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Sexless faces, abnormal bodies, and white trash girls: grotesque women in southern Gothic literature
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2013)
By exploring and breaking down traditional gender roles through Miss Amelia's androgyny in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, McCullers shows the ironclad nature of gender binaries and the inconsistency of gender perception in ...
Under skin: a critical essay of gender and the travel narrative
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2013)
There is a line between fact and parable, and the greatest writers of travel have unabashedly and purposefully ignored it in search of the subtle poetry just beneath the surface. This collection of non-fiction essays is ...
Greek cuisine on a budget
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2013)
Last summer, I spent three weeks on the island of Thassos, Greece discovering, eating, and savoring life. Immersing myself under the cool seawater and climbing out onto the rocky shore I was met not only by great natural ...
Race, gender, and the limits of physicality in Ourika and Quicksand
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2013)
A comparison of Claire de Duras's Ourika and Nella Larsen's Quicksand may at first seem puzzling to those familiar with the differing social and historical contexts of the two works. While it may be tempting to read Ourika ...
These little towns: land, family, and individuality in the Midwest
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2013)
I am interested in how current Midwestern writers are continuing to develop the Midwest's literary history, and how they relate to Midwestern artists working in different mediums, but with similar goals. These works stand ...
Value and exchange in Hemingway's The sun also rises
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
The characters in The Sun Also Rises follow a code of exchange instead of a traditional moral code. This emphasis on exchange matches the new found booming economy of the 1920s. Characters follow this code of exchange ...
The relevance and controversy of Dorothy Parker's works
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
Dorothy Parker -- writer, poet, satirist, journalist -- was in her literary prime in 1920s and 30s America. America at the time was faced with considerable tensions, much of which was due to the burgeoning Women's Movement. ...
Two works in creative non-fiction: The Marine wife and Novosibirsk
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
The two memoirs in my thesis universalize personal experience by linking it to larger historical events (war or the fall of the Soviet Union), and illuminate the historical through the lens of intimate life. The first piece ...
Influence: the linked stories of Olive Kitteridge and developing creative work
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
This collection of stories stemmed from reading Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence. For this project, I chose to “misread” Olive Kitteridge, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Elizabeth Strout. Strout's novel is a ...
Making Pierre Menard author of the Quixote: critics, creators, and context in Borges
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
Though it has not always been so, it is now possible to conceptualize the act of reading as a process in which we necessarily form an interpretation of a piece of literature, and in so doing, create the work, or the meaning ...
Comically serious: trauma and shame in coming-of-age graphic narratives
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
The visually arresting nature of the graphic form has appealed to youth from its international emergence in the early twentieth century. Comics of the past, from Little Nemo to The Yellow Kid, were brief and insubstantial, ...
The critique of women in Shakespeare's plays
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
In many of William Shakespeare's plays, women play a central role in moving the plot forward. These women become catalysts for the drama that unfolds, especially in Shakespeare's tragedies, where the reactions of the other ...
The symbolic significance of vice in Raymond Carver's What we talk about when we talk about love: blue-collar despair transcending class distinction
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
Raymond Carver's literary reputation is often defined as a minimalist writer who is known for his ability to effectively chronicle blue-collar despair. Because of his affinity to focus on characters of a lower class ...
Judgments on witness reliability from written transcripts
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
A myriad of research has been done on the ways in which different linguistic features can affect perceptions made about the speaker. The judgments made about a speaker can be particularly important in legal settings, like ...
Ideal gender roles and individual self-expression in the novels Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
The wide range of scholarship centered on Jane Austen is full of contention. Some put forth that she was ahead of her time in regards to feminist ideology. Others say she did not go far enough, at least in comparison to ...
Race, class, gender and property in women's writing of the Harlem Renaissance
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
By the 1920s, although slavery had been abolished in America decades before, many social, economic and legal inequalities remained between whites and blacks. This is well-known United States history, although to many, it ...
Fact to fiction: how the Tuatha de Danaan of history became the fairies of contemporary fantasy
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
Throughout the past twenty years, the fantasy genre has expanded and taken the literary world by storm. This is seen by the emergence of such famous fantasy literature as the Harry Potter series and the Twilight Saga. Yet ...
From the boulevard to the boudoir: the prose poem's evolution from Baudelaire's scenes of French daily life to Nin Andrew's contemporary portrayal of the individual
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
Compared to many forms of poetry, the prose poem is one of the most experimental and understated. It is a "genre of poetry, self consciously written, and characterized by the intense use of virtually all devices of verse" ...
Beneath, before and beyond: how characters achieve a true identity through alternative education in Song of Solomon, The bear, and Things fall apart.
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)
Dear Reader, let me tell you a story. In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, a black man named Milkman goes in search of his true identity. He had grown up learning to be a certain type of person: one who, like his father, ...
Pulled out of the land: the poetry of Seamus Heaney and its usage of the past
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2013)
The culture someone grows up in helps to define that person, for better or for worse. This culture steeps itself into the writer's work, and helps make the writer into who he or she is. For Seamus Heaney, this steeping was ...