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Title: Acknowledgement of Richard H. Leigh’s request for commutation of quarters.
Creator: Luckow, Edward, Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F6_057
Format: Image (JPEG2000)

Title: Order from E. W. Eberle appointing R. H. Leigh as member of Board on casualties – machinery.
Creator: Eberle, Edward W. (Edward Walter), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F7_077
Format: Set of related objects

Title: Order from the Navy Department authorizing the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Tennessee to leave the Navy Yard.
Creator: Coontz, Robert E. (Robert Edward), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F6_026
Format: Image (JPEG2000)

Title: Movements of the U.S.S. Tennessee.
Creator: Coontz, Robert E. (Robert Edward), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F6_029
Format: Image (JPEG2000)

Title: Recognition of R. H. Leigh’s Gunnery Excellence on board the U.S.S. Tennessee.
Creator: Coontz, Robert E. (Robert Edward), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F7_082
Format: Image (JPEG2000)

Title: Acknowledgement of receiving Richard H. Leigh’s claim to the Treasury Department.
Creator: Luckow, Edward, Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry), United States. Auditor for Navy Department
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F6_058
Format: Image (JPEG2000)

Title: Order from R. E. Coontz detaching Richard H. Leigh from duty assigned of the U.S.S. Seattle.
Creator: Coontz, Robert E. (Robert Edward), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F7_036
Format: Set of related objects

Title: Movement of the U.S.S. Tennessee.
Creator: Coontz, Robert E. (Robert Edward), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Abstract/Description: Discussion os upcoming tests to be performed on the U.S.S. Tennessee and directions to proceed to Newport, R.I. following these tests
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F6_030
Format: Image (JPEG2000)

Title: Movements of the U.S.S. Tennessee.
Creator: Coontz, Robert E. (Robert Edward), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F6_032
Format: Image (JPEG2000)

Title: Order from the Navy Department recognizing R. H. Leigh’s Gunnery Excellence, with attached handwritten note.
Creator: Coontz, Robert E. (Robert Edward), Leigh, Richard H. (Richard Henry)
Identifier: FSU_0165_B1011_F7_071
Format: Set of related objects

Title: Reforming the Politics of Sensibility: George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Tim Dorsey & the Narrative of Social Inaction.
Creator: Dowd, Emily Joan, Faulk, Barry, Burke, Helen, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Reforming the Politics of Sensibility: George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Tim Dorsey & the Narrative of Social Inaction maintains that key narrative modes in Twentieth Century political fiction are indebted to earlier manifestations in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century modes of sensibility in British fiction, and are likewise confronted by the socio-historical politics of these modes. These novels, stretching across time and geographical space, illustrate the continued pervasiveness of these modes...
Show moreReforming the Politics of Sensibility: George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Tim Dorsey & the Narrative of Social Inaction maintains that key narrative modes in Twentieth Century political fiction are indebted to earlier manifestations in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century modes of sensibility in British fiction, and are likewise confronted by the socio-historical politics of these modes. These novels, stretching across time and geographical space, illustrate the continued pervasiveness of these modes and their role in the narrative of socio-political reform. Each chapter addresses a changing narrative relationship with sentimental politics and the implications of this shift on the fictional project of reform. Together, Orwell, Vonnegut, and Dorsey represent a trajectory of politically-oriented authors whose texts reflect the changing conflicts between reformative aims and sentimental modes. Each author's relationship to the sentimental sets the tone for the socio-political work of his novel. Although this critical reading may seem eclectic in mingling of sensibility, melodrama, satire, and postmodernism, the use of this critical work illustrates the important relationships between them. This thesis a collection of critical discourse that attempts to address the socio-political work of popular novels, and the complicated interaction of sentimentality, satire, and narrative within them. By examining sentimental modes through this selection of novels, this thesisdemonstrates the roll they continue to play in the political quietism so dissatisfying to critics of popular fiction
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0683
Format: Thesis

Title: "The True Male Animals": Changing Representations of Masculinity in Lonesome Dove, Bonfire of the Vanities, Fight Club, and a Man in Full.
Creator: Player, Bailey, Edwards, Leigh, Cooper, Mark, Faulk, Barry, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This study is an attempt to trace changing perceptions of masculinity as expressed by popular literature in the late twentieth century. In this thesis I argue that masculinity is a process and, as such, can be understood differently at different times. Employing Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove (1985), Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996), and Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) and A Man in Full (1998), I examine the ways in which these popular novels might be understood as expressing and...
Show moreThis study is an attempt to trace changing perceptions of masculinity as expressed by popular literature in the late twentieth century. In this thesis I argue that masculinity is a process and, as such, can be understood differently at different times. Employing Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove (1985), Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996), and Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) and A Man in Full (1998), I examine the ways in which these popular novels might be understood as expressing and mediating concerns surrounding masculinity at the time of their publication. By investigating these literary works, we might be able to more fully appreciate the fears and desires linked with a fluctuating hegemonic masculinity in America. Specifically within each text, I look at how the main male characters maintain and/or are denied separation from an encroaching and feminizing civilization and how these struggles for secession correspond to modern anxieties influencing hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, by studying literary works popularized under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations, we can observe how traditional perceptions of masculinity as stoic, tough, and hard-boiled (a la Reagan) have been largely destabilized and softer, more docile forms of masculinity (a la Clinton) have become increasingly accepted and even normalized. As a result of enhanced and prevalent modes of technology, jobs that require muscular strength have decreased significantly in the last century, and so it has become increasingly unnecessary for men to define themselves in terms of their strength or toughness. Each of the novels considered in this thesis wrestle with these concerns. Finally, I extrapolate from these twentieth century works into the twenty-first century in an attempt to gauge what anxieties have been resolved and what remains to be reconciled. Overall, this thesis is an attempt to enter into a critical conversation with gender theorists such as Michael Kimmel who have suggested there is at least as much to discover about the constructedness of masculinity as femininity.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0639
Format: Thesis

Title: Rape in Contemporary American Literature: Writing Women as Rapeable.
Creator: Young, Tiffany Ann, Moore, Dennis, Ward, Candace, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In the 1970's, with the second-wave feminist movement, sexual violence became a forefront topic in feminist studies and it continues to trouble the boundaries between disciplinary studies. When I refer to rape, I consider it a criminal act, a violent sexual invasion on the body in connection to hegemonic discourse, resulting in sexual victimization. Looking at the cultural representation of rape in literature allows us to understand the cultural fears and fascinations with rape while...
Show moreIn the 1970's, with the second-wave feminist movement, sexual violence became a forefront topic in feminist studies and it continues to trouble the boundaries between disciplinary studies. When I refer to rape, I consider it a criminal act, a violent sexual invasion on the body in connection to hegemonic discourse, resulting in sexual victimization. Looking at the cultural representation of rape in literature allows us to understand the cultural fears and fascinations with rape while respecting the victims of assault. Looking at novels beginning in the late 1930's and continuing to the present, I hope to deconstruct the hegemonic discourse surrounding rape. Through the corporeal acts of sexual violence, we can understand ways the writer socially constructs sexuality, race, and gender and ways fictional assault both is scripted by and scripts cultural
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0868
Format: Thesis

Title: Coming Around Again.
Creator: Hawkins, Carly, Kimbrell, James, Suarez, Virgil, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The work contained in this manuscript stems from personal experience and a desire to portray life in honest, detailed poems. Some events are factual while others are speculative, all of which spins on an axis of imagery. The actions of others and my interpretation of said actions influence the work as well. Ultimately, the manuscript consists of candid moments which I endured and chose to recapture through poetic license.
Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4197
Format: Thesis

Title: Genuine Spectacle: Sliding Positionality in the Works of Pauline E. Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Spike Lee.
Creator: Metzler, Jessica, Lhamon, W. T., Edwards, Leigh, Ashford, Tomeiko, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis, "Genuine Spectacle: Sliding Positionality in the Work of Pauline E. Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Spike Lee," addresses the position of Hopkins's 1879 musical, Slaves' Escape; or the Underground Railroad, Hurston and Hughes's unproduced 1931 play, Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, and Lee's 2000 film, Bamboozled within what scholar W. T. Lhamon has dubbed the "blackface lore cycle." Viewing these works within the context of this cycle, which swings from...
Show moreThis thesis, "Genuine Spectacle: Sliding Positionality in the Work of Pauline E. Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Spike Lee," addresses the position of Hopkins's 1879 musical, Slaves' Escape; or the Underground Railroad, Hurston and Hughes's unproduced 1931 play, Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, and Lee's 2000 film, Bamboozled within what scholar W. T. Lhamon has dubbed the "blackface lore cycle." Viewing these works within the context of this cycle, which swings from virulently racist caricatures of blackness to obsequious imitation and vice versa, allows for an analysis of the sliding cultural currency given to minstrel stereotypes from the late nineteenth century to the present.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2462
Format: Thesis

Title: Sinnin' and Grinnin': Deviant Sexuality in the Contemporary Southern Novels of Mccarthy, Gay, and Crews.
Creator: Williams, Cameron, Parrish, Timothy, Shinn, Christopher, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: To study Southern literature is to inevitably study the search for Southern identity. Challenged by issues of gender, race, and class, the Southern literary tradition is immersed in the search for a static, definitive concept of Southern identity. Southern writers attempt to define this identity through an understanding of the past. But the South is a region with a particularly troubled history, marred by the ghost of slavery; as such, the South has essentially become the nation's "other,"...
Show moreTo study Southern literature is to inevitably study the search for Southern identity. Challenged by issues of gender, race, and class, the Southern literary tradition is immersed in the search for a static, definitive concept of Southern identity. Southern writers attempt to define this identity through an understanding of the past. But the South is a region with a particularly troubled history, marred by the ghost of slavery; as such, the South has essentially become the nation's "other," what Teresa Goddu calls "the repository for everything from which the nation wants to disassociate itself." In spite of its dubious reputation, Southern writers seemingly take pride in the region's status as "other," reflecting on human experience through the lens of the "outsider." Canonical Southern works, most notably the novels of Faulkner – such as Absalom, Absalom!, Light in August, or Sanctuary – typically present issues of racial or gender othering, using the other to question conventional codes and explain experience. In this study, I examine four contemporary novels – Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark (1968) and Child of God (1973), William Gay's Twilight (2006), and Harry Crews's A Feast of Snakes (1976) – and suggest that these authors no longer focus on the racial or gendered other, but instead consider the other, the outsider, as the sexual deviant. I argue that these authors, in an attempt to decode Southern experience through their respective treatments of incest, necrophilia, and bestiality, reveal and question the cultural and ideological contradictions of Southern convention, ultimately as an indictment of Southern social values. In doing so, this study will posit that McCarthy, Gay, and Crews recontextualize the concept of the "other" as an attempt to also recontextualize existing definitions of Southern identity.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0956
Format: Thesis

Title: Visions for A New World: A Journey Through Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead and Gardens in the Dunes and Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit and Solar Storms.
Creator: Lee, Kendra Gayle, Moore, Dennis, Edwards, Leigh, Montgomery, Maxine, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead and Gardens in the Dunes and Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit and Solar Storms forge a new borderland in literature, a fluid world where Native American traditions and Native American spirituality resonate, dynamically responding to the world in which the characters live. The borderland of these novels calls into question white culture's perception of nature, society, economics and history. Silko's and Hogan's works clearly express the necessity to blur...
Show moreLeslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead and Gardens in the Dunes and Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit and Solar Storms forge a new borderland in literature, a fluid world where Native American traditions and Native American spirituality resonate, dynamically responding to the world in which the characters live. The borderland of these novels calls into question white culture's perception of nature, society, economics and history. Silko's and Hogan's works clearly express the necessity to blur boundaries, which are diametrically opposed to the American Indian view of the Earth as a living entity with a spirit, and the necessity to create a pull toward a new society. Yet this society is neither an assimilation to white culture nor a return to traditional tribalism. It is a vision for a new world, undefinable by the structures that bind Anglo-American ideas and philosophy. This vision commands dissolution of the current economic and class system, sensitivity to and responsibility for the environment, and a respect for basic human rights. The vision encompasses an awareness of individual spirituality, a connection to community and an acknowledgement of the divinity of all life. Ecofeminist philosophy, the pull toward a union with the earth and equality for all living beings, unifies these novels and forms a basis for analyzing them in a literary and social context.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3204
Format: Thesis

Title: Crumbling Masculinities: Adaptations, Filtration, and the Crisis of Masculinity.
Creator: Champion, Jared, Moore, Dennis, Edwards, Leigh, Fenstermaker, John, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: My thesis project, titled Crumbling Masculinities: Adaptations, Filtration, and the Crisis of Masculinity, addresses the construction of masculinity through what I label "filtration." By building on the work of gender scholars like Michael Kimmel, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick, this thesis seeks to show that society teaches individuals to play gender roles by filtering either feminine or masculine traits accordingly. For example: in general, men are no less emotional than women, but society...
Show moreMy thesis project, titled Crumbling Masculinities: Adaptations, Filtration, and the Crisis of Masculinity, addresses the construction of masculinity through what I label "filtration." By building on the work of gender scholars like Michael Kimmel, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick, this thesis seeks to show that society teaches individuals to play gender roles by filtering either feminine or masculine traits accordingly. For example: in general, men are no less emotional than women, but society teaches that masculinity links emotion with weakness, so masculine figures filter emotion to create masculinity. The thesis opens with a discussion of David Mamet's original stage version of Glengarry Glen Ross and his subsequent adaptation of the piece to film. This chapter establishes that gender in religious representations, particularly traditional modes of masculinity, is in a period of flux following postmodernity. The following chapter uses a discussion of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of the nonfiction work to film in Adaptation to show that masculinity is constantly creating itself through the process of filtration. The final chapter in the thesis uses the discussion of filtration to show that socially constructed gender and biological sex are becoming disconnected, yet the masculine/feminine binary still exists and privileges masculinity. In conclusion, Crumbling Masculinities argues that gender is currently in a period of transition, and as such, the thesis attempts through an analysis of the adaptation process to explain the potential of this crisis to shape gender.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3926
Format: Thesis

Title: Confessional Poetry and Blog Culture in the Age of Autobiography.
Creator: Price, Deidre Dowling, Epstein, Andrew, Kalbian, Aline, Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Outka, Paul, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: M. L. Rosenthal's 1959 labeling of Robert Lowell's Life Studies as "Confessional," initiated a debate about the literary value of autobiographical writing. At the center of this controversy was the taboo subject matter explored by the confessional poets: madness, sexuality, alcoholism, depression, and suicide. Another form of autobiographical writing which similarly polarizes audience despite being born in 1999 is the blog. In this study, I explore various shared traits between confessional...
Show moreM. L. Rosenthal's 1959 labeling of Robert Lowell's Life Studies as "Confessional," initiated a debate about the literary value of autobiographical writing. At the center of this controversy was the taboo subject matter explored by the confessional poets: madness, sexuality, alcoholism, depression, and suicide. Another form of autobiographical writing which similarly polarizes audience despite being born in 1999 is the blog. In this study, I explore various shared traits between confessional poems of the 1960s and modern-day personal blogs and aim to demonstrate how we might read them both as part of the larger conversation about the culture of confession and the age of autobiography. This dissertation looks closely at works by three confessional poets, all of whose writing have recently experienced resurgence in popular culture—John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton—and draws a parallel between characteristic traits in their works and contemporary blogging practices. I borrow Berryman's "Henry" from Dream Songs to illuminate the similarities between a poetic persona and an online avatar and argue that Berryman's broken syntax foreshadows the fragmentation of language at work in modern-day blogs. I regard Plath's contemporary cult following as an indicator of her acute audience awareness and explore how various Plath poems function as highly performative works of art intended to elicit a desired effect from readers. I compare Sexton's writing about taboo marital and maternal subjects to the recent phenomenon of mommyblogging and explain how Sexton's subversive poems paved the way for later women to engage in open, unapologetic life writing in blog communities. Ultimately, I argue for the reading of personal blogs as cultural artifacts and for the consideration of confessional blogs as a remediated American literary genre.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0450
Format: Thesis

Title: Testing the Limits of Levelt's Loops with Delayed Auditory Playback.
Creator: Ellis, Dyana L. R., Sunderman, Gretchen, Edwards, Leigh, Leeser, Michael, Reglero, Lara, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: "To err is human. To self-repair fortunately is also." (Postma, 2000, p. 98) The overarching purpose of this research is to explore whether second language (L2) learners can identify speech errors in a digital recording of their own oral effort and can correct those errors in subsequent oral efforts. Contemporary psycholinguistic speech production models posit that self-monitoring is an integral and automatic function of online (real time) speech production. Pedagogical research has...
Show more"To err is human. To self-repair fortunately is also." (Postma, 2000, p. 98) The overarching purpose of this research is to explore whether second language (L2) learners can identify speech errors in a digital recording of their own oral effort and can correct those errors in subsequent oral efforts. Contemporary psycholinguistic speech production models posit that self-monitoring is an integral and automatic function of online (real time) speech production. Pedagogical research has demonstrated that learners can utilize this self-monitoring/self-analysis mechanism in a post-hoc self-assessment, particularly insofar as writing is concerned, to identify and correct production errors. The current research proposes that in the same way that learners err while writing, they err while speaking and, further, that such errors are not a valid representation of their internal language systems. Hypothetically, therefore, L2 learners can identify their own speech errors via audio playback (AP) given time and opportunity, and providing they have a rudimentary knowledge of the target forms to begin with. To test this assumption, learners were provided a series of monologic Spot the Difference tasks designed to elicit agreement of gender and number in adjective forms. Participants in the experimental procedure group listened to their oral product immediately after task completion while participants in the control group listened to linguistically sterile musical selections. Results of the experiment support the hypothesis that second language learners can identify speech errors in their own oral text, that self-correction efforts do increase and improve, and that acquisition does improve over repeated trials. Interestingly, however, a main effect was noted for post-positional adjectives and not for pre-nominals. A second important aspect of this study involved testing whether lack of developmental readiness (DR) was a constraining factor for AP. Findings revealed that participants who were developmentally unready also improved in self-monitoring and accuracy in subsequent trials. The implications of these findings on current psycholinguistic speech production/perception models as well as their pedagogical implications are discussed at the conclusion of the study.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0570
Format: Thesis

Title: "The Nature of the Search": Popular Culture and Intellectual Identity in the Work of Walker Percy.
Creator: Dominy, Jordan J., Epstein, Andrew, Dickson-Carr, Darryl, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this thesis, I argue that the works of Walker Percy present a progression from passive to active attitudes toward popular and mass culture and that understanding this progression brings a new perspective to the relationship between intellectuals and popular culture in mid-to-late-twentieth century American literature. I discuss two of Percy's novels, The Moviegoer and Lancelot, and a book of non-fiction satire and parody, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. The first chapter...
Show moreIn this thesis, I argue that the works of Walker Percy present a progression from passive to active attitudes toward popular and mass culture and that understanding this progression brings a new perspective to the relationship between intellectuals and popular culture in mid-to-late-twentieth century American literature. I discuss two of Percy's novels, The Moviegoer and Lancelot, and a book of non-fiction satire and parody, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. The first chapter addresses The Moviegoer. In it, I argue that its protagonist, Binx Bolling, deals with the encroaching mass culture of American suburbia of the 1950's by combining the best of both his high and low culture identities into a midcult one, a term defined by Andrew Ross and originally discussed by Dwight MacDonald, a contemporary of Percy. The novel's mere promise of happiness at it's conclusion reflects an ambivalent attitude toward popular culture and the midcult on Percy's part. The second chapter explores the ways in which Lance Lamar, the protagonist of Lancelot, violently subverts popular culture's media by videotaping his wife's acts of infidelity and murdering her lover. I also relate Andrew Ross's discussion of pornography's proliferation in mass media in the late 1960's and 1970's and the implications it has for Lance's anger towards the film company filming an all-but pornographic film at his ancestral home. Lance's violent reactions certainly reflect a changing attitude for Percy, who is more wary of the open sexuality in popular culture, but certainly does not advocate the violent revolution that his protagonist does. The final chapter reflects yet another change in Percy's attitude towards popular culture with Lost in the Cosmos. Rather than choosing fiction, he addresses his concerns with his own voice, albeit with parody, caricature, and satire. But beyond ridiculing popular culture, he recognizes the ways in which intellectuals are susceptible to its influence as well and how this makes the existence of Andrew Ross's "new intellectual" who can speak to both the academic and popular sphere a near impossibility. Ultimately, the resolution of the conflict between intellectuals and popular culture lies with individuals.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0718
Format: Thesis

Title: Community in the Academy: Musicianship and Transformation in University Old Time Ensembles and Local Music Scenes.
Creator: Riley, Holly Bugg, Bakan, Michael B., Jackson, Margaret R., Edwards, Leigh H., Florida State University, College of Music
Abstract/Description: This thesis explores values, identities, and practices found within community organizations and academic institutions that are mediated and made manifest in old-time ensembles and their surrounding music communities. The multi-site study includes primary ethnography from the author’s six years of participation and musicianship in the old-time ensembles at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Florida State University, as well as the surrounding communities of Greensboro and...
Show moreThis thesis explores values, identities, and practices found within community organizations and academic institutions that are mediated and made manifest in old-time ensembles and their surrounding music communities. The multi-site study includes primary ethnography from the author’s six years of participation and musicianship in the old-time ensembles at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Florida State University, as well as the surrounding communities of Greensboro and Tallahassee. The complex workings of these ensembles are contrasted with more established and performance-based programs, both in community folk music settings and in traditional university music schools. These old-time ensembles catalyze issues of individual and group identity, institutionalism and administration, invented and historical tradition, and folk music practice.
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_FALL2017_Riley_fsu_0071N_13922
Format: Thesis

Title: Altering Bodies, Transforming Selves: Emotion and Gender on Extreme Makeover.
Creator: Boyd, Emily M., Martin, Patricia Y., Edwards, Leigh H., Schrock, Douglas, Quadagno, Jill, Department of Sociology, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines one season of episodes of the television show Extreme Makeover. It focuses on the efforts of the show's producers, managers and staff as well of the majority of makeover candidates to frame their surgeries, training/instruction, and stylistic changes as transformative—of both the physical body and essential identity or self. My methods included watching and taking extensive notes on 18 one-hour episodes in the 2004-2005 season and then subjecting them to inductive...
Show moreThis dissertation examines one season of episodes of the television show Extreme Makeover. It focuses on the efforts of the show's producers, managers and staff as well of the majority of makeover candidates to frame their surgeries, training/instruction, and stylistic changes as transformative—of both the physical body and essential identity or self. My methods included watching and taking extensive notes on 18 one-hour episodes in the 2004-2005 season and then subjecting them to inductive analysis with a goal of understanding (a) how alterations of the body (particularly via cosmetic surgeries) and (b) how transformations of the self and (c) how femininity and masculinity were depicted on the show. The literature I use to frame my analysis reflects the central themes that I discovered—including the subjective feelings that the makeover candidates reported but also the differential experiences of women versus men. My two analysis chapters reflect these themes. I attempt to situate the study in literature on "reality" television shows, theories of emotions and bodies, and theories of gender. I am especially interested throughout in how the body, or embodiment, is represented in the discourse of the show's authorities and makeover candidates. At the conclusion of my study, I attempt so show how my findings can extend theoretical and empirical work in five areas: on theoretical debates of free choice versus false consciousness in cosmetic surgery, on men's increasing investment in beauty practices, on discussion of hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic femininity, on the male gaze, and on the political economy of Extreme Makeover.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3445
Format: Thesis

Title: Of Bridgets, Rebeccas, and Carries: Chick Culture Defines Woman.
Creator: Ruíz, Vivian, Daileader, Celia, Poey, Delia, Edwards, Leigh, Nudd, Donna M., Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Chick-Lit is a fairly young literary genre that is widely popular among female readers and holds an important place within the publishing industry. For this reason, I have chosen Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic, and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (three culturally significant Chick franchises) to approach said genre from a critical perspective with the aim of exposing and challenging its primarily traditional, conservative content....
Show moreChick-Lit is a fairly young literary genre that is widely popular among female readers and holds an important place within the publishing industry. For this reason, I have chosen Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic, and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (three culturally significant Chick franchises) to approach said genre from a critical perspective with the aim of exposing and challenging its primarily traditional, conservative content. The present work will examine the perpetuation of such oppressive ideologies as patriarchy and heteronormativity in the aforementioned Chick texts while also challenging their equation of femininity with commodity consumption, childbearing, and ditziness.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-5151
Format: Thesis

Title: "Femme Dysfunction Is Pure Gold": A Feminist Political Economic Analysis of Bravo's the Real Housewives.
Creator: Cox, Nicole B., Proffitt, Jennifer M., Edwards, Leigh H., Nudd, Donna M., McDowell, Stephen, School of Communication, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: As a programming powerhouse that has survived five years, more than 200 episodes, and seven series locations, Bravo's The Real Housewives franchise has become a formidable force in cable TV. With viewers in the millions, spin-off shows, merchandise, and cast appearances that extend far beyond Bravo, the presence of the franchise and its "ladies who lunch" cannot be missed in the realm of popular culture. Because of its success and its cultural position as a female-oriented reality TV program,...
Show moreAs a programming powerhouse that has survived five years, more than 200 episodes, and seven series locations, Bravo's The Real Housewives franchise has become a formidable force in cable TV. With viewers in the millions, spin-off shows, merchandise, and cast appearances that extend far beyond Bravo, the presence of the franchise and its "ladies who lunch" cannot be missed in the realm of popular culture. Because of its success and its cultural position as a female-oriented reality TV program, this study examines Bravo's The Real Housewives franchise through the lens of feminist political economy. Exploring the franchise through Kellner's (1995) critical cultural model, this study moves the franchise through the stages of production, text, and reception to understand not only how the franchise is guided by commercial motives, but also how the series upholds elements of capitalism and patriarchy that are problematic for its target audience: females. Through the circuit of production, text, and reception, this research uses critical, ideological textual analysis to unmask the motivations behind The Real Housewives production, the messages regarding gender, race, class, and sexuality found within programming, and the ways in which audiences are making sense of--and responding to--those messages themselves. Concluding that the franchise targets the female audience through intense marketing and interactivity, perpetuates stereotypical gender norms in programming via use of Bravo's infamous "wink," and is textually read by fans largely in line with programming intent, I argue that The Real Housewives franchise targets and exploits the female audience, selling them "images" of themselves that are deeply problematic and indicative of the contemporary epoch of postfeminist media culture. And while fans are responding to the series' messages of gender, race, class, and sexuality in a variety of ways, analysis suggests that they are likewise perpetuating the problematic portrayals in their own online interaction.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4780
Format: Thesis

Title: Into the Screenscape: Screens, Bodies, and the Biopolitics of the Population.
Creator: Wright, Katheryn, Rai, Amit, Opel, Andy, Edwards, Leigh, Yancey, Kathleen, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation explores the formation and significance of the screenscape in popular culture. A screenscape encompasses the mixture of screens and bodies that enter into and transform the aesthetic quality of social space. After reviewing types of screens that might comprise a given screenscape, I approach the screen not only as a technology but a cultural form that influences the way audiences perceive the relationship between media and their environments. As such, I expand Brian Massumi...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the formation and significance of the screenscape in popular culture. A screenscape encompasses the mixture of screens and bodies that enter into and transform the aesthetic quality of social space. After reviewing types of screens that might comprise a given screenscape, I approach the screen not only as a technology but a cultural form that influences the way audiences perceive the relationship between media and their environments. As such, I expand Brian Massumi's reading of the production of fear through the television after 9/11 and argue that the screen is a space of and for the collective modulation of affect. My argument hinges on three interlocking concepts: the screen as threshold, the affective body, and the biopolitical population. While new media theorists Lev Manovich and Anne Friedberg position the screen as a frame for onscreen content, the first chapter concludes by outlining how the screen also functions as a threshold, a critical point or site of transition. The second chapter defines the affective body and biopolitical population, linking the two through the collective modulation of affect. Each of the final three chapters focuses on a specific example, weaving together the concepts of the screen as threshold, affective body, and biopolitical population through the construction of the screenscape. I analyze the television series Dollhouse as a metaphor of the screen as a threshold. The narrative positions the primary character, Echo (Eliza Dushku), as a screen – a site for display rather than an object on display. She simultaneously represents both the affective body and the biopolitical population. Next I turn to Nine Inch Nail's Lights in the Sky tour. Trent Reznor, the visionary behind Nine Inch Nails, stands for the fantasy of the artist who surrenders his body to the onstage screenscape he finances and designs. Reznor's playful interactions with the three "stealth" screens enable his body to be controlled and secured by the logic of the screenscape as it expands beyond his control. My final discussion takes an ethnographic approach to the study of the screen at the 2008 US Open in New York. This sporting attraction and entertainment spectacle brings together a variety of screens ranging from video boards to handheld televisions. Here, the enormity of the event is expressed through the personal, affective relationships people have with their screen technologies. At the same time, the arrangement of screens across the venue help to manage crowds, control access, and corporately brand an event in its becoming. These readings hinge on a paradox embedded in the screen as a cultural form: to enter into the screenscape means to affect and be affected by the biopolitical population as it weaves into and informs the logic of cultural production and consumption.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4643
Format: Thesis

Title: We Are the Blues: Individual and Communal Performances of the King Biscuit Tradition.
Creator: Fry, Robert Webb, Gunderson, Frank D., Edwards, Leigh H., Bakan, Michael B., Van Glahn, Denise, College of Music, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The rapid decline of regional American identity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a subsequently increasing recognition and interest in America's cultural past have resulted in the promotion of small-town America as a tourist destination. Local communities throughout the country exhibit local culture and present their homes as theatrical spaces where tourists are permitted and encouraged to experience the "real" America, believed by many to be disappearing in an...
Show moreThe rapid decline of regional American identity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a subsequently increasing recognition and interest in America's cultural past have resulted in the promotion of small-town America as a tourist destination. Local communities throughout the country exhibit local culture and present their homes as theatrical spaces where tourists are permitted and encouraged to experience the "real" America, believed by many to be disappearing in an increasingly homogeneous society. In this dissertation, I present an ethnography that explores the formation and continuance of Helena, Arkansas, as a tourist destination and as a music place. I illustrate that Helena's adopted blues identity emerged and has evolved through a history of complex socio-musical interactions between host and guest cultures and between individuals and institutions. More importantly, I explore the larger issue of the blues as a signifier of "tradition," arguing that, for many attendants, the blues serve as a soundtrack while the city serves as a performative space that permits the creation, performance, and remembrance of newly formed social traditions occurring within the festival space and larger musical tradition. This dissertation provides insight into the role of the fan, both local and visitor, in the establishment and realization of a music place. Through the theatrics of tourism, both Helena and its connection to the blues tradition is revitalized each October, resulting in a presentation of Helena that meets the desires of both host and guest communities. While the city during the festival is promoted as an "authentic" portrayal of the Delta and the historic blues tradition, I suggest that the personal experiences and newly formed social traditions that occur during the time and space of the festival result in the realization of an authentic tourist and local experience.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4393
Format: Thesis

Title: Victorian Rebellion in Drag: Cushman and Menken Act Out Celebrity.
Creator: Galipeau, Stephanie Rosa, Lhamon, W. T., Cooper, Mark, Edwards, Leigh H., Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The latter half of the nineteenth century was a turbulent time for American theatre, and dubious was the occupation of the professional actress. To be successful, leading ladies needed to be independent, innovative, and appealing. Few were more so than Charlotte Cushman and Adah Isaacs Menken. Treading center stage and bathing in the hot footlights, both mesmerized their rowdy audiences with their compelling breeches or drag performances. The breeches convention was, of course, not new when...
Show moreThe latter half of the nineteenth century was a turbulent time for American theatre, and dubious was the occupation of the professional actress. To be successful, leading ladies needed to be independent, innovative, and appealing. Few were more so than Charlotte Cushman and Adah Isaacs Menken. Treading center stage and bathing in the hot footlights, both mesmerized their rowdy audiences with their compelling breeches or drag performances. The breeches convention was, of course, not new when Cushman first portrayed Romeo in 1837. As early as the seventeenth century, women acted male roles, usually boys or romantic leads, in British productions. Breeches roles were popular because the bodily display of the performer fulfilled heterosexual desire. However, breeches performances undermined heterosexual ideology by blurring concepts of gender. Culminating with the 1845 London Haymarket production, Cushman infused the role of Romeo with a new subversive energy. Not conventionally feminine, the tall and commanding Cushman was a convincing Romeo, for some spectators were not aware of her actual sex. In contrast, Menken's breeches depictions were not purposely realistic as the coquettish Menken often underscored her feminine appeal in the play Mazeppa. Debuting the play in 1861 at the New Bowery Theatre, Menken played the hardy Ivan Mazeppa, a nobleman betrayed by his lover and wrongly punished to death by being strapped to a wild horse. While her costume choice of scanty tunic and flesh-colored tights enticed many spectators to attend this equestrian drama, critics overlooked Menken?s gender critique implicit in her costume and athleticism. In fact, Cushman and Menken's performances were subliminally liberating as they showcased independent, strong women and allowed female spectators to engage in homosexual feelings without condemnation. What distinguishes Cushman and Menken is that their challenges occurred onstage and off, for many of their subversions were more symbolic than literal. They were liberated individuals in their personal lives and shrewd self-promoters triumphing on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite the sometime tarnished reputation of the actress, both actresses fashioned their images to appeal to middle-class society. Fiction like Cushman's "The Actress" and poetry like Menken's collection Infelicia not only kept their names on the readers' minds but also legitimized their artistic talents. Analyzing contemporary publications and writings, I am interested in Cushman and Menken as self-made icons and will focus on the role of the popular press and photography as sites of image construction. Through their literary output and manipulation of public persona, Cushman and Menken assured the potential of the professional woman. Onstage, in the press, and in their personal lives, Cushman and Menken transcended the discourse of containment that would confine them strictly to the domestic sphere. By transforming the image of the actress, Cushman and Menken were rebellious yet respected American celebrities.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4383
Format: Thesis

Title: Defined by Possession: Propety, Identity, and Law in American Literature.
Creator: Hawkins, Jacqueline Ruth, Edwards, Leigh H., Epstein, Andrew, Stuckey-French, Ned, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The late nineteenth and early twentieth century in America is an interesting time when examined through the lens of property ownership and self ownership. Technically and legally, married women could own property and many had enjoyed this right since the first Married Women's Property Acts in the 1840s. Technically and legally, African Americans enjoyed freedom and the rights as citizens of the United States. Additionally, authors were gaining rights of ownership over their published texts in...
Show moreThe late nineteenth and early twentieth century in America is an interesting time when examined through the lens of property ownership and self ownership. Technically and legally, married women could own property and many had enjoyed this right since the first Married Women's Property Acts in the 1840s. Technically and legally, African Americans enjoyed freedom and the rights as citizens of the United States. Additionally, authors were gaining rights of ownership over their published texts in a manner striking in its contrast to the culture of reprinting that thrived mid-century. We can understand these three systems of ownership as interrelated as they all connectively feature in the debate over who will have power and access to power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and as they all have a significant role to play in the attempt to preserve national manhood. The literature of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Charles Chesnutt, and Mark Twain posits the questions of debates over access to power and autonomy and explores the roles property and self-ownership play in the defense of national manhood. Each author offers a rather dark perspective on these issues. The heroines of Chopin, Wharton, and Chesnutt's works all die, either through suicide or some terrible accident. The effect of these tragic endings is unsatisfying to the reader, deliberately, in order to provoke thought about the inability of these othered characters to successfully participate as propertied members of society. The literary works here demonstrate the prevalent thought of Critical Legal studies that the law is written and/or adjudicated in such a way during this time period as to maintain existing systems of power, which exclude and other women and African-Americans. Because of the power of custom created by American law, it is difficult if not impossible for certain groups of people to succeed in self-ownership or property ownership.
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Date Issued: 2006
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4202
Format: Thesis

Title: Enter the Man.
Creator: Thomas, Aaron C., Dahl, Mary Karen, Hightower, Patricia Warren, Osborne, Elizabeth A., Edwards, Leigh H., School of Theatre, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: "Enter the Man" is a study of representations of sexual violence that focuses on the trope of male/male rape as it has gained prominence as a linguistic and cultural metaphor in USAmerican, British, and Canadian society. This dissertation attempts to disaggregate the assumptions that adhere to representations of male/male rape, and to discuss the various uses to which representations of male/male rape have been asked to work by artists working in theatre, film, literature, and television. ...
Show more"Enter the Man" is a study of representations of sexual violence that focuses on the trope of male/male rape as it has gained prominence as a linguistic and cultural metaphor in USAmerican, British, and Canadian society. This dissertation attempts to disaggregate the assumptions that adhere to representations of male/male rape, and to discuss the various uses to which representations of male/male rape have been asked to work by artists working in theatre, film, literature, and television. "Enter the Man" uses gender theory, queer theory, theories of violence, and trauma theory, to explore why male/male rape has become a popular literary, theatrical, and cinematic trope within Anglo-American media. "Enter the Man" is also a history text, detailing and analyzing the development of this trope. The dissertation follows a chronology of these representations beginning with the productions of Canadian dramatist John Herbert's playFortune and Men's Eyes. This document also considers James Dickey'sDeliveranceboth as a book and in its film version. Other texts analyzed include Miguel Piñero'sShort Eyes, Rick Cluchey'sThe Cage, John Schlesinger'sMidnight Cowboy, and Howard Brenton'sThe Romans in Britain. "Enter the Man" ends with the new movement of British playwriting in the 1990s with an examination of Anthony Neilson'sPenetrator, Sarah Kane'sBlasted, and Mark Ravenhill'sShopping and Fucking.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7013
Format: Thesis

Title: The Tears of a Clown: Masculinity and Comedy in Contemporary American Narratives.
Creator: Kunze, Peter C. (Peter Christopher), Epstein, Andrew, Wakamiya, Lisa Ryoko, Edwards, Leigh, Ikard, David, Ikard, David, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Tears of a Clown questions the pervasive narrative that men have begun only recently to realize the limitations society places on them as men. Scholars of masculinity contend men now are starting to see masculinity as an unattainable ideal that restricts, oppresses, and frustrates them. This questionable claim functions as a rhetorical move to create simultaneously a space for male voices in feminist discourse and to validate masculinity studies as a field of inquiry, which seemingly...
Show moreThe Tears of a Clown questions the pervasive narrative that men have begun only recently to realize the limitations society places on them as men. Scholars of masculinity contend men now are starting to see masculinity as an unattainable ideal that restricts, oppresses, and frustrates them. This questionable claim functions as a rhetorical move to create simultaneously a space for male voices in feminist discourse and to validate masculinity studies as a field of inquiry, which seemingly needs no legitimization when one considers the popularity of gender studies in the academy and the value such work can bring to our understanding of politics, history, culture, and society. My study uses an analysis of comic texts to glean information about the fluctuating ideological script of postwar American masculinities. My contention is that the comic--comedy, humor, and laughter--functions as a viable way for men to redirect and sublimate the fear, anxiety, and anger they experience as men. Since many associate this strategy for dealing with emotion as "kidding around," few people, even within the academy, take humor and laughter seriously. Therefore, it does not betray masculinity's requirement that men remain stoic and instead serves a vital social function. By close reading comic texts, I reveal the diverse ways male protagonists employ this strategy, and in the process, I reveal the importance of the comic in understanding the relationship between the male subject and society.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4962
Format: Thesis

Title: Race to Post: White Hegemonic Capitalism and Black Empowerment in 21st Century Black Popular Culture and Literature.
Creator: Bradley, Regina N., Ikard, David, Jones, Maxine, Montgomery, Maxine, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Race to Post examines the complex and varied negotiations of race and class in contemporary black popular culture from 1996 to the present. Examining a variety of texts, including rap music, novels, satirical performances, and new social media, I argue that these mediums reflect the obstacles to black empowerment and self-definition in this contemporary, 'post-racial' moment of American history. Specifically, I use rap music and African American satire to trouble black identity's political...
Show moreRace to Post examines the complex and varied negotiations of race and class in contemporary black popular culture from 1996 to the present. Examining a variety of texts, including rap music, novels, satirical performances, and new social media, I argue that these mediums reflect the obstacles to black empowerment and self-definition in this contemporary, 'post-racial' moment of American history. Specifically, I use rap music and African American satire to trouble black identity's political and economic capital in authenticating discourses of blackness. It begins from the recognition that as these media clear space for marginalized blacks to be seen and heard they also make black pain and "realness" commodities to be bartered and sold. I examine this contradiction through a Gramscian analysis of class and organic intellectualism. I argue that black popular culture exhibits the tensions blacks in postracial America currently face: how to be socially respected, responsible to their race, and "get paid." In the context of the current post-civil rights moment (post 9/11, post-Hurricane Katrina, and post-Obama), popular culture reflects the contradictory and ironic politics and economics of the black popular imagination.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7723
Format: Thesis

Title: Into the Screenscape: Screens, Bodies, and the Biopolitics of the Population.
Creator: Wright, Katheryn, Rai, Amit, Opel, Andy, Edwards, Leigh, Yancey, Kathleen, Program in Materials Science, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation explores the formation and significance of the screenscape in popular culture. A screenscape encompasses the mixture of screens and bodies that enter into and transform the aesthetic quality of social space. After reviewing types of screens that might comprise a given screenscape, I approach the screen not only as a technology but a cultural form that influences the way audiences perceive the relationship between media and their environments. As such, I expand Brian Massumi...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the formation and significance of the screenscape in popular culture. A screenscape encompasses the mixture of screens and bodies that enter into and transform the aesthetic quality of social space. After reviewing types of screens that might comprise a given screenscape, I approach the screen not only as a technology but a cultural form that influences the way audiences perceive the relationship between media and their environments. As such, I expand Brian Massumi's reading of the production of fear through the television after 9/11 and argue that the screen is a space of and for the collective modulation of affect. My argument hinges on three interlocking concepts: the screen as threshold, the affective body, and the biopolitical population. While new media theorists Lev Manovich and Anne Friedberg position the screen as a frame for onscreen content, the first chapter concludes by outlining how the screen also functions as a threshold, a critical point or site of transition. The second chapter defines the affective body and biopolitical population, linking the two through the collective modulation of affect. Each of the final three chapters focuses on a specific example, weaving together the concepts of the screen as threshold, affective body, and biopolitical population through the construction of the screenscape. I analyze the television series Dollhouse as a metaphor of the screen as a threshold. The narrative positions the primary character, Echo (Eliza Dushku), as a screen ' a site for display rather than an object on display. She simultaneously represents both the affective body and the biopolitical population. Next I turn to Nine Inch Nail's Lights in the Sky tour. Trent Reznor, the visionary behind Nine Inch Nails, stands for the fantasy of the artist who surrenders his body to the onstage screenscape he finances and designs. Reznor's playful interactions with the three 'stealth' screens enable his body to be controlled and secured by the logic of the screenscape as it expands beyond his control. My final discussion takes an ethnographic approach to the study of the screen at the 2008 US Open in New York. This sporting attraction and entertainment spectacle brings together a variety of screens ranging from video boards to handheld televisions. Here, the enormity of the event is expressed through the personal, affective relationships people have with their screen technologies. At the same time, the arrangement of screens across the venue help to manage crowds, control access, and corporately brand an event in its becoming. These readings hinge on a paradox embedded in the screen as a cultural form: to enter into the screenscape means to affect and be affected by the biopolitical population as it weaves into and informs the logic of cultural production and consumption.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7257
Format: Thesis

Title: TV Technoculture: The Representation of Technology in Digital Age Television Narratives.
Creator: Puiattiy, Valerie, Edwards, Leigh H., Erndl, Kathleen M., Proffitt, Jennifer, Yancey, Kathleen, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation explores how the relationship between individuals, society, and communication technologies is represented in television narratives and their overflow. My choice in using television as my media case study stems from the assumption that analysis of popular culture and television highlight the significance of everyday life. The selected programs offer a view into attitudes that are in circulation about how individuals and society are being affected by technology. In this...
Show moreThis dissertation explores how the relationship between individuals, society, and communication technologies is represented in television narratives and their overflow. My choice in using television as my media case study stems from the assumption that analysis of popular culture and television highlight the significance of everyday life. The selected programs offer a view into attitudes that are in circulation about how individuals and society are being affected by technology. In this project, I identify four primary emphases in television's presentation of the Internet and communications technologies: gender, generation gaps, security and privacy, and the impact of the virtual on the physical realm. These areas form the basis for each chapter of the dissertation. Chapter one begins with the idea that we are now living in a new age. It then explores media and scholarly considerations of how digital technology and the virtual have impacted activities based in the physical realm. This chapter seeks to illuminate what value is attributed to face-to-face communication and activities versus those of the virtual as well as to understand if these same concerns are expressed in television narratives. Chapter two explores how gender has been constructed in relation to technology. The third chapter addresses how television representations of generation gaps function to narrate the impact technology has made on the dynamic between digital natives and those who learned--or are learning--to navigate the innovations of the digital era later in life. The final chapter addresses how debates about privacy, freedom, and security have been actively incorporated into television narratives.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8871
Format: Thesis

Title: Can't Go Back: A Novel.
Creator: Beckerman, Charlie, Winegardner, Mark, Stuckey-French, Elizabeth, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Can't Go Back is the story of Martin Paris, a former cop-turned-private investigator, who is also a homosexual, living in Los Angeles in 1947. Written in the tradition of Noir detective fiction, the novel uses the conventions of the genre as well as the historical and social contexts of the postwar-era to explore ideas of sexuality, loss, fulfillment and time.
Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8942
Format: Thesis

Title: Under the Rainbow: Post-Closet Gay Male Representation in American Theatre and Television.
Creator: Grant, M. Shane, Dahl, Mary Karen, Sandahl, Carrie, Edwards, Leigh, Salata, Krzystof, School of Theatre, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this dissertation I examine mainstream representations of gay men in theatre and television between 1998 and 2006 in order to reveal how these texts contain within themselves both assimilationist and queerly rebellious narrative threads. Working with popular culture scholar John Fiske's idea that hegemonic reinforcement inherently contains aspects of subordinate resistance, I counter arguments that individual plays, televisions series, or specific program episodes ultimately promote only,...
Show moreIn this dissertation I examine mainstream representations of gay men in theatre and television between 1998 and 2006 in order to reveal how these texts contain within themselves both assimilationist and queerly rebellious narrative threads. Working with popular culture scholar John Fiske's idea that hegemonic reinforcement inherently contains aspects of subordinate resistance, I counter arguments that individual plays, televisions series, or specific program episodes ultimately promote only, or vastly overwhelmingly, the idea of acceptance through assimilation or queer separatist politics. In order to reconcile issues regarding audience differences and the political economies of two significantly different media, I maintain that the majority of Broadway audiences coincide with the primary television demographic interested in and supportive of the increase in gay characters in mainstream programming and theatrical production. To this end I employ queer television scholar Ron Becker's analysis of a demographic he recognizes as socially liberal and urban-minded, namely 'SLUMPYs.' I utilize four case studies to support my argument, two plays (with discussions of production) and two television series: Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out (2003), Mois's Kaufman's The Laramie Project (2001), NBC's Will and Grace (1998 ' 2006), and Showtime's Queer as Folk (2000 ' 2005). Of these four texts, two outwardly appear more assimilationist (Take Me Out and Will and Grace), while the others seem on first glance more progressive or queer. Utilizing, foundationally, Michael Warner's 1999 The Trouble with Normal and Lisa Duggan's The Twilight of Equality?, I reveal various ways in which all my case studies provide queer points of view despite their mainstream, broad appeal. The primary areas of discussion include: establishing gay male sexual identity in the post-closet era, gay characters negotiating normative forces, the impact of publicly heterosexual actor identity on gay characters, and trends in dramatizing actual events.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7148
Format: Thesis

Title: The Naylorian Worldview: Taking the African American Male from Slavery to Freedom.
Creator: Jeune, Teressa A., Montgomery, Maxine, Edwards, Leigh, McGregory, Jerrilyn, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines male characters in five primary texts: The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day, Bailey's Café, and The Men of Brewster Place, engaging theorists like bell hooks, James King, and Lawrence Hogue in a discussion of black masculinity. It explores Naylor's map of how black men could theoretically go from a place of bondage to a place of freedom. Through the characters in her works, Naylor moves away from males who embrace a masculine ideal, from the essentialist...
Show moreThis thesis examines male characters in five primary texts: The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day, Bailey's Café, and The Men of Brewster Place, engaging theorists like bell hooks, James King, and Lawrence Hogue in a discussion of black masculinity. It explores Naylor's map of how black men could theoretically go from a place of bondage to a place of freedom. Through the characters in her works, Naylor moves away from males who embrace a masculine ideal, from the essentialist roles of Western society, toward a polycentric ideal. Naylor believes a space should exist where all men, regardless of the lifestyle/gender definition they choose, are considered equal and where each man has the ability to define who he is. She presents a continuum on which her black male characters go from the confining roles of white society to a place where they can determine their own identities. In this progression, time and place also play a critical role in the journey from imprisonment to liberation. Naylor's male characters' mindsets about masculinity reflect the setting they allow to influence them most, whether that is the South, the city, or a place that exists metaphysically, a place that presently does not exist. As the setting for her male characters change, and the mindsets that they are influenced by change, from those places that are historical sites of bondage for black people to those that offer liberation, Naylor's male characters experience more freedom. Though this does not prove true for all her male characters and exceptions do occur, one can see the connection Naylor makes between setting and freedom. Through her male characters, Naylor highlights a possible road to solving what she perceives as the problem of black male identity.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3521
Format: Thesis

Title: Exceptional TV: Post-9/11 Serial Television and American Exceptionalism.
Creator: Johnson-Lewis, Erika, Edwards, Leigh H., Berry, R. M., Johnson, David, Rai, Amit, Proffitt, Jennifer, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation seeks to understand how a re-invigorated sense of American exceptionalism circulated within the texts of several prime time serial television programs. American exceptionalism has functioned as a foundational mythology and a justifying discourse that works to create a sense of national unity through participation in rituals of national belonging. Television is a cultural site where rituals of national belonging are experienced and shared. As such, it is important to examine...
Show moreThis dissertation seeks to understand how a re-invigorated sense of American exceptionalism circulated within the texts of several prime time serial television programs. American exceptionalism has functioned as a foundational mythology and a justifying discourse that works to create a sense of national unity through participation in rituals of national belonging. Television is a cultural site where rituals of national belonging are experienced and shared. As such, it is important to examine how television texts engage with and participate in the creation, cultivation, and circulation of nationalist mythologies, ideologies, and discourses. To understand serial television's engagement with exceptionalist themes and myths, I begin in chapter one by offering a history of American exceptionalism as it emerged through the institutionalization of American studies as a discipline. Chapter two looks at HBO's Deadwood and CBS's Jericho and examines how they engage with foundational exceptionalist tropes such as destiny, frontier, and the jeremiad. Chapter three engages with the Fox series 24 and the Showtime series Dexter, to describe the intersection of American exceptionalism's history as a justifying discourse and the legal construction of the state of exception in the discourse of the ticking time bomb scenario as it was deployed to legitimize the use of torture. The final chapter analyzes how ABC's Lost and SyFy's Battlestar Galactica negotiate with American exceptionalism in terms of both the state of exception and the ticking time bomb as well as with the foundationalist tropes of mission and destiny, the frontier and the garden.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4647
Format: Thesis

Title: Connecting the Dots: Does Reflection Foster Transfer?.
Creator: Taczak, Kara, Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Witte, Shelbie, Fleckenstein, Kristie, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This qualitative research study examined whether or not reflection facilitates transfer. While scholars have addressed the role that transfer may play in the composition classroom (e.g. Beaufort 2007), none has addressed the role of reflection as a deliberate, systematic practice to assist students in transferring knowledge and practice to other contexts. Using Schon's and Yancey's contention that reflection allows people to 'theorize [their] own practices' so that they can improve their work...
Show moreThis qualitative research study examined whether or not reflection facilitates transfer. While scholars have addressed the role that transfer may play in the composition classroom (e.g. Beaufort 2007), none has addressed the role of reflection as a deliberate, systematic practice to assist students in transferring knowledge and practice to other contexts. Using Schon's and Yancey's contention that reflection allows people to 'theorize [their] own practices' so that they can improve their work, this research uses case study methodology to analyze the experience of six participants'3 male and 3 females'that were in enrolled in a first-year composition course designed specifically to teach for transfer. The course, called teaching for transfer, incorporates three reflective components'reflective theory, reflective assignments, and reflective activities'in systematic, intentional, and explicit ways. By using a triangulation of the instructor's teaching journal, a set of four interviews and an exit survey, and the students' reflection-in-presentation, this study charted five themes that emerged from the data, including the role of prior knowledge and current attitude, a response to external benchmarks, the influence of key terms, and the influence of a student's theory of writing, and the difficulty of transfer. The findings from these themes indicate that students use reflection as a means to look backwards so they can progress forward in their writing; that reflection becomes a key term students use in their writing practices; and that systematic reflection becomes a reiterative practice encouraging the students to identify themselves as reflective writing practitioners as a way to promote transfer. Further analysis provides the ways reflection does foster the transfer of knowledge and practices from the first- year composition class to other academic writing sites, and drawing from the teaching from transfer course, recommendations for including reflection in first-year composition course design are also included.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7238
Format: Thesis

Title: Sporting Materiality: Commodification and Fan Agency in Collections, Memorabilia, Jerseys, and Dirt.
Creator: Andon, Stephen Patrick, Houck, Davis W., Edwards, Leigh H., Proffitt, Jennifer, Raney, Arthur A., Giardina, Michael D., School of Communication, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation dissects the current state of sport in society as manifested through an increasing number of material manifestations created in the late capitalist moment. These objects, namely sports memorabilia and other assorted products, have left an indelible mark on culture by virtue of their attempts to encapsulate presence, dictate levels of fandom, and commemorate collective public memory. In all, the dissertation uses four case studies to examine these consequences, beginning with...
Show moreThis dissertation dissects the current state of sport in society as manifested through an increasing number of material manifestations created in the late capitalist moment. These objects, namely sports memorabilia and other assorted products, have left an indelible mark on culture by virtue of their attempts to encapsulate presence, dictate levels of fandom, and commemorate collective public memory. In all, the dissertation uses four case studies to examine these consequences, beginning with the emplacement of a private memorabilia collection in a professional baseball stadium, a situation beset by the personal nature of collection and the team's goal to maximize capital in the new stadium. The next case study explores the commodification of sports memorabilia, epitomized by huge profits realized from the sale of authentic, game-used dirt, used in an attempt to re-establish industry credibility in the wake of massive fraud and draw in consumers at a variety of price points. The third case study is a rhetorical investigation of the material significance of retro ' or throwback ' jerseys, a fashion trend from the early 21st century that has become a standard part of the commercial offerings of professional sports teams. Concentrating on one professional franchise's attempt to resurrect its history in material form, this chapter argues that while some jerseys retain the symbolic power of the teams and players they channel, others fall short as a result of contextual factors that surround the commemoration. Finally, the last case study is focuses on attempts by sports fans to create their own merchandise, thus activating their individual creativities and operating against hypermasculine gender stereotypes in sports.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7088
Format: Thesis

Title: Prostituting the Public Interest in the 2012 Presidential Election: A Political Economic Analysis of Super Pacs in Television News.
Creator: Smock, Shea, Proffitt, Jennifer M., Edwards, Leigh, McDowell, Stephen, Opel, Andy, School of Communication, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In light of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, campaign finance law has been re-regulated to promote freedom of spending in elections. Previously, outside spending in elections was restricted to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption in the democratic process. Corporations, unions, and individuals can now spend unlimitedly on political advertisements in an attempt to persuade voters. Unlike campaign advertisements, the newly christened...
Show moreIn light of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, campaign finance law has been re-regulated to promote freedom of spending in elections. Previously, outside spending in elections was restricted to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption in the democratic process. Corporations, unions, and individuals can now spend unlimitedly on political advertisements in an attempt to persuade voters. Unlike campaign advertisements, the newly christened Super PACs do not have to approve the message or disclose donors if the money was last received from a nonprofit organization. Super PACs must also pay top dollar for their ad space unlike campaign ads that receive the lowest rates. This has the possibility of creating a massive conflict of interest for the news media. Journalists are expected to serve as watchdogs on these ads so citizens may make informed decisions, but the concentrated media industry is making massive profits from airing them - can we trust them to report on the often misleading and negative ads? This dissertation examines broadcast, cable, and public television news transcripts surrounding Super PAC ads in the 2012 primary and general presidential elections utilizing textual analysis and political economic theory. After exploring the economic structure and ownership of the news media and its coverage of this issue, I argue that we cannot trust the commercial news media to report critically or even accurately on Super PAC advertisers. This analysis attempts to explain how and why the commercial news media failed in its coverage and how it perpetuated problematic ideologies that support the status quo and ignore public opinion and protestation
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-8891
Format: Thesis

Title: The Ecopoetics of Space: How Contemporary American Poetics Can Help Posthumans Navigate a Postnatural World.
Creator: Pearson, Amber, Epstein, Andrew, Davis, Frederick, Edwards, Leigh, Walker, Eric, Outka, Paul, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Traditionally, ecopoetics has been interested in texts whose primary goal is to explore place, or locations that are imbued with human meaning or culture, as a solution to the problem of human alienation from the nonhuman world. While this work is valuable, placemaking alone is insufficient to meet contemporary needs, and as a result poetry which explores space, or the nonhuman that resists human understanding, is needed. To this end I describe a lineage of spatially-engaged, experimental...
Show moreTraditionally, ecopoetics has been interested in texts whose primary goal is to explore place, or locations that are imbued with human meaning or culture, as a solution to the problem of human alienation from the nonhuman world. While this work is valuable, placemaking alone is insufficient to meet contemporary needs, and as a result poetry which explores space, or the nonhuman that resists human understanding, is needed. To this end I describe a lineage of spatially-engaged, experimental American poetics that is consistent with contemporary ecocritical practice. First I examine Charles Olson, who rejected the possibility of simple, mimetic language in favor of deliberately constructed ways of understanding the world through myth, giving us postmodernism. Following Olson, James Schuyler's even stronger acceptance of limitation in language is coupled with a total acceptance of the way things are and an avant-garde writing style, leaving us with not just a constructed world, but a postnatural one. Intensifying both the suspicion of both language and its users is Lyn Hejinian, whose challenging of the way nature constructs its users asks us to reconfigure both the world and humans. The result of this challenge is to create a posthuman nonidentity in response to a spatial world. Through this traumatic experience, readers learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable: to be posthumans in a spatial environment. The result is a significant opportunity for what Timothy Morton calls "dark ecology": a way of maintaining solidarity with a damaged, toxic, hostile planet. Through reading spatial ecopoetics, posthumans can find ways to live in and identify with the 21st century's postnatural world.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7545
Format: Thesis

Title: Exceptional TV: Post-9/11 Serial Television and American Exceptionalism.
Creator: Johnson-Lewis, Erika, Edwards, Leigh H., Berry, R. M., Johnson, David, Rai, Amit, Proffitt, Jennifer, Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation seeks to understand how a re-invigorated sense of American exceptionalism circulated within the texts of several prime time serial television programs. American exceptionalism has functioned as a foundational mythology and a justifying discourse that works to create a sense of national unity through participation in rituals of national belonging. Television is a cultural site where rituals of national belonging are experienced and shared. As such, it is important to examine...
Show moreThis dissertation seeks to understand how a re-invigorated sense of American exceptionalism circulated within the texts of several prime time serial television programs. American exceptionalism has functioned as a foundational mythology and a justifying discourse that works to create a sense of national unity through participation in rituals of national belonging. Television is a cultural site where rituals of national belonging are experienced and shared. As such, it is important to examine how television texts engage with and participate in the creation, cultivation, and circulation of nationalist mythologies, ideologies, and discourses. To understand serial television's engagement with exceptionalist themes and myths, I begin in chapter one by offering a history of American exceptionalism as it emerged through the institutionalization of American studies as a discipline. Chapter two looks at HBO's Deadwood and CBS's Jericho and examines how they engage with foundational exceptionalist tropes such as destiny, frontier, and the jeremiad. Chapter three engages with the Fox series 24 and the Showtime series Dexter, to describe the intersection of American exceptionalism's history as a justifying discourse and the legal construction of the state of exception in the discourse of the ticking time bomb scenario as it was deployed to legitimize the use of torture. The final chapter analyzes how ABC's Lost and SyFy's Battlestar Galactica negotiate with American exceptionalism in terms of both the state of exception and the ticking time bomb as well as with the foundationalist tropes of mission and destiny, the frontier and the garden.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-7166
Format: Thesis

Title: Arrant Beggars: Staging the Atlantic Lumpenproletariat, 1777 to 1852.
Creator: Reed, Peter Patrick, Lhamon, W. T., Bearor, Karen A., Edwards, Leigh H., Faulk, Barry J., Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Atlantic popular theatre culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries circulated stagings of outcast yet admired underclasses. Karl Marx's naming of these characters lent increased visibility to the lumpenproletariat, the object of both audiences' applause and authorities' censure. Theatrical archives reveal numerous performances that helped imagine and define an emerging Atlantic lumpenproletariat. I examine a broad spectrum of interconnected popular performances. The cycle...
Show moreAtlantic popular theatre culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries circulated stagings of outcast yet admired underclasses. Karl Marx's naming of these characters lent increased visibility to the lumpenproletariat, the object of both audiences' applause and authorities' censure. Theatrical archives reveal numerous performances that helped imagine and define an emerging Atlantic lumpenproletariat. I examine a broad spectrum of interconnected popular performances. The cycle I follow begins with the charismatic piracy of John Gay's Polly (first performed in 1777) and moves to the interracial affiliations and struggles in plays such as John Fawcett's 1800 Obi; or, Three-Finger'd Jack. From there, nautical circulations produce melodramas such as Douglas Jerrold's 1830 Black-Ey'd Susan and urban voyeurism pictures the lumpen in plays like W. T. Moncrieff's 1822 Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London; finally I discuss the re-emergence of Jack Sheppard, the historical model for Macheath, in a spate of plays after 1839. Popular stagings of the lumpenproletariat provided a means of imagining class; urges to protect boundaries competed with cultural transgressions and complications of class. These theatricals also reveal connections to other modes of cultural expression, influencing the work of nineteenth-century artists and authors such as George Cruikshank, James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, and Herman Melville. Such circum-Atlantic and inter-generic cultural productions reveal the importance of cultural continuities and transmissions, the relationships between class and culture, and the unexplored influences of theatre on American and transatlantic literature.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1918
Format: Thesis

Title: Making Form-Meaning Connections: The Influence of Instruction and Working Memory on L2 French Clitic Acquisition.
Creator: Santamaría, Kindra, Sunderman, Gretchen, Edwards, Leigh, Leeser, Michael, Cloonan, William, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Previous second language studies (Benati, 2004; Buck, 2000; Cadierno, 1995) have shown Processing Instruction (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993a) to be successful in altering L2 learners' incorrect processing strategies. Studies conducted from the Input Processing perspective (VanPatten, 2004) have found that English learners of French incorrectly assign direct object nouns/pronouns as subject nouns/pronouns and confuse who is doing the action to whom. Heilenman & McDonald (1993a) suggest that...
Show morePrevious second language studies (Benati, 2004; Buck, 2000; Cadierno, 1995) have shown Processing Instruction (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993a) to be successful in altering L2 learners' incorrect processing strategies. Studies conducted from the Input Processing perspective (VanPatten, 2004) have found that English learners of French incorrectly assign direct object nouns/pronouns as subject nouns/pronouns and confuse who is doing the action to whom. Heilenman & McDonald (1993a) suggest that teaching dislocation can help these learners to rely less on word order and more on clitic pronouns. Input Processing as well as other research (Harrington, 1992; MacWhinney, 2005; Mikaye & Friedman, 1998) suggests that working memory plays an important role in L2 acquisition. In this study, I evaluate the effect of instruction type on altering L2 processing strategies and the influence of working memory on instruction type. Second and third semester French students received either Processing Instruction (PI), Traditional Instruction (TI), or no instruction. Those receiving instruction learned about dislocation while the PI group also learned how to interpret OVS, OSV and SOV strings. The two instructional groups practiced what they had learned through oral and written activities: structured input activities for the PI group and mechanical and meaningful drills for the TI group. Each participant also did an in-class reading span test, and was classified as having a higher or a lower working memory capacity. Success of the instructional types was operationalized by the scores of an immediate and a delayed posttest. Results indicate that the PI group did better on the interpretation task while the TI group scored higher on the production task. Participants performed as they had been taught. In addition, learners with certain cognitive resources did not benefit from one type of instruction over the other. Those with higher working memory scored higher than those with lower working memory on both tasks. These results do not support other Processing Instruction findings because the PI group was not as successful as the TI group on the production task. They do, however, support previous working memory research and indicate that working memory plays a role in both comprehension and production activities.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2083
Format: Thesis

Title: When Discourses Collide: Hegemony, Domestinormativity, and the Active Audience in Xena: Warrior Princess.
Creator: Myers, Brian H., Edwards, Leigh, Proffitt, Jennifer, Picart, Caroline Joan, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis argues that corporate practices of hegemony produce oppositional discourses on gender and sexuality through its appropriation and incorporation of feminist and queer fan discourses into television programming such as Xena: Warrior Princess. As a result, Xena: Warrior Princess can be read as a political site of struggle over the meaning of gender and sexuality. The destabilizing potential of these oppositional fan interpretations and practices, though, is simultaneously enabled and...
Show moreThis thesis argues that corporate practices of hegemony produce oppositional discourses on gender and sexuality through its appropriation and incorporation of feminist and queer fan discourses into television programming such as Xena: Warrior Princess. As a result, Xena: Warrior Princess can be read as a political site of struggle over the meaning of gender and sexuality. The destabilizing potential of these oppositional fan interpretations and practices, though, is simultaneously enabled and delimited to varying degrees by its situation within mass media institutions. In order to make this argument, my thesis is divided into three general sections, the first of which argues that the producers of Xena incorporated elements into the text from a wide variety of communities, particularly queer communities, in order to increase audience shares and profits. The second section examines how hegemonic and subaltern modes of gender and sexuality were negotiated within the text of Xena by framing the series within poststructuralist feminist debates and broadly arguing that attempts to fix the sexed and gendered identities of Xena's characters was undermined by the slippage of meaning enabled, but not totalized, by Xena's production practices. My final section concludes with a reconfiguration of the "active audience" by focusing upon the feedback loop between production and consumption practices in Xena, which positioned fans as forces that attempt to fix and ground interpretations of Xena rather than radically opening them.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2150
Format: Thesis

Title: Affectionately Yours: Women's Correspondence Networks in Eighteenth-Century British America.
Creator: McLallen, Wendy Weston, Hadden, Sally, Edwards, Leigh, Laughlin, Karen L., Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines epistolary manuscripts circulated among networks of women in eighteenth-century British America. The women saved and collected correspondence, copied important letters into commonplace books, and composed entire journals in letter format for family member or close friends. These writings, as they circulated from hand to hand, helped to solidify culturally significant social networks. This dissertation delves into the markedly performative nature of these writings...
Show moreThis dissertation examines epistolary manuscripts circulated among networks of women in eighteenth-century British America. The women saved and collected correspondence, copied important letters into commonplace books, and composed entire journals in letter format for family member or close friends. These writings, as they circulated from hand to hand, helped to solidify culturally significant social networks. This dissertation delves into the markedly performative nature of these writings and asks: even though these women writers, ostensibly, did not intend their texts for public consumption, to what extent did those texts provide public stages on which the women could rehearse, control, inscribe, or elide the fluid, yet often conflicting subject positions of the era? This dissertation examines five specific networks of writing women in eighteenth-century British America. Chapter one focuses on the writings of Elizabeth Fergusson, Annis Stockton, Hannah Griffitts, Milcah Moore, and Susannah Wright, the group of writers known as the "Philadelphia coterie," and uses their letters to establish epistolary patterns that inform my readings of the other networks of women writers—the same patterns that will ultimately influence the earliest epistolary fiction. Chapter two examines the diary of Grace Galloway and the letters of Anne Hulton, two avowedly loyalist women in British America. Chapter three focuses on the life and letters of shopkeeper Elizabeth Murray and her network of women merchants while chapter four examines the letters of the two most historically recognizable women in this study: Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. The networks of women I address in these chapters span multiple generations, and this multi-generational dynamic leaves a legacy of friendship that can help us better understand and locate the belles lettres of British America. However, the writings generated by these networks also leave a literary legacy that allows us to reconsider other writings in other genres, and it is to that endeavor I turn in the conclusion. The conclusion looks at Hannah Foster's epistolary novels in the context of early-American networks of writing women and uses the women's manuscripts to reposition the early-American novel.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2527
Format: Thesis

Title: Laughter and Hope and a Sock in the Eye.
Creator: McKelvy, Ashley, Suarez, Virgil, Stuckey-French, Ned, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In this collection of essays, I am looking at a young woman trying to find direction and decide what kind of woman she will be. Growing up, I have often felt like a woman of contradictions. I wanted to be tough, but not so tough that I was no longer "pretty." I was proud of being independent, but afraid of ending up alone. I wanted to travel the world as much as I wanted to find a place to call home. I began to see myself as a composite of gestures: The kind of girl who bought Gin and Tonic...
Show moreIn this collection of essays, I am looking at a young woman trying to find direction and decide what kind of woman she will be. Growing up, I have often felt like a woman of contradictions. I wanted to be tough, but not so tough that I was no longer "pretty." I was proud of being independent, but afraid of ending up alone. I wanted to travel the world as much as I wanted to find a place to call home. I began to see myself as a composite of gestures: The kind of girl who bought Gin and Tonic cologne. A girl who stole a book of Leonard Nimoy's poetry, danced on a pole she helped build in her living room, wished her life was an Aaron Sorkin script, hated Italian men but loved Italian Americans, and a girl who was as uncomfortable with her desire to date a nice guy as she was with her inability to find one. My one reservation about writing personal essays is that it feels a little self-indulgent. I don't think these stories are important simply because they are about me. Arkansans don't often tell people how fabulous and special they are; we leave that to Texans. If anything, I think these stories are worth telling because they deal with being a young woman finding out what she is capable of and who she wants to become. These essays focus on the struggle to find a balance between child and adult, girl and woman, observer and participant, naughty and nice, which I think many women struggle with. Also, there will be jokes. No one dies in these essays. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't typically write that kind of essay. Just as I had to find a balance in the extremes of my personality, I also seek to find the right mix of comedy and drama. Ultimately, I think humor works best when it has aspects of seriousness and there is something at stake. During the process of writing this thesis, I've read a lot more non-fiction in the form of essays, memoirs, and a book about corpses. My main influences remain Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris, not only for their use of humor but also for their conversational tone. I also read quite a bit of Dorothy Parker in college, and I still admire her ability to combine angst and venom in delightful heroic couplets. As a film and tv junkie, I am also looking at British comedies and American dramadies, which I think blend the elements of comedy and tragedy into something that is entertaining but also has a sense of purpose. I'm looking to curve out a niche somewhere between The Full Monty and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I hope you laugh, Ashley McKelvy
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2537
Format: Thesis

Title: Voicing the 'Body in Pain': Suffering and the Limits of Language in Edith Wharton.
Creator: Nuckolls, Elizabeth S., Edwards, Leigh H., Dickson-Carr, Darryl, Epstein, Andrew, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Edith Wharton's writing exhibits an understanding of and fascination with the connections between pain and language. Her novel, Ethan Frome, is her first extended analysis of the cycle of silence and suffering into which her characters fall. She explores how these interests complicate the conflicting pressures of individual necessities and community responsibilities. She also attempts to find ways of breaking the silence of those in pain through the manipulation of physical material rather...
Show moreEdith Wharton's writing exhibits an understanding of and fascination with the connections between pain and language. Her novel, Ethan Frome, is her first extended analysis of the cycle of silence and suffering into which her characters fall. She explores how these interests complicate the conflicting pressures of individual necessities and community responsibilities. She also attempts to find ways of breaking the silence of those in pain through the manipulation of physical material rather than verbal expression. World War I compels Wharton to return to the subjects she considered in her earlier novel. However, her understanding and attitude evolves as she begins to experience the awful realities of war. In Ethan Frome, she disapproves of the sacrifice of his individuality for the community, but in most of her war writing, she views the sacrifice of millions of individuals as a horrible but necessary result of the defense of France. In her fiction and nonfiction, Wharton shifts between an insightful analysis of the use of cliché to manipulate and hide the truth, to the use of cliché to describe and glorify the war. However, despite this idealization, Wharton continues to recognize the pain and suffering war caused and looks for ways for war victims to express their inner minds. She details the translation of abstract thought into physical representations, which in turn help reduce a human need. Much of her focus in her war work is on the numerous ways the process of war destroys these physical expressions, and the ways people work against the destruction of these objects.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2509
Format: Thesis

Title: Dark Veins.
Creator: Montjoy, Ashley Nicole, Kimbrell, James, Hamby, Barbara, Kirby, David, Edwards, Leigh, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Every day I find images that evoke deep connections in me. These images occur when I see a woman jogging, read a marquee, or overhear a conversation at the grocery store, the coffee house, or post office. When I write I try to make sense of the connections. I attempt to unearth how and why they affect me. My poems are born from my desire to understand the connection inside the moments—those fleeting instances in which I perceive life's most banal and extraordinary forms. I write inside a...
Show moreEvery day I find images that evoke deep connections in me. These images occur when I see a woman jogging, read a marquee, or overhear a conversation at the grocery store, the coffee house, or post office. When I write I try to make sense of the connections. I attempt to unearth how and why they affect me. My poems are born from my desire to understand the connection inside the moments—those fleeting instances in which I perceive life's most banal and extraordinary forms. I write inside a revolving glass door of perception and growth, and at best, my poems demonstrate the cultivation of my poetic third ear—a susurration located in the darkest rivulets of my veins. DEVELOPMENT and POETIC THIRD EAR Anne Sexton said, "Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard," and this is how I construct my poems. My third ear is embedded inside my marrow's reddest folds. It is a phantom voice that haunts my perception. It is an elision in the back of my brain, an inner writing guide that cultivates my desire to write "good" narrative poems. Before entering the realm of my third ear, I wrote restrained, abstract, attempting-to-be lyric poems and I relied heavily on one-inch lines to carry the tension. I felt imprisoned as though I was trying to utilize a form and vocabulary unnatural to me. I was trying to write short, dense poems which amounted to nothing more than descriptive gestures. As a result, these poems did not enter my thesis because the style and form did not echo the development of my voice. During this same time, fear prevented me from experimenting with narrative poems, and it was rare for me to feel comfortable writing a poem longer than one page. Then I began listening to my third ear—a shallow reverberation of acute awareness. At the same time, I revisited the poets that made me want to write in the first place. I fell back in love in the Beat Poets, particularly the momentum and sorrow in Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish." I studied Sharon Olds's complex constructions of the body and line enjambment. And I looked inward and I began rereading everything I'd ever written. Surprisingly, the poems I wrote as an undergraduate weren't bad, but they sounded like tangents and not poems. Nonetheless, these early attempts at poetry exuded a stark sense of rawness, of unconstrained vulnerability and an inherent desire to tell stories in a poetic form. "The Art of Female Shaving" is one of my earliest attempts to write narrative poems, and it marks the first time I understood what Robert Pinksy meant when he said, "The best feeling for a poet is just having written." This was the first moment when I unshackled myself from the "type of poems" I thought I should be writing, and instead began writing in a style and form natural to me. My third ear tells me when to "let out the story" and when to tighten. It shows me how to have faith in the poem's spiritual force. It is intuitive energy hidden in my body's darkest veins. CONSTRUCTION of SUBJECTS I write what I know: my experiences, memories, dreams, and my imaginative musing. I write from the desire to discover how and why my experiences create psychological and emotional detriment or strength. The poems "Death Guides Me Away from Materialism" and "Dreamscape: Buffalo-Skinned Girl Prophesy" turn toward the Tarot, astrology, and mythology to unearth these answers. In addition, a central rivulet in my work is the powerful element of water—a mutable force capable of great destruction and beauty, and its reciprocity with my poetic third ear. The speakers in my poems continually perform investigations into love, love lost, sorrow, familial relationships, and sex. My work might seem Confessional, and indeed, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were some of my earliest influences, and while my poems might confess, this does not originate solely from autobiography but also from imagination and story. I am not a diarist, and if the speakers in my poems seem to seek closure, it is because she hasn't the courage to sit in the raw space of not-knowing. Lyn Hejinian's essay The Rejection of Closure posits poetic theories that I still grapple with during my writing process. She argues toward making the poetic line reach simultaneously toward the next line and outward into the world. In certain sections the essay seems to promote density inside the poem's subject content, but also to "reject closure." Hejinian's theories resonate with my poetic third ear, and somewhere along the way I started making a conscious effort to write more multilateral poems. These poems avoid linearity and choose instead to zigzag in and out of my experiences and into the world's gorges. If I've succeeded with this technique, then "Decay of Red Brick," "Ode to Tawdry and other Banished Words," and "At the Vaginal Curator," are the best examples. I write with the intention to "make sense" of a moment or internal feeling—an offering of my voice in its most primordial stage. I write with the hope that an image or phrase will touch my readers in his or her deepest, darkest vein.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2330
Format: Thesis

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