Browsing by Author "Gage, Scott, committee member"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
From fountain pen to Facebook post: networking literacy as the intersection of digital and epistolary literacies
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Wilson, Emily M., author; Souder, Donna, advisor; Eskew, Doug, committee member; Gage, Scott, committee member
This thesis examines the connections between 18th century epistolary literacy and 21st century digital literacy. I argue for the use of the phrase "networking literacy" as a term that captures the essential overlapping elements of the two other terms. A networking literacy is a literacy developed in a dialogic environment between two or more people who are too distant in proximity to communicate verbally, is strongly informed by audience, is typically discursive, and focuses on topics that are usually personal or addressed from a personal angle. Networking literacies transcend geographical location, historical moment, and especially technology. While the tools of technology change, the need writers have to engage in networking literacy and the impact it can potentially have upon their motivation to write and comfort with writing, remains the same regardless of whether they hold a pen or a smart phone in their hands. The tools of networking literacy will undoubtedly evolve within the next several decades into forms that may well be unrecognizable to us. However, whether it's via Royal Post, Tweet, or status update, networking literacies will find a way into our new technologies. Although networking literacy will certainly shape and be shaped by technology, an essential set of principles about the writer and writing process will remain the same regardless of the writing tools used. I argue that the emergence of epistolary literacy in 18th century England and its effect on both the individual and society bears striking similarity to the emergence of digital literacy in 21st century America, and that the points at which they intersect form the definition of networking literacy. Networking literacies help construct the identities of the users and share certain attributes regardless of technology, including being discursive, personal, narrative, and dialogic. Regardless of the technological tools writers use, the characteristics of networking literacy, including its dialogism, discursiveness, and the narrative template it provides for writers to lay over the events of their lives, remain the same in any era.
Open Access
Samantha Stephens as the Third-World feminist other: border theory and Bewitched
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Lundahl, Audrey, author; Souder, Donna, advisor; Eskew, Doug, committee member; Gage, Scott, committee member
In this thesis I argue, using Samantha Stephens from the television show, Bewitched, as an example, that Third-World feminism can be expanded beyond identifications of ethnicity only in terms of physical appearance, in order to speak to experiences by women who are oppressed by dominant society in ways that are not easily recognizable. Bewitched presents a narrative of a Third-World oppressed experience, as defined by Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands, Sonia Saldivar-Hull's Feminism on the Border and the collective "radical women of color" in This Bridge Called my Back. Samantha's experience as shown through this narrative is not a typical experience of oppression because her ethnicity is portrayed through the fictional idea of Samantha being a witch. The show very clearly defines Samantha's identity as a witch as a cultural and ethnic difference, which is different and opposite from the dominant mortal culture. Samantha's narrative relies on the conflict that is created when Samantha marries Darrin, a mortal. Several episodes set up Samantha's identity as a witch as an ethnicity that is oppressed by mortals, and most of these episodes rely on Darrin's experiences with Samantha's mother, Endora. Endora and Darrin's interactions set up an "us vs. them" dynamic through the show, which parallels experiences of oppression in This Bridge Called my Back, which represents a collection of women who experience oppression in many different ways, because of their different identifiers, but who seek to understand each other and reach a common goal of equality. Samantha's experiences as a witch who must exist in a mortal world when she gets married, makes her narrative parallel with the ideas expressed in Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands, because of Samantha's place living among two liminal spaces. This relates specifically to Anzaldua's experiences expressed through her book living on the physical Borderlands in Southwest Texas, which further leads to a psychological border set up to distinguish and categorize places that are "safe and unsafe." Samantha's experiences are further complicated as she must face further oppression because of her place in a gender role as a 1960's middle-class housewife. Samantha's feminist struggles are comparable to Saldivar-Hull's Feminism on the Border because her theory speaks to a complicated identity as a female and a Chicana. And finally, I make the argument that through this analysis of Samantha Stephens' Third-World Feminist struggles in Bewitched, we have a model in which to judge television more critically in order to reach a more fair look at disparate experiences. This look at Bewitched can also help to encourage a more authentic look at the historical past, because of its representation of the 1960s.
Open Access
The structure of narrative in Cormac McCarthy's Child of God
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Williams, Scott C., author; Taylor, Cynthia H., advisor; Gage, Scott, committee member; Hudock, Sandy, committee member
This thesis argued an alternative, sub-textual, reading of Cormac McCarthy's third novel, Child of God , through an in depth study of the novel's structure of narrative. The alternative reading revealed the novel's multiple narrators' biased judgments toward their subject, the novel's protagonist, Lester Ballard, through the narratives they tell. Those biased judgments also revealed both the hypocrisy of the local tellers of the anecdotes and, in turn, the subjective nature of moral truth. Moreover, the examination of the sub-textual reading through narrative theory--particularly drawing from Seymour Chatman's study, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film--also delineated the novel's self-regulated and meta-narrative structure in detail by revealing the dynamics of the relationship between the dominant child of God narrative and the seven shorter local anecdotal narratives, such as how the child of God narrative evolved from the smaller local anecdotes. This thesis concluded that the novel, Child of God, is about the tellers and their construction of moral truth: that the seven local narratives have a greater significance then as mere exposition to the dominant child of God narrative that most critiques either suggest or assume is the novel. This thesis further concluded that the structure of narrative in Child of God indicated that Cormac McCarthy's early works--his Appalachian period--are as complex and architecturally crafted as is recognized in his later novels.