way that encounters with these things have been described in a variety of narratives, a number of the dynamics contributing to affective encounters with writerly things are uncovered. These dynamics or factors include: autographic ascription, authenticity, contiguity, metonymical fitness, equipmentality, and stasis/conspicuousness. Ultimately this thesis argues that certain things have a particular fitness for the task of evoking or presencing the absent individual for whom they stand, and that in doing so everyday objects undergo a metamorphosis: ceasing to be everyday tools fit for a specific task (for wearing, for sitting, for writing with) and becoming instead tools for remembrance – evocative things that presence both the absent individual with whom they are associated and the world they inhabited in their lifetime.

The work of nineteenth-century American poet Phoebe Cary presents a complex puzzle of exigence and purpose that combines social structure, political climate, and personal history. Known for her somber and spiritual sentimental poetry, Cary shocked readers and reviewers alike when she published her collection Poems and Parodies in 1854, which contained a series of scathing and hilarious parodies based on popular sentimental poetry. In my thesis, I work to untangle the various contextual elements surrounding Cary’s writing in order to gain a better understanding of the dual nature of the poet and her work. Through an examination of nineteenth-century American culture, sentimentalism, Cary’s career, and a close reading of selected parodies, I argue that by intentionally undermining patriarchal, sentimental conventions, Cary both reinstates agency and plurality to women through her female speakers and asserts her own agency as an autonomous artist.

The purpose of this study was to see the lifetime literacy growth of one fourth-grade writing teacher, and to view her teaching from inside her classroom. This study follows the journey of an emerging teacher as she grew and developed into a professional educator. This study continues into her classroom to see her as she taught Writers’ Workshop, inspiring her students to write from their own life experiences. This qualitative study was conducted using participant observation, interviews, and artifacts to gather data. Through qualitative inquiry and thematic analysis, data were interpreted to gain insight into this teacher’s life and her teaching. The researcher’ s reflections, review of the literature, and eighteen years of experience as a teacher, brought a knowledgeable perspective that informed interpretation of the data. This study of Ruth’s life and her classroom was an inquiry into the processes of teacher development. Our view of teachers and their teaching is hidden by the nature of the job they do. Stories of the lives and work of teachers seek to illuminate the professional development of teachers and their teaching (Goodson, 1994; Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995; Schwarz, 2001). By closely studying the path of one teacher’s growth and teaching, the growth and teaching of all teachers are illuminated; by "weav[ing] together the themes throughout one teacher’s lifetime, [we] connect" ¦them to the lives of many different teachers' (Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995, p. 28). From this study, experiences of one teacher build and layer as years of teaching experience and professional development mingle together to change and enhance her knowledge of teaching and resulting classroom practice. The fourth-grade students in Ruth’s classroom were the recipients of their teacher’s literacy experiences that developed over her lifetime. / Ph. D.

Fault Lines is a collection of nine stories that explore the themes of otherness, isolation, and transitions. In most of these stories I explore the concept of isolation in its many forms— emotional, physical, social, and spiritual. Many of my characters are people who have been "othered" for one reason or another, and many of them are people on the cusp, not only of society but also their own lives. I also explore characters who are on the verge of transition, either staring one down with fear and denial, moving hesitantly and trepidatiously toward one, or, in rare instances, jumping gleefully toward that next big moment in their lives. Many of my characters yearn for something to transcend their ordinary, material lives, whether through a spiritual encounter or simply an ordinary yet unusual one. Some of these characters are stuck in the mire of their current lives, and we see an uncomfortable mix of lethargy and longing. Primarily, I explore exactly what catalysts people require in order to move from a state which, though unsatisfying, might be comfortable, to one that is unknown and risky but potentially fulfilling. The title of the collection refers to those moments or events in one's life that indicate or cause shifts or transitions, whether mental, physical, or emotional. / Master of Fine Arts

In 1936, Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) employees began interviewing formerly enslaved men and women, allowing them to speak publicly of their experiences under slavery. Defying racism and the repressions of Jim Crow, ex-slaves discussed intimate details of their lives. Many researchers considered these interviews unreliable, but if viewed through the lens of gender and analyzed using recent scholarship on slavery and sexuality, FWP interviews offer new insights into the lives of enslaved men and women. Using a small number of ex-slave interviews, most of them drawn from Louisiana, this thesis demonstrates the value of these oral histories for understanding the sexual lives of enslaved men and women. These interviews expose what we would otherwise have little access to: the centrality of struggles over enslaved people’s sexuality and reproduction to the experience of enslavement and the long-term effects of these struggles on the attitudes of slavery’s survivors.

Social and textual aspects of the language assimilation of German exile writers are studied. Major differences concern the length of their exile, their foreign language learning ability and their attitude to assimilating, and the primary sources are letters and diaries. Descriptive analysis is performed on the prose, mainly in the area of crosslinguistic influences. Despite their differing assimilation, the prose contains similar crosslinguistic influences. There are consistent changes in crosslinguistic influences during the course of language assimilation, initially determined by the extent of second language acquisition. However, language learning factors give way to social factors with crosslinguistic infuences ultimately governed by the functional independence of the second language. Lexically triggered code-switching is usually a step towards functionally motivated code-switching. Finally a tentative, schematic model of how the process of language assimilation causes and modifies crosslinguistic influences is proposed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis studies the progressive nature of women’s writing and the various factors that helped and hindered the successful publication of women’s written works in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The thesis interrogates culturally encoded definitions of the term “success” in relation to the status of these women writers. In a time when success meant, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “attainment of wealth or position”, women could never achieve a level of success equal to the male elite. The dichotomous worldview, in which women were excluded from almost all active participation in the public sphere, led to a literary protest by women. However, the male-privileged binary system is seen critically to affect women’s literary success. Hence, a redefinition of success will specifically refer to the literary experience of these women writers and a long-lasting recognition of this experience in the twentieth century. An examination of literary techniques used in key works from Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen suggests that there was a critical double standard with which women writers were constantly faced. The literary techniques, used by the earlier writers, fail in overcoming this critical double standard because of their emphasis on revolution. However, the last two women writers become literary successes (according to my reinterpretation of the term) because of their particular emphasis on amelioration rather than revolution. The conclusion of the thesis suggests that despite the “unsuccessful” literary attempts by the first three women authors, there is an overall positive progression in women’s journey toward literary success. Described as the ‘generational effect’, this becomes the fundamental point of the study, because together these women represent a combined movement which challenges a system of patriarchal tradition, encouraging women to continue to push the gender relations’ boundaries in order to be seen as individual, successful writers.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references (p.228-235).

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 19, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Thesis advisor: Dr. Tim P. Vos. Includes bibliographical references.

Maracle responds to the question of how she developed as a public intellectual. She describes how she has reworked English to "suit the Salish sensibility."