Poster presentation for the 2012 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on factors that affect children's literacy.

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, …

A collection of poems by Caleb Braun following his experiences with spirituality.

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

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

This article examines an outpouring of printed poems and biographical publications in the 1780s and 1790s that sought to shape the public image of the celebrated prison reformer John Howard

Undergraduate thesis psychoanalyzing the composer Don Carlo Gesualdo. It focuses on the relationship between the composer and mastery of the musical task. The author examines the life and work of Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, who was commonly referred to as both musician and murderer.

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.

Paper closely examines the thematic and linguistic content of Percy Shelley's poem "Ode to Liberty".

Undergraduate thesis that is a collection of short stories preceded by critical preface. The preface, which is divided into two sections, contextualizes the function and presence of the modular narrative. The first section explores the criticism of the form and the second section provides contextual examples of contemporary stories which more or less exhibit elements of the modular. This collection entitled "We Were Once All Gentle Creatures" employs the many conventions and elements of the modular story as means to show how the modular replicates the atemporal qualities of human experience.

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.

Poster presentation for the 2012 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas. This presentation discusses research on an excerpt of a confessional narrative in an early 15th century manuscript known as Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys 2125 against 'The Clensyng of Mannes Sowle', found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 923.

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).

This paper discusses research on popular resistance, leadership attitudes, and Turkish accession to the European Union (E.U.).

Paper explores the difference in the portrayal of Native Americans in captivity narratives that did result in acculturation and those that did not.

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.

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.

Poster presentation for the 2010 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on mental illness in literature and a case study of Sylvia Plath and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Article on strengthening graduate student preparation for the Writing Program Administration (WPA) work.

Paper examines the effectiveness of advertising techniques used in print magazines that target Mexican American consumers.

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.

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 discusses issues of sexism and anti-feminist sentiment in the modern organized skepticism movement.

Because Shakespeare borrowed so many ideas and devices from other writers, we wonder whether he also borrowed the trick of double time from some of his predecessors; therefore one of the purposes of this study is to discover whether or not this device was original with Shakespeare. In this study I have considered the works of John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and George Peele because these four seem to have influenced Shakespeare more than did any of the other of his immediate predecessors. To discover what influence, if any, these men had upon Shakespeare ts treatment of time is not, however, the only purpose of this study; for I am also interested in the characteristics of the works of these men for their own values, independent of any influence which they may have had on the works of Shakespeare.