Article discussing the rhetoric of democracy on the war on terror. It offers a brief analysis of United States (U.S.) policy toward Pakistan during the last days of General Pervez Husharraf's unconstitutional regime.

The dissertation consists of a critical preface and a novel. The preface analyzes what it terms “polyvocal” novels, or novels employing multiple points of view, as well as “layered storytelling,” or layers of textuality within novels, such as stories within stories. Specifically, the first part of the preface discusses polyvocality in twenty-first century American novels, while the second part explores layered storytelling in novels responding to World War II or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The preface analyzes the advantages and difficulties connected to these techniques, as well as their aptitude for reflecting the fractured, disconnected, and subjective nature of the narratives we construct to interpret traumatic experiences. It also acknowledges the necessity—despite its inherent limitations—of using language to engage with this fragmentation and cope with its challenges. The preface uses numerous novels as examples and case studies, and it also explores these concepts and techniques in relation to the process of writing the novel After the Planes. After the Planes depicts multiple generations of a family who utilize storytelling as a means to work through grief, hurt, misunderstanding, and loss—whether from interpersonal conflicts or from war. Against her father’s wishes, a young woman moves in with her nearly-unknown grandfather, …

Undergraduate thesis expanding exploring the 1836 captivity narrative "An Authentic Narrative of the Seminole War; and the Miraculous Escape of Mrs. Mary Godfrey, and Her Four Female Children." Unlike Mary Rowlandson's "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God," the anonymously-authored "An Authentic Narrative" is almost certainly fabricated. There are no records of a Mrs. Mary Godfrey being captured and redeemed, or even existing at all. However, like Rowlandson's captivity narrative, it attempts to use a woman's experience of captivity to defend and stabilize a national male identity. "An Authentic Narrative" is a variation on the captivity genre that indicates a shift toward the white fraternal national identity described by Dana E. Nelson, even as the female captive's rescue by an escaped slave and the deaths of the white, male rescuers point to the fundamental incoherence of this national identity.

Poster presentation for the 2011 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on portrayals of abortion in mid-twentieth century literature.

Paper discusses eugenics policies brought against Native Americans as explored in the young adult novel Hidden Roots.

Paper discusses the prefaces to the novels and short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and argues that the author uses this space to describe political views that are clear to only a select audience.

Undergraduate thesis exploring criticisms of patriarchy in women's captivity narratives by examining Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1862) and Sarah Wakefield's Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees: A Narrative of Indian Captivity (1862). Both used their socially acceptable roles in order to assert their own ideas regarding the patriarchy. The author concludes that both narratives therefore assert that patriarchal societies did not necessarily produce justice for English or American women who were a part of these societies, or for the Dakota Indians who lived in close contact with a patriarchal society.

Undergraduate thesis exploring how the economic collapse of Zimbabwe from 2000 to 2009 has been expressed in literature by Zimbabwean writers. It seeks to establish a connection between the strong-government controls of information in the media and the politicized nature of fiction during this period. It examines the nationalist narrative created by the Zimbabwean government and shows how the works of fiction of writers like Brian Chikwava and Petina Gappah have undermined this narrative by revealing parallel narratives that reveal the spin the government has put on society.

American writers of narrative fiction frequently manipulate the words of their narrators in order to convey a significance of which the author and the reader are aware but the narrator is not. By causing the narrator to reveal information unwittingly, the author develops covert themes that are antithetical to those espoused by the narrator. Particularly subject to such subversion is the first-person narrator whose "I" is not to be interpreted as the voice of the author. This study examines how and why the first-person narrator is subverted in four works of twentieth-century American fiction: J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to , and Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus

Paper analyzes Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, arguing that she Rowlandson resists patriarchy by working within her socially accepted roles.

In this dissertation I argue that in the characters in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet there is consistently evidenced a psychological orientation towards growth. An introductory Chapter One surveys and a concluding Chapter Six summarizes the dissertation, but the body of the text is four chapters demonstrating the growth-orientation in four characters.

Paper describes study exploring parliamentary speakers’ orientation toward reconciliation (OTR) over a period of one year in Kenya after the Kenyan election crisis of 2007-2008.

Paper discusses how changing gender roles in the 1920s, particularly for mothers, are depicted in the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and how mother figures influence the development of his leading male characters.

Article discussing neoliberal dispositif and the rise of fundamentalism.

Undergraduate thesis biographically examining the lives, deaths, and works of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, including their roles as daughters, wives, mothers, and female writers. This thesis has implications for the relevancy and pertinence of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to literary, gender, and even political studies today as evident in their being namesakes of their crafts, hallmarks of the literary periods in which they wrote, and some of the most recognized and referenced literary names in popular culture.

This thesis presents a the satire of Jonathan Swift's writings framed within the context of the historical events and conditions as they existed during his lifetime.

This paper discusses research on Nathanial Hawthorne's political aims and divided audience.

This dissertation traces imperialist ideology as it functions in the texts of two radical Liberal critics of imperialism, Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster. In chapters two and three respectively, I read Woolf's autobiographical account Growing and his novel The Village in the Jungle to examine connections between "nonfictional" and "fictional" writing on colonialism. The autobiography's fictive texture compromises its claims to facticity and throws into relief the problematic nature of notions of truth and fact in colonialist epistemology and discursive systems.

Article discussing convict transportation and penitence in 'Moll Flanders.'

Article discussing the form of Daniel Defoe's 'Colonel Jack.'

This article discusses Salman Rushdie and reading the postcolonial texts in the era of empire. Using the first three novels of Salman Rushdie, this essay articulates a different conceptual framework for reading the postcolonial texts.

(Dis) Agreements Section of L'Atalante: Revista de Estudios Cinematográficos Issue 28. This section includes assessments of the topic of censorship and cinematic classicism that serve to correct and update numerous aspects in relation to the real scope and impact of the Hays Code on Hollywood films.

This creative thesis collects five fictional stories, as well as a critical preface entitled “Fractals and the Gestalt: the Hybridization of Genre.” The critical preface discusses genre as a literary element and explores techniques for effective genre hybridization. The stories range from psychological fiction to science fiction and fantasy fiction. Each story also employs elements from other genres as well. These stories collectively explore the concept of the other and themes of connection and ostracization.

The thesis systematically explicates Dostoevsky's portrayal of the origin of human evil on earth through the novel The Brothers Karamazov. Drawing from the novel and from Augustine, Pelagius, and Luther, the explication compares and contrasts Dostoevsky's doctrine of original conflict against the three theologians' views of original sin. Following a brief summary of the three earlier theories of original sin, the thesis describes Dostoevsky's peculiar doctrine of Karamazovism and his unique account of how human evil originated. Finally, the thesis shows how suffering, love, and guilt grow out of the original conflict and how the image of Christ serves as an icon of the special kind of social unity projected by Zosima the Elder in The Brothers Karamazov.