In every young writer's heart there is a dream, a dream that one day all of their hard work will lead to a successful, published novel. And not just any novel, but the next Great American novel that will be taught in classes ...

In this project, I examine the responses of filmgoers to three adaptations of Victorian novels: Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice (2005), Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005), and Alfonso Cuarón's Great Expectations (1998). ...

This dissertation focuses on the cinematic versions of the Robinson Crusoe story. Starting from the early 1900s, a significant number of films rewrite, reinvent, and rework the Crusoe myth. Instead of replicating Defoe's ...

male gaze. These scholars should seek new ways to theorize the female body: we cannot challenge preexisting models if we do not propose new ones. From my work in literature, I have found that body theory intersects with adaptation studies...

literatures that presume to speak, and not speak, of sounds and silences. Structured as a triptych (I. Critical Introductions, II. Creative Body, III. Critical Conclusions), three essays serve to frame the hybrid Galerie de Difformité at the collection's core...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The creative portion of this dissertation, Worried Notes: Poems, is a collection that engages the American vernacular-song tradition and specifically ...

points that I hope this project makes are as follows: 1. Suicide is a foundational and constitutive trope of what we might call Anglophone African diaspora literatures. 2. Suicide in these texts is experienced on the level of community: by their nature...

such literature might bypass post-racial criticism. Colson Whitehead's Zone One and Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow use apocalyptic scenarios and post-apocalyptic life or death decisions to bring the tired questions of teleology and existence...

these may be slightly extreme examples, perhaps the category of Young Adult Literature could be renamed Stories for those who Feel Things Intensely, Have Uncertainty about their Place in the World, and Are Seeking Some Sense of Hope. Those emotions do...

This dissertation demonstrates the emergent character of nationalism in conjunction with economic liberalism and global capitalism. It demonstrates how globalization and right wing fundamentalist nationalisms are mutually ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is often thought of as a book that focuses on the development of girls into women, but also on the development ...

Deliberately playing on the word "tradition," in Re/Presenting Traditions: Identity, Power, and Politics in Folklife Programming, my research interrogates both current practices of re/presenting traditional cultures to the ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The category of "harmful" cultural practices' has become a central and defining concept in global health and development policy. A key target of ...

This dissertation examines hip-hop fatherhood narratives from 2010-2015 influenced by drug addiction, mass incarceration, underground economies, trauma, and dysfunctional co-parenting. Explicitly, the paper explores how ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This novel is the story of Tianne, a twenty-eight-year-old stained glass artist. She works two part-time jobs as a clerk at a stained glass supply ...

My dissertation offers a culturally-based examination of the aid-driven western marketplace for Central Asian crafts based on detailed textual and visual analysis of websites, film, online and print catalogues, and comics ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Until recently, Beat women writers have been overlooked as artists by scholarship. They have been pigeonholed as prostitutes, chicks, or conventional ...