Dissertations
Over the past five years, students receiving PhDs in English—-Literary Studies and Writing Studies—-have completed dissertations that range across the broad field of English studies in their scholarly interests. See below for the authors, titles, committee members, and dissertation deposit dates.
May 2009
Borst, Allan
TOWARD NATIONAL IDENTITY: ADDICTION, SUBJECTIVITY, AND AMERICAN LITERARY CULTURE
Chair: Cary Nelson; and Stephanie Foote, William Maxwell, Mark Thompson
Forst, Jean
RADICAL RETREATS: SENTIMENTALISM, SEPARATE SPHERES, AND THE DOMESTIC TURN IN AMERICAN WOMEN'S FICTION, 1850-1940
Chair: Robert Dale Parker; and Stephanie Foote, Cary Nelson, Bruce Michelson
Stevens, Clint
PAINFUL PASSAGES: DEATH, RITUAL, AND LITERATURE IN POST-REFORMATION ENGLAND
Chair: Leon Chai; and Gillen Wood, Robert Markley, William Underwood
October 2009
Damsen, Silver
EROTIC LOVE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROTO-CAPITALIST IDEOLOGY IN EARLY MODERN COMEDY
Chair: Carol Neely; and Michael Shapiro, Lori Newcomb, Zachary Lesser
McWhorter, Ellen
UNSAYABLE SOMETHINGS: MODERN AMERICAN POETRY, LANGUAGE, AND THE LOGIC OF EXPERIENCE
Chair: Cary Nelson; and Siobhan Somerville, Julia Walker, James Hansen
May 2008
Alexander, Sarah
"Shopping for Pleasure: The Fasion Lover in Victorian Fiction"
Chair: Peter Garrett; and Julia Saville, Hina Nazar, Lauren Goodlad
Dahlquist, Mark
"Faire Semblants and Scandalous Worship: Iconophobia and the English Renaissance "
Chair: Achsah Guibbory; and Lori Newcomb, Robert Markley, Caroline Hibbard
Fratz, Deborah
"Disabled Subjects Disability: Gender and Ethical Agency in Victorian Realism"
Chair: Lauren M. E. Goodlad; and Julia Saville, Hina Nazar, Eleanor Courtemanche
Savage, Elizabeth
"Nursery of the Nation: Mothers, Midwives and National Identity on the Eighteenth-Century Comedic Stage"
Chair: Suvir Kaul; and Robert Markley, Carol Neely, Tony Pollock
Tracy, Daniel
"Middlebrow Modernism: Professional Writing, Genre, and the Circulation of Cultural Authority in U.S. Mass Culture, 1913-32"
Chairs: Stephanie Foote, Siobhan Somerville; and Robert Parker, William Maxwell
Walker, Marilyn
"Writing Resistance: The Politics and Poetics of British Women's Antislavery Verse, 1785-1865"
Chair: Antoinette Burton; and Robert Markley, Gillen D'Arcy Wood, Ted Underwood
Walter, Christina
"The Modernist Imagetext: Embodying Impersonality from Optics to Aesthetics"
Chair: Jed Esty; and Joseph Valente, Jesse Matz, Julia Saville
October 2008
Allen Lesley
"Inventing the Sacred Nation: Saint Edmund of East Anglia and English Identity in Medieval Text and Image"
Chair: Robert Barrett; and Charlie Wright, Martin Camargo, Anne D. Hedeman
Buell, Marcia
"The Interplay of Voice, Identity, and Response Among Five EAL University Writers"
Chair: Robert Barrett; and Charlie Wright, Martin Camargo, Anne D. Hedeman
Ching, Kory
"Out of the Shadows: Rethinking Response Through the Instructor-Led Peer Conference"
Chair: Paul Prior; and Gail Hawisher, Peter Mortensen, Sarah McCarthey
Gossett, Katherine
"From Manuscript to Multimedia: Illuminating Memory and Re[image]ning Composition"
Chair: Martin Camargo; and Gail Hawisher, Joyce Walker, Anne Hedeman, Joseph Squier
Hultquist, Aleksondra
"Equal Ardour: Female Desire, Amatory Fiction, and the Recasting of the Novel, 1680-1760"
Chair: Robert Markley; and Anthony Pollock, Lori Newcomb, Dana Rabin, Tita Chico
Macharia, Keguro
"Queer Natives"
Chair: Siobhan Somerville; and Jed Esty, Bill Maxwell, Matti Bunzl
Misri, Deepti
"Reading Violence: Gender, Violence and Representation in India and Pakistan (1947-Present)"
Chairs: Ania Loomba, Jed Esty; and Simona Sawhney, Antoinette Burton
Starr, Rebecca
"Elfric's Gendered Theology in the Catholic Homilies, the First Series"
Chair: Charles D. Wright; Renee Trilling, Robert Barrett, Lisa M. C. Weston
VanIttersum, Derek
"Reassembling Writing Technologies: Historical and Situated Studies of Rhetorical Activity"
Chair: Gail Hawisher; and Paul Prior, Peter Mortense, Chip Bruce
December 2008
Carluccio, Dana
COGNITIVE FICTIONS: THE EVOLUTION OF IDENTITY IN LATE-NINETEENTH CENTURY FICTION AND SCIENCE
Chair: Siobhan Somerville; and Stephanie Foote, Nancy Castro, Robert Parker
Lamanna, Carrie
DISCIPLINING IDENTITIES: FEMINISM, NEW MEDIA, AND 21ST CENTURY RESEARCH PRACTICES
Chair: Hawisher; and Paul Prior, Nan Elizabeth Googin, Ramona Curry
May 2007
Campbell, Brad
"Neurotic Nationalism: 'The American Disease' in American Modernist Literature"
Chair: William Maxwell; and Michael Berube, Julia Walker, Mark Micale
Cull, Ryan
"Beyond the Cheated Eye: Modern American Poetry and the Perils of Post-Romantic Subjectivity"
Chair: Cary Nelson; and John Timberman Newcomb, Edward Brunner, William Maxwell
Garcia, Humberto
"Islam in the Radical Protestant Imagination, 1660-1830"
Chair: Robert Markley; and Leon Chai, William Underwood, Bernadette Andrea
Hudson, John
"Silent Readers, Silenced Readers: Lgbt Student Perceptions of Lgbt Representation in Composition Readers"
Chair: Peter Leslie Mortensen; and Gail Hawisher, Catherine Prendergast, Cheryl Cole
Steen, Abram
"Painful Passages.: Death, Ritual, and Literature in Post-Reformation England"
Chair: Achsah Guibbory; and Zach Lesser, Lori Newcomb, Caroline Hubbard
October 2007
Baldridge, Elizabeth
"Medicalized Illiteracies: Learning Disabilities, Ontentious Histories, and Writing Studies"
Chair: Peter Leslie Mortensen; and Catherine Prendergast, Spencer Schaffner, Gail Hawisher
Hyun, Aerin Myung Hae
"Evaluating the Borderline Personality: A Study of Identity and Narrative Voice"
Chair: Mark Micale; and Sari Aronson, Carol Neely, Nancy Blake
Owens, Hensley Kim
"Rhetorical Labor: Writing, Childbirth, and the Internet"
Chairs Debra hawhee and Peter Mortensen; Gail Hawisher, Catherine Prendergast, Leslie Reagan
Solberg, Janine
"Pretty Typewriters: Gender, Technology, and Literacy in Career Advice Literature for Women"
Chairs Peter Mortensen and Gail Hawisher; Debra Hawhee, Paul Prior
Wan, Amy
"Producing Good Citizens: Literacy and Citizenship Training in Anxious Times"
Chair: Peter Mortensen; and Gail Hawisher, Catherine Prendergast, Debra Hawhee
December 2007
Barnard, Thomas Conant
"George Herbert and Aristocratic Identity"
Chair: Achsah Guibbory; and Carol Neely, David Kay, Catherine Gray
Gillette, Meg
"Modernism's Scarlet Letter: Plotting Abortion in American Fiction, 1900-1945"
Chair: Robert Parker; and Cary Nelson, Dale Bauer, Nancy Castro
O’Meara, Jennifer
"Alchemists, Epics, and Heroes: The Rhetorical Construction of the Seventheenth-Century Experimental Philosopher"
Chair: Carol Neely; and Zachary L. Lesser, Robert Markley, Jonathan Smith
May 2006
Gopinath, Praseeda
"Scarecrows of Chivalry: The Literature of Post-Imperial English Masculinity"
Chair: Joseph Valente; and Jed Esty, Matthew Hart, Jim Hansen
Purdy, James
"Digital Archives and the Turn to Design"
Chair: Gail Hawisher; and Debra Hawhee, Cara Finnegan, Peter Mortensen
Waitinas, Catherine
"Performing Union: Walt Whitman, Participatory Democracy, and Antebellum Performance Culture"
Chair: Leon Chai; and Julia Walker, Tim Dean, Kenneth Price
October 2006
Mylander, Jennifer
"The English in America: National Identity and the Transatlantic Book Trade, 1620-1688"
Chair: Achsah Guibbory; and Zachary Lesser, Joan Klein, Lori Newcomb
December 2006
Im, Chung-in
"Adventuring Men and Changeable Women in Early Modern Drama"
Chair: Carol Neely; and Catharine Gray, Joan Klein, Lori Newcomb
Shmurak, Susannah
"Constructing Urban Experience: American Realism, the Periodical Press, and the Late-Nineteenth-Century Cityscape "
Chair: Nina Baym Stillinger; and Robert Parker, Bruce Michelson, Stephanie Foote
May 2005
Johnson, Sherita Lavon
"Truth is Stranger than Fiction: Black Women in American Literature of the South"
Chair: Stephanie Foote; and Nancy Castro, Arlene Torres, Robert Parker
Roozen, Kevin Roger
"Mapping Critical Connections: Tracing Undergraduates’ Literate Lives"
Chair: Gail Hawisher; and Peter Mortensen, Paul Prior, Catherine Prendergast
Sychterz, Jeffrey Scott
"Though Their Bones Crunched, Their Shut Mouths Made No Moan; Speaking the Corpse in Twentieth Century Anglo-American War Poetry"
Chair: Cary Nelson; and Michael Rothberg, Joshua Esty, Matt Hart, Tim Dean
Watkins, Rychetta N.
"Black and Yellow Power: The Intersections of Identity Politics and Literary Study "
Chair: Robert Dale Parker; and William Maxwell, Mark Thompson, Leslie Reagan
October 2005
Eckhardt, Joshua
"The Politics of Anti-Courtly Love Poetry: Gender, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Verse Miscellanies"
Chair: Achsah Guibbory; and Ania Loomba, Tim Dean, Zachary Lesser
Lipscomb, Susan Rae Bruxvoort
"Between Wildness and Art: Ecology and Agency in Victorian Literature"
Chair: Julia Saville; and Peter Garrett, Gillen Wood, Joshua Esty
Massey, Lance M.
"Using Complexity Theory to Investigate Disciplinarity: A Historical, Theoretical, and Ethical Inquiry into Composition's Ethical Turn"
Chair: Peter Mortensen; and Gail Hawisher, Debra Hawhee, Cathy Prendergast
Middeljans, April
"Telephone Trespassing: Social Regulation and Resistance in American Telephone Fictions"
Chair: Robert Dale Parker; and Nina Baym, Stephanie Foote, Julia Walker
Shipka, Jody
"Remediating Rhetoric and Compositions: An Activity-Based Multimodal Framework For Compsing"
Chair: Paul Prior; and Peter Mortensen, Gail Hawisher, Geoffrey Sirc
Vukovich, Daniel Frederick
"Sinological-Orientalism: The Production of the West’s Post-Mao China"
Chair: Cary Nelson; and Gao Mobo, Michael Rothberg, Matthew Hart
December 2005
Brackmann, Rebecca
"Language, Land, and Law: Laurence Nowell’s Anglo-Saxon Studies in Sixteenth-Century England"
Chair: Charlie Wright; and Timothy Graham, Achsah Guibbory, Robert Berret
