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Pages
- Title
- I Would Rather Talk About Persimmons.
- Creator
- Feimi, Mary, McKay, Becka, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
I Would Rather Talk About Persimmons aims to understand the roots of trauma, addiction, and lineage. A discovery of what it means to be half American, half Albanian. A discovery of loving the people in our lives no matter how imperfect, no matter how painful no matter the sacrifice. The work seeks to understand the existence of joy and pain in the ways they work together and by doing so we see that emotions of the human experience are not linear, rather chaotic.
- Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014208
- Subject Headings
- Creative writing, Poetry
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- FABRIC, AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LYRIC: REPRINTING ‘AGENCY’.
- Creator
- Martin, Damara Christine, Furman, Andrew, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
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This dissertation is an anthropological lyric, a work that utilizes various modes of writing to examine and reveal the present-day predicament of the African-American woman. By engaging with transatlantic diaspora studies and Black feminist scholarship, particularly Zora Neale Hurston’s literary and linguistic contributions, herstory is bridged with the contemporary moment, allowing for an intricate and intimate dialogue between my ancestors and me. Providing a space for nontraditional voices...
Show moreThis dissertation is an anthropological lyric, a work that utilizes various modes of writing to examine and reveal the present-day predicament of the African-American woman. By engaging with transatlantic diaspora studies and Black feminist scholarship, particularly Zora Neale Hurston’s literary and linguistic contributions, herstory is bridged with the contemporary moment, allowing for an intricate and intimate dialogue between my ancestors and me. Providing a space for nontraditional voices exposes the divergent and intersecting conflicts that have and continue to arise for the descendants of slaves. American culture is founded on war capitalism and an Africanist presence (a liberal modernity). Black women experience alarmingly high rates of discrimination, repression, oppression, and exploitation; fittingly, this work explores how haunting and trauma impact our livelihood and identity formation and functioning. Racial, monopolistic, and militaristic violences are exposed through the (re)telling of our stories, because the aftermath of colonial conquest and settlement most directly impacts our personhood. These stories portray the dynamic ways we have suffered and thrived in the face of imperialistic rule. Finally, this project aims to recompense my ancestors and me by reprinting our agencies through new forms of language. This lyric becomes a form of feminist knowledge production that questions hegemonic epistemologies by applying various narrations. An intersubjective and reflexive account of truth grapples with linguistic hegemony and other forms of identity politics. Diasporic subjects “speak for themselves,” acting to revoke the systems and events, past and present, that strive to maintain their liminal group status.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014143
- Subject Headings
- Writing, Creative writing, Orality, African-American studies
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- SELF-TOUCH IN HENRY JAMES'S MAJOR PHASE.
- Creator
- Martin, James, Furman, Andrew, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
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The three novels of Henry James’s “major phase” have alienated many readers in James’s own time and today. I draw on the philosophical school of phenomenology, in particular the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and a recent extension by the philosopher Richard Kearney, to suggest that a lack of self-touch by characters in these novels has contributed in a significant but previously unnoticed way to many readers’ sense that these novels feel frustratingly intangible. I make a comparison to the...
Show moreThe three novels of Henry James’s “major phase” have alienated many readers in James’s own time and today. I draw on the philosophical school of phenomenology, in particular the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and a recent extension by the philosopher Richard Kearney, to suggest that a lack of self-touch by characters in these novels has contributed in a significant but previously unnoticed way to many readers’ sense that these novels feel frustratingly intangible. I make a comparison to the instances of self-touch in other Edwardian novels to underline the difference. I suggest that James is putting forward a model of “middle-distance intimacy” in which intimates orbit each other at a fixed distance, neither coming closer nor moving further away. This kind of intimacy, for James, privileges the eye that sees from across the room over the hand that touches from up close. While this model of intimacy perplexed many readers in James’s time and later, it is a valuable exploration of a different yet—for some—no less satisfactory kind of emotional life.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014144
- Subject Headings
- James, Henry, 1843-1916, James, Henry, 1843-1916--Criticism and interpretation, Comparative studies
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Self-Gardening.
- Creator
- Reeves, Naudia, McKay, Becka, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
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Self-Gardening seeks to explore the oftentime selfish rationale behind seemingly selfless decisions. In dissecting my motivation, I found insecurity. I don't garden for the joy of it, I garden to feel valuable. Beneath my desire for children, lives the terrifying hesitation of putting more bad into the world. While this thesis does look to shine a light on uncomfortability and insecurity, it has no interest in poking or prodding them. Acknowledgement and awareness are enough.
- Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014194
- Subject Headings
- Creative writing, Poetry
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- READING TRANSNESS IN AI NARRATIVES: HOW ARTIFICIALITY CONSTRUCTS TRANSGENDER IDENTITY.
- Creator
- Sheridan, Tristan, Miller, Timothy, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
Transgender identity and the concept of artificial intelligence are constructed and understood through dichotomies such as natural/unnatural and real/artificial, with each dichotomy informing the other; what is “unnatural” is often deemed to be a mimicry of the “natural,” therefore a false representation of what is “real.” By surveying various classic SF texts and their portrayal of AI characters through the lens of transgender studies—drawing upon scholars including Susan Stryker, Sandy...
Show moreTransgender identity and the concept of artificial intelligence are constructed and understood through dichotomies such as natural/unnatural and real/artificial, with each dichotomy informing the other; what is “unnatural” is often deemed to be a mimicry of the “natural,” therefore a false representation of what is “real.” By surveying various classic SF texts and their portrayal of AI characters through the lens of transgender studies—drawing upon scholars including Susan Stryker, Sandy Stone, and Florence Ashley—I assert that artificiality itself is a construction formed by cisnormative ideals and standards to exclude certain others (namely, transgender people) that requires reframing. I examine how these representations in works such as Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2 reveal and articulate the constructed dichotomies and cultural narratives which surround transgender identity, as well as how contemporary, trans-authored works such as Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous can offer tools for responding to and reconfiguring those dichotomies.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014196
- Subject Headings
- Transgender fiction, Artificial intelligence in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- NAMELESS IN Z.
- Creator
- Salazar, J. Q., Furman, Andrew, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
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The stories in Nameless in Z take place in the fictional city of Z, located on the northwestern coast of the US. The throughline of this collection tracks alternate versions of the same male narrator as he subconsciously pursues relationships in an attempt to supplant his own destructive addictions. The first half of this book dwells more in the relationship aspect, while the second half owns up to the consequences of the first half. Each story involves the titular city tormenting the...
Show moreThe stories in Nameless in Z take place in the fictional city of Z, located on the northwestern coast of the US. The throughline of this collection tracks alternate versions of the same male narrator as he subconsciously pursues relationships in an attempt to supplant his own destructive addictions. The first half of this book dwells more in the relationship aspect, while the second half owns up to the consequences of the first half. Each story involves the titular city tormenting the narrator in a way that physically and/or spiritually manifests his specific addiction. Speculative fiction elements hang around the fringes of each of these stories, typically through different forms of the supernatural. The purpose of this work is to give a voice to underrepresented aspects of addiction and to disentangle my own demons; the ones I’ve inherited as well as the ones I’ve created as a direct result.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014157
- Subject Headings
- Creative writing, Speculative fiction
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Letters for Burning.
- Creator
- Precanico, Joseph Dante, McKay, Becka, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
This creative thesis is a collection of poems and lyric forms that explore queer identity and difference through the fraught navigation of heteronormative spaces and institutions such as the American school system, the Catholic Church, and marriage. Included are letters-as-poems, journal fragments, and extended lyrical sequences that serve to highlight the significance of community and chosen family to queer identity. When they aren’t addressed to an imagined recipient, they are dedicated to...
Show moreThis creative thesis is a collection of poems and lyric forms that explore queer identity and difference through the fraught navigation of heteronormative spaces and institutions such as the American school system, the Catholic Church, and marriage. Included are letters-as-poems, journal fragments, and extended lyrical sequences that serve to highlight the significance of community and chosen family to queer identity. When they aren’t addressed to an imagined recipient, they are dedicated to or in conversation with friends, family, lovers, strangers, past selves, and other writers. Although the three sections (LETTERS, FIRE, and HEARTH) that demarcate this work chart a thematic chronology that organizes stages of a queer life, memory isn’t cleanly linear. Poems pour into and echo each other, signifying embodied history in the present and the past’s bearings on queer (re)imaginings of the future.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014152
- Subject Headings
- Creative writing, Poems
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- GOTHIC CONFESSIONS: CORRUPTION IN THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY AND OSCAR WILDE’S INTENTIONS.
- Creator
- Prochak, Kennedy R., Buckton, Oliver, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
In 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in Lippincott’s Magazine, and the fate of late-nineteenth century Victorian Britain was forever changed. While over a century's worth of studies have been conducted on aestheticism, the novel’s moral story, and whether or not Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde are both gay figures, this thesis examines the possible intentions behind the writing of Wilde’s novel. Wilde lived during the time of the 1885 Labouchere Amendment, –under which he himself...
Show moreIn 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in Lippincott’s Magazine, and the fate of late-nineteenth century Victorian Britain was forever changed. While over a century's worth of studies have been conducted on aestheticism, the novel’s moral story, and whether or not Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde are both gay figures, this thesis examines the possible intentions behind the writing of Wilde’s novel. Wilde lived during the time of the 1885 Labouchere Amendment, –under which he himself would be prosecuted for “gross indecency”– making the novel's contents risky. Alongside this amendment, there were already existing instances of criminalized homosexuality such as the Cleveland Street Scandal, making the novel’s publication all the more dangerous for Wilde. After publication, Wilde received numerous negative reviews attacking his novel and himself; even today, reviewers and critics have not fully understood why Wilde produced a novel with such an apparent and perilous homoerotic theme.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014153
- Subject Headings
- Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900, Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. Picture of Dorian Gray
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Imagine Me Like That.
- Creator
- Wilcox, Kate, McKay, Becka, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
Imagine Me Like That offers an exploration into an experience of one coming to terms with one’s unique trans and queer identity through ecological and nature-based connections, as well as through interpersonal connections. This collection utilizes both poetry and lyric essay to offer insights into the joys of queer ways of living, while also acknowledging the difficulties of occupying a marginalized identity. Ultimately, Imagine Me Like That seeks to affirm and acknowledge the multi-faceted...
Show moreImagine Me Like That offers an exploration into an experience of one coming to terms with one’s unique trans and queer identity through ecological and nature-based connections, as well as through interpersonal connections. This collection utilizes both poetry and lyric essay to offer insights into the joys of queer ways of living, while also acknowledging the difficulties of occupying a marginalized identity. Ultimately, Imagine Me Like That seeks to affirm and acknowledge the multi-faceted modes of queer existence.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014201
- Subject Headings
- Creative writing, Poetry
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- FROM PAINESVILLE, OHIO: A COLLECTION OF PLACES.
- Creator
- Melnick, Lorien Rae, Bucak, Ayşe, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
This thesis is a collection of essays related to place, including meditations on different landscapes, examinations of historic place-based research, and an exploration of environmental and cultural issues.
- Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014147
- Subject Headings
- Essays, Creative writing
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The Disembodied Voices of Remembrance: Male Trauma through the Aquatic and the Female Body in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides.
- Creator
- Blankman, Erika, Hagood, Taylor, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
In William Faulkner’s the Sound and the Fury, many scholars have debated about Caddy as Eve, the functionality of hermeneutic structure in relation to narrative function, and the use of Edenic scenery as a metaphor for Quentin Compsons’ world coming to an end. However, there is yet to be an analysis of Faulkner’s text in relation to trauma and ecocriticism and its influence on later Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides. It is through the female and the aquatic bodies that widen the interpretation...
Show moreIn William Faulkner’s the Sound and the Fury, many scholars have debated about Caddy as Eve, the functionality of hermeneutic structure in relation to narrative function, and the use of Edenic scenery as a metaphor for Quentin Compsons’ world coming to an end. However, there is yet to be an analysis of Faulkner’s text in relation to trauma and ecocriticism and its influence on later Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides. It is through the female and the aquatic bodies that widen the interpretation of Faulkner’s exploration of Southern male identity in relation to trauma, water, and memory its reflection onto the Southern environment. In Conroy’s text, he mirrors the way in which trauma is explored through the idea of water and the Faulknerian narrative technique, the stream of consciousness, which is activated only with the remembrance of the sister and her social ruin. Faulkner and Conroy delve into the South and communicate it as a site of decay, ruin, and a liminal space that inevitably exposes one to trauma. The men within Faulkner’s and Conroy’s texts must sift through their memories, both present and past, to define and identify the wound that disrupts their psyche [and its consequences]. This thesis aims to unpack Faulkner’s utilization of the female, terrestrial, and aquatic bodies as spaces that communicate male trauma. This thesis aims to suggest that, as an echo of Faulkner, Conroy’s text expands and further adapts the canon of Southern literature that takes an ecological approach to explore trauma in the form of water and the female body. This analysis aims to propose that the construction of Faulkner’s Southern ecology and its intersection between ecocriticism and trauma studies in relation to water influenced this approach and framework for Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014170
- Subject Headings
- Faulkner, William, 1897-1962. Sound and the fury, Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation, Conroy, Pat--Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- THE UNFILTERED RAW PUBLIC CYBORGS THAT DRINK RAW BREAST MILK.
- Creator
- Mudafort, Nannette Marie, Mason, Julia, Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
The commodification of the female body is a vital concern that can be seen throughout history from the rhetoric consumed by societies. This thesis will give a rhetorical analysis of the websites of the milk banks of Prolacta Bioscience, Medolac, and The Human Milk Banking Association of North America. This will demonstrate how commodification, erasure, and disembodiment occurs to the mothers who donate their milk. I will examine how each organization offers up mothers, their milk, and infants...
Show moreThe commodification of the female body is a vital concern that can be seen throughout history from the rhetoric consumed by societies. This thesis will give a rhetorical analysis of the websites of the milk banks of Prolacta Bioscience, Medolac, and The Human Milk Banking Association of North America. This will demonstrate how commodification, erasure, and disembodiment occurs to the mothers who donate their milk. I will examine how each organization offers up mothers, their milk, and infants as complete separate entities. My argument will propose a new metaphor I will define as the unfiltered raw public. I will demonstrate how this metaphor might better serve to restructure rhetoric to tether the mothers back to their bodies more sustainably for a cyborg future. The unfiltered raw public seeks to shift future discourse to reflect one more inclusive to difference rather than a future that commodifies the female body.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014188
- Subject Headings
- Rhetoric, Metaphor
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- LEXICAL OBSOLESCENCE IN LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH: A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC INVESTIGATION.
- Creator
- Harrison, Rachel L., Leeds, John C., Florida Atlantic University, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
Lexical obsolescence is a topic whose study spans centuries, and yet it is not well-understood. Variously termed lexical mortality, lexical death, and lexical loss, among other names, the phenomenon has been described as both a product and a process, but the scholarship on how and why expressions go out of use has, until recently, been sporadic and sparse. The last few years have seen attempts to situate obsolescence among other processes of language change, but these have mostly focused on...
Show moreLexical obsolescence is a topic whose study spans centuries, and yet it is not well-understood. Variously termed lexical mortality, lexical death, and lexical loss, among other names, the phenomenon has been described as both a product and a process, but the scholarship on how and why expressions go out of use has, until recently, been sporadic and sparse. The last few years have seen attempts to situate obsolescence among other processes of language change, but these have mostly focused on obsolescing constructions in modern languages. The present study, by contrast, investigates words that went obsolete in Late Middle English, suggesting a methodological approach designed to overcome the challenge of finding that which is no longer there, namely the consultation of a comprehensive online historical dictionary, and proposing an explanatory framework within the tradition of onomasiology and semasiology that positions obsolescence as a diachronic result of the habitual and contextually driven corporate deselection of linguistic constructions.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014218
- Subject Headings
- Onomasiology, Semantics, Linguistics
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Testing Momentum Enhancement Of Ribbon Fin Based Propulsion Using A Robotic Model With An Adjustable Body.
- Creator
- English, Ian L., Curet, Oscar M., Florida Atlantic University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering
- Abstract/Description
-
A robotic ribbon fin with twelve independent fin rays, elastic fin membrane, and a body of adjustable height was developed for this thesis specifically to test the 1990 theory put forth by Lighthill and Blake that a multiplicative propulsive enhancement exists for Gymnotiform and Balisiform swimmers based on the ratio of body and fin heights. Until now, the theory has not been experimentally tested. Proof of such a momentum enhancement could have a profound effect on unmanned underwater...
Show moreA robotic ribbon fin with twelve independent fin rays, elastic fin membrane, and a body of adjustable height was developed for this thesis specifically to test the 1990 theory put forth by Lighthill and Blake that a multiplicative propulsive enhancement exists for Gymnotiform and Balisiform swimmers based on the ratio of body and fin heights. Until now, the theory has not been experimentally tested. Proof of such a momentum enhancement could have a profound effect on unmanned underwater vehicle design and shed light on the evolutionary advantage to body-fin ratios found in nature, shown as optimal for momentum enhancement in Lighthill and Blake’s theory. Thrust tests for various body heights were conducted in a recirculating flow tank at different flow speeds and fin flapping frequencies. When comparing different body heights at different frequencies to a ’no-body’ thrust test case at each frequency no momentum enhancement factor was found. Data in this thesis indicate there is no momentum enhancement factor due to the presence of a body on top of an undulating fin.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004682, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004682
- Subject Headings
- Animal locomotion, Animal mechanics, Biomechanics, Computers, Special purpose, Oceanographic submersibles, Robotics
- Format
- Document (PDF)