Paper explores sophism and it's effect on modern democracy in the United States.

This thesis addresses the possible sources of melancholy evident in Eighteenth Century writing. Possibilities include nature, mental state, attitudes, sentimentalism, and significant works of fiction.

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

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.

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.

Presentation for the 2012 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing "That One Congenial Friend" and a study on Nathaniel Hawthorne's political aims and divided audience.

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

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.

Presentation for the first Open Data Hackathon at UNT, organized as part of International Open Data Day. This presentation discusses The Humanities and Technology (THAT) Camp.

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 thesis examines some selective cases of morphophonemic alternation in Mandarin Chinese. It presents analyses of the function -of the retroflex suffix -r and describes several conditions for tone sandhi. The suffix -r functions not simply as a noun formative. Some of the suffixed forms have consistently different meanings from the roots on which they are based. The suffix -r also plays a role in poetry as a time-filler to make each line of a poem fulfill the requirements of the strict number of characters and rhyme. This thesis also explains what causes the tone pattern of words such as xiaojie and jiejie to be pronounced differently. These tonal changes are found to be related to the way in which a word is formed. Compounding, reduplication and suffixation differ with respect to how they effect tone sandhi. Tone alternations in actual speech are explored to determine how tone sandhi produces each pronunciation and how grammatical structure and other factors are relevant.

This doctoral dissertation applies user experience and complex systems theory, combining eye-tracking data with verbal and observational data from user test instances, to study the effectiveness of metadata records that accompany digital primary source objects available on The Portal to Texas History.

This study analyzes the development of the major characters in Fowles's novel - Charles, Sarah, and Sam - in terms of the heroic quest motif. Using the basic pattern of the heroic quest, the monomyth, that Joseph Campbell sets forth in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I attempt to show that Fowles's novel may best be understood as the story of three separate heroic quests whose paths cross rather than as the story of a single hero or heroine. This reading seems to account best for all elements of the novel and to explain best the final positions of the characters in question as well as providing a rich appreciation of the novel's wealth of imagery.

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 article discusses a plea for reviving the politics of historiography.

Poster presentation for the 2009 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on William Blake's influence on popular culture.

Poster for the 2010 University Scholars Day at the University of North Texas discussing research on William Blake's modern-day influence on the visual word.

This article examines aspects of William James's thought such as his "transmission theory" of consciousness, his ideas on the "knowing of things together," and "the compounding of consciousness," which suggest his working toward a naturalistic understanding of consciousness.

This thesis resulted from an examination of the influence of witchcraft superstitions upon Elizabethan-era dramas.

Paper discusses the content and implications of three previously uncollected letters written by minister William Ellery Channing, a progressive nineteenth century thinker.

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.

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.

Paper discusses the efforts of the National Writing Project (NWP) to mitigate the effects of high-stakes testing on teachers and students.