English Lit. Theses

English Department

English Literature Master's Theses from 1993-Present

1993

Brett Edward Eckelberg, M.A. 1993
Thesis Title: The Matter of the Mother: Encoding of the Mother in H. D.'s Poetry and Prose
Thesis Committee: Michael Hoffman, Sandra Gilbert, David Robertson

1994

Danielle Cunniff Plumer, M.A. 1994
Thesis Title: Lineation and Meter in Old English Poetry
Thesis Committee: Caron Cioffi, James Murphey, David Robertson

1996

Kathryn R. Remen, M.A. 1996
Thesis Title: The Presence, Absence, and Implications of Female Community in Late Eighteenth-Century British Women's Fiction
Thesis Committee: Kari Lokke, Sandra Gilbert, David Robertson

1997

Glenn Keyser, M.A. 1997
Thesis Title: Victorian Schizopolis: Urban Anxiety and Urban Representation in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Thesis Committee: Patricia Moran, Joanne Feit Diehl, Michael Hoffman

1998

Suzanne R. Moser, M.A. 1998
Thesis Title: Double Selves: Katherine Mansfield's Encounters with Her Mother's Legacy in "Prelude" and "At the Bay"
Thesis Committee: Patricia Moran, Joanne Feit Diehl, Michael Hoffman

2000

Katie Kalpin, M.A. 2000
     Thesis Title: When the spectacle of power spectacularly fails: revenge through the masque in The Spanish Tragedy, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and
     Women Beware Women (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
     Thesis Committee: Margaret Ferguson, Richard Levin

2001

Melissa Fay Conner, M.A. 2001
Thesis Title: "The Customer is Always Wrong": Eyes Wide Shut's "Forced Happy Ending"
Thesis Committee: Scott Simmon, Patricia Moran, Don Abbott

Blythe Creamer, M.A. 2001
Thesis Title: Queering the scene: performativity and recreativity in rave culture (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: David Van Leer, Don Abbott, Elizabeth Freeman

Elizabeth Dumont, M.A. 2001
Thesis Title: Jorie Graham’s apology to the reader (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: Joanne Feit Diehl, Clarence Major, Don Abbott

Eden Koren Osucha, M.A. 2001
Thesis Title: Queerly Beloved: Maternal Desire and Lesbian Signification in a Novel of Slavery
Thesis Committee: Margaret Ferguson, Linda Morris, Riche Richardson

2002

Tamar Baskind, M.A. 2002
Thesis Title: Intentional Polysemy in 'The Wife's Lament
Thesis Committee: Marijane Osborn, Claire Waters, Seeta Chaganti

Maura Kathleen Grady, M.A. 2002
Thesis Title: "I Felt Funny about This Job Right Off": Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and the Death of the Organization Man
Thesis Committee: David Van Leer, Judith Newton, Scott Simmon

2003

Jordana Clare Ashman, M.A. 2003
Thesis Title: Saints Preserved: Mysticism, Myth and History in Seamus Heaney's Bog Poems
Thesis Committee: Sandra Gilbert, Gregory Dobbins, Karl Zender

Lyle Cloud Kerzner, M.A. 2003
Thesis Title: Living Fictions: Tarzan of the Apes, The Black Stallion and the American Adventure Imaginary
Thesis Committee: Bishnu Ghosh, Riche Richardson, Elizabeth Freeman

Laura Maestrelli, M.A. 2003
Thesis Title: Jesting With Saints: Catholic Hagiography and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure
Thesis Committee: Claire Waters, Margaret Ferguson, Richard Levin

Tony R. Magagna, M.A. 2003
Thesis Title: Chipped Glass: Flawed Perfection and Explanation in Hapworth 16, 1924
Thesis Committee: Jack Hicks, Karl Zender, Michael Hoffman

Poonam Sachdev, M.A. 2003
Thesis Title: Laying Claim to History: Questioning the Authenticity of Local Color Literature in the Construction of America's Identity
Thesis Committee: David Simpson, Elizabeth Freeman, Inés Hernandez-Avila

Elizabeth Amy Warden, M.A. 2003
Thesis Title: The Medieval Monastic Self and Social Responsibility: Structuring Identityin the Lives and Teachers of Saints Benedict and Gregory
Thesis Committee: Claire Waters, Seeta Chaganti, Gregory Dobbins

2004

Jennifer Gayle Halpin, M.A. 2004
Thesis Title: Gift Unpossessed: Community as Gift in The Calcutta Chromosome
Thesis Committee: Bishnu Ghosh, Gregory Dobbins, Scott Shershow

Jessica Howell, M.A. 2004
Thesis Title: Fatal skins: Richard Burton’s Colonial Lexicon (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: Bishnu Ghosh, Scott Shershow, Elizabeth Constable

Darcy Irvin, M.A. 2004
Thesis Title: "Forward vision": Allegory in Michael Mazur’s Illustrations for The Inferno of Dante (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: Alan Williamson, Seeta Chaganti, Blake Stimson

Jennifer Marion Norris, M.A. 2004
Thesis Title: Obstinate about the Cross; The Converted Jew in Castle Rackrent
Thesis Committee: Catherine Robson, Peter Dale, Gregory Dobbins

Melissa Jane Strong, M.A. 2004
     Thesis Title: "Does a Girl Never have a Sphere of her Own?" Feminist Space, Lesbian Desire, and the New Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
     Herland
     Thesis Committee: Elizabeth Freeman, Evan Watkins, Dianne Macleod

2005

Celeste Marie Cruz, M.A. 2005
Thesis Title: The "Gracious Silence" of Displacement: Shakespeare's Virgilia in Rome and On Stage
Thesis Committee: Frances Dolan, Margaret Ferguson, Richard Levin

Jessica Hope Jordan, M.A. 2005
Thesis Title: Adulterous Voices and Slanderous Tongues: Criminal Conversation in The Tragedie of Miriam and Othello
Thesis Committee: Margaret Ferguson, Scott Shershow, Scott Simmon

Nicholas Justin McGee Luker, M.A. 2005
Thesis Title: A Shipwreck of a Relationship: Patronage in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Thesis Committee: Richard Levin, Margaret Ferguson, Alan Williamson

Kathleen O'Brien, M.A. 2005
Thesis Title: "Thou Ill-Formed Offspring of My Feeble Brain": Anne Bradstreet's Monstrous Imagination
Thesis Committee: David Van Leer, Margaret Ferguson, Elizabeth Freeman

Clara S. Van Zanten, M.A. 2005
Thesis Title: Undermining Ecocriticism: Reading the Ecologial Poetics of Brenda Hillman's Cascadia
Thesis Committee: Timothy Morton, Joshua Clover, Elizabeth Freeman

2006

Sean Michael David Allan, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: Bodies and the Machinations of Desire in the Films of Wong Kar-Wai and The Films of Tsai Ming-Liang
Thesis Committee: Scott Simmon, Evan Watkins, Lu Sheldon

Cynthia Degnan, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: David Van Leer, Elizabeth Freeman, Gayatri Gopinath

Valerie Ann Dennis, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: Playing with Demons: Demons and Audience in Medieval Cycle Plays
Thesis Committee: Seeta Chaganti, Frances Dolan, Noah Guynn

Alysia Garrison, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: Timothy Morton, David Simpson, Gregory Dobbins

Kristian Jensen, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: Scott Simmon, Elizabeth Freeman, Michael Ziser

Sarah Juliet Lauro, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: Into the White: A Study of Enjabment and Caesura in a Disabled Poetics
Thesis Committee: Scott Simmon, Joshua Clover, Sandra McPherson

Melanie Christine Madden, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: The Border Gothic in Arturo Islas' The Rain God
Thesis Committee: Desirée Martín, Elizabeth Freeman, Anna Kuhn

Laura Susan Molander, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: The Patient Rewritten: Body Mastery and the Doctor-Patient Relationship
Thesis Committee: Catherine Robson, Colin Milburn, Michael Ziser

Eric O'Brien, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: Timothy Morton, David Simpson, Margaret Ferguson

Genevieve Beach Pearson, M.A. 2006
Thesis Title: "Yet There is Hony in the Meanest Flowres" Muses and Metaphors in the Passion of Lanyer
Thesis Committee: Margaret Ferguson, Frances Dolan, Seeta Chaganti

2007

Ryan Dennis Fong, M.A. 2007
Thesis Title: Ripping the Elizabethan Bodice: Narrating the Tudor Dynasty in Contemporary History and Fiction
Thesis Committee: Frances Dolan, David Simpson, Gayatri Gopinath

Tolly Moseley, M.A. 2007
Thesis Title: (Not Currently Shelved in O'Connor)
Thesis Committee: Dianne Macleod, Frances Dolan, Elizabeth Constable

Esther Man-Wah Pun, M.A. 2007
Thesis Title: 9/11 Children's Literature: When and How is it appropriate to teach about 9/11?
Thesis Committee: Evan Watkins, Yuuko Uchikoshi, Steve Athenases

2008

Jolie Braun, M.A. 2008
Thesis Title: England's Dead: Unmarked Graves, Memorialization and Home in Felicia Hemans's Poetry
Thesis Committee: David Simpson, Elizabeth Constable, Kari Lokke

2010

James Addona, M.A. 2010
Thesis Title: Graffiti and Late Modernism in B.S. Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry
Thesis Committee: Gregory Dobbins, Scott Shershow, John Marx

Valerie Christine Billing, M.A. 2010
Thesis Title: “Treble marriage”: Margaret Cavendish, William Newcastle, and Collaborative Authorship
Thesis Committee: Margaret Ferguson, Richard Levin, Alessa Johns

Claire Anna Dawkins, M.A. 2010
Thesis Title: “I’ll use that tongue I have” Contested Feminine Speech and Genre in The Winter’s Tale
Thesis Committee: Margaret Ferguson, Frances Dolan, Richard Levin

Dyani Johns, M.A. 2010
Thesis Title: “Lat in youre brayn non other fantasie: Problems with Secret-Keeping and Genre in Troilus and Criseyde”
Thesis Committee: Claire Waters, Seeta Chaganti, Margaret Ferguson

Sarah Elizabeth Klotz, M.A. 2010
Thesis Title: The Impact of Contagion on Race and Embodiment in Ludwig von Reizenstein’s The Mysteries of New Orleans”
Thesis Committee: Hsuan Hsu, Mark Jerng, Michael Ziser

Kaitlin Patricia Walker, M.A. 2010
Thesis Title: Embroidering a Transnational Feminist Room of One’s Own: Desire, Labor, and Narrative in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and Caramelo
Thesis Committee: Hsuan Hsu, Desireé Martin, Elizabeth Freeman

Kristin Michelle Wehner, M.A. 2011
Thesis: “Quite Like Old Times”: Jean Rhys, Emily Dickinson, and the Limits of Modernism”
Thesis Committee: Elizabeth C. Miller (chair), Kathleen Frederickson, Joanne Feit Diehl

2013

Ian Afflerbach, M.A. 2013
Thesis: Blind Judgment: Liberalism in the Rhetoric and Reception of Richard Wright’s Native Son
Thesis Committee: Mark Jerng (dir.), Matthew Stratton, Nathan Brown

Collin Davey, M.A. 2013
Thesis: Structure and Love in the Lais of Marie de France
Thesis Committee: Seeta Chaganti (chair), Hsuan Hsu, Matthew Vernon

2014

Emma Krosschell, M.A 2014
Thesis: Native Traces and an "ethereal northern sort" of Maine ideology in Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs
Thesis Committee: Hsuan Hsu (Chair), John Marx, Mark Jerng

2015

Zachary Kissinger, M.A. 2015
Thesis: The Consequences of Paradox: Gravitating Bodies and Spatiotemporality in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
Thesis Committee: Colin Milburn (Chair), Mark Jerng, Desiree Martin

Kimberly Swanberg, M.A. 2015
Thesis: Imagined Spaces and the Limits of Sympathy: Sensibility, Race, and Illness in the Colonial West Indies
Thesis Committee: David Simpson (Chair), Elizabeth Freeman, Christopher Loar

George Vela, M.A. 2015
Thesis: Cast Down Your Bullets Where You Are: Nat Love Works the Western
Thesis Committee: Mark Jerng (Chair), Hsuan Hsu, Scott Simmon

Melissa Wang, M.A 2015
Thesis: An Indictment of Whiteness: Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee
Thesis Committee: Mark Jerng (Chair), Parama Roy, Wendy Ho

Doctoral Dissertation Collection Dissertations & Master's Theses

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