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Description
"Romantic Cyber-Engagement" offers a new type of dissertation organized around three projects that combine the core values of the Digital Humanities with the hypertext tradition of scholarly pursuits in the field of Romanticism. The first of the three Digital Humanities contributions is to the profession. "A Resource for the Future:

"Romantic Cyber-Engagement" offers a new type of dissertation organized around three projects that combine the core values of the Digital Humanities with the hypertext tradition of scholarly pursuits in the field of Romanticism. The first of the three Digital Humanities contributions is to the profession. "A Resource for the Future: The ICR Template and Template Guide" articulates a template for the construction and operation of an advanced conference in Romantic studies. This part of the project includes the conference web site template and guide, which is publicly available to all interested organizations; the template guide includes instructions, tutorials, and advice to govern modification of the template for easier adaptation for future conferences. The second project, "Collaborative Literature Projects in the Digital Age: The Frankenstein Project" is a functional pedagogical example of one way to incorporate Digital Humanities praxis as an interactive part of a college course. This part of the dissertation explains the "Frankenstein Project," a web site that I created for an undergraduate critical theory course where the students contributed various critical approaches for sections of the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The final project, "'[W]hat they half-create, / And what perceive': The Creation of a Hypertext Scholarly Edition of 'Tintern Abbey;'" is a critical approaches section in which I created an interactive web site that focused on the primary work, "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey: On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798." This advanced, multimodal site allows viewers to examine various critical approaches to each section of the primary work, and the viewer/reader can interactively engage the text in dialogue by contributing their own interpretation or critical approach. In addition to the three products and analysis generated from this dissertation, the project as a whole offers an initial Digital Humanities model for future dissertations in discipline of English Literature.
ContributorsMatsunaga, Bruce (Author) / Lussier, Mark S (Thesis advisor) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Wright, Johnson K (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
This thesis examines Christopher Marlowe's poem Hero and Leander and George Chapman's Continuation thereof through a theoretical lens that includes theories of intimacy, sexuality and touch taken from Lee Edelman, Daniel Gil, James Bromley, Katherine Rowe and others. Hands are seen as the privileged organ of touch as well as

This thesis examines Christopher Marlowe's poem Hero and Leander and George Chapman's Continuation thereof through a theoretical lens that includes theories of intimacy, sexuality and touch taken from Lee Edelman, Daniel Gil, James Bromley, Katherine Rowe and others. Hands are seen as the privileged organ of touch as well as synecdoche for human agency. Because it is all too often an unexamined sense, the theory of touch is dealt with in detail. The analysis of hands and touch leads to a discussion of how Marlowe's writing creates a picture of sexual intimacy that goes against traditional institutions and resists the traditional role of the couple in society. Marlowe's poem favors an equal, companionate intimacy that does not engage in traditional structures, while Chapman's Continuation to Marlowe's work serves to reaffirm the transgressive nature of Marlowe's poem by reasserting traditional social institutions surrounding the couple. Viewing the two pieces of literature together further supports the conclusion that Marlowe's work is transgressive because of how conservative Chapman's reaction to Hero and Leander is.
ContributorsHardman, Katherine (Author) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Description
The rise of print book culture in sixteenth-century England had profound effects on understandings of identity that are reflected in the prose, poetry, and drama of the age. Drawing on assemblage and actor-network theory, this dissertation argues that models of identity constructed in relation to books in Renaissance England

The rise of print book culture in sixteenth-century England had profound effects on understandings of identity that are reflected in the prose, poetry, and drama of the age. Drawing on assemblage and actor-network theory, this dissertation argues that models of identity constructed in relation to books in Renaissance England are neither static nor self-contained, arising instead out of a collaborative engagement with books as physical objects that tap into historically specific cultural discourses. Renaissance representations of book usage blur the boundary between human beings and their books, both as textual carriers and as physical artifacts.

The first chapter outlines the relationship between book history and assemblage theory to examine how books contribute to the assembly of the human subject in different ways for readers, owners, and authors and to lay a theoretical and historical foundation for reading cultural assemblages in later chapters. The second chapter studies how authors and sometimes printers attempt as makers of books to construct public identities through them. The chapter focuses on how Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender and Isabella Whitney’s poetry anthologies play with texts and paratexts in order to create the illusion of control over the resulting authorial persona, even while acknowledging that the book itself is a deterritorialized element of their own identities with particular agencies of its own. The third chapter investigates how Renaissance drama represents human beings using books to curate their identity assemblages both publicly and inwardly, particularly as depicted in the work of Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, and the author of Arden of Faversham. The successes and failures of these assemblages on the stage reflect anxieties about the book as an agentive object in an assembled identity. The fourth chapter examines the prose work of Philip Sidney, Roger Ascham, and Fulke Greville, considering the obsession with travel books and writing as a reflection of wider notions about the permeability and possible contamination by foreign influences of the self constructed through books and writings related to travel.
ContributorsAdams, John Henry (Author) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Moulton, Ian F (Committee member) / Ryner, Bradley D. (Committee member) / Irish, Bradley J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
As a contribution to what has emerged categorically in medieval scholarship as gentry studies, this dissertation looks at the impact the development of obligatory taxation beyond customary dues and fees had on late medieval English society with particular emphasis given to the emergent view of the medieval subject as a

As a contribution to what has emerged categorically in medieval scholarship as gentry studies, this dissertation looks at the impact the development of obligatory taxation beyond customary dues and fees had on late medieval English society with particular emphasis given to the emergent view of the medieval subject as a commercial-legal entity. Focusing on Middle English popular romance and drawing on the tenets of practice theory, I demonstrate the merger of commerce and law as a point of identification in the process of meaning and value making for late medieval gentry society. The introductory chapter provides an overview of the historical development of taxation and the emergence of royal authority as an institutionalized form of public welfare, or a state. The second chapter examines the use of contractual language in Sir Amadace to highlight the presence of the state as an extra-legal authority able to enforce contractual agreements. The attention paid to the consequences of economic insolvency stage a gentry identity circumscribed by its position in a network of credit and debt that links the individual to neighbor, state, and God. The third chapter explores conservative responses to economic innovation during the period and the failure of the state to protect the proprietary rights of landowners in Sir Cleges. Specifically, the chapter examines the strain the gradual re-definition of land as a movable property put on the proprietary rights of landowners and challenged the traditional manorial organization of feudal society by subjecting large estates to morcellation in the commercial market. The fourth chapter examines the socioeconomic foundations of late medieval English sovereignty in Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle. By dismissing the cultural fantasies of power and authority bound up in the Arthurian narrative, the author reveals the practical economic mechanisms of exchange that sustain and legitimize sociopolitical authority, resulting in a corporate vision of English society. Collectively, the analyses demonstrate the influence the socioeconomic circumstances of gentry society exerted on the production and consumption of Middle English popular romance and the importance of commerce, law, and taxation in the formation of a sense of self in late medieval England.
ContributorsBump, Nathaniel (Author) / Newhauser, Richard G (Thesis advisor) / Sturges, Robert S (Committee member) / Voaden, Rosalynn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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The purpose of this project is to analyze Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon (1817) and its inclusion of a character of color. This thesis discusses Austen's mixed-race heiress, Miss Lambe, in the context of two other pieces of fiction that feature mixed-race heroines--the anonymously published The Woman of Colour (1808)

The purpose of this project is to analyze Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon (1817) and its inclusion of a character of color. This thesis discusses Austen's mixed-race heiress, Miss Lambe, in the context of two other pieces of fiction that feature mixed-race heroines--the anonymously published The Woman of Colour (1808) and Mary Ann Sullivan's Owen Castle (1816). Scholarship on Austen's awareness of the Abolitionist movement and her sympathy for its politics has previously been published. I advance our conversations on the subject by discussing Austen's Miss Lambe as a mixed-race heiress in the context of gender, race, and ethnicity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novels. My thesis considers literary and historical treatments of people of color and provides a trans-Atlantic approach to female characters identified as mixed race.

Juxtaposing Sanditon, The Woman of Colour, and Owen Castle provides insight into how Austen was working within a set of established literary traditions, while creating ways to disrupt some of its problematic elements. This project looks at conventions of the mixed-race female characters in five ways. To begin, I discuss the mixed-race heroine and the compulsion to define her place of origin. Second, I consider the convention of describing mixed-race heiresses' rights to their inheritance. An analysis of the significance of naming mixed-race heiresses follows. I discuss literary conventions of the betrayal of mixed-race females. Lastly, I explore the common use of black maid figures in novels of this era to advance social critique against prejudice. Comparative analysis of Austen with other novels featuring mixed-race heroines in this era allows us to reach new understandings of Sanditon. Austen's unfinished last novel is shown to question the power of fortune, to undermine the orthodoxy of categorizing race and ethnicity, and to unsettle the hierarchy among characters of different races and ethnicities.
ContributorsBaugh, Victoria (Author) / Looser, Devoney (Thesis advisor) / Justice, George (Committee member) / Wernimont, Jacqueline (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
It has become something of a scholarly truism that during the medieval period, gluttony was combatted simply by teaching and practicing abstinence. However, this dissertation presents a more nuanced view on the matter. Its aim is to examine the manner in which the moral discourse of dietary moderation in late

It has become something of a scholarly truism that during the medieval period, gluttony was combatted simply by teaching and practicing abstinence. However, this dissertation presents a more nuanced view on the matter. Its aim is to examine the manner in which the moral discourse of dietary moderation in late medieval England captured subtle nuances of bodily behavior and was used to explore the complex relationship between the individual and society. The works examined foreground the difficulty of differentiating bodily needs from gluttonous desire. They show that moderation cannot be practiced by simply refraining from food and drink. By refiguring the idea of moderation, these works explore how the individual’s ability to exercise moral discretion and make better dietary choices can be improved. The introductory chapter provides an overview of how the idea of dietary moderation in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English didactic literature was influenced by the monastic and ascetic tradition and how late medieval authors revisited the issue of moderation and encouraged readers to reevaluate their eating and drinking habits and pursue lifestyle changes. The second chapter focuses on Langland’s discussion in Piers Plowman of the importance of dietary moderation as a supplementary virtue of charity in terms of creating a sustainable community. The third chapter examines Chaucer’s critique of the rhetoric of moderation in the speech of the Pardoner and the Friar John in the Summoner’s Tale, who attempted to assert their clerical superiority and cover up their gluttony by preaching moderation. The fourth chapter discusses how late Middle English conduct literature, such as Lydgate’s Dietary, revaluates moderation as a social skill. The fifth chapter explores the issue of women’s capacity to control their appetite and achieve moderation in conduct books written for women. Collectively, the study illuminates how the idea of moderation adopted and challenged traditional models of self-discipline regarding eating and drinking in order to improve the laity’s discretion and capacity to assess its own appetite and develop a healthy lifestyle for the community.
ContributorsLee, Sun Young (Author) / Newhauser, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Bjork, Robert (Committee member) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description

This research conceptualizes Gothic literature featuring undead characters produced and popularized by Britain in the early nineteenth century as educational texts. As an influx of new ideas at home and abroad disrupted the lives of the Romantics, not to mention the literal uprising of bodies in the French Revolution and

This research conceptualizes Gothic literature featuring undead characters produced and popularized by Britain in the early nineteenth century as educational texts. As an influx of new ideas at home and abroad disrupted the lives of the Romantics, not to mention the literal uprising of bodies in the French Revolution and the lost war with the North American colonies, British citizens dedicated themselves to preserving the relative safety of their shores from external and internal threats. I expand the definition of the “undead” to include any tangible, corporeal being once technically dead and now reanimated. In doing so, I invite a broader range of texts, and authors, into the conversation of Gothic literature and the genre’s continued legacy. My work reads male and female authors in dialogue with one another, both sexes working within common networks, rather than as creating separate or disparate traditions. The production of instructive undead bodies becomes particularly important to the development of British national identity and reveals a reliance on the maternal to educate and inform future citizens. The texts examined in this dissertation reveal the necessity of contemplating the histories and experiences of the past, of non-white voices, and of the female influence.

The texts range in publication date from 1805 to 1863 and thus demonstrate the continued used of the undead in the Gothic genre. An examination of the reanimated corpse in Romantic narrative demonstrates how authors utilized the undead as an educational tool both for the characters inside the text and the actual individuals reading the narrative. The undead offers a lens to look at the Gothic not regarding authorial gender or even a character’s gender, but rather in how the genre portrays bodies, and how those bodies interact with and instruct others. This dissertation’s perception of the undead as a powerful educational force in literature assists in the attempt to complete a more comprehensive analysis of Gothic, and therefore Romantic, literature.

ContributorsZarka, Emily (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / Broglio, Ron (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Among the many paradigm shifts brought about in the seventeenth century was an increased dissociation between the subject and time as a lived, shared experience. Clockwork Subjects in the Seventeenth Century: Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton investigates how changes in the social understanding and experience of time, concurrent with changes in

Among the many paradigm shifts brought about in the seventeenth century was an increased dissociation between the subject and time as a lived, shared experience. Clockwork Subjects in the Seventeenth Century: Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton investigates how changes in the social understanding and experience of time, concurrent with changes in timekeeping technologies, were reflected in the literature of the period. This dissertation is closely concerned with the phenomenon of time from the perspective of the subject and the various ways subjects represent themselves as beings in time. Chapter One provides a theoretical introduction, establishing a Heideggerian framework of temporality and ontology, while emphasizing the characteristics of clock-time as time that is movable and separable from what Heidegger would term “originary time.” Chapter Two analyzes metaphors of hearing in Richard II in relation to the play’s pivotal conceit, in which a dethroned Richard compares himself to broken clockwork; exploring temporality in tandem with the phenomenon of hearing, I argue that aural captivation distorts Richard’s perception of his placement in a larger historical framework. Chapter Three employs a reading of Augustinian time George Herbert’s poems, “Even-song” and “Church-monuments,” analyzing the soul’s experience of time in contrast to temporal metaphors that ask, with Augustine, whether time can be measured by and within the self. Chapter Four, analyzing Milton’s Samson Agonistes, explores Samson’s attempt to act and interpret divine intent while in the middle of history, paralleling early modern efforts to construct an interpretive framework for nature and time.
ContributorsDowner, Jennifer (Author) / Hawkes, David (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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The Female Patient: American Women Writers Narrating Medicine and Psychology 1890-1930 considers how American women writers, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Zelda Fitzgerald, Sarah Orne Jewett, Edith Wharton, and Gertrude Stein, use the novel form to examine medical culture during and after the turn of the 20th century. These authors insert

The Female Patient: American Women Writers Narrating Medicine and Psychology 1890-1930 considers how American women writers, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Zelda Fitzgerald, Sarah Orne Jewett, Edith Wharton, and Gertrude Stein, use the novel form to examine medical culture during and after the turn of the 20th century. These authors insert the viewpoint of the woman patient, I argue, to expose problematics of gendered medical relationships and women’s roles in medicine, as well as the complexities of the pre-Freudian medical environment. Issues such as categorizing and portrayal of mental illness, control and perception of the patient through treatment, women's alternative medical practices, addiction, and the immigrant and minority patient are all examined. In doing so, the goal of revising medicine's dominant narratives and literature's role in that objective may be achieved. Authors using the subjectivity of the patient help to refigure perspectives of women's medical and social encounters. Utilizing historical record and sociocultural theorizing, this dissertation presents the five women authors as essential in creating new narratives of modernity and ways of understanding medical experience during this time.
ContributorsSlatus, Kerri (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Holbo, Christine (Committee member) / Tromp, Marlene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Scientific and Cultural Interpretations of Volcanoes, 1766-1901 analyzes nineteenth-century conceptions of volcanoes through interdisciplinary literature and science studies. The project considers how people in the nineteenth century used science, aesthetics, and other ways of knowing to understand volcanoes and their operations. In the mid-eighteenth century, volcanoes were seen as singular,

Scientific and Cultural Interpretations of Volcanoes, 1766-1901 analyzes nineteenth-century conceptions of volcanoes through interdisciplinary literature and science studies. The project considers how people in the nineteenth century used science, aesthetics, and other ways of knowing to understand volcanoes and their operations. In the mid-eighteenth century, volcanoes were seen as singular, unique features of the planet that lacked temporal and terrestrial reach. By the end of the nineteenth century, volcanoes were seen as networked, environmental phenomena that stretched through geological time and geographic space. Scientific and Cultural Interpretations of Volcanoes, 1766-1901 offers a new historical understanding of volcanoes and their environmental connections, using literature and science to show how perceptions of volcanic time and space changed over 135 years.

The first chapter, using texts by Sir William Hamilton, Hester Piozzi, and Priscilla Wakefield, argues that in the late eighteenth century important aspects of volcanoes, like their impact upon human life and their existence through time, were beginning to be defined in texts ranging from the scientific to the educational. The second chapter focuses on works by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Lyell to demonstrate the ways that volcanoes were stripped of metaphysical or symbolic meaning as the nineteenth century progressed. The third chapter contrasts the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa with Constance Gordon-Cumming’s travels to Kīlauea. The chapter shows how even towards the end of the century, trying to connect human minds with the process of volcanic phenomenon was a substantial challenge, but that volcanoes like Kīlauea allowed for new conceptions of volcanic action. The last chapter, through a post-apocalyptic novel by M. P. Shiel, shows how volcanoes were finally beginning to be categorized as a primary agent within the environment, shaping all life including humanity. Ultimately, I argue that the change in thinking about volcanoes parallels today’s shift in thinking about global climate change. My work provides insight into how we imagine ecological catastrophes like volcanic eruptions or climate change in the past and present and what that means for their impact on people.
ContributorsLinthicum, Kent Robert (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Bivona, Daniel (Committee member) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / Tromp, Marlene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016