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Adapting place: Author: Konsmo, Michael Jonathan; Date: 2004-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Beginning writers in Montana, especially students enrolled in composition courses at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, can benefit from a curriculum that connects the act of writing to the place each person is from. Place occurs wherever people interact with landscape. Interaction is defined broadly, and can take the form of many activities, most importantly to this study, interaction takes on the form of writing. Place is embodied in the works of many of Montana's finest authors of literature, especially Wallace Stegner, Norman Maclean, Ivan Doig, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane and ...; Download File | View full details

Burdens and blessings: heuristic pedagogy for the rhetorical endeavor in composition: Author: Lenart, Joshua Bela; Date: 2005-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Rhetoric has been a cornerstone of Western thought for at least the last 2500 years, whether disdained as manipulative techniques exercised by immoral lawyers and corrupt politicians or prized as an elegant mastery of language displayed by leaders and dignitaries. This essay posits that rhetoric is always a fundamental part not only of Western but of all societies. Maintaining such a constitution necessarily raises the questions how and why should educators acknowledge rhetoric's role in their instruction. Of the innumerable sites for introducing an increased focus on rhetorical instruction in...; Download File | View full details

Chasing the dream: literature and regional construction in California's Great Central Valley: Author: Bryson, Rachel Welton; Date: 2006-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: As a region, California's Great Central Valley can be defined through the physical and cultural characteristics assigned to the space by its residents. Not unlike the larger regions of which it is part, the Valley's cultural landscapes have long been constructed as sites of wealth, fertile ground, and opportunity. Drawn to the region's myriad promises and possibilities, populations moving into and within the region often search for their part in a frequently elusive California Dream. Yet as with any place, the lived experience of the Valley's residents is often far removed from the constructio...; Download File | View full details

Composition and aleche: Native American education, scholarship and the pedagogy of John Dewey: Author: Jenkins, Nathan Joseph; Date: 2005-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: This thesis approaches the historical and contemporary education of Native Americans in order to analyze and combat the American academic system's failure to educate Native students. The chapters cover 1) boarding schools aims and student resistance, 2) problems still faced by Native American students, and 3) possible solutions to these problems. Chapters 1 and 2 give an overview of history and research done by educators and scholars. Chapter 3 is a combination of suggestions by educators of Native students and John Dewey. The first sections demonstrate problems and voids in academia, and the ...; Download File | View full details

Defining grammar: a critical primer: Author: Wilcox, Karen Marie; Date: 2004-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Many new or pre-service English teachers may not have learned much about grammar during their own school years or throughout their college preparation. This lack of preparedness may cause these instructors to remain apprehensive about teaching a subject they don't understand very well. Also, the full-fledged grammar classes which a pre-service English teacher might be required to take in college may further intimidate through an immediate, in-depth explication of the subject with complex diagrams and theories before the teaching candidate is even fully aware of the definition(s) of the word gr...; Download File | View full details

Nature/Culture and Fly Fishing in the New West: Author: Hostetler, Jeffrey William; Date: 2006-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Cultural theorists define the New West as the region including most portions of the states of Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the entire portions of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Their term assumes, as does anything new, that there was an Old West as well, possessing distinct characteristics from the New. What analyses of historical, cultural, and theoretical texts reveal is the seamlessness of terms such as New and Old; that throughout this region, the complications and conflict involved around limited resources like water, wildlife, and timber ...; Download File | View full details

The Point of View of the Author: Intersections in Philosophy and Literature: Author: Leubner, Benjamin Jordan; Date: 2004-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: The question of this thesis is what does it mean to write under the temporal categories, or categories of understanding of, repetition, recurrence and return. Naturally, before the question can be dealt with, these categories must be investigated, as well as set off against the traditional categories which they aim to expand. The method of exposition utilized within the thesis is meant to walk, as it were, hand in hand with its content. The content being largely the "three R's" mentioned above, the thesis accordingly repeats, recurs and returns to the same ideas and the same metap...; Download File | View full details

Rationalism and D. H. Lawrence: A 21st Century Perspective: Author: Rehan, Naveed; Date: 2004-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Since the time of the Greek philosopher Plato, Western intellectuals have relied on logos or "the word" to make philosophical propositions about the world humans find themselves in. Logos or "the word" has generally been privileged over mythos or pathos, denoting emotion and feeling. This privileging has sometimes been challenged by intellectuals within the Western tradition. D. H. Lawrence was the most vocal and passionate writer to do so in modern times. This text traces the development of rationalism in the Western tradition and Lawrence's resistance to it. It also ...; Download File | View full details

Theorizing nature: seeking middle ground: Author: Voss, Dahlia Louise; Date: 2005-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Acknowledging that our ideas about nature and culture are both inextricably linked and the result of social factors shaped by multiple forms of knowledge is at the center of this project. Through a postmodern analysis, informed by environmental cultural studies, I critique a relatively new genre, the environmental memoir, to theorize the ways interconnections between nature and culture are either resisted or revealed. Environmental memoir is a genre-hopping exploration of both personal narrative and environmental literature. Critiquing the literary constructions of nature, culture, environment...; Download File | View full details

The warrior's words: seeking the American soldier in non-fictional military literature: Author: King, Jodey Corben; Date: 2004-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: The genre of non-fictional military literature is which has been long overlooked, underappreciated and undervalued in concern to literary research, and otherwise. While other forms of military representation, specifically fictional writing and movies, have long served a classroom function of elucidation, non-fiction has taken a back seat. What's more, in society at large, the population is predisposed to accept mass media accounts of the military, the soldier and warfare rather than turning to the words of the soldier. However, this source has great potential, even beyond the literary sense. T...; Download File | View full details

Coup d' eventail: the Maghreb, the French, and imperial pretext: Author: Walker, Timothy John; Date: 2006-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: This thesis examines the experience of the men and women of the Maghreb through an analysis of regionally-based writers, historians, and cultural and geopolitical analysts, as well as alternative sources detailing salient factors involved in this era. The Maghreb, a region of North Africa consisting of three nations, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, experienced well over a century of colonial rule by the French. The colonial era lasted from the early 1800's to the culmination of the French-Algerian War in 1962. France was determined to establish Algeria as an integral component of the French emp...; Download File | View full details

Individualizing the writing process through a genre-based, social-process pedagogy: Author: Wilke, William Walter; Date: 2006-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Many contemporary composition scholars are moving beyond process theory, contending that the act of writing effectively is one of complex social interaction, an intricate ballet of intellectual feigns, parries and thrusts, that cannot be reduced to the simple process of prewriting, writing and rewriting to be taught in the same, or even similar, manner to every person. In fact, they argue, there can be no effective classroom composition pedagogy that reveals the social nature of the act of writing to the student in any meaningful way. And yet a wealth of personal observations have shown that a...; Download File | View full details

Trapped between graffiti'd walls and sidewalk borders: resistance, insistence and changing the shape of things: Author: Rohde-Finnicum, Robyn Renee; Date: 2006-08-15; Program: English; Abstract: Beat poetics, specifically exemplified by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Alan Ginsberg, offer a political aesthetic voice of dissent within both the cannon and the nation. Creating their own fold of heterogeneity, these poets base their critique of the Western Enlightenment technocratic and logocentric philosophic tradition upon a performance of marginality. Separating themselves from this way of being in the world, Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg use American institutions and industries as metaphors for a Moloch-like system of imprisoning and/or destroying individuality and excess, sacrificing differenc...; Download File | View full details

Finding the faces of our mothers: every day feminism in Stephen King's 'Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's game': Author: Turnage, Rachel Anne; Date: 2006-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: The historical validity, feminist aspects, and social implications of Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game are analyzed to demonstrate how the novels reflect the nature of women's rights and struggles from the 1950's until the early 1990's. The patterns of survivor abuse stories are unearthed through both social science research and feminist literary criticism. By drawing connections between the two novels and their connection to the larger world of feminist issues, the argument is made that these and other popular novels are fruitful for cultural analysis because popular fiction...; Download File | View full details

The Space Between: How Hypertext Affects the Author/Reader Divide: Author: Becker, Michael Edward; Date: 2007-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Authors and readers have been in conflict since the invention of writing, battling over the right to interpret a written document. This has artificially created a split between these two institutions, a split typically divided between those who have the power and money to publish their words to a mass audience and those whose words have been repressed by that publishing system. This thesis examines, through the lens of deconstruction and other post-structuralist threories, how hypertext and other digital technologies have empowered reader to take back some of the functions historically granted...; Download File | View full details

Images in the labyrinth: a reading of symbol and archetype in four quartets: Author: Berg, Wayne Carl Jr.; Date: 2007-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Since the publication of Four Quartets as a complete poem in 1944, the question of meaning, of how to understand the poem, has remained foremost in the mind of the reader. Insight into T.S. Eliot's last major work of prose has run the gamut of interpretive (and evaluative) schools; yet, as perhaps should be the case, exact meaning eludes the critic. That this is a major work of modernism goes without saying, but the analysis of historicism is tied to one, timely dimension. As a religious poem the reverence of its lines ascends into the realms of metaphysics, but simultaneously they lack a dogm...; Download File | View full details

Beyond consummate masculinity: implications of differing masculinities in Patrick O'Brian's novels: Author: Casey, Jamin Allen; Date: 2007-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: There has been a lot written about gender studies in the nineteenth century and there have been comparisons between Patrick O'Brian's writing and Jane Austen's. I look at masculinity and how O'Brian may be demonstrating something interesting about the similarities and the differences between a nineteenth century masculinity a more modern concept of masculinity through the fictional characters in his Master and Commander Series. In order to evaluate his representation of the nineteenth century man I look at representations from the period by authors including Frederick Marryat and Jane Austen. ...; Download File | View full details

Exercising influence, hoping for change: Sarah Orne Jewett, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Zitkala-Sa negotiate feminism at the turn of the century: Author: Feusahrens, Ellen Teresa; Date: 2007-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: By the mid 1800s, American feminism began gaining momentum. Politicians, scientists, and clergymen all responded to the evolving call for reforms. More and more people adopted the view that women were oppressed by a male-centered society, and most women were isolated within the home. Women writers belonged to a small group of women whose voices had cultural weight and they had to negotiate between the demands of their writing and audience and their involvement and interest in the women's movement. At the turn of the century, Sarah Orne Jewett, Zitkala-Ša, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman ...; Download File | View full details

Buffy at play: tricksters, deconstruction, and chaos at work in the Whedonverse: Author: Graham, Brita Marie; Date: 2007-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: The television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer - in its entirety - encompasses a collection of ideas, languages, semiotic representation, artistic expression, and even scientific curiosity that is not easily reducible and has few true parallels. The Whedonverse, as fans refer to it, has become a semiotic domain in much the same vein as Star Trek or Star Wars, reaching beyond its one-time niche market into the realm of pop culture iconography. The text's simultaneous admixture and denial of discrete genres, from comedy to action, from horror to melodrama, marks it as a truly unique creation. Wh...; Download File | View full details

The Place of Story and the Story of Place: How the Convergence of Text and Image Marks the Opening of a New Literary Frontier: Author: Lynn, Marie Elizabeth; Date: 2007-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: While certain scholars are lamenting that literature has become less relevant in these postmodern times, I have found that this is not at all the case. What is actually happening is that literature is the process of change, due in no small part to our blossoming visual culture. Interweaving Native American and dominant culture literatures, this document explores the ways narrative has historically played a critical role, not only in constructing human identity, but also in defining our relationship with place. More recently, new literary hybrids, with various degrees of intertwining text with ...; Download File | View full details

Other spaces, other voices: heterotopic spaces in island narratives: Author: Storment, Ryan Lee; Date: 2007-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Islands periodically reappear and manifest themselves within our cultural texts as locations for fantasy and the exotic. On the surface they are often remote locations that simply serve as interchangeable backgrounds, but their reoccurrence is usually due to their unique ability to be molded. They are served up as blank slates, much like early visions of the western United States, where we meet the Other or encounter exotic voices. Because of this, islands are perceived as spaces with no Western historical narrative or structure so it becomes simply to move Western structures and complex issue...; Download File | View full details

The theory and practice of nature: reinventing nature through the literature of Jim Harrison: Author: Lewis, James Fielding IV; Date: 2007-08-15; Program: English; Abstract: The term, "nature," has been and continues to be utilized widely throughout Western culture to great effect in shaping our understanding of ourselves as "human beings," what we conceive of as our "environment," and our existence. This thesis aims to explore traditionally and alternatively-based popular understandings and conceptions of "nature," their origins, and their consequences, along with the making of an alternative conception of nature through a reinvention of the term by means of the literary arts. In the course of this study, the work of severa...; Download File | View full details

Stolen Identity: Author: Shober, Kacie Ann; Date: 2007-08-15; Program: English; Abstract: Students' previous experiences have contributed to their loss of voice in writing. Through the examination of historical events that occurred within the basic reading and writing classroom, a significant separation between students and what is deemed as academically appropriate writing is apparent. By exploring the dynamics of students and the established curriculum, the argument can be made that through a multigenre project students are able to reconnect with writing and rediscover their voice....; Download File | View full details

Aspects of individualism in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century medieval texts: Author: Ainsworth, Breeman Neal III; Date: 2008-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Many scholars have noted the rise of the individual in medieval Europe. In spite of this claim however, many continue to maintain that there is a fundamental difference between the medieval, or pre-modern, and modern eras; in terms of the individual, this generates scholarship that posits the medieval individual as nothing more than a member of a group, not in fact an individual in modern terms. Nevertheless, the shifting dialectic concerning individualism reveals a similarity between medieval and contemporary conceptions of the individual. Although the modernist interpretation that the indivi...; Download File | View full details

Live or die: unmasking the mythologies of Anne Sexton's poetry: Author: McKenna, Edward Francis; Date: 2008-05-15; Program: English; Abstract: Confessional poetry is supposedly drawn directly from the poet's personal life as if the poems are simply a diary. Further, confessional poetry is often dissected with such a finite Freudian, Bloomian, Jungian, etc., scalpel by reviewers, pundits, and critics, that the true roots of the poems are constantly overlooked; that of the essence of mythology. Critics, scholars, and purveyors of Anne Sexton continually refuse to acknowledge the influence of mythologies, the inspiration of previous and contemporary poets, and that Sexton admittedly relied on myths to write poetry. Utilizing Northrop Fr...; Download File | View full details

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