Current & Past Dissertations

Current Dissertations

Barbara Campbell, Under the Ivory Tower: Labor in the American Academic Novel

Ken Cormier, Suicide in the Fiction of Herman Melville

Dawn Goode, Representations of Female Relationships on the Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Stage

James Luberda, Social Statics and Evolutionary Discourse, 1844-1859

Rose Novak, Factory of Famine:Political Narratives and the Cultivation of Sympathy in the United Kingdom, 1800-1870

Karen Renner, Murder, Madness, and the Metropolis: New York City and Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Dissertations Defended (present-2002)

Maureen Tuthill’s final Ph.D. Defense, July 11, 2008 THESIS TITLE: “ Medical Aesthetics of the Early American Novel” (Harrs, Franklin, Tilton)

Ernest Cole’s final Ph.D. Defense, May 8, 2008 THESIS TITLE: “Post-Apartheid and Its Representation: The Interregnum as Motif in Selected South African Novels” (Coundouriotis, Phillips, Recchio)

Lois Coleman’s final Ph.D. Defense, May 8, 2008 THESIS TITLE: “ Michelle Cliff: History, Fiction, Agency, and Frontier Consciousness (Makowky, Coundouriotis, Phillips)

Katie Peel’s final Ph.D. Defense, Apr 9, 2008 THESIS TITLE: “‘Unsuitable for Narrative’: Working Women in Victorian Literature” (Marsden, Breen, Higonnet)

J.Aaron Sander’s final Ph.D. Defense, Dec. 4, 2007 THESIS TITLE: “Black Witness: Avenging Angels, Heroes & Apostates” (Bradfield, Pelizzon, Pickering, Tilton)

Reggie Wilburn’s final Ph.D. Defense, Dec. 18, 2007 THESIS TITLE: “Milton and the Gospel of Black Revolt” (G. Semenza, J. Phillip, B. Murphy)

Randall Cream’s final Ph.D. Defense, Oct. 23, 2007 THESIS TITLE: “A Stoic Practice of Sentiment: Eighteenth-Century Moral Theory and the Subjectivation of Habit” (Marsden, Simpson, Turley, Recchio)

Joe Stephenson’s final Ph.D. Defense, Jul 19, 2007 THESIS TITLE: “Drama and Dutchness from Shakespeare to Dryden" (Semenza, Hart, Marsden)

Jon Dietrick’s final Ph.D. Defense, Apr 30, 2007 THESIS TITLE: “Bad Pennies and Dead Presidents: Money in American Drama 1935-2001" (Murphy, Phillips, Tilton)

Aaron Mushengyezi’s final Ph.D. Defense, Apr 25, 2007 THESIS TITLE: “From Orality to Literacy: Translating Traditional Ugandan Oral Forms Into Texts for Children” (Higonnet, Haring, Smith)

Jennie-Rebecca Falcetti’s final Ph.D. Defense, Apr 13, 2007 THESIS TITLE: “Poet Descending a Staircase: Literary Modernism’s Aesthetic Engagement with Avant-Garde Visual Art” (Higonnet, MacLeod, Phillips, Shea)

John Sexton’s final Ph.D. Defense, Dec. 8, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “ In the Saint’s Embrace: The Sanctuary Privilege in Medieval Religious Writing” (Hasenfratz/Olson, Benson, Biggs)

Matthew Cella’s final Ph.D. Defense, Dec. 7, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Bad Land Pastoralism: Land Use and the Biocultural Landscape in Great Plains Fiction.” (Tilton, Franklin, Makowsky)

Bill Dalessio’s final Ph.D. Defense, Dec. 4, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Food Preparation, Food Consumption, and Identity Formation in Twentieth-Century American Immigrant Literature” (Makowsky, Bloom, Sanchez)

Jason Courtmanche’s final Ph.D. Defense, Dec. 1, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Sin and Salvation: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Typology of Evil” (Tilton, Hogan, Pickering)

Laurie Cella’s final Ph.D. Defense, Nov. 29, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “A Radical Romance: The Intersection of Conversion Narrative and the Romance Plot within Proletarian Novels, 1862-1939 “ (Murphy, Harris, Recchio, Tilton)

Jim Donahue’s final Ph.D. Defense, Nov. 28, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Rewriting the American Myth: Post-1960s American Historical Froniter Romances” (Tilton, Franklin, Phillips)

Anita Duneer’s final Ph.D. Defense, Oct. 16, 2006 THESIS TITLE: The Steamboat and the Petticoat: Revisions of the Maritime Romantic Ideal in American (Murphy, Phillips, Tilton)

Tonya McArthur’s final Ph.D. Defense, Aug. 24, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “A Devotion of Resistance: The Revisiting of English Female Monasticism in Eighteenth & Nineteenth Century British Literature” ( Marsden, Higonnet, Recchio, Roden)

Amanda Cagle’s final PhD Defense, Jun 28, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Pushing From Their Hearts a New Song”: The (Re)Construction of the Feminine in American Indian Women’s Poetry” (Tilton, Makowsky, Gibson)

Aparna Gollapudi’s final Ph.D. Defense, May 1, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “The Reform Plot in Comedy: 1696-1747" (Marsden, Turley, Phillips)

Christopher Anderson’s final Ph.D. Defense , May 4, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Nothing Lowly: The Anti-Picturesque in American Nature Poetry” (Gatta, Tilton, Hollenberg)

K. Doug Anderson’s final Ph.D. Defense, May 5, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Don’t Rub Your Eyes: A Memoir of the Vietnam War and its Aftermath (Higonnet, Pickering, Recchio)

Walter Nott’s final Ph.D. Defense, May 10, 2006 THESIS TITLE: “Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener,” “The Encantadas,” and “Benito Cereno” and the Discourse Community of Putnam’s Monthly (Meyer, Bercaw-Edwards, Phillips)

Cherie Ann Turpin’s final defense, Dec. 16, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Narrative, Erotic Power and Black Womanhood in the Works of Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Dionne Brand” (Phillips, Breen, Eby)

Lori Beste’s final defense, Dec. 9, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Margaret Fuller and National Culture: Political Idealism through Self-culture” (Meyer, Pickering, Tilton)

Mara Reisman’s final defense, Nov. 18, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Mind You, They’ll Say Anything”: Fay Weldon and the Cultural History of Feminism, 1967-2002 (Barreca, Coundouriotis, Lynch)

M. Wendy Hennequin’s final defense, Sept. 21, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Battle-Brave beyond Women-Kin: Women Warriors in Medieval English Literature (Hasenfratz, Biggs, S. Johnson from Classics)

Kristina Knobelsdorff’s final defense, July 20, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Re-readings of the Book of Job in American Life and Letters: Debate and Dissent within Bounds (Gatta, Higonnet, Tilton)

Karen Cubie-Henck’s final defense, May 26, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Reader, I Married Him”: The Spiritually-Responsible Heroine and the Nineteenth-Century Female-Authored Novel. (M. Higonnet, Coundouriotis, Fairbanks)

Chandra Wells’ final defense, May 26, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Befriending the Other(ed) Woman: Fictions of Interracial Email Friendship”(Makowsky, Bloom, Higonnet)

C. William Stanley’s final defense, May 2, 2005 THESIS TITLE: “Uncivil Defenses: The Nuclear Fictions of Philip Wylie.” (Barreca, Shea,)

Kathrine Aydelott’s final defense, Feb. 28, 2005 THESIS TITLE: Maine Stream: A Bibliographical Reception Study of Sarah Orne Jewett (L. Bloom, R. Bleiler, Makowsky)

Kurt Heidinger’s final defense, Nov 16, 2004 THESIS TITLE: Edward Abbey’s Geography of Freedom: A Writer’s Attempt to Inhabit Jefferson’s Promised Land (Gatta, Pickering, Tilton)

Michael Menard’s final defense, Nov18, 2004 THESIS TITLE: Building an Ethical Life: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Sense of Brotherhood’ and the Need for Social Engagement (Gatta, Bloom, Tilton)

Robert Curry’s final defense, Nov. 19, 2004 THESIS TITLE: Nature and Holism: Barry Lopez’s Integral Natural Philosophy (Gatta, Phillips, Tilton)

DeAnn Finkel’s final PhD Defense, June 9, 2004 THESIS TITLE: Telling Time: Time Chronology and Change in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Jean Toomer's Cane (Phillips, Hollenberg, Murphy)

Margaret Mitchell’s final PhD Defense, June 10, 2004 THESIS TITLE: Reconfiguring Gender: George Gissing and Social Progress (Barreca, Coundouriotis, Higonnet)

Joshua Master’s final PhD Defense, June 14, 2004 THESIS TITLE: The Image of the Book and the Act of Writing in the American West, 1803-1893 (Phillips, Coundouriotis, Tilton)

David Rice’s final PhD Defense, June 17, 2004 THESIS TITLE: Mediating Colonization: Indians in the City and the Twentieth Century Native American Novel (Hollenberg, Phillips, Tilton)

Allison Singley’s Final PhD Defense, May 19, 2004 THESIS TITLE: "Spurious Delusions of Reward": Innocence and United States Identity in the Caribbean of William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Russell Banks (Eby, Coundouriotis, Phillips)

Joanne Cordon’s final PhD Defense, April 26, 2004 THESIS TITLE: “Twin Strangleholds: The Blathering Irishman, The Simpering Miss and the Invisible Irishwoman” (Marsden, Recchio, Turley)

Jennifer Spinner’s final PhD Defense, Mar 19, 2004 THESIS TITLE: “On Women and the Essay” (L. Bloom, Marsden, Pickering)

Elizabeth Bidinger’s final Ph.D. Defense, Mar 18, 2004 THESIS TITLE: "Inventions and Reinventions In Working Class Autobiogaphy”(L. Bloom, Makowsky, Tilton)

Genevieve Brassard’s final Ph.D. defense, Dec 15, 2003 THESIS TITLE: “Becoming a War Heroine: Feminist Revision and Cultural Resistance in Women’s Literature of the First World War” (Higonnet, Barreca, Coundouriotis)

Karen Cajka’s final Ph.D.Defense, Dec 3, 2003 THESIS TITLE: “The Forgotten Women Grammarians of Eighteenth-Century England” (Marsden, Fairbanks, Jambeck)

Brian Cremin’s final Ph.D. defense, Nov. 5, 2003 THESIS TITLE: “A World of Secret Affinites”: African American Novelist Oscar Micheaux and the Frontiers of American Popular Fiction, 1913-1947 (Eby, Meyer, Phillips)

Stephanie Roach’s, Ph.D.Defense, May 2, 2003 THESIS TITLE: “A Rhetoric of Crisis: A Historical/Rhetorical Analysis of the Emergence of the WPA and its Continued Identity Formation”(Recchio, Murphy, Pickering)

Moira Casey's Ph.D. Defense, January 17, 2002 THESIS TITLE: AThe Lesbian in the House: Irish Lesbian Fiction@ (Lynch, Breen, Shea)

Julie Nash's Ph.D. Defense, August 7, 2002 THESIS TITLE: AUnderplots in the Drama: Servants and Paternalism in the Novels of Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell@
(Barreca, Marsden, Shea)

Vince Whitman’s Ph.D. Defense, June 28, 2002 THESIS TITLE: Red Round Globe: The Critique of Berkeleian Finite Spirit in William Blake’s Early Prophecies (Fairbanks, Higonnet, Recchio)

O. Cheriff Diop's Ph.D. Defense, April 30, 2002 THESIS TITLE: "Violence in African Literature@ (E.Coundouriotis, Hogan, Phillips)

Eugene Kannenberg's Ph.D. defense, May 6, 2002 THESIS TITLE: Form, Function, Fiction: Text and Image in the Comics Narratives of Winsor McCay, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware (T. Roberts, Hasenfratz, Phillips)

Vincent Whitman's Ph.D. defense, June 28, 2002 THESIS TITLE: Red Round Globe: The Critique of Berkeleian Finite Spirit in William Blake's Early Prophecies (A.H.Fairbanks, Higonnet, Recchio)