Matching Items (5)
Filtering by
- Genre: Masters Thesis
Description
The Fledglings of Anani is a universe with an underlying organizing principle of desire, auspiciousness and serendipity, the veiled doors and windows of these realms serve as fugues bridging layers of time leading us through myth and landscape intimately tied to the physical intelligence of earth and character of place. It is a voice that comes to know itself first as being, then in correspondence to nature and her elements, enters into the rhythm of human connection and ultimately circles back to comprehend itself as all these things, varying only in degree. The poems travel further and further toward an allusive center with a contemplative inner eye that embraces the complexity and vitality of life.
ContributorsPoole, Heather Lea (Author) / Dubie, Norman (Thesis advisor) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Savard, Jeannine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
During the 1960s, American youth were coming of age in a post–war period marked by an unprecedented availability of both money and leisure time. These conditions afforded young people new opportunities for exploring fresh ways of thinking and living, beyond the traditional norms of their parents' generation. Tom Wolfe recognized that a revolution was taking place, in terms of manners and morals, spearheaded by this latest generation. He built a career for himself reporting on the diverse groups that were developing on the periphery of the mainstream society and the various ways they were creating social spaces, what he termed “statuspheres,” for themselves, in which to live by their own terms. Using the techniques of the New Journalism—“immersion” reporting that incorporated literary devices traditionally reserved for writers of fiction—Wolfe crafted creative non–fiction pieces that attempted not only to offer a glimpse into the lives of these fringe groups, but also to place the reader within their subjective experiences. This thesis positions Wolfe as a sort of liminal trickster figure, who is able to bridge the gap between disparate worlds, both physical and figurative. Analyzing several of Wolfe's works from the time period, it works to demonstrate the almost magical way in which Wolfe infiltrates various radical, counterculture and otherwise “fringe” groups, while borrowing freely from elements across lines of literary genre, in order to make his subjects' experiences come alive on the page. This work attempts to shed light on his special ability to occupy multiple spaces and perspectives simultaneously, to offer the reader a multidimensional look into the lives of cultural outsiders and the impact that they had and continue to have on the overarching discussion of the American Experience. Ultimately, this paper argues that by exposing these various outlying facets of American culture to the mainstream readership, Wolfe acts as a catalyst to reincorporate these fringe elements within the larger conversation of what it means to be American, thereby spurring a greater cultural awareness and an expansion of the collective American consciousness.
ContributorsKilduff, Josiah (Author) / Ortiz, Simon J. (Thesis advisor) / De La Garza, Sarah A. (Committee member) / Gutkind, Lee (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
A collection of short stories, each told with a differing narrative structure and a different cast of characters. Some stories in the collection employ traditional narrative structures such as the frame tale and the three-act structure. Other stories borrow their structures from society at large, the bombardment of text and media Americans face every day (letters, recipes, song lyrics). The stories explore how people can read our world and possibly interpret larger shared narrative strands. These stories focus attention on human responses to illness, loss, family, war and protest, looking for opportunities to expand recognition of the range of emotions, moving beyond generic understanding to personal connection. The tone of the collection tends towards dark humor to hint at the deeper, possibly inexplicable human condition.
ContributorsBlickle, Benjamin (Author) / Turchi, Peter (Thesis advisor) / McNally, Mike (Committee member) / Pritchard, Melissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The Victorian era was the age of museum development in the United States. In the wake of these institutions, another important figure of the nineteenth century emerged--the flâneur. The flâneur represents the city, and provided new mechanisms of seeing to the public. The flâneur taught citizens how to gaze with a panoptic eye. The increasing importance of cultural institutions contributed to a new means of presenting power and interacting with the viewing public. Tony Bennett's exhibitionary complex theory, argues that nineteenth-century museums were institutions of power that educated, civilized, and through surveillance, encourage self-regulation of crowds. The flâneur's presence in the nineteenth century informed the public about modes of seeing and self-regulation--which in turn helped establish Bennett's theory inside the museum. The popular writing and literature of the time provides an opportunity to examine the extent of the exhibitionary complex and the flâneur. One of the most prominent nineteenth-century authors, Henry James, not only utilizes museums in his work, but he often uses them in just the manner Bennett puts forth in his theory. This is significant because the ideas about museums in James's work shaped the minds of an expanding literary public in the United States, and further educated, civilized, and regulated readers. James also represents the flâneur in his writing, which speaks to broader cultural implications of the both exhibitionary complex on the outside world, and the effects of broader cultural influences on the museum. Beyond the impact of James's work, in the late nineteenth century American culture increasingly became centered around the printed word. The central position of books in American culture at the end of the nineteenth century allowed books and libraries to appropriate the exhibitionary complex and become tools of power in their own right. The book and the library relate to the museum as part of a larger cultural environment, which emerged as a result of modernity and a response to the ever-changing nineteenth-century world.
ContributorsHarrison, Leah Gibbons (Author) / Szuter, Christine (Thesis advisor) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
During the mid-1930s in Cuba, Ernest Hemingway befriended Cuban artist Antonio Gattorno (1904-1980) during Hemingway's most active period of Gulf Stream fishing trips. Their relationship soon transcended ocean sojourns, and the two exchanged letters, eight of which reside in the Hemingway Collection at the J.F.K. Library in Boston. Written between 1935 and 1937, the Hemingway-Gattorno correspondence showcases the relationship that came to fruition between the American writer and Cuban artist in the 1930s. It also presents a lens through which to examine the cultural contact that occurred between Americans and Cubans during a decade of great political, social, and economic exchange between the two nations. In addition, the Hemingway-Gattorno correspondence elucidates each country's tendency to romanticize the other before the Cuban Revolution and provides a template with which to examine current U.S.-Cuban relationships today. This thesis endeavors to first discuss the Hemingway-Gattorno relationship via a close examination of the correspondence that occurred between them. It then attests that the Hemingway-Gattorno correspondence exemplifies the transatlantic glamorization that characterized pre-revolutionary U.S.-Cuban relations. The thesis explores the replay of this act of romanticizing in real time, arguing that despite governmental injunctions since 1961, Americans and Cubans alike have continued to ingeniously find ways to communicate with one another in much the same way Hemingway and Gattorno did in the 1930s. One mechanism for doing so is remembering Ernest Hemingway's life in Cuba and the home he owned there, Finca Vigía, a performance of memory that often occurs through the conduits of either the Hemingway Archives in Boston or the Finca Vigía Museum in Cuba. American and Cuban longing for the cultural contact enjoyed by Hemingway and Gattorno is expressed and performed through a glorification of Hemingway and the Finca Vigía, despite the severance of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1961. In addition, for Cubans in particular, Hemingway and the Finca Vigía present an opportunity to imagine the much more unified pre-revolutionary Cuba. Although certainly Hemingway and his home represent different realities for Cubans and Americans, in all, the thesis will show that citizens from both countries continue to find ways to create and imagine themselves in pre-revolutionary contexts like those embodied by Hemingway and Gattorno in the 1930s.
ContributorsDriscoll, Sarah (Author) / Horan, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Tobin, Beth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011