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.

This study defines and applies a theory of tragedy which is based on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy. In the first chapter the writer argues for the need of a widely accepted theory of tragedy and show that we do not presently have one. In the same chapter, the writer presents the theory that tragedy is a very specific art type which transcends genre and which is the product of a synthesis of the Dionysiac and Apollonian forces in Western culture. The writer argues that by understanding the philosophical and aesthetic nature of the forces as they are expressed in tragedy we can isolate and define the essential elements of tragedy. Tragedy must have a person of heroic stature as its main protagonist. It must have a specific kind of plot in which a reversal of the hero's experience of the universe occurs. It must have a choric element, which is a combination of two components: communality and lyricism. Finally, tragedy must contain a mythic background which allows for the expression of two themes, the Dionysiac theme and the Apollonian theme.

Wuthering Heights is a composite of opposites. Its two houses, its two families, its two generations, its two planes of existence are held in place by Emily Bronte's careful manipulation of repetitive, yet differentiated, symbols associated with each of these pairs. Using symbols to develop her polarities and to unify them along the imaginatively rendered horizontal axis connecting Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the vertical axis connecting the novel's several "heavens" and "hells," and the third dimensional axis connecting the spiritual and corporeal worlds, Emily Bronte gives the divided world of Wuthering Heights an almost perfect symmetry. This study divides the more than seven hundred symbols into physical and nonphysical. The physical symbols are subdivided into setting, animal life, plant life, people, celestial objects, and miscellaneous objects. The fewer nonphysical symbols are grouped under movement, light, time, emotions, concepts, and miscellaneous terms. Verticality and thresholds, the two most important symbolic motifs, are drawn from both physical and nonphysical symbols.

An understanding of the influence of Shakespeare on the structure and language of Moby-Dick is important because the plays of Shakespeare gave Melville a sudden insight into the significance of form and because his absorption of Shakespearean rhetoric enabled him to solve a serious artistic problem. In Moby-Dick Melville wished to write a work of symbolic fiction which would have both epic scope and tragic depth, but his difficulty lay in finding a structural and stylistic method which would provide the amplitude necessary to epic and at the same time could achieve the compression and verbal economy necessary to tragedy. He solved this problem by learning from Shakespeare to create a multi-layered dramatic structure and to use a dramatic language which becomes one layer of that structure. In Shakespeare's greatest plays there is a virtual fusion of form and meaning, and it is this fusion which, in its greatest moments, the language of Moby-Dick achieves.

The Old English Apollonius of Tyre survives as only a fragment of a popular medieval romance which is recorded in numerous Latin manuscripts. Approximately half the story is missing; therefore, studies of this prose romance are usually restricted to linguistic and stylistic analyses. Hence this study focuses on the word order of phrases and clauses and on features of style apparent in the Old English version, with comparison to the Latin source where significant divergences occur.

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.

Book chapter on considerations on the impact of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Outcomes Statement (OS) on second language writers. This chapter examines the extent to which the WPA OS reflects (or does not reflect) the presence and needs of second language writers.

Article on rethinking composition's precedence in normal schools.

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

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

Article on the problem of publics and the curious case of Texas.

Article discussing neoliberal dispositif and the rise of fundamentalism.

Article discussing Joseph Conrad's alleged racism beyond 'The Heart of Darkness,' and highlighting the importance of Conrad's Muslim characteristics in his Malay novels.

Article on YouTube and how YouTube videos have become an influential source of argumentation, suggesting that they often serve a highly rhetorical function.

Article on Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 1854 "Address to the Legislature of New York."

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.

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, …

This study examines mental illness in literature, with a focus on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar', the primary texts of the research, and develops similarities and personal connections between the authors and their mentally unstable main characters.

Presentation for the 2011 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on popular resistance, leadership attitudes, and Turkish accession to the European Union (EU).

Presentation for the 2010 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research the noble appeal and establishing truth in true reports from the early modern era.

Presentation for the 2010 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on the effect of Queen Elizabeth I's sovereignty as a monarch on English literature in the 17th century England, especially the work of John Milton's 'Paradise Lost'.

Presentation for the 2005 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on identifying and analyzing the poetic qualities of The Beatles' lyrics from 1965-1970.

Presentation for the 2005 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on the conflicted self in the life and art of Carlo Gesualdo.