This thesis examines tragicomedy in two 19th Century British novels, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford. Both narratives have perceived happy endings; however, tragedy lies underneath the surface. With Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream as a starting point, playacting becomes the vehicle through which tragedy can be discovered by the reader. Throughout, I find examples in which playacting begins as a comedic act, but acquires tragic potential when parents enter the scene. Here, I define tragedy not as a dramatic experience, but rather seemingly small injustices that, over time, cause more harm than good. In Mansfield Park, the tragedy is parental neglect and control. In Cranford, the tragedy is parental abuse. For both narratives, characters are unable to experience life fully, and past parental injuries cannot be redeemed. While all the children in the narratives experience some form of parental neglect, the marginalized children are harmed more than the others. In addition, I find that lifelong loneliness is a common theme in both narratives, showing that tragedy can lead to grief experienced in isolation.

In an era of great political division and fear of the "other," how can introductory writing classes do a better job of foregrounding marginalized voices and building classroom communities that value many different life experiences over the one presented in dominant discourse? By employing select features of the serial form including: worldbuilding for community, use of devices of continuity to bridge part-whole segmentation, and cyclical communication and recursive writing practices, voices and stories from the margins can break into dominant discourse. This paper begins and ends with my own story as it is spun and woven through the chapters. Between interludes, I initiate a layered exploration defining the origins and scope of the serial form, establish terms and identify storytelling devices that serials rely on for long-term, overarching, and influential success. Turning then to iterations of the modern serial, I explore the continued development of devices of continuity (the cliffhanger and the recap), develop further ideas of cyclical communication, and clarify how the modern serial is tied firmly with capitalism. After an analysis of the evolution of the serial form and its constituent parts, I suggest ways of incorporating certain strategies and devices of the serial form into the introductory writing classroom in order to build community; establish a cyclical, serialized communication through writing and sharing our individual stories; and normalizing outside voices. The implications of this investigation are that pedagogical repurposing of select devices of the serial can support writing instructors' efforts to amplify voices and stories from the margins bringing them into dominant discourse.

Several of Raymond Carver's short stories and two of Thomas Pynchon's novels are analyzed for their ability to function as ethnography, through which they reveal the dominant and dominated codes in American culture. These texts were approached from an interdisciplinary stance, using theories and concepts from literary criticism, cultural anthropology, and sociology in order to interpret them with a greater degree of accuracy; because the text is treated as an ethnographic representation of a culture, it is possible to turn to it as the sole illustration of cultural elements and, in doing so, to be more open to addressing themes that the text explicates, rather than approaching the it with a preconceived agenda of what necessarily constructs American culture. By focusing in this manner on Carver's and Pynchon's texts as accounts of what is to be "American," it is possible to remain closer to what the texts portray and to avoid misreadings as well as misinterpretations of culture. Through these authors' representations of characters who defy mainstream cultural codes, the reader encounters in these authors' works what mainstream America finds most unsettling: characters who are not only alienated, but also aware of their status as outsiders and, more frequently than not, choose to embrace deviance in their self-definitions. Carver and Pynchon, when taken together, afford the reader with a vision of our culture that explores the dissociation and alienation that cuts through our society regardless of class or background. In their varying presentations of reality, they offer complementary views of distinct American subcultures that feature characters who are isolated and who generally denounce mainstream ideals. Conformist society is merely hinted at within the texts; its presence appears through its absence, characters' recognition of what they are denying, and what characters are denied. Both authors feature characters who identify aberrant behavior, for which rule-breaking individuals are labeled. Characters, once labeled, adopt secondary deviance and instigate a deviant career, from which the authors rarely permit a reprieve. The effect of labeling is the creation of a schism in the social fabric of American culture, which is characterized by the societal exclusion of individuals who do not uphold the dominant beliefs. American culture is also characterized by assimilation; as characters in Carvers and Pynchon's texts resist this process, they pose a threat to the social order, which is the prime factor in their labeling.

The anti-heroine is a difficult woman to define. The intent of this project was to find the markers and signifiers for the character of the anti-heroine. Only recently, with modernism and then post-modernism, has the equation of beauty = woman started to change. What has occurred is the opposite, the grotesque. How are female artists using the grotesque to open up the possibilities for how women are allowed to act? Although women are now being allowed, in film, to DO what men do, i.e. kill people, they are still coming across in stereotypically female ways. The women are still beautiful, they use violence, they have to be more manly than men. How has second and third wave feminist theory opened up the realm of writing about the bitch? In the past decade literally thousands of books have been written with "bitch" in the title. Is the "bitch" the same thing as the anti-heroine? In the creative part of the dissertation, I have attempted to write a multi-faceted anti-heroine who isn't necessarily a bitch, doesn't participate in violence, has a sense of humor, and is writing about both female and feminist subjects. The critical essay looks at literary influences on my writing and my own definition of the anti-heroine. My research has shown that the anti-heroine is an extremely elusive character and is quite different from the male anti-hero. What we can say is that she defies stereotyping, is a complex creation, may or may not be beautiful, and acts rather than reacts.

The main objective of the research described in this dissertation was to explore how English second language (ESL) writers used their first language (L1) when composing in their second language (L2). This task was undertaken by identifying participants according to their L2 (English) proficiency level, Latino ethnic subgroup, and generational status. Another objective of this study was to better understand the writer's perspective regarding first language use in L2 writing, referred to as language-switching (L-S) in this study. Eight high school Latinos were recruited in Fairbanks, Alaska, and a group of twenty-three college-level participants in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. Participants were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire, provide a writing sample, and participate in a guided focus group discussion. Findings indicated that participants with low L2 proficiency were more likely to switch languages at the lexical level than participants at an intermediate or advanced level of English proficiency. Switching languages from English to Spanish at the lexical level was of no benefit for text coherence. Lack of L2 linguistic competence was a contributing factor for switching to the L1 as participants compensated for L2 difficulties with their L1 knowledge at the morphological, syntactical, and semantic level. A qualitative analysis of the focus group data suggests that thinking in the L1 is a common strategy for ESL learners, which they perceive to be an advantage for generating ideas faster and to decide what to write. However, participants' perceived writing text in the L1 for later content translation to be counterproductive. An important factor that cannot be discounted and that may have contributed to the language switching frequency among the participants in this study is the learning contexts: learning English in the U.S. versus learning English in Puerto Rico. Additional research is needed to explore the relationship between language switching and learning context. I conclude this dissertation by suggesting pedagogical implications regarding L2 writing instruction and for placement of L2 learners in ESL programs.

Late-deafened adults are individuals who lose their hearing in adolescence or adulthood. Whether the hearing loss is sudden or progressive, it forces immense psychosocial changes upon the individual, disrupting relationships and work, and impacting every area of the person's life. This manual serves as a guidebook for the newly deafened adult, giving her understanding, empathy and a road map to help make sense of the adjustment process. The first chapters detail what to expect during visits to the ear specialist and audiologist, and discuss the grieving process and the impact of deafness on identity formation. Information on how to develop new ways of communicating and how to build a support network is shared. An introduction to cochlear implantation, assistive technology, and legal rights for late-deafened adults follows. The manual closes with interviews of three late-deafened adults who share their journey into late-deafness.

This thesis on the Rampart, Manley Hot Springs, and Fort Gibbon mining districts of Alaska provides the first comprehensive public history of prospecting and mining activity in these three districts within the gold belt of Interior Alaska. Spanning almost one hundred years, the history begins in 1894 and extracts material from early recorders' books, old newspapers, correspondence of miners whose dreams drew them to the gold fields, and U.S. Geological Survey reports which analyzed Alaska's natural resources and mining economy. It surveys mining development from stampedes during the boom years of the turn-into-the-twentieth-century through periods of decline and on into the modern, mechanized, open-pit operations near the beginning of the twenty-first century. It concludes with an extensive annotated bibliography designed to assist other researchers in finding specialized, in-depth information about the three districts. <p>

The temporary resurgence in Swinburne's popularity in the late sixties and early seventies manifested itself predominantly as explorations into what forms the poet's peculiar sexuality and painful romantic history took in his work. This thesis turns the focus of Swinburnian criticism to his texts, specifically to the heroines in two of his works whom I believe have gone largely underappreciated: Atalanta of Atalanta in Calydon, and Chthonic of Erechtheus. First, this thesis shifts focus from Swinburne's biography to the heroines' mythical Greek constructions, while at the same time complicating that classical context by presenting evidence that Swinburne, though he revered classical Greece, was not attempting to mimic the traditional Greek style. Then, this thesis explores Erechtheus and Atalanta in Calydon individually in order to show how the heroines of each piece exhibit significantly more agency over, and responsibility for, the course of events surrounding them than has previously been appreciated. In positions of power over the courses of events in which they are involved, their seeming dispassion is more generative when it is viewed as resolve, indicative of consciousness and feeling underneath a visage that has accepted what must be, and refuses to suffer for what cannot be.

This literary analysis--of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Tom Gilling's The Sooterkin, and Gabriel García Márquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"-- asserts that unconditional love is not possible without a supernatural impartation, because all humans have their limitations. To further this claim, I dissect the most sacred of interpersonal dynamics, society's subgroups--the family. The four guiding perimeters of affection are societal influence--its opinion of a person; money, financial prospect; communication aptitude, whether verbal and physical speech that is understood or enjoyed; and, lastly, aesthetics: are they nondescript or pleasant to the eye? These variables determine how long a person will stay in a family's domestic space or their proverbial rolodex. These three texts have numerous similarities, most apparent is their each having a weird character interrupt a family's domestic life: hyperbolic contingencies that highlight the causes of limited or temporal affection.

This research examines two contemporary Alaskan works of literature: Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child and Don Rearden's The Raven's Gift. I have engaged with (post) colonial theoretical frameworks to describe the settler colonial dynamics at work in each text. By comparing these two works I find that each narrative seeks autochthonous belonging for settler colonial protagonists, which is predicated upon the elimination of indigeneity from the land. I focus on the divergent rhetorical methods of indigenous erasure in each text, and the interaction between race and gender in settler colonial identity construction. Examining the relationship between race and gender highlights the underappreciated significance of the complicity of white women in the settler colonial process and demonstrates the crucial role that indigenous women play as gatekeepers to settler colonial belonging. Within the narratives, I find examples of the formation of private property under settler colonial thought, which paved the way for the dismissal of indigenous land claims. I also look at the way that each text employs the metaphorical language of ghostliness and the supernatural to weaken indigenous presence and bring indigeneity to the precipice of extinction. Both narratives ultimately avoid active dispossession in the settler colonial quest for land by creating and landscape in which indigeneity is already gone.