The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the Department of English Language and Literature. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Kansas City. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.

Items in MOspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Recent Submissions

  • The Nonstory and Other Stories 

    Patrick, Montana (2022)
    The following is a selection of my writing from 2018 to present. I consider the work I have completed during my years at UMKC to be a series of experiments in the short fiction form, and I believe that this thesis is a ...
  • “It has already exposed you to some very impertinent remarks": Intertextual regulation of women from the early British novel to the twenty-first century screen 

    Kelsey, Elizabeth Anne (2023)
    This interdisciplinary dissertation examines twenty-first century film adaptations of Jane Austen’s work as intertextual, intermedial products with roots in the early-British novel. Rather than being direct offspring of ...
  • Beyond the Abyss: American Gaslight and Popular Literature 

    Toms, Anna Marlene (2023)
    The mainstream feminist movement in the United States has struggled to include women of color and marginalized women. However, two constants emerge from the work of both white feminists and feminists of color: first, writing ...
  • Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Sinned: The Dramatic Potency of Confession on the Early Modern English Shakespearean Stage 

    Schulenberg, Lara Jennifer (2023)
    Though forcefully absent in its traditional practice by political and religious reformation, evidence of confession in early modern English drama remained and became representative of an exchange of power between dramatic ...
  • Rubber Tummy 

    Spalding, Brooke (2023)
    This hybrid collection of poems and essays explores hunger and desire through the lens of a ravenous woman. I wrote Rubber Tummy to grant women the freedom to talk about eating, sex, and indulgence outside the current ...
  • Faculty Identity Development Through Story: A Narrative Study in a Higher Education Context 

    Lucchi, Addison Michael (2023)
    Many higher education faculty members are not trained to teach during their graduate study; thus, faculty development programs (FDPs) can provide systematic opportunity for teaching training. While FDPs are prevalent in ...
  • Little Girl Gods 

    Moran, Shannon (2023)
    This master’s thesis, Little Girl Gods, is a collection of poems in three parts. The poems presented here aim to follow a speaker through young girlhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, where the speaker struggles with ...
  • Mothers Making Meaning: An Exploration of Contemporary Ritual Practices Surrounding Childbirth 

    Marksbury, Erika Jeanne (2023)
    Many contemporary American women undergo one of the most intense identity shifts of their lives—becoming a mother—without prescribed ritual resources to navigate that transition. Lacking a common cultural script to follow, ...
  • Fringes 

    Whitehead, Douglass Ross (2023)
    This thesis is a collection of short stories that I have written throughout my time as a graduate student in the University of Missouri-Kansas City Master of Fine Arts program. These pieces were picked because, and I believe ...
  • Amazonian Vision: Representations of Women Artists in Victorian Fiction 

    Andersen, Amy Theresa (2023)
    This dissertation examines representations of women artists—writers, musicians, painters, and photographers—in nineteenth-century British novels and poetry written by Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George ...
  • Daughters of Shanghai 

    Miniace, Giana (2022)
    Daughters of Shanghai is an historical fiction novel set in China between 1937 and 2014. It is centered around resilient Lucy Lau who struggles to survive war, natural disaster, betrayal, and grief while raising four ...
  • Opus Ignotum 

    Hynes, D. E. (2022)
    “Vocibus concide,” Ennius commanded, in the single line of an otherwise lost work preserved in Varro’s De lingua latina: “With words destroy him.” Not even Ennius’ context did Varro record, only the imperative that an ...
  • Revising the Future: Exploring Ethnofuturism 

    Davis, Andrew Scott (2022)
    While the desire for a postracial, colorblind society remains an emotional investment, the present reality of race and racist attitudes ingrained in the structure of American culture suggest that any such imagined future ...
  • No One is Looking For You 

    Bradley, Savannah Jane (2022)
    The poems in this manuscript explore the emotional landscape of an emotionally repressed speaker to explore opposing themes of isolation and connection; self-denial and self discovery; and rage and hope. It is perpetually ...
  • (Un)natural Bridges, (Un)safe Spaces: A Critical Qualitative Study of Spanish as a Foreign Language Educators’ Perceptions of Heritage Language Learners in Mixed Classrooms 

    Silva, Marta (2022)
    Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa has been an integral part of research on hybrid identities and consciousness. In an increasingly multicultural and multilingual school system, educators of Spanish as a foreign ...
  • Confluences 

    Standlee, Emily Anne (2022)
    This collection of poems, essays, and fictional stories is meant to mirror a confluence of rivers, made navigable by threads—or currents—that weave through and redirect my life. Some of my life’s water (so far) has been ...
  • Conflicts of Law in Antebellum America: Criticism of the United States Constitution and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act in the Works of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lysander Spooner, Lydia Maria Child, and Herman Melville 

    Hunter, Sharon K. (2022)
    The quest for African Americans to gain emancipation and equal civil rights occupied the efforts of abolitionists and antislavery advocates for much of the nineteenth century. For both men and women who valued the democratic ...
  • Picture This 

    Marshall, Alicia (2022)
    Picture This is a collection of short stories featuring a series of strong female protagonists wrestling with questions of identity and belonging. This collection seeks to explore the tension between faith and doubt, ...
  • Rabid and Other Stories 

    McCormack, Jared Evan (2022)
    Rabid and Other Stories is a collection of short prose set in small-town Missouri exploring wealth inequality, family relationships, and toxic masculinity through the lens of rural America. The characters in these thirteen ...
  • Background Artist 

    Davison, Amanda (2021)
    This thesis in creative writing is a novella that follows the pursuits of an aspiring actor in Los Angeles in the early 2010s. Aware of the varied traditions of the Hollywood novel, this work delivers its own version of ...

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