Theses and Dissertations
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Item Open Access "Too disconnected/too bound up": the paradox of identity in Mercé Rodoreda's The time of the doves(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1991) Short, Kayann, author; Freeman, Marion, committee member; Mitchell, Carol, committee member; Boyer, Harriet, 1936-, committee memberFeminist theory has shown how women's lives are paradoxically both marginal to, yet affected by, hegemonic discourses of power. However, as long as women's experiences are viewed singularly along an axis of sexual difference, placing paradox as a trope for female identity risks reinscribing a closed system of oppression based only on male-female relations, thereby foreclosing possibilities for oppositional strategies organized around intersecting locations of resistance. Mercé Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves, originally published in Catalan as La Plaça del Diamant in 1962, portrays a working-class woman's life in Barcelona from the onset of the Second Republic to the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a period she calls "a piece of history." Natalia's presence as both "articulate" narrator and "inarticulate" character embodies her paradoxical position as both outside and inside discourses of gender, class, and national oppression. Attention to the specific cultural contexts within which women's lives are both externally constructed and internalized allows a recognition of Natalia's silence and inwardness oppositional strategies of survival rather than as qualities of limitation and alienation.Item Restricted The disciple of because and other stories(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Backens, Nicole, author; Doenges, Judy, advisor; Becker, Leslee, committee member; Bernasek, Alexandra, committee memberThese six stories explore common notions of polite behavior, particularly social expectations in the Midwest. Here, women (and one man) of various ages feel pigeonholed into a set of anticipated actions that feel, ultimately, false. When faced with the crisis of choice, many of these characters sense a distinct tension between their own emotions and impulses and the decisions that are expected of them by their families and peers. These people—from an adolescent girl to an old woman to a teenaged boy—handle these crises in different ways, sometimes by defying convention, and at other times by approaching traditional roles with an almost frenzied, panicked enthusiasm, thereby reinventing such roles in often surprising ways.Item Open Access Work of art: a collection of stories and essays(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2005) Franck, Judea, author; Doenges, Judy, 1959-, advisor; Calderazzo, John, committee member; Callahan, Gerald N., 1946-, committee memberThis collection of work, composed over a period of three years, contains stories and essays that explore the emotional struggles of people in fictional and real-life experiences. These stories and essays are concerned with the idea of resilience -- how people and characters reshape their lives after fracturing events. It is a collection influenced by the idea of loss, but also by the hope of resurgence. It details the ways in which characters and people can be hurt, maimed, brokenhearted, and yet find a way to recover.Item Restricted Shuffle and draw(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Dial, Tabitha, author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, 1973-, advisor; Steensen, Sasha, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee memberUsing my own worn Universal-Waite Tarot deck, I wrote a large number of poems while an MFA candidate at Colorado State University. "Five of Pentacles". "The Hanged Man" and "The Empress" are ekphrastic and attempt to verbalize Tarot cards of the same names. Storylines within this thesis began with the Arms suit, a suit created after reading Barbara Walker's study of her Tarot, The Secrets o/the Tarot: Origins. History, and Symbolism. Each of her suits developed myths and symbols, using a direction I wanted to take, after straight ekphrasis of most of the 78 cards produced interesting writing, but poems that were not full and provocative. I came to produce my own versions of-other major arcana cards while studying Walker and others. Only one Cups poem emerges in this thesis. Because the Cups represent the emotions, the implication might be that Tarot-interpretations of emotional maturity are stunted in my collection because there is only one Cup cards/poem. But the poem remains true to the original ekphrastic spirit of my work. The creation of my own poems/suits, some that address the poem reader/Tarot reader, fill in for Cups psyche.Item Open Access Rhetorics of disgust and love in the Belgian colonization of the Congo(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Kiser, Karyn Elaine, author; Sloane, Sarah, advisor; Sorensen, Leif, committee member; Anderson, Karrin, committee memberAs colonial and postcolonial studies insist, the Western legacy of colonization has had— and continues to have—a profound impact on the composition of subject positions and the subsequent distribution of power in Western civilization. Connected to the colonizer/colonized binary produced through colonial involvement is the reason/emotion binary; Western concepts of civilization and primitivism are closely related to the reason/emotion binary as reason and emotional restraint have historically been markers of civilization while the Western notion of the primitive includes emotional excess to the point of animality. Given this link between reason, emotion, and colonization, recent emotion studies scholarship that seeks to unpack the reason/emotion binary has much to offer colonial studies. One such emotion theorist is Sara Ahmed, who in The Cultural Politics of Emotion investigates the manner in which emotion produces and sustains social meaning to construct subjectivities. The intersection of this scholarship and colonial studies, then, lies in emotion’s role in composing colonial subjectivities. My aim in this thesis is to explore that intersection, investigating how emotion operates as an organizing principle within the colonizer/colonized binary and, more specifically, in the historical moment of Belgium’s King Leopold II and his campaign for Belgian colonial involvement in Africa. My focus throughout this research rests on rhetorics of disgust and love, two seemingly incompatible emotions. In traditional conceptions, the former involves a strong bodily revulsion and the latter an equally strong affection and desire. However, within Ahmed's framework of relational emotions and sustained affective investments, disgust and love operate similarly to identify objects of emotion and, in so doing, allow for emerging subjects. Close attention to these emotions in colonial texts from Belgium’s Congo Free State offer s new and instructive ways of understanding the intersecting relationships within this discourse. Despite Leopold’s international notoriety in the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries, through a series of complex historical and political phenomena, the story of the founding of the Congo Free State and its aftermath has been largely erased from the Western historical narrative. In the interests of exploring the largely untold story of the Congo, this thesis is a close textual reading of historical documents from Leopold, the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, and the lawyer Henry Wellington Waek, which support colonization, as well as documents from Congo Reform Association leader E. D. Morel. My ultimate goal in analyzing these texts is to offer insights into rhetorics of disgust and love beyond the immediate historical situation while at the same time drawing long overdue attention to this colonial circumstance.Item Open Access There ain't no plantations in Pittsburgh: glimpses of the African diaspora in the plays of August Wilson(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Hull, Brian J., author; Thompson, Deborah, advisor; Harding, Blane, committee member; Hentschell, Roze, committee member"There Ain’t no Plantations in Pittsburgh" addresses questions of African identity versus European identity for African Americans as addressed by the plays of August Wilson. Whereas characters who embrace an African ethos in Wilson's plays are prominent, they are not necessarily more enlightened than their apparently less African counterparts. Instead of resorting to overly simplistic formulas for black liberation, Wilson, in plays like Seven Guitars, Ma Ramey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and Two Trains Running, depicts the complex psychological landscape of twentieth century America where African roots prove elusive and the "names of the gods have been forgotten." In Wilson's dramaturgy echoes of the brutal history of slavery and the Middle Passage coincide with the burgeoning possibilities of renewed dignity and a distinctive African American voice. History constantly interacts with the present and cannot be seen as finished or insignificant but instead is a vital part of an ever evolving reality where the past most be confronted to make room for the future.Item Open Access Built on emotion: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the emotional work of Uncle Tom's cabin(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Roller, James Joseph, author; Ronda, Bruce, advisor; Gudmestad, Robert, committee member; Thompson, Deborah, committee memberExcept for the Bible, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the largest selling book during the nineteenth century. Modern emotion theorists have produced extensive scholarship exploring the ways in which Uncle Tom's Cabin functioned within antebellum America, and the ways in which it changed the American slavery debate. Using emotion theory, this thesis explains how Stowe’s family history and regional location contributed to her ability to address a variety of audiences with her novel. It describes how Uncle Tom’s Cabin employs many rhetorical strategies from American antislavery writing. It examines the ways in which the text was received in American society with a particular emphasis on the book’s contemporary reviews and it shows how Stowe’s approach to writing changed in the aftermath of the novel’s release.Item Open Access Rethinking avoidance of English phrasal verbs by Arab learners(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Abu Jamil, Basem Saleh, author; Flahive, Douglas, advisor; Berry, Nancy, committee member; Grim, Frederique, committee memberThere is a long-standing controversy about the causes of underproduction (avoidance) of structures in second language learning/acquisition. A significant field of research has focused on one lexicalized phrase, the English phrasal verb. The present study explores the cultural dimensions of the avoidance of English phrasal verbs among 160 Arab learners of English. It examines the impact of educational background (EFL, ESL), levels of proficiency (advanced, intermediate), and the inherent semantic complexity of phrasal verb (literal, semi-transparent, figurative) on the avoidance of phrasal verbs. It also explores the role the environmental background plays in comprehending phrasal verbs. Although Arab learners in the study tended to under-use English phrasal verbs, there were significant developmental differences ranging from avoidance to nonavoidance based on participants’ educational background and level of proficiency and the semantic properties of phrasal verbs. This study calls into question straightforward interpretation of the avoidance phenomenon. Although these findings support previous studies’ results, they do not support previous studies that show that L1-L2 differences might motivate learners to develop a genuine avoidance; Arab learners in this study did not avoid literal phrasal verbs. The study offers interesting clues to the success of advanced ESL students in learning and mastering phrasal verbs.Item Open Access Whiteness, anger, and anti-racist pedagogy: toward a raced theory of emotion(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Earle, Christopher, author; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, advisor; Browne, Kate, committee memberThis thesis examines the political and rhetorical functions of white racial anger in the anti-racist first-year composition course. Elizabeth Spelman poses a generative question: "[w]hy has anger been appropriated by and for dominant group or beings when in so many other ways emotions are thought to be the province of subordinate groups?" (264). Further, this thesis questions why the anger of white men has become so common and persuasive in and through racial discourses? To address these questions and to explore pedagogical strategies to address white racial anger in the anti-racist composition classroom, this thesis seeks to investigate and build upon the connections and overlaps (or gaps) between anti-racist pedagogy and critical emotion studies.Item Open Access Interpreting exile and double consciousness in conjunction with V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Paudel, Pradeep, author; Frank, Katherine, advisor; Ribadeneira, Alegria, committee member; Morales, Juan, committee memberWritten in multi-genre form, this thesis interweaves the personal and academic writing by negotiating among various forms of genres, such as non-fictional prose narrative, epistolary writing, poetry, interior monologue, short fiction and literary criticism to study exile and double consciousness. The genres employed in the thesis are reflective of the ruptured double consciousness, and they also give expression to different emotional instances caused by the sense of exile, dislocation and alienation. The core philosophy of multi-genre writing is to express what is inexpressible through traditional expository narrative and to engage the readers by using vivid expressionist writing. The personal writing in the thesis offers a personal narrative of exile, and the academic writing studies V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men and provides an analysis of exile and its various ramifications, most particularly, double consciousness. By contextualizing the personal experience with the textual analysis on theoretical ground, the thesis tries to develop a synthetic resolution to the traumatic experience of cultural and geographical dislocation.Item Open Access Moving toward a newer understanding of writing anxiety in adult students using a critical emotion studies framework(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Smith, Carmody Leerssen, author; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; Davies, Timothy, committee memberWriting anxiety has been a part of composition scholarship for many years, but the research has failed to adequately address the effect it has on adult students. Early research on writing anxiety was primarily cognitively based and focused on quantitative data analysis such as Daly and Miller’s Writing Apprehension Assessment from 1975. These cognitively based research strategies are useful and valuable to composition and for understanding writing anxiety, but in this thesis I argue that it is now time we move beyond the notion that writing anxiety is an internal, mental barrier to writing success and instead look at the causes as well as strategies for alleviating writing anxiety through a critical emotion studies lens. By using a critical emotion studies framework, we can begin to understand writing anxiety as a social and cultural construct that is created through the individual’s relationship with writing.Item Open Access Performance and pedagogy in the 21st century: theoretical and practical comparisons of composition and the theatre(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Heedt-Moosman, Dorothy, author; Frank, Katherine, advisor; Souder, Donna, committee member; Eskew, Doug, committee memberIn this thesis, I explore the shared exigencies of composition studies and the theatre as a method for addressing the problems inherent to first year composition programs. More specifically, I consider those issues that arise in mid-to-open enrollment institutions. I argue that composition instructors should use the practical approaches of the theatre as a means to 1) improve instructor attitudes and teacher-student communication; 2) embrace and effectively use technology, not as the defining pedagogical tool but as a way to maintain the relevance for composition students; 3) connect classroom practices to real-world purposes. I suggest that both composition studies and the theatre are rooted in the process of translating thoughts and feelings into action, resulting in effective communication to an audience. These aims are reflected by Kenneth Burke, whose explorations of motives and human communication and dramatism are applicable to composition pedagogy as well as connected to theatrical principles. I argue for an approach to teaching first year composition that would include the use of Burke’s pentad of human motives (with his inclusion of “attitude” as a sixth element) as a means for instructors to assess and revise their motives and perspectives as compositionists. I further contend that Burke’s pentad serves as a means to guide students towards more effective methods of rhetorical analysis and composition.Item Open Access Voices that resonate: popular music subverting and reinforcing the rape script(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Davies, Ashley Marie, author; Thompson, Deborah, advisor; Coke, Pamela, committee member; Alexander, Ruth, committee memberAs case after case of rape comes before the court and different prevention policies are tried, scholars and activists are frustrated by the continual prominence of sexual violence. Many believe that if our society viewed rape as a serious offence and prosecuted it correctly, fewer people would rape. Along with the number of sexual abuse cases, representations of rape, or rape narratives as I will call them, have infiltrated mainstream media; film, television, and music all share the horrific tales of rape victims and, in some cases, seem to uphold feminist standards by giving a voice to those who have previously been silenced both by the legal system and societal gender expectations. While scholarship has made the instances of sexual violence more visible and examined many aspects of rape (motivations, myths, the trauma of the victim, etc.), there is still much to be done to challenge the deeply entrenched rape culture we live in. In order to do so we must see how rape is constituted through discourse and how representations of rape affect those discourses. To see how rape narratives simultaneously perpetuate and question the authority that makes sexual violence possible, this work uses post-structural analysis to examine how rape is represented in popular music texts.Item Open Access Presentation of the warrior hero and the symbolism of death in Apocalypse Now, Black Hawk Down, and Stop-Loss: a study of script and film texts(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Kelly, Fern Anita, author; Lamanna, Carrie A., advisor; Kiefer, Kathleen, committee member; Burgchardt, Carl, committee memberThis thesis discusses the presentation of archetypal characters and the depiction of death in both the scripts and films for Apocalypse Now, Black Hawk Down and Stop-Loss. The project's main focus is on how ideals are presented differently at different time periods and because of shifting public opinions of a conflict. It emphasizes the difference between the post-Vietnam War film and the post-9/11 War film in their presentation of American ideals through their main character and depiction of death. This thesis also suggests a curriculum using the War film genre in a composition classroom to encourage student's analysis of script and film texts and aid in the production of multimodal texts.Item Open Access Reconstructing the embodied feminine: sexuality, postcolonialism and revolt against Victorian morality in Olive Schreiner's the Story of an African Farm(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Wickizer, Kristina Rhiannon, author; Frank, Katherine, advisor; Souder, Donna, committee member; Taylor, Ted, committee memberIn this thesis, I argue that Olive Schreiner’s 1883 novel. The Story of an African Farm, though most often dismissed as an example of “New Woman” literature, is, in fact, a scathing look at sexuality in a postcolonial society. Moreover, by understanding the role, or lack thereof, that sexuality had in Victorian society, modern scholars can see the ways that sexuality and an individual’s expression of it are still limited by socially constructed ideologies. In the first section, titled a “Review of Literature,” I quote Edward Said’s argument that postcolonialism needs a variety of voices in order to better understand the effects of imperialism on the colonized. Consequently, The Story of an African Farm is important to the field, because it offers the experience of a white English woman living in South Africa. I then show how Olive Schreiner’s novel added to the discussion and the rise of the New Woman novel. Discussing these two different literary traditions allows me to contextualize the importance of imperialism and the “new” feminism in my reading of The Story of an African Farm. In the second section, titled "^Argument,'' I argue that Schreiner’s depiction of her characters’ sexuality allows us to discuss the societal limitations placed on an individual’s sexuality. I conclude by summarizing the ways in which sexuality is still a personal construct that society tries to control and label. I then suggest future implications for how the limitations of gender and sexuality can be discussed in regards to feminist and imperialist studies today.Item Restricted barbarous(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Dempsey, Sunshine, author; Cooperman, Matthew, advisor; Beachy-Quick, Dan, committee member; Dicesare, Catherine, committee memberWhat barbarous is primarily concerned with, as a book of poetry, is a formal representation of the disintegration and recreation of the speaker’s psyche. A more stable identity, that with which the speaker begins the manuscript, is represented by a more stable form, that of the prose block, which will gradually evolve into a more “fractured” structure, that of the “spatial” or “field” work. This hybridization of form is deliberate in that it should most aptly capture the disorientation of identity, the “breakage” that occurs to the speaker when he/she loses (and attempts to regain) a sense of “wholeness.” In this manuscript, the loss of identity is also represented metaphorically by an inability to speak, or to be understood. This loss of voice is a displacement to the speaker, and is therefore furthered by fracture and negative space. When there is no voice, there is no language, no written word, and therefore the silence of the empty page.Item Open Access Rhetorics of silence/listening and teaching trauma: Holocaust testimony in the composition classroom(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Miller, Teva, author; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; Alexander, Ruth, committee memberMany scholars and educators who have taught Holocaust testimony and literature in their classes have offered numerous pedagogical methods to outline best practices, ethical concerns, and student engagement. While some of these methodologies are particularly instructive for the first year college composition course, most do not address the gaps or silences found in Holocaust testimony. Other pedagogical methods tend to lack the affective component that is an unavoidable part of teaching trauma texts. In this thesis, I offer a heuristic that can be used in the composition classroom to engage with Holocaust testimony. I argue that there is a need for this heuristic because it not only attends to the affective economies that are vital and inseparable from reading and writing about Holocaust testimony, but also because it re-privileges silence as a powerful rhetorical act made by both survivors and secondary witnesses. It also works to destabilize and disrupt “sentimental” student responses that tend to thwart invested critical analysis and which often lead to dehumanizing depictions of victim as well as potential misappropriations of a victim’s or survivor’s words.Item Open Access Psychological principles and pedagogical possibilities: toward a new theory of motivation in the composition classroom(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Van Winkle, Kevin W., author; Frank, Katherine, advisor; Souder, Donna, committee member; Eskew, Doug, committee memberDespite its importance, the issue of a student’s motivation to engage in the composition process is rarely discussed in composition theory. As a first step towards correcting the absence of motivation as a topic in composition theory, this thesis advances the notion that more attention should be paid to what can motivate students to engage in the composition process. The central tenet of this thesis is that students motivated to write are more likely to become better writers and fulfill the expectations composition instructors hold for them. Furthermore, the key to motivating students to engage in the composition process requires composition instructors make connections between the use of composition and the students’ original goals for entering the university. This thesis puts forth the argument that rhetoric, as learned and developed through composition studies, is the most useful aspect of composition studies for students, and therefore the teaching of rhetoric in the composition classroom is most likely to motivate students to write. As a result of the dearth of research and discussion on the topic of student motivation in the composition classroom, it was necessary to search outside the composition theory field and look at what others, namely psychologists, have to say about motivation as it relates to individuals and their participation in academic endeavors. Lastly, this thesis makes suggestions for future areas of study as related to student motivation in the composition classroom.Item Open Access The lion, the old lady, and the golden thread: ontological and rhetorical dissonance in the children's literature of George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Sundermann, Isaac R., author; Frank, Katherine, advisor; Souder, Donna, committee member; Taylor, Ted, committee memberStarting from the premise that at least some works of children’s literature are written with the motive of engendering religious conversion or de-conversion among their readers, this thesis sets out to establish the rhetorical differences among these types of works as a basis for a uniquely religious form of criticism. To demonstrate this method, a focus is placed on the two most popular children’s books of George MacDonald (The Princess and the Goblin) and C.S. Lewis (The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe). The first section of this thesis consists of a review of relevant literature related to the intertwining of literary reputations between MacDonald and Lewis. The second section of this thesis argues that the respective soteriologies (salvation narratives) of MacDonald and Lewis act as windows into the ontological assumptions of each author. By first looking at these foundational assumptions, the rhetorical framework of each text becomes evident. These frameworks, explored through the lens of Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad, provide a basis for the differentiation of the two authors. They also locate the crux of Lewis’s misreading of his literary precursor MacDonald. Specifically, it is the universalism of George MacDonald (i.e. his belief that all will be saved) that creates a profound dissonance with the thought of Lewis, who held to a more orthodox narrative in which all humans ultimately arrive at a state of eternal damnation or eternal bliss.Item Open Access Integrated reading and writing in community colleges: a qualitative study of developmental literacy education(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Church, Martin A., author; Doe, Sue, advisor; Kiefer, Kathleen, committee member; Davies, Timothy, committee memberThe following thesis investigates the potential benefits that integrating reading and writing instruction provides to developmental students. In light of several bans on developmental education at four-year institutions across the country, the role community colleges play in providing literacy instruction appears to be increasingly important. This project strives to understand the potential to integrate developmental reading and writing instruction in community colleges by answering the following questions: To what extent are community college administrators aware of the literature on the reading/writing connection? What are the costs and benefits of integrating developmental reading and writing and what do the better curricula consist of? How do issues concerning developmental literacy education change in the context of community colleges when compared to four-year institutions? What administrative, programmatic, and organizational challenges do integrated developmental reading and writing programs create and how can those challenges be addressed? Based on my analysis of interviews conducted with seven developmental program administrators, representing five community colleges within the state, I conclude that organizational factors at these institutions strongly influence notions of literacy education and administrator’s ability to 111 implement programmatic revisions. Further, I argue that administrators’ efforts to implement effective forms of integrated developmental education must include not only a sound pedagogical grounding in reading and writing and a framework to account for specific challenges that arise at their institution, but also a better means for articulating developmental concerns to their college’s central administration, each other, and state officials.