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English Department Dissertations Collection

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Dissertations from 2023 2023

In Search of Middle Paths: Buddhism, Fiction, and the Secular in Twentieth-Century South Asia , Crystal Baines, English

Save Our Children: Discourses of Queer Futurity in the United States and South Africa, 1977-2010 , Jude Hayward-Jansen, English

Epistemologies of the Unknowable in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature , Maria Ishikawa, English

Revenge of the Nerds: Tech Masculinity and Digital Hegemony , Benjamin M. Latini, English

The Diasporic Mindset and Narrative Intersections of British Identity in Transnational Fiction , Joseph A. Mason, English

A 19TH CENTURY ETHNOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT UN/CAGED: NARRATIVES OF INFORMAL EMPIRE, AFROLATINIDAD, AND CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC (RE)FRAMINGS , Celine G. Nader, English

Dissertations from 2022 2022

Writing the Aftermath: Uncanny Spaces of the Postcolonial , Sohini Banerjee, English

Science Fiction’s Enactment of the Encouragement, Process, and End Result of Revolutionary Transformation , Katharine Blanchard, English

LITERARY NEGATION AND MATERIALISM IN CHAUCER , Michelle Brooks, English

TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL AND LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: THE IDEA OF AMERÍKA IN ICELANDIC FICTION, 1920–1990 , Jodie Childers, English

When Choices Aren't Choices: Academic Literacy Normativities in the Age of Neoliberalism , Robin K. Garabedian, English

Redefining Gender Violence: Radical Feminist Visions in Contemporary Ethnic American Women’s Fiction and Women of Color Activism 1990-2010 , Hazel Gedikli, English

Stories Women Carry: Labor and Reproductive Imaginaries of South Asia and the Caribbean , Subhalakshmi Gooptu, English

The Critical Workshop: Writing Revision and Critical Pedagogy in the Middle School Classroom , Andrea R. Griswold, English

Racial Poetics: Early Modern Race and the Form of Comedy , Yunah Kae, English

At the Limits of Empathy: Political Conflict and its Aftermath in Postcolonial Fiction , Saumya Lal, English

The Burdens and Blessings of Responsibility: Duty and Community in Nineteenth- Century America , Leslie Leonard, English

No There There: New Jersey in Multiethnic Writing and Popular Culture Since 1990 , Shannon Mooney, English

Ownership and Writer Agency in Web 2.0 , Thomas Pickering, English

Combating Narratives: Soldiering in Twentieth-Century African American and Latinx Literature , Stacy Reardon, English

“IT DON’T ‘MEAN’ A THING”: TIME AND THE READER IN JAZZ FICTIONAL NARRATIVE , Damien C. Weaver, English

SATURNINE ECOLOGIES: ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD, 1542-1688 , John Yargo, English

Dissertations from 2021 2021

"On Neptunes Watry Realmes": Maritime Law and English Renaissance Literature , Hayley Cotter, English

Theater of Exchange: The Cosmopolitan Stage of Jacobean London , Liz Fox, English

“The Badge of All Our Tribe”: Contradictions of Jewish Representation on the English Renaissance Stage , Becky S. Friedman, English

On Being Dispersed: The Poetics of Dehiscence from "We the People" to Abolition , Sean A. Gordon, English

Echoing + Resistant Imagining: Filipino Student Writing Under American Colonial Rule , Florianne Jimenez, English

When Your Words Are Someone Else's Money: Rhetorical Circulation, Affect, and Late Capitalism , Kelin E. Loe, English

Indigenous Impositions in Contemporary Culture: Knotting Ontologies, Beading Aesthetics, and Braiding Temporalities , Darren Lone Fight, English

NEGRITUDE FEMINISMS: FRANCOPHONE BLACK WOMEN WRITERS AND ACTIVISTS IN FRANCE, MARTINIQUE, AND SENEGAL FROM THE 1920S TO THE 1980S , Korka Sall, English

Negotiating Space: Spatial Violation on the Early Modern Stage, 1587-1638 , Gregory W. Sargent, English

Stranger Compass of the Stage: Difference and Desire in Early Modern City Comedy , Catherine Tisdale, English

Dissertations from 2020 2020

AFFECTIVE HISTORIES OF SOUTHERN TRAUMA: SHAME, HEALING, AND VULNERABILITY IN US SOUTHERN WOMEN’S WRITING, 1975–2006 , Faune Albert, English

Materially Queer: Identity and Agency in Academic Writing , Joshua Barsczewski, English

ANGELS WHO STEPPED OUTSIDE THEIR HOUSES: “AMERICAN TRUE WOMANHOOD” AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY (TRANS)NATIONALISMS , Gayathri M. Hewagama, English

WRITING AGAINST HISTORY: FEMINIST BAROQUE NARRATIVES IN INTERWAR ATLANTIC MODERNISM , Annaliese Hoehling, English

Passing Literacies: Soviet Immigrant Elders and Intergenerational Language Practice , Jenny Krichevsky, English

Lisa Ben and Queer Rhetorical Reeducation in Post-war Los Angeles , Katelyn S. Litterer, English

Daring Depictions: An Analysis of Risks and Their Mediation in Representations of Black Suffering , Russell Nurick, English

From Page to Program: A Study of Stakeholders in Multimodal First-Year Composition Curriculum and Program Design , Rebecca Petitti, English

Forms of the Future: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Visioning Work of Aesthetics in U.S. Poetry, 1822-1863 , Magdalena Zapędowska, English

Dissertations from 2019 2019

Black Men Who Betray Their Race: 20TH Century Literary Representations of the Black Male Race Traitor , Gregory Coleman, English

“The Worlding Game”: Queer Ecological Perspectives in Modern Fiction , Sarah D'Stair, English

Afrasian Imaginaries: Global Capitalism and Labor Migration in Indian Ocean Fictions, 1990 – 2015 , Neelofer Qadir, English

Divided Tongues: The Politics and Poetics of Food in Modern Anglophone Indian Fiction , Shakuntala Ray, English

Globalizing Nature on the Shakespearean Stage , William Steffen, English

Gilded Chains: Global Economies and Gendered Arts in US Fiction, 1865-1930 , Heather Wayne, English

“ÆTHELTHRYTH”: SHAPING A RELIGIOUS WOMAN IN TENTH-CENTURY WINCHESTER , Victoria Kent Worth, English

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Sex and Difference in the Jewish American Family: Incest Narratives in 1990s Literary and Pop Culture , Eli W. Bromberg, English

Rhetorical Investments: Writing, Technology, and the Emerging Logics of the Public Sphere , Dan Ehrenfeld, English

Kiskeyanas Valientes en Este Espacio: Dominican Women Writers and the Spaces of Contemporary American Literature , Isabel R. Espinal, English

“TO WEIGH THE WORLD ANEW”: POETICS, RHETORIC, AND SOCIAL STRUGGLE, FROM SIDNEY’S ARCADIA TO SHAKESPEARE’S THEATER , David Katz, English

CIVIC DOMESTICITY: RHETORIC, WOMEN, AND SPACE AT HULL HOUSE, 1889-1910 , Liane Malinowski, English

Charting the Terrain of Latina/o/x Theater in Chicago , Priscilla M. Page, English

The Politics of Feeling and the Work of Belonging in US Immigrant Fiction 1990 - 2015 , Lauren Silber, English

Turning Inside Out: Reading and Writing Godly Identity in Seventeenth-Century Narratives of Spiritual Experience , Meghan Conine Swavely, English

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Tragicomic Transpositions: The Influence of Spanish Prose Romance on the Development of Early Modern English Tragicomedy , Josefina Hardman, English

“The Blackness of Blackness”: Meta-Black Identity in 20th/21st Century African American Culture , Casey Hayman, English

Waiting for Now: Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time , Amanda Ruth Waugh Lagji, English

Latina Identities, Critical Literacies, and Academic Achievement in Community College , Morgan Lynn, English

Demanding Spaces: 1970s U.S. Women's Novels as Sites of Struggle , Kate Marantz, English

Novel Buildings: Architectural and Narrative Form in Victorian Fiction , Ashley R. Nadeau, English

CATCH FEELINGS: CLASS AFFECT AND PERFORMATIVITY IN TEACHING ASSOCIATES' NARRATIVES , Anna Rita Napoleone, English

Dialogue and "Dialect": Character Speech in American Fiction , Carly Overfelt, English

Materializing Transfer: Writing Dispositions in a Culture of Standardized Testing , Lisha Daniels Storey, English

Theatres of War: Performing Queer Nationalism in Modernist Narratives , Elise Swinford, English

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Multimodal Assessment in Action: What We Really Value in New Media Texts , Kathleen M. Baldwin, English

Addictive Reading: Nineteenth-Century Drug Literature's Possible Worlds , Adam Colman, English

"The Book Can't Teach You That": A Case Study of Place, Writing, and Tutors' Constructions of Writing Center Work , Christopher Joseph DiBiase, English

Protest Lyrics at Work: Labor Resistance Poetry of Depression-Era Autoworkers , Rebecca S. Griffin, English

From What Remains: The Politics of Aesthetic Mourning and the Poetics of Loss in Contemporary African American Culture , Kajsa K. Henry, English

Minor Subjects in America: Everyday Childhoods of the Long Nineteenth Century , Gina M. Ocasion, English

Enduring Affective Rhetorics: Transnational Feminist Action in Digital Spaces , Jessica Ouellette, English

The School Desk and the Writing Body , Marni M. Presnall, English

Sustainable Public Intellectualism: The Rhetorics of Student Scientist-Activists , Jesse Priest, English

Prosthetizing the Soul: Reading, Seeing, and Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Devotion , Katey E. Roden, English

Dissertations from 2015 2015

“As Child in Time”: Childhood, Temporality, and 19th Century U.S. Literary Imaginings of Democracy , Marissa Carrere, English

A National Style: A Critical Historiography of the Irish Short Story , Andrew Fox, English

Homosexuality is a Poem: How Gay Poets Remodeled the Lyric, Community and the Ideology of Sex to Theorize a Gay Poetic , Christopher M. Hennessy, English

Affecting Manhood: Masculinity, Effeminacy, and the Fop Figure in Early Modern English Drama , Jessica Landis, English

Who Do You Think You Are?: Recovering the Self in the Working Class Escape Narrative , Christine M. Maksimowicz, English

Metabolizing Capital: Writing, Information, and the Biophysical World , Christian J. Pulver, English

Audible Voice in Context , Airlie S. Rose, English

The Role of Online Reading and Writing in the Literacy Practices of First-Year Writing Students , Casey Burton Soto, English

Dissertations from 2014 2014

RESURRECTION: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BLACK CHURCH IN CONTEMPORARY POPULAR CULTURE , Rachel J. Daniel, English

Seeing Blindness: The Visual and the Great War in Literary Modernism , Rachael Dworsky, English

HERE, THERE, AND IN BETWEEN: TRAVEL AS METAPHOR IN MIXED RACE NARRATIVES OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE , Colin Enriquez, English

Interactive Audience and the Internet , John R. Gallagher, English

Down from the Mountain and into the Mill: Literacy Sponsorship and Southern Appalachian Women in the New South , Emma M. Howes, English

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma in U.S. War Fiction , Ruth A.H. Lahti, English

"A More Natural Mother": Concepts of Maternity and Queenship in Early Modern England , Anne-Marie Kathleen Strohman, English

Dissertations from 2013 2013

Letters to a Dictionary: Competing Views of Language in the Reception of Webster's Third New International Dictionary , Anne Pence Bello, English

Staging the Depression: The Federal Theatre Project's Dramas of Poverty, 1935-1939 , Amy Brady, English

Our Story Has Not Been Told in any Moment: Radical Black Feminist Theatre From The Old Left to Black Power , Julie M Burrell, English

Writing for Social Action: Affect, Activism, and the Composition Classroom , Sarah Finn, English

Surviving Domestic Tensions: Existential Uncertainty in New World African Diasporic Women's Literature , Denia M Fraser, English

From Feathers to Fur: Theatrical Representations of Skin in the Medieval English Cycle Plays , Valerie Anne Gramling, English

The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama , Nathaniel C. Leonard, English

The World Inscribed: Literary Form, Travel, and the Book in England, 1580-1660 , Philip S Palmer, English

Shakespearean Signifiers , Marie H Roche, English

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Home > ARTSSCI > English > dissertations

English Dissertations and Theses

The English Department Dissertations and Theses Series is comprised of dissertations and thesis authored by Marquette University's English Department doctoral and master's students.

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Lifting the Postmodern Veil: Cosmopolitanism, Humanism, and Decolonization in Global Fictions of the 21st Century , Matthew Burchanoski

Gothic Transformations and Remediations in Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Wendy Fall

Milton’s Learning: Complementarity and Difference in Paradise Lost , Peter Spaulding

“The Development of the Conceptive Plot Through Early 19th-Century English Novels” , Jannea R. Thomason

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Gonzo Eternal , John Francis Brick

Intertextuality and Sociopolitical Engagement in Contemporary Anglophone Women’s Writing , Jackielee Derks

Innovation, Genre, and Authenticity in the Nineteenth-Century Irish Novel , David Aiden Kenney II

Reluctant Sons: The Irish Matrilineal Tradition of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Flann O’Brien , Jessie Wirkus Haynes

Britain's Extraterrestrial Empire: Colonial Ambition, Anxiety, and Ambivalence in Early Modern Literature , Mark Edward Wisniewski

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Re-Reading the “Culture Clash”: Alternative Ways of Reading in Indian Horse , Hailey Whetten

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

When the Foreign Became Familiar: Modernism, Expatriation, and Spatial Identities in the Twentieth Century , Danielle Kristene Clapham

Reforming Victorian Sense/Abilities: Disabilities in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Social Problem Novels , Hunter Nicole Duncan

Genre and Loss: The Impossibility of Restoration in 20th Century Detective Fiction , Kathryn Hendrickson

A Productive Failure: Existentialism in Fin de Siècle England , Maxwell Patchet

Inquiry and Provocation: The Use of Ambiguity in Sixteenth-Century English Political Satire , Jason James Zirbel

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity , Justice Hagan

The City As a Trap: 20th and 21st Century American Literature and the American Myth of Mobility , Andrew Joseph Hoffmann

The Fantastic and the First World War , Brian Kenna

Insane in the Brain, Blood, and Lungs: Gender-Specific Manifestations of Hysteria, Chlorosis, & Consumption in 19th-Century Literature , Anna P. Scanlon

Reading Multicultural Novels Melancholically: Racial Grief and Grievance in the Joy Luck Club, Beloved, and Anil's Ghost , Jennifer Arias Sweeney

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

The Ethos of Dissent: Epideictic Rhetoric and the Democratic Function of American Protest and Countercultural Literature , Jeffrey Lorino Jr

Literary Cosmopolitanisms of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy , Sunil Samuel Macwan

The View from Here: Toward a Sissy Critique , Tyler Monson

The Forbidden Zone Writers: Femininity and Anglophone Women War Writers of the Great War , Sareene Proodian

Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots , Adrianne A. Wojcik

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Changing the Victorian Habit Loop: The Body in the Poetry and Painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris , Bryan Gast

Gendering Scientific Discourse from 1790-1830: Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet , Bridget E. Kapler

Discarding Dreams and Legends: The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty , Katy L. Leedy

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Saving the Grotesque: The Grotesque System of Liberation in British Modernism (1922-1932) , Matthew Henningsen

The Pulpit's Muse: Conversive Poetics in the American Renaissance , Michael William Keller

A Single Man of Good Fortune: Postmodern Identities and Consumerism in the New Novel of Manners , Bonnie McLean

Julian of Norwich: Voicing the Vernacular , Therese Elaine Novotny

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Homecomings: Victorian British Women Travel Writers And Revisions Of Domesticity , Emily Paige Blaser

From Pastorals to Paterson: Ecology in the Poetry and Poetics of William Carlos WIlliams , Daniel Edmund Burke

Argument in Poetry: (Re)Defining the Middle English Debate in Academic, Popular, and Physical Contexts , Kathleen R. Burt

Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England , Steven A. Hackbarth

The Creation of Heaven in the Middle Ages , William Storm

(re)making The Gentleman: Genteel Masculinities And The Country Estate In The Novels Of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, And Elizabeth Gaskell , Shaunna Kay Wilkinson

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Brides, Department Stores, Westerns, and Scrapbooks--The Everyday Lives of Teenage Girls in the 1940s , Carly Anger

Placed People: Rootedness in G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and Wendell Berry , David Harden

Rhetorics Of Girlhood Trauma In Writing By Holly Goddard Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Sandra Cisneros, And Jamaica Kincaid , Stephanie Marie Stella

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

A Victorian Christmas in Hell: Yuletide Ghosts and Necessary Pleasures in the Age of Capital , Brandon Chitwood

"Be-Holde the First Acte of this Tragedy" : Generic Symbiosis and Cross-Pollination in Jacobean Drama and the Early Modern Prose Novella , Karen Ann Zyck Galbraith

Pamela: Or, Virtue Reworded: The Texts, Paratexts, and Revisions that Redefine Samuel Richardson's Pamela , Jarrod Hurlbert

Violence and Masculinity in American Fiction, 1950-1975 , Magdalen McKinley

Gender Politics in the Novels of Eliza Haywood , Susan Muse

Destabilizing Tradition: Gender, Sexuality, and Postnational Identity in Four Novels by Irish Women, 1960-2000 , Sarah Nestor

Truth Telling: Testimony and Evidence in the Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell , Rebecca Parker Fedewa

Spirit of the Psyche: Carl Jung's and Victor White's Influence on Flannery O'Connor's Fiction , Paul Wakeman

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Performing the Audience: Constructing Playgoing in Early Modern Drama , Eric Dunnum

Paule Marshall's Critique of Contemporary Neo-Imperialisms Through the Trope of Travel , Michelle Miesen Felix

Hermeneutics, Poetry, and Spenser: Augustinian Exegesis and the Renaissance Epic , Denna Iammarino-Falhamer

Encompassing the Intolerable: Laughter, Memory, and Inscription in the Fiction of John McGahern , John Keegan Malloy

Regional Consciousness in American Literature, 1860-1930 , Kelsey Louise Squire

The Ethics of Ekphrasis: The Turn to Responsible Rhetoric in Mid-Twentieth Century American Poetry , Joshua Scott Steffey

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Cognitive Architectures: Structures of Passion in Joanna Baillie's Dramas , Daniel James Bergen

On Trial: Restorative Justice in the Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley Family Fictions , Colleen M. Fenno

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

What's the point to eschatology : multiple religions and terminality in James Joyce's Finnegans wake , Martin R. Brick

Economizing Characters: Harriet Martineau and the Problems of Poverty in Victorian Literature, Culture and Law , Mary Colleen Willenbring

Submissions from 2008 2008

"An improbable fiction": The marriage of history and romance in Shakespeare's Henriad , Marcia Eppich-Harris

Bearing the Mark of the Social: Notes Towards a Cosmopolitan Bildungsroman , Megan M. Muthupandiyan

The Gothic Novel and the Invention of the Middle-Class Reader: Northanger Abbey As Case Study , Tenille Nowak

Not Just a Novel of Epic Proportions: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man As Modern American Epic , Dana Edwards Prodoehl

Recovering the Radicals: Women Writers, Reform, and Nationalist Modes of Revolutionary Discourse , Mark J. Zunac

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

"The Sweet and the Bitter": Death and Dying in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , Amy M. Amendt-Raduege

The Games Men Play: Madness and Masculinity in Post-World War II American Fiction, 1946-1964 , Thomas P. Durkin

Denise Levertov: Through An Ecofeminist Lens , Katherine A. Hanson

The Wit of Wrestling: Devotional-Aesthetic Tradition in Christina Rossetti's Poetry , Maria M.E. Keaton

Genderless Bodies: Stigma and the Myth of Womanhood , Ellen M. Letizia

Envy and Jealousy in the Novels of the Brontës: A Synoptic Discernment , Margaret Ann McCann

Technologies of the Late Medieval Self: Ineffability, Distance, and Subjectivity in the Book of Margery Kempe , Crystal L. Mueller

"Finding-- a Map-- to That Place Called Home": The Journey from Silence to Recovery in Patrick McCabe's Carn and Breakfast on Pluto , Valerie A. Murrenus Pilmaier

Emily Dickinson's Ecocentric Pastoralism , Moon-ju Shin

The American Jeremiad in Civil War Literature , Jacob Hadley Stratman

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Literary Art in Times of Crisis: The Proto-Totalitarian Anxiety of Melville, James, and Twain , Matthew J. Darling

(Re) Writing Genre: Narrative Conventions and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison , Jennifer Lee Jordan Heinert

"Amsolookly Kersse": Clothing in Finnegan's Wake , Catherine Simpson Kalish

"Do Your Will": Shakespeare's Use of the Rhetoric of Seduction in Four Plays , Jason James Nado

Woman in Emblem: Locating Authority in the Work and Identity of Katherine Philips (1632-1664) , Susan L. Stafinbil

When the Bough Breaks: Poetry on Abortion , Wendy A. Weaver

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Heroic Destruction: Shame and Guilt Cultures in Medieval Heroic Poetry , Karl E. Boehler

Poe and Early (Un)American Drama , Amy C. Branam

Grammars of Assent: Constructing Poetic Authority in An Age of Science , William Myles Carroll III

This Place is Not a Place: The Constructed Scene in the Works of Sir Walter Scott , Colin J. Marlaire

Cognitive Narratology: A Practical Approach to the Reader-Writer Relationship , Debra Ann Ripley

Theses/Dissertations from 2004 2004

Defoe and the Pirates: Function of Genre Conventions in Raiding Narratives , William J. Dezoma

Creative Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century Courtship Novel , Michelle Ruggaber Dougherty

Exclusionary Politics: Mourning and Modernism in the Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew , Donna Decker Schuster

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

Toward a Re-Formed Confession: Johann Gerhard's Sacred Meditations and "Repining Restlessnesse" in the Poetry of George Herbert , Erik P. Ankerberg

Idiographic Spaces: Representation, Ideology and Realism in the Postmodern British Novel , Gordon B. McConnell

Theses/Dissertations from 2002 2002

Reading into It: Wallace Stegner's Novelistic Sense of Time and Place , Colin C. Irvine

Brisbane and Beyond: Revising Social Capitalism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America , Michael C. Mattek

Theses/Dissertations from 2001 2001

Christians and Mimics in W. B. Yeats' Collected Poems , Patrick Mulrooney

Renaissance Roles and the Process of Social Change , John Wieland

'Straunge Disguize': Allegory and Its Discontents in Spenser's Faerie Queene , Galina Ivanovna Yermolenko

Theses/Dissertations from 2000 2000

Reading American Women's Autobiography: Spheres of Identity, Spheres of Influence , Amy C. Getty

"Making Strange": The Art and Science of Selfhood in the Works of John Banville , Heather Maureen Moran

Writing Guadalupe: Mediacion and (mis)translation in borderland text(o)s , Jenny T Olin-Shanahan

Writing Guadalupe: Mediacion and (Mis)Translation in Borderland Text(o)s , Jenny T. Olin-Shanahan

Theses/Dissertations from 1999 1999

Setting the Word Against the Word: The Search for Self-Understanding in Richard II , Richard J. Erable

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Dissertations.

Michael Abraham: “The Avant-Garde of Feeling: Queer Love and Modernism” directed by Langdon Hammer, Marta Figlerowicz, Ben Glaser” 

Peter Conroy: “Unreconciled: American Power and the End of History, 1945 to the Present” directed by Joe Cleary, Joseph North, Paul North

Trina Hyun: “Media Theologies, 1615-1668” directed by John Durham Peters, Catherine Nicholson, Marta Figlerowicz, John Rogers (University of Toronto)

Margaret McGowan: “A Natural History of the Novel: Species, Sense, Atmosphere” directed by Jonathan Kramnick, Katie Trumpener, Marta Figlerowicz

Benjamin Pokross: “Writing History in the Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes” directed by Caleb Smith, Greta LaFleur, Michael Warner

Sophia Richardson: “Reading the Surface in Early Modern English Literature” directed by Catherine Nicholson, Lawrence Manley, John Rogers(University of Toronto)

Melissa Shao Hsuan Tu: “Sonic Virtuality: First-Person Voices in Late Medieval English Lyric” directed by Ardis Butterfield, Jessica Brantley, John Durham Peters

Sarah Weston: “The Cypher and the Abyss: Outline Against Infinity” directed by Paul Fry, Tim Barringer, John Durham Peters

December 2022

Anna Hill: “Sublime Accumulations: Narrating the Global Climate, 1969-2001” directed by Joe Cleary, Marta Figlerowicz, Ursula Heise (UCLA)

Christopher McGowan: “Inherited Worlds: The British Modernist Novel and the Sabotage and Salvage of Genre” directed by Joe Cleary, Michael Denning, Katie Trumpener

Samuel Huber: “Every Day About the World: Feminist Internationalism in the Second Wave” directed by  Jacqueline Goldsby, Margaret Homans, Jill Richards

Shayne McGregor: “An Intellectual History of Black Literary Discourse 1910-1956” directed by Joseph North, Robert Stepto

Brandon Menke: “Slow Tyrannies: Queer Lyricism, Visual Regionalism, and the Transfigured World” directed by Langdon Hammer, Wai Chee Dimock, Marta Figlerowicz

Arthur Wang: “Minor Theories of Everything: On Popular Science and Contemporary Fiction” directed by Amy Hungerford, John Durham Peters, Sunny Xiang

December 2021

Sarah Robbins: “Re(-)Markable Texts: Making Meaning of Revision in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature” directed by Caleb Smith, Jacqueline Goldsby, Anthony Reed

David de León: “Epic Black: Poetics in Protest in the Time of Black Lives Matter” directed by  Langdon Hammer, Daphne Brooks, Marta Figlerowicz

Clio Doyle: “Rough Beginnings: Imagining the Origins of Agriculture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain” directed by Lawrence Manley, David Kastan, Catherine Nicholson

Clay Greene: “The Preexistence of the Soul in the Early English Enlightenment: 1640-1740” directed by John Rogers, Jonathan Kramnick, Lawrence Manley

December 2020

Wing Chun Julia Chan: “Veritable Utopia: Revolutionary Russia and the Modernism of the British Left” directed by Katie Trumpener, Jill Richards, Katerina Clark

James Eric Ensley: “Troubled Signs: Thomas Hoccleve’s Objects of Absence” directed by Jessica Brantley, Alastair Minnis, Ardis Butterfield

Paul Franz: “Because so it is made new”: D. H. Lawrence’s charismatic modernism directed by David Bromwich, Ben Glaser, and Langdon Hammer

Chelsie Malyszek: Just Words: Diction and Misdirection in Modern Poetry directed by Lanny Hammer, David Bromwich, and Ben Glaser

Justin Park: “The Children of Revenge: Managing Emotion in Early English Literature” directed by Roberta Frank, Alastair Minnis, David Kastan

Peter Raccuglia: “Lives of Grass: Prairie Literature and US Settler Capitalism” directed by Michael Warner, Jonathan Kramnick, Michael Denning

Ashley James: “ ‘Moist, Fleshy, Pulsating Surfaces’: Seeing and Reading Black Life after Experientiality” directed by Professors Jacqueline Goldsby, Elizabeth Alexander, and Anthony Reed

Brittany Levingston: “In the Day of Salvation: Christ and Salvation in Early Twentieth-Century African American Literature” directed by Professors Jacqueline Goldsby, Robert Stepto, and Anthony Reed

Lukas Moe: “Radical Afterlives: U.S. Poetry, 1935-1968” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer, Jacqueline Goldsby, and Michael Denning

Carlos Nugent: “Imagined Environments: Mediating Race and Nature in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock, Amy Hungerford, and Michael Warner

Anna Shechtman: “The Media Concept: A Genealogy” directed by Professors Amy Hungerford, John Durham Peters, and Michael Warner

December 2019

Bofang Li: “Old Media/New Media: Intimate Networked Publics and the Commodity Text Since 1700” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock, R. John Williams, and Francesco Casetti

Scarlet Luk: “Gender Unbound: The Novel Narrator Beyond the Binary” directed by Professors Margaret Homans, Jill Campbell, and Jill Richards

Phoenix Alexander: “Voices with Vision: Writing Black, Feminist Futures in Twentieth-Century African America” directed by Professors Jacqueline Goldsby, Daphne Brooks, Anthony Reed, and Wai Chee Dimock

Andrew S. Brown: “Artificial Persons: Fictions of Representation in Early Modern Drama” directed by Professors David Kastan, John Rogers, and Joseph Roach

Margaret Deli: “Authorizing Taste: Connoisseurship and Transatlantic Modernity, 1880-1959” directed by Professors Ruth Yeazell, Joseph Cleary, and R. John Williams

Ann Killian: “Expanding Lyric Networks: The Transformation of a Genre in Late Medieval England” directed by Professors Ardis Butterfield, Jessica Brantley, and Alastair Minnis

Alexandra Reider: “The Multilingual English Manuscript Page, c. 950-1300” directed by Professors Roberta Frank, Ardis Butterfield, and Alastair Minnis

December 2018

Seo Hee Im: “After Totality: Late Modernism and the Globalization of the Novel” directed by Professors Joseph Cleary, Katie Trumpener, and Marta Figlerowicz

Angus Ledingham: “Styles of Abstraction: Objectivity and Moral Thought in Nineteenth-Century British Literature” directed by Professors David Bromwich, Jill Campbell, and Stefanie Markovits

Jason Bell: “Archiving Displacement in America” directed by Professors Caleb Smith, Wai Chee Dimock, and Jacqueline Goldsby

Joshua Stanley: “If but Once We Have Been Strong: Collective Agency and Poetic Technique in England during the Period of Early Capitalism” directed by Professors Paul Fry, David Bromwich, and Anthony Reed

December 2017

Carla Baricz: “Early Modern Two-Part and Sequel Drama, 1490-1590” directed by Professors David Quint, Lawrence Manley, and David Kastan

Edward King: “The World-Historical Novel: Writing the Periphery” directed by Professors Joseph Cleary, R. John Williams, and Michael Denning

Palmer Rampell: “The Genres of the Person in Post-World War II America” directed by Professors Amy Hungerford, Michael Warner, and R. John Williams

Anya Adair: “Composing the Law: Literature and Legislation in Early Medieval England” directed by Professors Roberta Frank, Ardis Butterfield, and Alastair Minnis

Robert Bradley Holden: “Milton between the Reformation and Enlightenment: Religion in an Age of Revolution” directed by Professors David Quint, Bruce Gordon, and John Rogers

Andrew Kau: “Astraea’s Adversary: The Rivalry Between Law and Literature in Elizabethan England” directed by Professors Lawrence Manley, David Quint, and David Kastan

Natalie Prizel: “The Good Look: Victorian Visual Ethics and the Problem of Physical Difference” direcgted by Professors Janice Carlisle and Tim Barringer

Rebecca Rush: “The Fetters of Rhyme: Freedom and Limitation in Early Modern Verse” direcgted by Professors David Quint, David Kastan, and John Rogers

Prashant Sharma: “Conversions to the Baroque: Catholic Modernism from James Joyce to Graham Greene” directed by Professors Paul Fry, Joseph Cleary, and Marta Figlerowicz

Joseph Stadolnik: “Subtle Arts: Practical Science and Middle English Literature” directed by Professors Ardis Butterfield and Alastair Minnis

Steven Kirk Warner: “Versions of Narcissus: The Aesthetics and Erotics of the Male Form in English Renaissance Poetry” directed by Professors John Rogers and Catherine Nicholson

December 2016

Kimberly Quiogue Andrews: “The Academic Avant-Garde: Poetry and the University since 1970” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer, Paul Fry, and Wai Chee Dimock

Alexis Chema: “Fancy’s Mirror: Romantic Poetry and the Art of Persuasion” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Paul Fry

Daniel Jump: “Metadiscursive Struggle and the Eighteenth-Century British Social Imaginary: From the End of Licensing to the Revolution Controversy” directed by Professors Michael Warner, Jill Campbell, and Paul Fry

Jordan Brower: “A Literary History of the Studio System, 1911-1950” directed by Wai Chee Dimock, JD Connor, and Joe Cleary

Ryan Carr: “Expressivism in America” directed by Michael Warner, Caleb Smith, and Paul Fry

Megan Eckerle: “Speculation and Time in Late Medieval Visionary Discourse” directed by Jessica Brantley and Alastair Minnis

Gabriele Hayden: “Routes and Roots of the New World Baroque: U.S. Modernist Poets Translate from Spanish” directed by Landon Hammer and Wai Chee Dimock

Matthew Hunter: “The Pursuit of Style in Shakespeare’s Drama” directed by David Kastan, Lawrence Manley, and Brian Walsh

Leslie Jamison: “The Recovered: Addiction and Sincerity in 20th Century American Literature” directed by Wai Chee Dimock, Amy Hungerford, and Caleb Smith

Jessica Matuozzi: “Double Agency: A Multimedia History of the War on Drugs” directed by Jacqueline Goldsby, Amy Hungerford, and Anthony Reed

Aaron Pratt: “The Status of Printed Playbooks in Early Modern England” directed by David Kastan, Lawrence Manley, and Keith Wrightson

Madeleine Saraceni: “The Idea of Writing for Women in Late Medieval Literature” directed by Jessica Brantley, Ardis Butterfield, and Alastair Minnis

J. Antonio Templanza: “Know to Know No More: The Composition of Knowledge in Milton’s Epic Poetry” directed by John Rogers and Paul Fry

Andrew Willson: “Idle Works: Unproductiveness, Literature Labor, and the Victorian Novel” directed by Janice Carlisle, Stefanie Markovits, and Ruth Yeazell

December 2015

Melina Moe: “Public Intimacies: Literary and Sexual Reproduction in the Eighteenth Century” directed by Katie Trumpener, Wendy Lee, Jonathan Kramnick, and Jill Campbell

Merve Emre: “Paraliterary Institutions” directed by Wai Chee Dimock and Amy Hungerford

Samuel Fallon: “Personal Effects: Personal and Literary Culture in Elizabethan England” directed by David Kastan, Catherine Nicholson, and Lawrence Manley

Edgar Garcia: “Deep Land: Hemispheric Modernisms and Indigenous Media” directed by Wai Chee Dimock, Langdon Hammer, and Anthony Reed

Jean Elyse Graham: “The Book Unbound: Print Logic between Old Books and New Media” directed by David Kastan, Catherine Nicholson, and R. John Williams

December 2014

Len Gutkin: “Dandiacal Forms” directed by Amy Hungerford, Sam See, and Katie Trumpener

Justin Sider: “Parting Words: Address and Exemplarity in Victorian Poetry” directed by Linda Peterson, Leslie Brisman, and Stefanie Markovits

William Weber: “Shakespearean Metamorphoses” directed by David Kastan

Thomas Koenigs: “Fictionality in the United States, 1789-1861” directed by Michael Warner, Jill Campbell, and Caleb Smith

Andrew Kraebel: “English Traditions of Biblical Criticism and Translation in the Later Middle Ages” directed by Alastair Minnis, Jessica Brantley, and Ian Cornelius

Tessie Prakas: “The Office of the Poet: Ministry and Verse Practice in the Seventeenth Century” directed by John Rogers, David Kastan, and Catherine Nicholson

Nienke Christine Venderbosch: “‘Tha Com of More under Misthleothum Grendel Gongan’: The Scholarly and Popular Reception of Beowulf ’s Grendel from 1805 to the Present Day” directed by Roberta Frank and Paul Fry

Eric Weiskott: “The Durable Alliterative Tradition” directed by Roberta Frank, Alastair Minnis, Ian Cornelius

December 2013

Anthony Domestico: “Theologies of Crisis in British Literature of the Interwar Period” directed by Amy Hungerford and Pericles Lewis

Glyn Salton-Cox: “Cobbett and the Comintern:  Transnational Provincialism and Revolutionary Desire from the Popular Front to the New Left” directed by Katie Trumpener, Katerina Clark, and Joe Cleary

Samuel Alexander: “Demographic Modernism: Character and Quantification in Twentieth Century Fiction” directed by Professors Pericles Lewis and Barry McCrea

Andrew Karas: “Versions of Modern Poetry” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Langdon Hammer

James Ross Macdonald: “Popular Religious Belief and Literature in Early Modern England” directed by Professors David Kastan and John Rogers

December 2012

Michael Komorowski: “The Arts of Interest: Private Property and the English Literary Imagination in the Age of Milton” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

Fiona Robinson: “Raising the Dead: Writing Lives and Writing Wars in Britain, 1914-1941” directed by Professors Katie Trumpener, Margaret Homans, and Sam See

Nathalie Wolfram: “Novel Play: Gothic Performance and the Making of Eighteenth Century Fiction” directed by Professors Joseph Roach and Katie Trumpener

Michaela Bronstein: “Imperishable Consciousness: The Rescue of Meaning in the Modernist Novel” directed by Professors Ruth Yeazell and Pericles Lewis

David Currell: “Epic Satire: Structures of Heroic Mockery in Early Modern English Literature” directed by Professor David Quint

Andrew Heisel: “Reading in Darkness: Sacred Text and Aesthetics in the Long Eighteenth Century” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Elliott Visconsi

Hilary Menges: “Authorship before Copyright: The Monumental Book, 1649-1743” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and John Rogers

Nathan Suhr-Sytsma: “Poetry and the Making of the Anglophone Literary World, 1950-1975” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Langdon Hammer

December 2011

Patrick Gray: “The Passionate Stoic: Subjectivity in Shakespeare’s Rome” directed by Professors Lawrence Manley and David Quint

Christopher Grobe: “Performing Confession: American Poetry, Performance, and New Media 1959” directed by Professors Amy Hungerford and Joseph Roach

Sebastian LeCourt: “Culture and Secularity: Religion in the Victorian Anthropological Imagination” directed by Professors Linda Peterson and Katie Trumpener

Laura Saetveit Miles: “Mary’s Book: The Annunciation in Middle England” directed by Jessica Brantley and Alastair Minnis

Stephen Tedeschi: “Urbanization in English Romantic Poetry” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Christopher R. Miller

Julia Fawcett: “Over-Expressing the Self: Celebrity, Shandeism, and Autobiographical Performance, 1696-1801” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Joseph Roach

Daniel Gustafson: “Stuart Restorations: History, Memory, Performance” directed by Professor Joseph Roach and Elliott Visconsi

Sarah Mahurin: “American Exodus: Migration and Oscillation in the Modern American Novel” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Robert Stepto

Erica Levy McAlpine: “Lyric Elsewhere: Strategies of Poetic Remove” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Langdon Hammer

Sarah Novacich: “Ark and Archive: Narrative Enclosures in Medieval and Early Modern Texts” directed by Professors Roberta Frank and Alastair Minnis

Jesse Schotter: “The Hieroglyphic Imagination: Language and Visuality in Modern Fiction and Film” directed by Professors Peter Brooks and Pericles Lewis

Matthew Vernon: “Strangers in a Familiar Land: The Medieval and African-American Literary Tradition” directed by Professor Alastair Minnis

Chia-Je Weng: “Natural Religion and Its Discontents: Critiques and Revisions in Blake and Coleridge” directed by Professors Leslie Brisman and Paul Fry

Nicole Wright: “‘A contractile power’: Boundaries of Character and the Culpable Self in the British Novel, 1750-1830” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Katie Trumpener

December 2010

Molly Farrell: “Counting Bodies: Imagining Population in the New World” directed by Professor Wai Chee Dimock

John Muse: “Short Attention Span Theaters: Modernist Shorts Since 1880” directed by Professors Joseph Roach and Marc Robinson

Denis Ferhatović: “An Early English Poetics of the Artifact” directed by Professor Roberta Frank

Colin Gillis: “Forming the Normal: Sexology and the Modern British Novel, 1890-1939” directed by Professors Laura Frost and Pericles Lewis

Katherine Harrison: “Tales Twice Told: Sound Technology and American Fiction after 1940” directed by Professor Amy Hungerford

Jean Otsuki: “British Modernism in the Country” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Margaret Homans

Erin Peterson: “On Intrusion and Interruption: An Exploration of an Early Modern Literary Mode” directed by Professor John Rogers

Patrick Redding: “A Distinctive Equality: The Democratic Imagination in Modern American Poetry” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Langdon Hammer

Emily Setina: “Modernism’s Darkrooms: Photography and Literary Process” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer and Pericles Lewis

Jordan Zweck: “Letters from Heaven in the British Isles, 800-1500” directed by Professor Roberta Frank

December 2009

Elizabeth Twitchell Antrim: “Relief Work: Aid to Africa in the American Novel Since 1960” directed by Professor Wai Chee Dimock

Emily Coit: “The Trial of Abundance: Consumption and Morality in the Anglo-American Novel, 1871-1907” directed by Professors Catherine Labio and Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Andrew Goldstone: “Modernist Fictions of Aesthetic Autonomy” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer and Amy Hungerford

Matthew Mutter: “Poetry Against Religion, Poetry As Religion: Secularism and its Discontents in Literary Modernism” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Pericles Lewis

Anna Chen: “Kinship Lessons: The Cultural Uses of Childhood in Late Medieval England” directed by Professors Jessica Brantley and Lee Patterson

Anne DeWitt: “The Uses of Scientific Thinking and the Realist Novel” directed by Professor Linda Peterson

Irina Dumitrescu: “The Instructional Moment in Anglo-Saxon Literature” directed by Professor Roberta Frank

Susannah Hollister: “Poetries of Geography in Postwar America” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Langdon Hammer

James Horowitz: “Rebellious Hearts and Loyal Passions: Imagining Civic Consciousness in Ovidian Writing on Women, 1680-1819” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Elliott Visconsi

Ben LaBreche: “The Rule of Friendship: Literary Culture and Early Modern Liberty” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

December 2008

Sarah Van der Laan: “What Virtue and Wisdom Can Do: Homer’s Odyssey in the Renaissance Imagination” directed by Professor David Quint

Annmarie Drury: “Literary Translators and Victorian Poetry” directed by Professor Linda Peterson

Jeffrey Glover: “People of the Word: Puritans, Algonquians, and the Politics of Print in Early New England” directed by Professors Elizabeth Dillon and Wai Chee Dimock

Dana Goldblatt: “From Contract to Social Contract: Fortescue’s Governance and Malory’s Morte ” directed by Professors David Quint and Alastair Minnis

Kamran Javadizadeh: “Bedlam and Parnassus: Madness and Poetry in Postwar America” directed by Professor Langdon Hammer

Ayesha Ramachandran: “Worldmaking in Early Modern Europe: Global Imaginations from Montaigne to Milton” directed by Professors Annabel Patterson and David Quint

Jennifer Sisk: “Forms of Speculation: Religious Genres and Religious Inquiry in Late Medieval England” directed by Professor Lee Patterson

Ariel Watson: “The Anxious Triangle: Modern Metatheatres of the Playwright, Performer, and Spectator” directed by Professor Joseph Roach

Jesse Zuba: “The Shape of Life: First Books and the Twentieth-Century Poetic Career” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer and Amy Hungerford

December 2007

Rebecca Boggs: “The Gem-Like Flame: the Aesthetics of Intensity in Hopkins, Crane, and H.D.” directed by Professor Langdon Hammer

Maria Fackler: “A Portrait of the Artist Manqué : Form and Failure in the British Novel Since 1945” directed by Professors Pericles Lewis and Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Melissa Ganz: “Fictions of Contract: Women, Consent, and the English Novel, 1722-1814” directed by Professor Jill Campbell

Siobhan Phillips: “The Poetics of Everyday Time in Frost, Stevens, Bishop, and Merrill” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Langdon Hammer

Morgan Swan: “The Literary Construction of a Capital City: Late-Medieval London and the Difficulty of Self-Definition” directed by Professor Lee Patterson

Andrea Walkden: “Lives, Letters and History: Walton to Defoe” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

Rebecca Berne: “Regionalism, Modernism and the American Short Story Cycle” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Vera Kutzinski

Leslie Eckel: “Transatlantic Professionalism: Nineteenth-Century American Writers at Work in the World” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Jennifer Baker

December 2006

Gregory Byala: “Samuel Beckett and the Problem of Beginning” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Pericles Lewis

Eric Lindstrom: “Romantic Fiat” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Paul H. Fry

Megan Quigley: “Modernist Fiction and the Re-instatement of the Vague” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Pericles Lewis

Randi Saloman: “Where Truth is Important: The Modern Novel and the Essayistic Mode” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Laura Frost

Michael Wenthe: “Arthurian Outsiders: Heterogeneity and the Cultural Politics of Medieval Arthurian Literature” directed by Professor Lee Patterson

Christopher Bond: “Exemplary Heroism and Christian Redemption in the Epic Poetry of Spenser and Milton” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

Lara Cohen: “Counterfeit Presentments: Fraud and the Production of Nineteenth-Century American Literature” directed by Professors Elizabeth Dillon and Wai Chee Dimock

Nicholas Salvato: “Uncloseting Drama: Modernism’s Queer Theaters” directed by Professors Joseph Roach and Michael Trask

Anthony Welch: “Songs of Dido: Epic Poetry and Opera in Seventeenth-Century England” directed by Professor David Quint

December 2005

Brooke Conti: “Anxious Acts: Religion and Autobiography in Early Modern England” directed by Professor Annabel Patterson

Brett Foster: “The Metropolis of Popery: Writing of Rome in the English Renaissance” directed by Professors Lawrence Manley and David Quint

Curtis Perrin: “Langland’s Comic Vision” directed by Professor Traugott Lawler

The Library wishes you a nice holiday break. Buildings will be closed from 12/23/22 to 12/31/22. For a full list of closing and opening times, please visit the library hours page.

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"An Interesting Planet": The Ecotheology of Marilynne Robinson's Fiction

"Cheap plywood and glue": American Theatrical Enclosure at the End of the Frontier

• Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2021
• Concentration: English

'The Feel of Not to Feel It': British Romanticism, Melancholic Historiography, and the Degree Zero of Emotion

'Unhackneyed Solitudes': Recycled Fragment as Lyric Voice in the Poetry of Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath

A Complicated Faith

• Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2020
• Concentration: English Nonfiction Writing

A Lily on Display: Compromised Privacy in The House of Mirth

A New Normal: Family Stories of Mental Illness, Resilience, and Recovery

Aesthetics in Place: Commercial Rhetoric and Local Identity in the British Atlantic, 1720-1820

American Corps: Who Is One of Us?

American Literature and the Religion of the Disinherited: Antisecularism and Modern Fiction

An Education on Wandering

Authentic Modernism: Ekphrasis and Objecthood in British and American Literature of the Early Twentieth Century

Autobiography's Queer Forms: Modernist Self-Writing from Auden to H.D.

Automatically Popular: Exoticism and Mass Media in Nineteenth-century British Fiction

Bad Style: Feminism and the Ethics of Reading in 20th and 21st century Global Anglophone Literature

Between Law and Justice: Legal Authority, Liberal Democracy, and Postwar Fiction

Biopolitics, Professional Subjectivity, and Postcolonial Anglophone Literary Studies: Ishiguro, Coetzee, Ondaatje

Bodies Unbound: Race, Gender, and Embodied Identity Politics in Recent Ethnic American Fiction

Boundaryland

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"All May Na Man Have in Talle": The Parabiblical Imaginary in Medieval English Literature 

Cognitive boundaries: perception and ethics in nineteenth-century britain , colony writing: creative community in the age of revolt , cosmopolitan romance: the adventure of archaeology, the politics of genre, and the origins of the future in walter scott's crusader novels , the entangled cities: earthly communities and the heavenly jerusalem in late medieval england , the fate of epic in twentieth-century american poetry , getting lost: forms of animation in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century british novel , hap: uncertainty and the english novel , the imaginary encyclopedia: the novel and the reference work in the age of reason , lyric as comedy , milton and music , the miniature and victorian literature , “my life is only one life”: turning to other people in american lyric poetry after new criticism , narrative and its non-events: counterfactual plotting in the victorian novel , poetry, desire, and devotional performance from shakespeare to milton, 1609-1667 , practical georgics: managing the land in medieval britain , the practice of form: arts of life in victorian literature , the premodern literary: matter and form in english poetry 1400-1547 , protestant institutionalism: religion, literature, and society after the state church , representations of counsel in selected works of sir philip sidney .

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Digital Commons @ USF > College of Arts and Sciences > English > Theses and Dissertations

English Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Of Mētis and Cuttlefish: Employing Collective Mētis as a Theoretical Framework for Marginalized Communities , Justiss Wilder Burry

What on earth are we doing (?): A Field-Wide Exploration of Design Courses in TPC , Jessica L. Griffith

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study of Cortez, Florida , Karla Ariel Maddox

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Using Movie Clips to Understand Vivid-Phrasal Idioms’ Meanings , Rasha Salem S. Alghamdi

An Exercise in Exceptions: Personhood, Divergency, and Ableism in the STAR TREK Franchise , Jessica A. Blackman

Vulnerable Resistance in Victorian Women’s Writing , Stephanie A. Harper

Curricular Assemblages: Understanding Student Writing Knowledge (Re)circulation Across Genres , Adam Phillips

PAD Beyond the Classroom: Integrating PAD in the Scrum Workplace , Jade S. Weiss

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Social Cues in Animated Pedagogical Agents for Second Language Learners: the Application of The Embodiment Principle in Video Design , Sahar M. Alyahya

A Field-Wide Examination of Cross-Listed Courses in Technical Professional Communication , Carolyn M. Gubala

Labor-Based Grading Contracts in the Multilingual FYC Classroom: Unpacking the Variables , Kara Kristina Larson

Land Goddesses, Divine Pigs, and Royal Tricksters: Subversive Mythologies and Imperialist Land Ownership Dispossession in Twentieth Century Irish and American Literature , Elizabeth Ricketts

Oppression, Resistance, and Empowerment: The Power Dynamics of Naming and Un-naming in African American Literature, 1794 to 2019 , Melissa "Maggie" Romigh

Generic Expectations in First Year Writing: Teaching Metadiscoursal Reflection and Revision Strategies for Increased Generic Uptake of Academic Writing , Kaelah Rose Scheff

Reframing the Gothic: Race, Gender, & Disability in Multiethnic Literature , Ashely B. Tisdale

Intersections of Race and Place in Short Fiction by New Orleans Gens de Couleur Libres , Adrienne D. Vivian

Mental Illness Diagnosis and the Construction of Stigma , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Rhetorical Roundhouse Kicks: Tae Kwon Do Pumsae Practice and Non-Western Embodied Topoi , Spencer Todd Bennington

9/11 Then and Now: How the Performance of Memorial Rhetoric by Presidents Changes to Construct Heroes , Kristen M. Grafton

Kinesthetically Speaking: Human and Animal Communication in British Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century , Dana Jolene Laitinen

Exploring Refugee Students’ Second Language (L2) Motivational Selves through Digital Visual Representations , Nhu Le

Glamour in Contemporary American Cinema , Shauna A. Maragh

Instrumentalization Theory: An Analytical Heuristic for a Heightened Social Awareness of Machine Learning Algorithms in Social Media , Andrew R. Miller

Intercessory Power: A Literary Analysis of Ethics and Care in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon , Alice Walker’s Meridian , and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child , Kelly Mills

The Power of Non-Compliant Logos: A New Materialist Approach to Comic Studies , Stephanie N. Phillips

Female Identity and Sexuality in Contemporary Indonesian Novels , Zita Rarastesa

"The Fiery Furnaces of Hell": Rhetorical Dynamism in Youngstown, OH , Joshua M. Rea

“We developed solidarity”: Family, Race, Identity, and Space-Time in Recent Multiethnic U.S. American Fiction , Kimber L. Wiggs

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Remembrance of a Wound: Ethical Mourning in the Works of Ana Menéndez, Elías Miguel Muñoz, and Junot Díaz , José Aparicio

Taking an “Ecological Turn” in the Evaluation of Rhetorical Interventions , Peter Cannon

New GTA’s and the Pre-Semester Orientation: The Need for Informed Refinement , Jessica L. Griffith

Reading Rape and Answering with Empathy: A New Approach to Sexual Assault Education for College Students , Brianna Jerman

The Karoo , The Veld , and the Co-Op: The Farm as Microcosm and Place for Change in Schreiner, Lessing, and Head , Elana D. Karshmer

"The weak are meat, and the strong do eat"; Representations of the Slaughterhouse in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature , Stephanie Lance

Language of Carnival: How Language and the Carnivalesque Challenge Hegemony , Yulia O. Nekrashevich

Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature , Elan J. Pavlinich

Because My Garmin Told Me To: A New Materialist Study of Agency and Wearable Technology , Michael Repici

No One Wants to Read What You Write: A Contextualized Analysis of Service Course Assignments , Tanya P. Zarlengo

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Beauty and the Beasts: Making Places with Literary Animals of Florida , Haili A. Alcorn

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature , Timothy M. Curran

Seeing Trauma: The Known and the Hidden in Nineteenth-Century Literature , Alisa M. DeBorde

Analysis of User Interfaces in the Sharing Economy , Taylor B. Johnson

Border-Crossing Travels Across Literary Worlds: My Shamanic Conscientization , Scott Neumeister

The Spectacle of The Bomb: Rhetorical Analysis of Risk of The Nevada Test Site in Technical Communication, Popular Press, and Pop Culture , Tiffany Wilgar

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Traveling Women and Consuming Place in Eighteenth-Century Travel Letters and Journals , Cassie Patricia Childs

“The Nations of the Field and Wood”: The Uncertain Ontology of Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , J. Kevin Jordan

Modern Mythologies: The Epic Imagination in Contemporary Indian Literature , Sucheta Kanjilal

Science in the Sun: How Science is Performed as a Spatial Practice , Natalie Kass

Body as Text: Physiognomy on the Early English Stage , Curtis Le Van

Tensions Between Democracy and Expertise in the Florida Keys , Elizabeth A. Loyer

Institutional Review Boards and Writing Studies Research: A Justice-Oriented Study , Johanna Phelps-Hillen

The Spirit of Friendship: Girlfriends in Contemporary African American Literature , Tangela La'Chelle Serls

Aphra Behn on the Contemporary Stage: Behn's Feminist Legacy and Woman-Directed Revivals of The Rover , Nicole Elizabeth Stodard

(Age)ncy in Composition Studies , Alaina Tackitt

Constructing Health Narratives: Patient Feedback in Online Communities , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Rupturing the World of Elite Athletics: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Suspension of the 2011 IAAF Regulations on Hyperandrogenism , Ella Browning

Shaping Climate Citizenship: The Ethics of Inclusion in Climate Change Communication and Policy , Lauren E. Cagle

Drop, Cover, and Hold On: Analyzing FEMA's Risk Communication through Visual Rhetoric , Samantha Jo Cosgrove

Material Expertise: Applying Object-oriented Rhetoric in Marine Policy , Zachary Parke Dixon

The Non-Identical Anglophone Bildungsroman : From the Categorical to the De-Centering Literary Subject in the Black Atlantic , Jarad Heath Fennell

Instattack: Instagram and Visual Ad Hominem Political Arguments , Sophia Evangeline Gourgiotis

Hospitable Climates: Representations of the West Indies in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , Marisa Carmen Iglesias

Chosen Champions: Medieval and Early Modern Heroes as Postcolonial Reactions to Tensions between England and Europe , Jessica Trant Labossiere

Science, Policy, and Decision Making: A Case Study of Deliberative Rhetoric and Policymaking for Coastal Adaptation in Southeast Florida , Karen Patricia Langbehn

A New Materialist Approach to Visual Rhetoric in PhotoShopBattles , Jonathan Paul Ray

Tracing the Material: Spaces and Objects in British and Irish Modernist Novels , Mary Allison Wise

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Representations of Gatsby: Ninety Years of Retrospective , Christine Anne Auger

Robust, Low Power, Discrete Gate Sizing , Anthony Joseph Casagrande

Wrestling with Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry , Paul T. Corrigan

#networkedglobe: Making the Connection between Social Media and Intercultural Technical Communication , Laura Anne Ewing

Evidence of Things Not Seen: A Semi-Automated Descriptive Phrase and Frame Analysis of Texts about the Herbicide Agent Orange , Sarah Beth Hopton

'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home , Rondrea Danielle Mathis

Relational Agency, Networked Technology, and the Social Media Aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing , Megan M. Mcintyre

Now, We Hear Through a Voice Darkly: New Media and Narratology in Cinematic Art , James Anthony Ricci

Navigating Collective Activity Systems: An Approach Towards Rhetorical Inquiry , Katherine Jesse Royce

Women's Narratives of Confinement: Domestic Chores as Threads of Resistance and Healing , Jacqueline Marie Smith

Domestic Spaces in Transition: Modern Representations of Dwelling in the Texts of Elizabeth Bowen , Shannon Tivnan

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Paradise Always Already Lost: Myth, Memory, and Matter in English Literature , Elizabeth Stuart Angello

Overcoming the 5th-Century BCE Epistemological Tragedy: A Productive Reading of Protagoras of Abdera , Ryan Alan Blank

Acts of Rebellion: The Rhetoric of Rogue Cinema , Adam Breckenridge

Material and Textual Spaces in the Poetry of Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld, and Robinson , Jessica Lauren Cook

Decolonizing Shakespeare: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in Three Adaptations of Three Plays by William Shakespeare , Angela Eward-Mangione

Risk of Compliance: Tracing Safety and Efficacy in Mef-Lariam's Licensure , Julie Marie Gerdes

Beyond Performance: Rhetoric, Collective Memory, and the Motive of Imprinting Identity , Brenda M. Grau

Subversive Beauty - Victorian Bodies of Expression , Lisa Michelle Hoffman-Reyes

Integrating Reading and Writing For Florida's ESOL Program , George Douglas Mcarthur

Responsibility and Responsiveness in the Novels of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley , Katherine Marie McGee

Ghosts, Orphans, and Outlaws: History, Family, and the Law in Toni Morrison's Fiction , Jessica Mckee

The "Defective" Generation: Disability in Modernist Literature , Deborah Susan Mcleod

Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Representation of Ethnic Futurity , Joy Ann Sanchez-Taylor

Hermes, Technical Communicator of the Gods: The Theory, Design, and Creation of a Persuasive Game for Technical Communication , Eric Walsh

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Rhetorical Spirits: Spirituality as Rhetorical Device in New Age Womanist of Color Texts , Ronisha Witlee Browdy

Disciplinarity, Crisis, and Opportunity in Technical Communication , Jason Robert Carabelli

The Terror of Possibility: A Re-evaluation and Reconception of the Sublime Aesthetic , Kurt Fawver

Unbearable Weight, Unbearable Witness: The (Im)possibility of Witnessing Eating Disorders in Cyberspace , Kristen Nicole Gay

the post- 9/11 aesthetic: repositioning the zombie film in the horror genre , Alan Edward Green, Jr.

An(other) Rhetoric: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Rhetorical Tradition , Kathleen Sandell Hardesty

Mapping Dissertation Genre Ecology , Kate Lisbeth Pantelides

Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics in a Posthuman Age , Daniel Patrick Richards

"Of That Transfigured World" : Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature , Benjamin Jude Wright

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Recent PhD Dissertations

Of Unsound Mind: Madness and Mental Health in Asian American Literature

Carrie Geng

Cultural Capitals: Postwar Yiddish between Warsaw and Buenos Aires

Rachelle Grossman

Counter-Republics of Letters: Politics, Publishing, and the Global Novel

Elisa Sotgiu

‘Through the Looking Glass’: The Narrative Performance of Anarkali Aisha Dad

Indeterminate “Greekness”: A Diasporic and Transnational Poetics Ilana Freedman

Imagined Mothers: The Construction of Italy, Ancient Greece, and Anglo-American Hegemony Francesca Bellei

The Untimely Avant-Garde: Literature, Politics, and Transculturation in the Sinosphere (1909-2020) Fangdai Chen

Recovering the Language of Lament: Modernism, Catastrophe, and Exile Sarah Corrigan

Beyond Diaspora:The Off Home in Jewish Literature from Latin America and Israel Lana Jaffe Neufeld

Artificial Humanities: A Literary Perspective on Creating and Enhancing Humans from Pygmalion to Cyborgs Nina Begus

Music and Exile in Twentieth-Century German, Italian, and Polish Literature Cecily Cai

We Speak Violence: How Narrative Denies the Everyday Rachael Duarte Riascos

Anticlimax: The Multilingual Novel at the Turn of the 21st Century Matylda Figlerowicz

Forgetting to Remember: An Approach to Proust’s Recherche Lara Roizen

The Event of Literature:An Interval in a World of Violence Petra Taylor

The English Baroque:The Logic of Excess in Early Modern Literature Hudson Vincent

Porte Planète; Ville Canale –parisian knobs /visually/ turned to \textual\ currents Emma Zofia Zachurski

‘…not a poet but a poem’: A Lacanian study of the subject of the poem Marina Connelly The Tune That Can No Longer Be Recognized: Late Medieval Chinese Poetry and Its Affective Others Jasmine Hu The Invention of the Art Film: Authorship and French Cultural Policy Joseph Pomp Apocalypticism in the Arabic Novel William Tamplin The Sound of Prose: Rhythm, Translation, Orality Thomas Wisniewski

The New Austerity in Syrian Poetry Daniel Behar

Mourning the Living: Africa and the Elegy on Screen Molly Klaisner

Art Beyond the Norms: Art of the Insane, Art Brut, and the Avant-Garde from Prinzhorn to Dubuffet (1922-1949) Raphael Koenig

Words, Images and the Self: Iconoclasm in Late Medieval English Literature Yun Ni

Europe and the Cultural Politics of Mediterranean Migrations Argyro Nicolaou

Voice of Power, Voice of Terror: Lyric, Violence, and the Greek Revolution Simos Zenios

Every Step a New Movement: Anarchism in the Stalin-Era Literature of the Absurd and its Post-Soviet Adaptations Ania Aizman

Kino-Eye, Kino-Bayonet: Avant-Garde Documentary in Japan, France, and the USSR Julia Alekseyeva

Ambient Meaning: Mood, Vibe, System Peli Grietzer

Year of the Titan: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Ancient Poetry Benjamin Sudarsky

Metropolitan Morning: Loss, Affect, and Metaphysics in Buenos Aires, 1920-1940 Juan Torbidoni

Sophisticated Players: Adults Writing as Children in the Stalin Era and Beyond Luisa Zaitseva

Collecting as Cultural Technique: Materialistic Interventions into History in 20th Century China Guangchen Chen

Pathways of Transculturation: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia and Japan (1880-1930) Xiaolu Ma

Beyond the Formal Law: Making Cases in Roman Controversiae and Tang Literary Judgments Tony Qian

Alternative Diplomacies: Writing in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai, Istanbul, and Beyond? Alice Xiang

The Literary Territorialization of Manchuria: Rethinking National and Transnational Literature in East Asia from the Frontier Miya Qiong Xie World Literature and the Chinese Compass, 1942-2012 Yanping Zhang

Anatomy of ‘Decadence’ Henry Bowles

Medicine As Storytelling: Emplotment Strategies in Doctor-Patient Encounters and Beyond (1870-1830) Elena Fratto

Platonic Footnotes: Figures of Asymmetry in Ancient Greek Thought Katie Deutsch

Children’s Literature Grows Up Christina Phillips Mattson

Humor as Epiphanic Awareness and Attempted Self-Transcendence Curtis Shonkwiler

Ethnicity, Ethnogenesis and Ancestry in the Early Iron Age Aegean as Background to and through the Lens of the Iliad Guy Smoot

The Modern Stage of Capitalism: The Drama of Markets and Money (1870-1930) Alisa Sniderman

Repenting Roguery: Penance in the Spanish Picaresque Novel and the Arabic and Hebrew Maqāma Emmanuel Ramírez Nieves

The “Poetics of Diagram” John Kim

Dreaming Empire: European Writers in the Fascist Era Robert Kohen

The Poetics of Love in Prosimetra across the Medieval Mediterranean Isabelle Levy

Renaissance Error: Digression from Ariosto to Milton Luke Taylor

The New Voyager: Theory and Practice of South Asian Literary Modernisms Rita Banerjee

Be an Outlaw, Be a Hero: Cinematic Figures of Urban Banditry and Transgression in Brazil, France, and the Maghreb Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

Bāgh-e Bi-Bargi: Aspects of Time and Presence in the Poetry of Mehdi Akhavān Sāles Marie Huber

Freund-schaft: Capturing Aura in an Unframed Literary Exchange Clara Masnatta

Class, Gender and Indigeneity as Counter-discourses in the African Novel: Achebe, Ngugi, Emecheta, Sow Fall and Ali Fatin Abbas

The Empire of Chance: War, Literature, and the Epistemic Order of Modernity Anders Engberg-Pedersen

Poetics of the unfinished: illuminating Paul Celan’s “Eingedunkelt” Thomas Connolly

Towards a Media History of Writing in Ancient Italy Stephanie Frampton Character Before the Novel: Representing Moral Identity in the Age of Shakespeare Jamey Graham

Transforming Trauma: Memory and Slavery in Black Atlantic Literature since 1830 Raquel Kennon

Renaissance Romance: Rewarding the Boundaries of Fiction Christine S. Lee

Psychomotor Aesthetics: Conceptions of Gesture and Affect in Russian and American Modernity, 1910s-1920s Ana Olenina

Melancholy, Ambivalence, Exhaustion: Responses to National Trauma in the Literature and Film of France and China Erin Schlumpf

The Poetics of Human-Computer Interaction Dennis Tenen

Novelizing the Muslim Wars of Conquest: The Christian Pioneers of the Arabic Historical Novel Luke Leafgren

Secret Lives of the City: Reimagining the Urban Margins in 20th-Century Literature and Theory, from Surrealism to Iain Sinclair Jennifer Hui Bon Hoa

Archaic Greek Memory and Its Role in Homer Anita Nikkanen

Deception Narratives and the (Dis)Pleasure of Being Cheated: The Cases of Gogol, Nabokov, Mamet, and Flannery O’Connor Svetlana Rukhelman

Aesthetic Constructs and the Work of Play in 20th Century Latin American and Russian Literature Natalya Sukhonos

Stone, Steel, Glass: Constructions of Time in European Modernity Christina Svendsen

See here for a full list of dissertations since 1904 .

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Department of English

Recent Theses and Dissertations

Recent phd dissertations.

• Mohammed Alhamili, The Emergence of Arab Nation-State Nationalism as an Alternative to the Supranational Concept of Ummah
• Anthony Buenning, Shakespeare and Early Modern Trauma
• Jay Gentry, The World We Want to Leave Behind: White Supremacy in the Apocalyptic Genres Past, Present, and Future
• Jonathan Duckworth, The Sometime Joy
• Maricruz Gomez, Chicana Decolonial Feminism: An Interconnectedness of Being
• Cassia Hameline, Stay for the Heron: Essays
• Kat Moore, Have You Ever Had a Broken Heart?
• Aza Pace, Her Terrible Splendor
• Travis Scott Ray, Stories and "Burning Man"
• Megan Arlett, Louisiana Saturday Nights
• Anum Aziz, Mapping the Feminist Movement in Pakistani Literature: Towards a Feminist Future
• Joshua Jones, Somehow Holier
• Minadora Macheret, Dear Bone Mother
• Takuya Matsuda, This Man is Your Friend: Knowing "Us" and "Them" in Ethnic American Literature of the Pacific Theater
• Lauren Rogener, Cultures of Elite Theatre in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Masque: Four Incarnations
• Andrew Smith, The Construction of the Fringe Extraterrestrial of Postmodernity
• Carly Susser, Molt
• Kevin West, Portal
• Brett Armes, The Ends of Smaller Worlds
• Rebecca Bernard, In the Way of Family
• Natalie Clark, Defining and Teaching Courtliness with Animals and Clothing in the Lais of Marie de France
• Brian Clifton, Wrong Feast
• Andrew Koch, Some Names for Empty Space
• Shannon Sawyer, True War Stories: Lies, Truth, and Recovery in the Non/Fiction of Vietnam
• Katherine Schneider, Body Doubles: Materiality and Gender Non-Binarism in Victorian Supernatural Fiction
• Stephanie Vastine, Queerness, Futurity, and Desire in American Literature: Improvising Identity in the Shadow of Empire
• Aurelia von Tress, Revolutionaries and Prophets: Post-Oppositionality in Kathleen Alcalá's Sonoran Desert Trilogy
• Sarah Warren, Oklahoma History
• Ruby Al-Qasem, Resurrection Attempts: Essays
• Stevie Edwards, Still House
• Sanderia Faye, Eleven
• Natalie Foster, Winter
• Allyson Jones, Just Ask: A Memoir of My Father
• Matthew Morton, Improvisation without Accompaniment and What Passes Here for Mountains
• Sebastian Paramo, Where We Split
• James Redmond, Because You Previously Liked or Played
• Iqra Shagufta, Postmodernity and Pakistani Postmodern Literature
• Daniel Stuart, Stalking Dickens: Predatory Disturbances in the Novels of Charles Dickens
• Virginia Wood, Tigers Born in the Same Year
• Conor Burke, Given That the Body Was Made
• Justin Carter, Brazos
• Cheri Paris Edwards, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine:Voices from the Other Side of the Color Line
• Kimberly Garza, The Last Karankawas: Stories
• Meghan Taylor Johnson, Poor Things: Objects, Ownership, and the Underclasses in American Literature, 1868-1935
• Ross Wilcox, Union: A Novel
• Spencer Hyde, Let It Run
• Nick Lu, Constructing Taiwan: Taiwanese Literature and National Identity
• Jessica Murray, Notes for the Manual Assembly
• Clint Peters, The Divine Coming of the Light
• Jeff Pickell, Jeff Pickell: New and Selected
• Timothy Regetz, Lollardy and Eschatology: English Literature c. 1380-1430
• Charlie Ricciardelli, The Hoboken War Bride: A Novel
• Brian Tatum, Rearranging an Infinite Universe: Literary Misprision and Manipulations of Space and Time, 1750-1850
• Heidi Cephus, Corporeal Judgment in Sheakpeare's Plays
• Trista Edwards, Spectral Evidence
• Anthony Cole Jeffrey, The Aesthetics of Sin: Beauty in Early Modern English Literature
• Tana Juko, Misrecognized and Misplaced: Race Performed in African American Literature, 1900-2015
• Darcy Lewis, Xenotopia: Death and Displacement in the Landscape of Nineteenth-Century American Authorship
• Nick McRae, Inscrutable House
• Amber Pagel, "How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?": Cognitive Poetics and the Poetry of William Butler Yeats
• Timothy Ponce, The Hybrid Hero of Early Modern English Literature: A Synthesis of Classical and Contemplative Heroism
• Karl Zuehlke, Momentarium

Recent MA Theses

• Xaviera Hernandez, Mexican Goodbye
• Caleb Kunasek, The Colonial Subject in the Early British Novel: Revisiting Colonial Captivity in Robinson Crusoe
• John Brandt, "Before This Memory Makes Sense": Essays
• Joel Najera, Beyond the Hold: The Evolution of the Ship in African American Literature
• Andrea Perez, Death Date
• Sara Ulery, Rein of Renegades
• Kaitlyn Brown, Exploitation, Justification and Overcoming through Voice: Exploring American Slavery and the Slave Narrative in "The Handmaid's Tale"
• Cade Mason, "Engine Running": Essays
• Martin Ramirez, "The Sandbox" and Other Short Stories
• Olivia Trotter, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy: How Society of Spectacle Bred the Mockingjay
• Conor Flannery, Collected Stories
• Zachary Kusch, A Century of Ash
• Garrett Vesely, Mortal Ghosts
• Laura Allen, Driving Lessons and Other Stories
• WIlliam Ross Irvin, Life Holders
• Hunter Jernigan, Running from My Youth: Essays
• Benjamin Smith, "A Very Fine Piece of Writing": Parnell and the Joycean Text, 1905-1922
• Morgan Inigo Smith, Flotsam: Men in Isolation
• Leah Tieger, Animals Alive and Dead
• Jaya Wagle, Homeland/Split
• Jessica Beattie, Second Life, Second Chance
• Caleb Braun, Developer
• Lauren Pilcher, "A Kind of Ghost"
• Sarah Ridley , That Every Christian May be Suited: Isaac Watts's Hymns in the Writings of Early Mohegan Writers, Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson
• Cary Siegfried, "Failure to Yield": Essays
• Amanda Yanowski , Off Main Street: Stories

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Home > FACULTIES > English > ENGLISH-ETD

English Theses and Dissertations

This collection contains theses and dissertations from the Department of English, collected from the Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Theses/Dissertations from 2024 2024

The Ecology of American Noir , Katrina Younes

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Poetics in Transit: Indigenous, Diasporic, and Settler Women’s Contemporary Writing in Canada , Christine Campana

Bodies of Silence and Space: Victimhood, Complicity, and Resistance in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale , Sana H. Mufti

Capacious Feminism: Intimacy and Otherness in Mina Loy's Poetry , Elise Ottavino

Romantic Citation and the Receding Future , Andrew Sargent

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Love-Worlds: Performance of Love as Decolonial Worldmaking in India and in Indigenous Theatre on Northern Turtle Island , Sheetala Bhat

Diaspora and Abjection of a Nowhere in Particular: Theorizing the Hyphen in Iranian-Canadian Narratives , Mahdiyeh Ezzatikarami

Nostalgic Metafiction: The Adventure Fiction of Stevenson, Kipling, and Conrad , Hanji Lee

Men under Microscopes: “Medical Gaze” and Homeostasis in Victorian Realist Literature , Nida Rashid

The Time Helix: Nonlinear Narrative Structures and the Paradox of Delayed Simultaneity , Jaclyn A. Reed

Representing Women and the 1947 Partition in Hindi Cinema and Television (1948-Present) , Nidhi Shrivastava

Buried Feelings, Standing Stones: Secularity, Animism, and Late-Victorian Pagan Revivalism , Jeff Swim

Speaking Chastity: Female Speech, Silence, and the Strategic Performance of Chaste Identity in Early Modern Drama and Women's Writing , Lisa Templin

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Unsettling Sympathy: Indigenous and Settler Conversations from the Great Lakes Region, 1820-1860 , Erin Akerman

Unmade and Unmanned Men: Reading Traumatized Masculinity in Late Nineteenth-Century British Adventure Fiction through the Lens of the Indian “Mutiny” of 1857 , Madison A. Bettle

Artificial Frontiers, Simulated Indigeneity: Western Big-Budget Open World Games and the Settler Colonial Imaginary , Adam Bowes

Bible Translations And Literary Responses: Re-reading Missionary Interventions In Africa Through Local Perspectives , Chinelo Ezenwa

Capital Distress: Productive Citizenship and Mental Health in Adolescent Literature , Jeremy TL Johnston

Refusing Interpretation: Waste Ecologies in Victorian Fiction and Prose , Nahmi Lee

Resonances: An Examination of Republication Through Four Case Studies , F S. Nakhaie

“The seal set on our nationhood”: Canadian Literary Responses to the South African War (1899-1902) , Alicia C. Robinet

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Exquisite Corpses: Markedness, Gender, and Death in Video Games , Meghan Blythe Adams

Critiquing Psychiatry, Narrating Trauma: Madness in Twentieth-Century North American Literature and Film , Sarah Blanchette

Duration and Depravity: Religious and Secular Temporality in Puritanism and the American Gothic , Taylor Kraayenbrink

Sacred Mnemonics in Late Medieval England: ars memoria in the Hagiography of Osbern Bokenham , Erica C. Leighton

Malory, Chivalric Medievalism, and New Imperialist Masculinity , Andrew LiVecchi

Land, Water, and Stars: Relationality in Anishinaabe and Diasporic Literature , Maral Moradipour

Atmosphere and Religious Experience in American Transcendentalism , Thomas Sorensen

Material Witness: Occult Affects in the Mystery Fiction of the Fin de Siècle , Thomas Matthew Stuart

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Semantic Shift in Old English and Old Saxon Identity Terms , David A. Carlton

Financial Frictions: Money and Materiality in American Literary Naturalism, 1890-1925 , Patricia Luedecke

Criminal Masculinities and the Newgate Novel , Taylor R. Richardson

Everywhere, Animals Appear: Species, Race, and the State in Literature from the Raj to Global India , Jason Sandhar

Antichrist in the Shadows: Biblical Allusion in Richard III and Macbeth , Curtis J. Simpson

Georgic Political Economy: Emergent Forms of Order and Liberal Statecraft in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry , Jonathan Stillman

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Agnotologies of Modernism: Knowing the Unknown in Lewis, Woolf, Pound, and Joyce , Jeremy Colangelo

Species Panic: Interspecies Erotics in Post-1900 American Literature , David Huebert

Unread: The (Un)published Texts of Romanticism , Marc D. Mazur

Narrative Immunities: The Logic of Infection and Defense in American Speculative Fiction , Riley R. McDonald

Buddhism in Progress: Ecstasy, Eternity, and Zen Sickness in the English Romantics , Logan M. Rohde

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Romantic Metasubjectivity: Rethinking the Romantic Subject Through Schelling and Jung , Gord Barentsen

The Hermetic Enigma of a Protean Poet: Gnosis and the Puritanical Error in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis , Luke Jennings

Literary Language Revitalization: nêhiyawêwin, Indigenous Poetics, and Indigenous Languages in Canada , Emily L. Kring

The Unknown Soldier in the 21st Century: War Commemoration in Contemporary Canadian Cultural Production , Andrew Edward Lubowitz

Islam's Low Mutterings at High Tide: Enslaved African Muslims in American Literature , Zeinab McHeimech

Appearing Live: Spectatorship, Affect, and Liveness in Contemporary British Performance , Meghan O'Hara

Spaces of Collapse: Psychological Deterioration, Subjectivity, and Spatiality in American Narratives , Andrew Papaspyrou

No Delicate Flower: Victorian Floral Symbolism’s Mediation of Social Issues in Selected Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, John Ruskin, and Isabella Bird Bishop , Christine Penhale

Waiting for God: John Milton’s Millenarianism Reconsidered , Rainerio George Ramos

Terrorism, Islamization, and Human Rights: How Post 9/11 Pakistani English Literature Speaks to the World , Shazia Sadaf

Crossing the Line: Censorship, Borders, and the Queer Poetics of Disclosure in English-Canadian Writing, 1967-2000 , Kevin T. Shaw

Imagining the Unimagined Metropolis: Privilege, Liminality, and Peripheral Communities in the Contemporary Urban Situation , Colton R. Sherman

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Rhetorical Ductus in Chaucerian Ekphrasis , Emily Laura Pez

"The Sense of An Ending": The Destabilizing Effect of Performance Closure in Shakespeare's Plays , Megan Lynn Selinger

Of the Last Verses in the Book: Old Age, Caregiving, and Early Modern Literature , Emily M. Sugerman

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Reading the Canadian Battlefield at Quebec, Queenston, Batoche, and Vimy , Rebecca Campbell

Turning to Food: Religious Contact and Conversion in Early Modern Drama , Fatima F. Ebrahim

Reading Boredom in Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Christina Rossetti , Rebekah Ann Lamb

Creating Difference: The Legal Production of Race in American Slavery , Shaun N. Ramdin

About Telling: Ghosts and Hauntings in Contemporary Drama and Poetry , Leif Erik Schenstead-Harris

The Aesthetics of Romantic Hellenism , Derek Shank

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

The Luminous Detail: The Evolution of Ezra Pound's Linguistic and Aesthetic Theories from 1910-1915 , John J. Allaster

"Rank Corpuscles": Soil and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Representations , Nina Patricia Budabin McQuown

The Romantic Posthuman and Posthumanities , Elizabeth Effinger

Transnational Conversations: The New Yorker and Canadian Short Story Writers , Nadine Fladd

The Book Beautiful: Aestheticism, Materiality, and Queer Books , Frederick D. King

Graphic Drama: Reading Shakespeare in the Comics Medium , Russell H. McConnell

Diffuse Connections: Making Sense of Smell in Canadian Diasporic Women's Writing , Stephanie Oliver

“Companions of the Flame”: Concealment and Revelation in H.D.’s Trilogy , Cam Riddell

Dirty Modernism: Ecological Objects in American Poetry , Michael D. Sloane

EECOLOGY: (pata)physical taoism in e. e. cummings’s poetry , Nathan B. TeBokkel

Fatal Attraction: The Fetishized Image of the Fatal Woman as Gothic Double , Margaret Anne Young

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Storied Truths: Contemporary Canadian and Indigenous Childhood Trauma Narratives , Michelle Coupal

Feeling With Imagination: Sympathy and Postwar American Poetry , Timothy A. DeJong

After Dark: Reading Canadian Literature in a Light-Polluted Age , David S. Hickey

Dark Sympathy: Desiring the Other in Godwin, Coleridge, and Shelley , Jeffrey T. King

Strata, Soma, Psyche: Narrative and the Imagination in the Nineteenth-Century Science of Lyell, Darwin, and Freud , Pascale M. Manning

Uncommon Ecology: Reading the Romantic Oikos , Shalon Noble

"Radiant Imperfection": The Interconnected Writing Lives of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky , Kostantina Northrup

Preposterous America: The Language of Inversion in Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne , Rasmus R. Simonsen

Metaphor and Metanoia: Linguistic Transfer and Cognitive Transformation in British and Irish Modernism , Andrew C. Wenaus

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Hazardous Experiments: The Elusive Prefaces of William Godwin, Mary Hays, William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley , Jeffrey W. Miles

Architectures of the Veil: The Representation of the Veil and Zenanas in Pakistani Feminists' Texts , Amber Fatima Riaz

Miscegenation in the Marvelous: Race and Hybridity in the Fantasy Novels of Neil Gaiman and China Miéville , Nikolai Rodrigues

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• Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates

Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates

Published on June 7, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on November 21, 2023.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical early steps in your writing process . It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding the specifics of your dissertation topic and showcasing its relevance to your field.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation , such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review, research methods, avenues for future research, etc.)

In the final product, you can also provide a chapter outline for your readers. This is a short paragraph at the end of your introduction to inform readers about the organizational structure of your thesis or dissertation. This chapter outline is also known as a reading guide or summary outline.

Table of contents

How to outline your thesis or dissertation, dissertation and thesis outline templates, chapter outline example, sample sentences for your chapter outline, sample verbs for variation in your chapter outline, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis and dissertation outlines.

While there are some inter-institutional differences, many outlines proceed in a fairly similar fashion.

• Working Title
• “Elevator pitch” of your work (often written last).
• Introduce your area of study, sharing details about your research question, problem statement , and hypotheses . Situate your research within an existing paradigm or conceptual or theoretical framework .
• Subdivide as you see fit into main topics and sub-topics.
• Describe your research methods (e.g., your scope , population , and data collection ).
• Present your research findings and share about your data analysis methods.
• Answer the research question in a concise way.
• Interpret your findings, discuss potential limitations of your own research and speculate about future implications or related opportunities.

For a more detailed overview of chapters and other elements, be sure to check out our article on the structure of a dissertation or download our template .

To help you get started, we’ve created a full thesis or dissertation template in Word or Google Docs format. It’s easy adapt it to your own requirements.

 Download Word template    Download Google Docs template

It can be easy to fall into a pattern of overusing the same words or sentence constructions, which can make your work monotonous and repetitive for your readers. Consider utilizing some of the alternative constructions presented below.

Example 1: Passive construction

The passive voice is a common choice for outlines and overviews because the context makes it clear who is carrying out the action (e.g., you are conducting the research ). However, overuse of the passive voice can make your text vague and imprecise.

Example 2: IS-AV construction

You can also present your information using the “IS-AV” (inanimate subject with an active verb ) construction.

A chapter is an inanimate object, so it is not capable of taking an action itself (e.g., presenting or discussing). However, the meaning of the sentence is still easily understandable, so the IS-AV construction can be a good way to add variety to your text.

Example 3: The “I” construction

Another option is to use the “I” construction, which is often recommended by style manuals (e.g., APA Style and Chicago style ). However, depending on your field of study, this construction is not always considered professional or academic. Ask your supervisor if you’re not sure.

Example 4: Mix-and-match

To truly make the most of these options, consider mixing and matching the passive voice , IS-AV construction , and “I” construction .This can help the flow of your argument and improve the readability of your text.

As you draft the chapter outline, you may also find yourself frequently repeating the same words, such as “discuss,” “present,” “prove,” or “show.” Consider branching out to add richness and nuance to your writing. Here are some examples of synonyms you can use.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Research bias

• Anchoring bias
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• The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
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When you mention different chapters within your text, it’s considered best to use Roman numerals for most citation styles. However, the most important thing here is to remain consistent whenever using numbers in your dissertation .

The title page of your thesis or dissertation goes first, before all other content or lists that you may choose to include.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review , research methods , avenues for future research, etc.)

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

George, T. (2023, November 21). Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved April 15, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/dissertation-thesis-outline/

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Dissertation Structure & Layout 101: How to structure your dissertation, thesis or research project.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | July 2019

So, you’ve got a decent understanding of what a dissertation is , you’ve chosen your topic and hopefully you’ve received approval for your research proposal . Awesome! Now its time to start the actual dissertation or thesis writing journey.

To craft a high-quality document, the very first thing you need to understand is dissertation structure . In this post, we’ll walk you through the generic dissertation structure and layout, step by step. We’ll start with the big picture, and then zoom into each chapter to briefly discuss the core contents. If you’re just starting out on your research journey, you should start with this post, which covers the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis .

*The Caveat *

In this post, we’ll be discussing a traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout, which is generally used for social science research across universities, whether in the US, UK, Europe or Australia. However, some universities may have small variations on this structure (extra chapters, merged chapters, slightly different ordering, etc).

So, always check with your university if they have a prescribed structure or layout that they expect you to work with. If not, it’s safe to assume the structure we’ll discuss here is suitable. And even if they do have a prescribed structure, you’ll still get value from this post as we’ll explain the core contents of each section.  

Overview: S tructuring a dissertation or thesis

• Acknowledgements page
• Abstract (or executive summary)
• Table of contents , list of figures and tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature review
• Chapter 3: Methodology
• Chapter 4: Results
• Chapter 5: Discussion
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Reference list

As I mentioned, some universities will have slight variations on this structure. For example, they want an additional “personal reflection chapter”, or they might prefer the results and discussion chapter to be merged into one. Regardless, the overarching flow will always be the same, as this flow reflects the research process , which we discussed here – i.e.:

• The introduction chapter presents the core research question and aims .
• The literature review chapter assesses what the current research says about this question.
• The methodology, results and discussion chapters go about undertaking new research about this question.
• The conclusion chapter (attempts to) answer the core research question .

In other words, the dissertation structure and layout reflect the research process of asking a well-defined question(s), investigating, and then answering the question – see below.

To restate that – the structure and layout of a dissertation reflect the flow of the overall research process . This is essential to understand, as each chapter will make a lot more sense if you “get” this concept. If you’re not familiar with the research process, read this post before going further.

Right. Now that we’ve covered the big picture, let’s dive a little deeper into the details of each section and chapter. Oh and by the way, you can also grab our free dissertation/thesis template here to help speed things up.

The title page of your dissertation is the very first impression the marker will get of your work, so it pays to invest some time thinking about your title. But what makes for a good title? A strong title needs to be 3 things:

• Succinct (not overly lengthy or verbose)
• Specific (not vague or ambiguous)
• Representative of the research you’re undertaking (clearly linked to your research questions)

Typically, a good title includes mention of the following:

• The broader area of the research (i.e. the overarching topic)
• The specific focus of your research (i.e. your specific context)
• Indication of research design (e.g. quantitative , qualitative , or  mixed methods ).

For example:

A quantitative investigation [research design] into the antecedents of organisational trust [broader area] in the UK retail forex trading market [specific context/area of focus].

Again, some universities may have specific requirements regarding the format and structure of the title, so it’s worth double-checking expectations with your institution (if there’s no mention in the brief or study material).

Acknowledgements

This page provides you with an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped you along your research journey. Generally, it’s optional (and won’t count towards your marks), but it is academic best practice to include this.

So, who do you say thanks to? Well, there’s no prescribed requirements, but it’s common to mention the following people:

• Your dissertation supervisor or committee.
• Any professors, lecturers or academics that helped you understand the topic or methodologies.
• Any tutors, mentors or advisors.
• Your family and friends, especially spouse (for adult learners studying part-time).

There’s no need for lengthy rambling. Just state who you’re thankful to and for what (e.g. thank you to my supervisor, John Doe, for his endless patience and attentiveness) – be sincere. In terms of length, you should keep this to a page or less.

Abstract or executive summary

The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report – in other words, it should be able to stand alone .

For it to stand alone, your abstract should cover the following key points (at a minimum):

• Your research questions and aims – what key question(s) did your research aim to answer?
• Your methodology – how did you go about investigating the topic and finding answers to your research question(s)?
• Your findings – following your own research, what did do you discover?
• Your conclusions – based on your findings, what conclusions did you draw? What answers did you find to your research question(s)?

So, in much the same way the dissertation structure mimics the research process, your abstract or executive summary should reflect the research process, from the initial stage of asking the original question to the final stage of answering that question.

In practical terms, it’s a good idea to write this section up last , once all your core chapters are complete. Otherwise, you’ll end up writing and rewriting this section multiple times (just wasting time). For a step by step guide on how to write a strong executive summary, check out this post .

Need a helping hand?

Table of contents

This section is straightforward. You’ll typically present your table of contents (TOC) first, followed by the two lists – figures and tables. I recommend that you use Microsoft Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate your TOC. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, the video below explains it simply:

If you find that your table of contents is overly lengthy, consider removing one level of depth. Oftentimes, this can be done without detracting from the usefulness of the TOC.

Right, now that the “admin” sections are out of the way, its time to move on to your core chapters. These chapters are the heart of your dissertation and are where you’ll earn the marks. The first chapter is the introduction chapter – as you would expect, this is the time to introduce your research…

It’s important to understand that even though you’ve provided an overview of your research in your abstract, your introduction needs to be written as if the reader has not read that (remember, the abstract is essentially a standalone document). So, your introduction chapter needs to start from the very beginning, and should address the following questions:

• What will you be investigating (in plain-language, big picture-level)?
• Why is that worth investigating? How is it important to academia or business? How is it sufficiently original?
• What are your research aims and research question(s)? Note that the research questions can sometimes be presented at the end of the literature review (next chapter).
• What is the scope of your study? In other words, what will and won’t you cover ?
• How will you approach your research? In other words, what methodology will you adopt?
• How will you structure your dissertation? What are the core chapters and what will you do in each of them?

These are just the bare basic requirements for your intro chapter. Some universities will want additional bells and whistles in the intro chapter, so be sure to carefully read your brief or consult your research supervisor.

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Now that you’ve set a clear direction with your introduction chapter, the next step is the literature review . In this section, you will analyse the existing research (typically academic journal articles and high-quality industry publications), with a view to understanding the following questions:

• What does the literature currently say about the topic you’re investigating?
• Is the literature lacking or well established? Is it divided or in disagreement?
• How does your research fit into the bigger picture?
• How does your research contribute something original?
• How does the methodology of previous studies help you develop your own?

Depending on the nature of your study, you may also present a conceptual framework towards the end of your literature review, which you will then test in your actual research.

Again, some universities will want you to focus on some of these areas more than others, some will have additional or fewer requirements, and so on. Therefore, as always, its important to review your brief and/or discuss with your supervisor, so that you know exactly what’s expected of your literature review chapter.

Now that you’ve investigated the current state of knowledge in your literature review chapter and are familiar with the existing key theories, models and frameworks, its time to design your own research. Enter the methodology chapter – the most “science-ey” of the chapters…

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions:

• Exactly HOW will you carry out your research (i.e. what is your intended research design)?
• Exactly WHY have you chosen to do things this way (i.e. how do you justify your design)?

Remember, the dissertation part of your degree is first and foremost about developing and demonstrating research skills . Therefore, the markers want to see that you know which methods to use, can clearly articulate why you’ve chosen then, and know how to deploy them effectively.

Importantly, this chapter requires detail – don’t hold back on the specifics. State exactly what you’ll be doing, with who, when, for how long, etc. Moreover, for every design choice you make, make sure you justify it.

In practice, you will likely end up coming back to this chapter once you’ve undertaken all your data collection and analysis, and revise it based on changes you made during the analysis phase. This is perfectly fine. Its natural for you to add an additional analysis technique, scrap an old one, etc based on where your data lead you. Of course, I’m talking about small changes here – not a fundamental switch from qualitative to quantitative, which will likely send your supervisor in a spin!

You’ve now collected your data and undertaken your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In this chapter, you’ll present the raw results of your analysis . For example, in the case of a quant study, you’ll present the demographic data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics , etc.

Typically, Chapter 4 is simply a presentation and description of the data, not a discussion of the meaning of the data. In other words, it’s descriptive, rather than analytical – the meaning is discussed in Chapter 5. However, some universities will want you to combine chapters 4 and 5, so that you both present and interpret the meaning of the data at the same time. Check with your institution what their preference is.

Now that you’ve presented the data analysis results, its time to interpret and analyse them. In other words, its time to discuss what they mean, especially in relation to your research question(s).

What you discuss here will depend largely on your chosen methodology. For example, if you’ve gone the quantitative route, you might discuss the relationships between variables . If you’ve gone the qualitative route, you might discuss key themes and the meanings thereof. It all depends on what your research design choices were.

Most importantly, you need to discuss your results in relation to your research questions and aims, as well as the existing literature. What do the results tell you about your research questions? Are they aligned with the existing research or at odds? If so, why might this be? Dig deep into your findings and explain what the findings suggest, in plain English.

The final chapter – you’ve made it! Now that you’ve discussed your interpretation of the results, its time to bring it back to the beginning with the conclusion chapter . In other words, its time to (attempt to) answer your original research question s (from way back in chapter 1). Clearly state what your conclusions are in terms of your research questions. This might feel a bit repetitive, as you would have touched on this in the previous chapter, but its important to bring the discussion full circle and explicitly state your answer(s) to the research question(s).

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings? In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Lastly, you should discuss the limitations of your research, as well as what this means for future research in the area. No study is perfect, especially not a Masters-level. Discuss the shortcomings of your research. Perhaps your methodology was limited, perhaps your sample size was small or not representative, etc, etc. Don’t be afraid to critique your work – the markers want to see that you can identify the limitations of your work. This is a strength, not a weakness. Be brutal!

This marks the end of your core chapters – woohoo! From here on out, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

The reference list is straightforward. It should contain a list of all resources cited in your dissertation, in the required format, e.g. APA , Harvard, etc.

It’s essential that you use reference management software for your dissertation. Do NOT try handle your referencing manually – its far too error prone. On a reference list of multiple pages, you’re going to make mistake. To this end, I suggest considering either Mendeley or Zotero. Both are free and provide a very straightforward interface to ensure that your referencing is 100% on point. I’ve included a simple how-to video for the Mendeley software (my personal favourite) below:

Some universities may ask you to include a bibliography, as opposed to a reference list. These two things are not the same . A bibliography is similar to a reference list, except that it also includes resources which informed your thinking but were not directly cited in your dissertation. So, double-check your brief and make sure you use the right one.

The very last piece of the puzzle is the appendix or set of appendices. This is where you’ll include any supporting data and evidence. Importantly, supporting is the keyword here.

Your appendices should provide additional “nice to know”, depth-adding information, which is not critical to the core analysis. Appendices should not be used as a way to cut down word count (see this post which covers how to reduce word count ). In other words, don’t place content that is critical to the core analysis here, just to save word count. You will not earn marks on any content in the appendices, so don’t try to play the system!

Time to recap…

And there you have it – the traditional dissertation structure and layout, from A-Z. To recap, the core structure for a dissertation or thesis is (typically) as follows:

• Acknowledgments page

Most importantly, the core chapters should reflect the research process (asking, investigating and answering your research question). Moreover, the research question(s) should form the golden thread throughout your dissertation structure. Everything should revolve around the research questions, and as you’ve seen, they should form both the start point (i.e. introduction chapter) and the endpoint (i.e. conclusion chapter).

I hope this post has provided you with clarity about the traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or feel free to get in touch with us. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the  Grad Coach Blog .

Psst… there’s more (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project. 

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36 Comments

many thanks i found it very useful

Glad to hear that, Arun. Good luck writing your dissertation.

Such clear practical logical advice. I very much needed to read this to keep me focused in stead of fretting.. Perfect now ready to start my research!

what about scientific fields like computer or engineering thesis what is the difference in the structure? thank you very much

Thanks so much this helped me a lot!

Very helpful and accessible. What I like most is how practical the advice is along with helpful tools/ links.

Thanks Ade!

Thank you so much sir.. It was really helpful..

You’re welcome!

Hi! How many words maximum should contain the abstract?

Thank you so much 😊 Find this at the right moment

You’re most welcome. Good luck with your dissertation.

best ever benefit i got on right time thank you

Many times Clarity and vision of destination of dissertation is what makes the difference between good ,average and great researchers the same way a great automobile driver is fast with clarity of address and Clear weather conditions .

I guess Great researcher = great ideas + knowledge + great and fast data collection and modeling + great writing + high clarity on all these

You have given immense clarity from start to end.

Morning. Where will I write the definitions of what I’m referring to in my report?

Thank you so much Derek, I was almost lost! Thanks a tonnnn! Have a great day!

Thanks ! so concise and valuable

This was very helpful. Clear and concise. I know exactly what to do now.

Thank you for allowing me to go through briefly. I hope to find time to continue.

Really useful to me. Thanks a thousand times

Very interesting! It will definitely set me and many more for success. highly recommended.

Thank you soo much sir, for the opportunity to express my skills

Usefull, thanks a lot. Really clear

Very nice and easy to understand. Thank you .

That was incredibly useful. Thanks Grad Coach Crew!

My stress level just dropped at least 15 points after watching this. Just starting my thesis for my grad program and I feel a lot more capable now! Thanks for such a clear and helpful video, Emma and the GradCoach team!

Do we need to mention the number of words the dissertation contains in the main document?

It depends on your university’s requirements, so it would be best to check with them 🙂

Such a helpful post to help me get started with structuring my masters dissertation, thank you!

Great video; I appreciate that helpful information

It is so necessary or avital course

This blog is very informative for my research. Thank you

Doctoral students are required to fill out the National Research Council’s Survey of Earned Doctorates

wow this is an amazing gain in my life

This is so good

How can i arrange my specific objectives in my dissertation?

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Literature Dissertation Topics

Published by Carmen Troy at January 9th, 2023 , Revised On April 16, 2024

Introduction

A literature dissertation aims to contextualise themes, ideas, and interests that have grabbed a reader’s interest and attention, giving them a more profound meaning through the movement of time within and outside cultures.

Literature is a comprehensive knowledge of other writers’ views, and to understand them, a student must perform extensive reading and research. A writer coveys their thoughts and ideas through their literary works, including the views and opinions of writers ranging from topics on philosophy , religious preferences, sociology , academics, and psychology .

To help you get started with brainstorming for literature topic ideas, we have developed a list of the latest topics that can be used for writing your literature dissertation.

These topics have been developed by PhD qualified writers of our team , so you can trust to use these topics for drafting your dissertation.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting  a brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the topic,  research question ,  aim and objectives ,  literature review  along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted.  Let us know  if you need any help in getting started.

Check our  dissertation examples  to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

Review the full list of  dissertation topics for here.

2024 Literature Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: impact of the second language barrier on the social integration of immigrants- a case of chinese nationals migrating to the uk.

Research Aim: This research purposes an analysis to show the impact of the second language barrier on the social integration of Chinese immigrants in the UK. It will analyze how this barrier affects various segments of their lives by limiting their social interactions. Moreover, it will identify ways (language courses, communal support, financial support, etc.) through which government and civil society help these immigrants to overcome this barrier to make them feel inclusive in the UK and play a part in the economy.

Topic 2: The Power of the Writer’s Imagination- A Study Finding the Role of Writer Imagination in the Social Revolution in 19th-Century Europe

Research Aim: This study intends to identify the role of the writer’s imagination in the social revolution in 19 th century Europe. It will show how writers’ imagination is reflected in their writings and how it affects ordinary individuals’ mindsets. It will assess the writings of various authors during the 19 th -century social revolution when Europe replaced the monarchy with democracy. It will show the language used by the authors and its effect on the individuals’ will to achieve democracy.

Topic 3: How does an Accent Develop? An Exploratory Analysis Finding Factors Shaped Various English Accents in the World- A Case of America, Australia, and India

Research Aim: This research will analyze how an accent develops when a language is imported from one region to the other. It will identify how various factors such as culture, norms, politics, religion, etc., affect accent development. And to show this effect, this research will show how the English accent changed when it came to America, Australia, and India. Moreover, it will indicate whether social resistance in these areas affected the accent or was readily accepted.

Topic 4: “Gender Pronouns and their Usage” a New Debate in the Social Linguistics Literature- A Systematic Review of the Past and Present Debates

Research Aim: This study sheds light on a relatively new debate in politics, sociology, and linguistics, which is how to correctly use gender pronouns in all of these contexts. Therefore, this study will explore these areas, but the main focus will be on linguistics. It will review various theories and frameworks in linguistics to show multiple old and new debates on the subject matter. Moreover, a systematic review will determine the correct usage of gender pronouns.

Topic 5: Are Men Portrayed Better in the English Literature? A Feminist Critique of the Old English Literature

Research Aim: This research will analyze whether men are portrayed better in English literature through a feminist lens. It will assess a different kind of English literature, such as poems, essays, novels, etc., to show whether men are portrayed better than women in various contexts. Moreover, it will analyze multiple classical and modern-day writers to see how they use different male and female characters in their literature. Lastly, it will add a feminist perspective on the subject matter by introducing the feminist theory and its portrayal of men and women.

Covid-19 Literature Research Topics

Topic 1: the scientific literature of coronavirus pandemic.

Research Aim: This study will review the scientific literature of Coronavirus pandemic

Topic 2: Literature and the future world after Coronavirus.

Research Aim: This study will reveal the world’s literature predictions after the pandemic.

Topic 3: Coronavirus is a trending topic among the media, writers, and publishers

Research Aim: Covid-19 has disrupted every sector’s health care system and economy. Apart from this, the topic of the Coronavirus has become trending everywhere. This study will highlight whether the information provided about COVID-19 by all the sources is authentic? What kind of misleading information is presented?

Literature Dissertation Topics for 2023

Topic 1: dependence of humans on computers.

Research Aim: This research aims to study the dependence of humans on the computer, its advantages and disadvantages.

Topic 2: Whether or not the death penalty is effective in the current era?

Research Aim: This research aims to identify whether the death penalty is effective in the current era.

Topic 3: Fashion Industry and its impact on people's upward and downward social perception

Research Aim: This research aims to identify the impact on people’s upward and downward social perception

Topic 4: Communication gaps in families due to the emergence of social media

Research Aim: This research aims to address the communication gaps in families due to the emergence of social media and suggest possible ways to overcome them.

Topic 5: Employment and overtime working hours- a comparative study

Research Aim: This research aims to measure the disadvantages of overtime working hours of employees.

Topic 6: Machine translators Vs. human translators

Research Aim: This research aims to conduct a comparative study of machine translators and human translators

Topic 7: Freelancing Vs 9 to 5 jobs- a comparative study

Research Aim: This research aims to compare freelancing jobs with 9 to 5 jobs.

More Literature Dissertation Topics for 2024

Topic 1: the effects of everyday use of digital media on youth in the uk..

Research Aim: Digital media is a normal part of a person’s life. In this research, the aim is to examine and analyse; how young people between the ages of 15-25 in the UK engage with digital media. The study includes the amount of time interaction occurs and the role of time-space, time elasticities, and online/offline intersections.

Topic 2: Critical analysis of the teenager protagonist in “The Room on the Roof” written by Ruskin Bond.

Research Aim: Many Indian writers and children’s book authors regard Ruskin Bond as an icon. This research will systematically study the alienated teenage protagonist in Ruskin’s “The Room on the Roof” and how Ruskin evolved the character gradually throughout the novel. The way Ruskin used this protagonist to reflect his feelings and convey them to the reader.

Topic 3: Promotion of women empowerment through mass media in Nepal.

Research Aim: The primary purpose of this study is to analyse the role of mass media, including audio, print, and audio-visual, in the empowerment of women in the Nepal region. It also discusses the development of mass media in Nepal and spreading awareness of women’s empowerment.

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Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Literature Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: eighteenth-century british literature..

Research Aim: This study aims to study the evolution of modern British literature compared to eighteenth-century literature. This research will focus on the genre of comedy only. The research will discuss the causes of laughter in the eighteenth century compared to things that cause laughter in modern times.

Topic 5: A systematic study of Chaucer’s Miller’s tale.

Research Aim: This research aims to take a closer look at Chaucer’s heavily censored story, “The Miller’s Tale.” It seeks to look at why “The Miller’s Tale” is criticised and categorised as obscene and unfit for a general read. The study will analyse the writer’s writing style, language, and method for the research paper.

Topic 3: Understanding 17th-century English culture using a model of Francis Bacon’s idea.

Research Aim: This research aims to take a more in-depth look into Francis Bacon’s idea of modern economic development. To conduct the study, machine learning processes will be implemented to examine Francis’s ideas and their implementations in contemporary times.

Topic 4: The relation between early 18th-century English plays and The emerging financial market.

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse the relationship between eighteenth-century plays and a flourishing financial market. Most theatrical plays were written and performed in the middle of the 1720s, but writing carried out contributed to the financial market.

Topic 5: Issues of climate change used in early English literature: Shakespeare’s View of the sky.

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse climate change’s impact on early English writings. Climatic issues were faced even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, providing writers with another topic to add to their published work. This research will focus on the work of Shakespeare, in which he included the specifics of climate change.

Also Read: Medicine and Nursing Dissertation Topics Free

Nineteenth-Century Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: impact of nineteenth-century gothic vampire literature on female members of the gothic subculture..

Research Aim: This research will look at the introduction of gothic vampire literature and its impact on female members of the gothic subculture. It includes a complete analysis of writing style and the impression it left of the female readers’.

Topic 2: Women theatre managers and the theatre in the late nineteenth century.

Research Aim: This research aims to view the impact on theatres under the management of women theatre managers. The improvement to theatre shows, along with the hardships faced by some managers, is discussed. The proposed study analyses the categories of theatre plays.

Topic 3: The history of American literature.

Research Aim: This research aims to give a brief history of American literature’s development and evolution throughout the centuries. The timeline begins from the early 15th century to the late 19th century. Word variations, sentence structures, grammar, and written impressions will be analysed.

Topic 4: “New women” concept in the novels of Victorian age English writers.

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse women’s position in the early nineteenth and how later Victorian writers used their work to give women a new identity. The method employed by these writers who wrote from a feminist point of view will also be discussed.

Topic 5: Discussing the role of the writer in their own story.

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse the form in which the writer reveals their presence to the reader. The methods can be achieved directly or use the characters to replace themselves in the narrative. The study observes the phrases, vocabulary, and situations the writer uses to narrate.

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Twentieth Century Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: effect of gender association in modern literature..

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse the issue of gender association in twentieth-century literature. Currently, male characters are described in a more masculine term than before in comparison to female counterparts. This research will also explore the possible approach of the possible characterisation of the two genders.

Topic 2: Feminism and literature.

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse the impacts of feminism on modern English literature quality. The study will look into the ideology of feminism and how feminist thoughts impact the readers’ view.

Topic 3: Modern literature based on climate change and eco-themes.

Research Aim: This research will study the various works of writers who tackled climate change and other eco-themes in their work. The study discusses the way they portrayed the item along with their views on preventing climate change. Modern work is compared to the work of previous writers who wrote about climate change.

Topic 4: How are fathers portrayed in modern literature?

Research Aim: This research will study the role of fathers in modern literature. The way the father character is portrayed in recent times has changed compared to writing in the early centuries. This research will look into the evolution of the father figure over time.

Topic 5: Literature for Asian American children.

Research Aim: This research will examine the fusion of classic American literature and Asian literature for children. The different genera’s that are produced and the style of writing will be analysed.

Also Read: Free Law Dissertation Topics

Children’s Literature Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: the influence of the intersection of race and bullying in children’s books..

Research Aim: This research will analyse the literature made for children from 2015 to 2019 in which the intersection between race and bullying is made. The study will evaluate the impact of literature read by a child in which there is bullying. Various picture books are analysed to observe the influence of racism on bullying.

Topic 2: Diversity of culture in children’s literature.

Research Aim: This research will observe the influence of the various cultural aspects of children’s books. The study will analyse the impact of mixed cultures on literature in a community and how it affects children’s mindsets from a young age.

Topic 3: The use of literature to shape a child's mind.

Research Aim: This research will analyse the effects of literature on a child’s mind. Behaviour, intelligence, and interactions between children and their age fellows are to be observed. A child’s behaviour with adults will also be analysed.

Topic 4: Evolution of children's literature.

Research Aim: This research will explore the change in children’s literature trends. This research will compare the literary work from the mid-nineteen century with modern-day children’s books. Differences in vocabulary, sentence structure, and mode of storytelling will be examined.

Topic 5: Racial discrimination in “the cat in the hat” impacts children’s racial views.

Research Aim: This research will take an in-depth analysis of the children’s story, “The Cat in the Hat,” to observe if it has any racial remarks which cause an increase in racism among children. The words used and the pictures found on the page will be thoroughly analysed, and their impact on the children reading it.

Topic 6: Measuring the nature of a child’s early composing.

Research Aim: This research will analyse the development of a child’s writing skills based on the type of books they read. The book’s genera, vocabulary, and the writing style of the child’s preferred book will be considered.

Topic 7: Use of a classroom to incorporate multicultural children’s literature.

Research Aim: This research will reflect on the potential use of a school classroom to promote multicultural literature for children. Since a classroom is filled with children of different cultural backgrounds, it becomes easier to introduce multicultural literature. The difficulties and the advantages to society in the incorporation of multicultural literature in classrooms are discussed.

Important Notes:

As literature looking to get good grades, it is essential to develop new ideas and experiment with existing literature theories – i.e., to add value and interest to your research topic.

The literature field is vast and interrelated to many other academic disciplines like linguistics , English literature and more. That is why creating a literature dissertation topic that is particular, sound, and actually solves a practical problem that may be rampant in the field is imperative.

We can’t stress how important it is to develop a logical research topic based on your entire research. There are several significant downfalls to getting your topic wrong; your supervisor may not be interested in working on it, the topic has no academic creditability, the research may not make logical sense, and there is a possibility that the study is not viable.

This impacts your time and efforts in writing your dissertation , as you may end up in the cycle of rejection at the initial stage of the dissertation. That is why we recommend reviewing existing research to develop a topic, taking advice from your supervisor, and even asking for help in this particular stage of your dissertation.

While developing a research topic, keeping our advice in mind will allow you to pick one of the best literature dissertation topics that fulfil your requirement of writing a research paper and add to the body of knowledge.

Therefore, it is recommended that when finalizing your dissertation topic, you read recently published literature to identify gaps in the research that you may help fill.

Remember- dissertation topics need to be unique, solve an identified problem, be logical, and be practically implemented. Please look at some of our sample literature dissertation topics to get an idea for your own dissertation.

How to Structure your Literature Dissertation

A well-structured dissertation can help students to achieve a high overall academic grade.

• A Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Declaration
• Abstract: A summary of the research completed
• Table of Contents
• Introduction : This chapter includes the project rationale, research background, key research aims and objectives, and the research problems. An outline of the structure of a dissertation can also be added to this chapter.
• Literature Review : This chapter presents relevant theories and frameworks by analysing published and unpublished literature on the chosen research topic to address research questions . The purpose is to highlight and discuss the selected research area’s relative weaknesses and strengths whilst identifying any research gaps. Break down the topic and key terms that can positively impact your dissertation and your tutor.
• Methodology : The data collection and analysis methods and techniques employed by the researcher are presented in the Methodology chapter, which usually includes research design , research philosophy, research limitations, code of conduct, ethical consideration, data collection methods, and data analysis strategy .
• Findings and Analysis : Findings of the research are analysed in detail under the Findings and Analysis chapter. All key findings/results are outlined in this chapter without interpreting the data or drawing any conclusions. It can be useful to include graphs, charts, and tables in this chapter to identify meaningful trends and relationships.
• Discussion and Conclusion : The researcher presents his interpretation of results in this chapter and states whether the research hypothesis has been verified or not. An essential aspect of this section of the paper is to link the results and evidence from the literature. Recommendations with regards to implications of the findings and directions for the future may also be provided. Finally, a summary of the overall research, along with final judgments, opinions, and comments, must be included in the form of suggestions for improvement.
• References : Your University’s requirements should complete this
• Bibliography
• Appendices : Any additional information, diagrams, and graphs used to complete the dissertation but not part of the dissertation should be included in the Appendices chapter. Essentially, the purpose is to expand the information/data.

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