Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10217/100417

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Pardon blooming
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1983) Hayden, M. D., author; Ude, Wayne, advisor; Tremblay, Bill, committee member; Mitchell, Carol, committee member; McMurray, George R., committee member
A toad, a butterfly, a human being, a philodendron, all need sustenance, need air; all grow and change. Clamp a bottle over a living creature and it suffocates, its movement restricted, its possibilities limited. For an individual, rigidity becomes a glass bottle, and those who struggle to escape the bottle must experience something painful in the process. Glass bottle. Rigidity of society and tradition. For some, rigidity comes from their own acceptance of society's rules or tradition's importance. A creature raised in the confines of a glass bottle is uncomfortable with sudden freedom, as uncomfortable, perhaps as a free creature confined. For others, rigidity is imposed from the outside. These rigid boundaries of society and tradition may not be apparent until they conflict with the individual's inner needs for growth, but when they do conflict, the individual must find air to breathe. Some escape the glass bottle; most don't. Glass bottle. Rigidity of linear time. Although the concept of time as linear is arbitrary in Western thought (some American Indian tribes do not have such a concept), most of us assume our past happened to us in the time line before now. If we remain always the same person, the past, the memories happen continually. But if we have grown and changed, we are not the same person as the child of ten, the adolescent of fifteen, the young adult of twenty. The memories we hold happened to a different person because we are always becoming someone else. Linear time does not allow this idea, but circular time, or even spherical time, does. Glass bottle. Rigidity of gender. Separation of the sexes by innate differences or by imposed societal roles creates a rigid boundary that obscures the commonality of human experience, that denies the similarity of emotion and need in men and women. The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are 'the opposite sex'--(Though why 'opposite' I do not know; what is the 'neighboring sex'?) But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world. 1 Glass bottle. Rigidity of language. The boundaries of our language define the boundaries of our world. Those things we cannot perceive, we cannot say, and vice versa. The stories in this collection seek to express what our language has no way of saying, to escape a rigid structure, voice or time, to break glass bottles.
Open Access
"Too disconnected/too bound up": the paradox of identity in Mercé Rodoreda's The time of the doves
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1991) Short, Kayann, author; Freeman, Marion, committee member; Mitchell, Carol, committee member; Boyer, Harriet, 1936-, committee member
Feminist theory has shown how women's lives are paradoxically both marginal to, yet affected by, hegemonic discourses of power. However, as long as women's experiences are viewed singularly along an axis of sexual difference, placing paradox as a trope for female identity risks reinscribing a closed system of oppression based only on male-female relations, thereby foreclosing possibilities for oppositional strategies organized around intersecting locations of resistance. Mercé Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves, originally published in Catalan as La Plaça del Diamant in 1962, portrays a working-class woman's life in Barcelona from the onset of the Second Republic to the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a period she calls "a piece of history." Natalia's presence as both "articulate" narrator and "inarticulate" character embodies her paradoxical position as both outside and inside discourses of gender, class, and national oppression. Attention to the specific cultural contexts within which women's lives are both externally constructed and internalized allows a recognition of Natalia's silence and inwardness oppositional strategies of survival rather than as qualities of limitation and alienation.
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The disciple of because and other stories
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2004) Backens, Nicole, author; Doenges, Judy, advisor; Becker, Leslee, committee member; Bernasek, Alexandra, committee member
These six stories explore common notions of polite behavior, particularly social expectations in the Midwest. Here, women (and one man) of various ages feel pigeonholed into a set of anticipated actions that feel, ultimately, false. When faced with the crisis of choice, many of these characters sense a distinct tension between their own emotions and impulses and the decisions that are expected of them by their families and peers. These people—from an adolescent girl to an old woman to a teenaged boy—handle these crises in different ways, sometimes by defying convention, and at other times by approaching traditional roles with an almost frenzied, panicked enthusiasm, thereby reinventing such roles in often surprising ways.
Open Access
Work of art: a collection of stories and essays
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2005) Franck, Judea, author; Doenges, Judy, 1959-, advisor; Calderazzo, John, committee member; Callahan, Gerald N., 1946-, committee member
This collection of work, composed over a period of three years, contains stories and essays that explore the emotional struggles of people in fictional and real-life experiences. These stories and essays are concerned with the idea of resilience -- how people and characters reshape their lives after fracturing events. It is a collection influenced by the idea of loss, but also by the hope of resurgence. It details the ways in which characters and people can be hurt, maimed, brokenhearted, and yet find a way to recover.
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Shuffle and draw
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Dial, Tabitha, author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, 1973-, advisor; Steensen, Sasha, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member
Using my own worn Universal-Waite Tarot deck, I wrote a large number of poems while an MFA candidate at Colorado State University. "Five of Pentacles". "The Hanged Man" and "The Empress" are ekphrastic and attempt to verbalize Tarot cards of the same names. Storylines within this thesis began with the Arms suit, a suit created after reading Barbara Walker's study of her Tarot, The Secrets o/the Tarot: Origins. History, and Symbolism. Each of her suits developed myths and symbols, using a direction I wanted to take, after straight ekphrasis of most of the 78 cards produced interesting writing, but poems that were not full and provocative. I came to produce my own versions of-other major arcana cards while studying Walker and others. Only one Cups poem emerges in this thesis. Because the Cups represent the emotions, the implication might be that Tarot-interpretations of emotional maturity are stunted in my collection because there is only one Cup cards/poem. But the poem remains true to the original ekphrastic spirit of my work. The creation of my own poems/suits, some that address the poem reader/Tarot reader, fill in for Cups psyche.
Open Access
Romance revisited: quiltmaking in the twenty-first century
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Hodapp, Angela, author; Sloane, Sarah, advisor; Cowell, Pattie, committee member; Griffin, Cindy, committee member
The first twentieth-century American quilt revival lasted from the century's earliest years through the Depression; the second-the current revival-began around the time of America's bicentennial in 1976. In 1915, author Marie D. Webster identified three hallmarks of the revival of her time. She claimed that the increasing demand for competent quilters, the desire for new quilt patterns, and the growing popularity of quilt exhibitions were evidence of that revival. In this collection of creative nonfiction essays, which are largely based on my personal experiences as a quiltmaker and as the editor of a leading quilt magazine, I compare the revival of Webster's time with the revival of mine. Taking each of Webster's hallmarks in turn, I discuss quilting for hire; the mechanization of quiltmaking; the commercialization of the quilt industry; intellectual property rights as they apply to quilts; the ethics of entering, producing, and judging quilt contests; and predictions for the future of quiltmaking in America.
Open Access
Multi-literacies in the 21st century and the role of the print-based text in public education
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Dixon, Michael S., author; Coke, Pamela K., advisor; Mallette, Dawn M., committee member; Reid, Louann, committee member
This study examines the appeal of print-based and multimodal-based texts in relation to the 21st century learner and in context of the modern secondary level public education classroom. A review of literature gives depth to the ways in which print-based and multimodal-based texts have established themselves within the institution of education as well as how each type of text relates to the fields of semiotic systems and technology. The aim of the study is to examine and measure the appeal of print-based and multimodal-based texts to the 21st century learner. To achieve this goal, two types of research provided results: a quantitative classroom study in which students engaged and interacted with a print-based assessment and a multimodal-based assessment and provided feedback via a survey, and a qualitative study in which educators provided their thoughts and opinions on the role of print-based and multimodal-based texts at the secondary level of education via an electronic questionnaire.
Open Access
Rhetorics of disgust and love in the Belgian colonization of the Congo
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Kiser, Karyn Elaine, author; Sloane, Sarah, advisor; Sorensen, Leif, committee member; Anderson, Karrin, committee member
As colonial and postcolonial studies insist, the Western legacy of colonization has had— and continues to have—a profound impact on the composition of subject positions and the subsequent distribution of power in Western civilization. Connected to the colonizer/colonized binary produced through colonial involvement is the reason/emotion binary; Western concepts of civilization and primitivism are closely related to the reason/emotion binary as reason and emotional restraint have historically been markers of civilization while the Western notion of the primitive includes emotional excess to the point of animality. Given this link between reason, emotion, and colonization, recent emotion studies scholarship that seeks to unpack the reason/emotion binary has much to offer colonial studies. One such emotion theorist is Sara Ahmed, who in The Cultural Politics of Emotion investigates the manner in which emotion produces and sustains social meaning to construct subjectivities. The intersection of this scholarship and colonial studies, then, lies in emotion’s role in composing colonial subjectivities. My aim in this thesis is to explore that intersection, investigating how emotion operates as an organizing principle within the colonizer/colonized binary and, more specifically, in the historical moment of Belgium’s King Leopold II and his campaign for Belgian colonial involvement in Africa. My focus throughout this research rests on rhetorics of disgust and love, two seemingly incompatible emotions. In traditional conceptions, the former involves a strong bodily revulsion and the latter an equally strong affection and desire. However, within Ahmed's framework of relational emotions and sustained affective investments, disgust and love operate similarly to identify objects of emotion and, in so doing, allow for emerging subjects. Close attention to these emotions in colonial texts from Belgium’s Congo Free State offer s new and instructive ways of understanding the intersecting relationships within this discourse. Despite Leopold’s international notoriety in the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries, through a series of complex historical and political phenomena, the story of the founding of the Congo Free State and its aftermath has been largely erased from the Western historical narrative. In the interests of exploring the largely untold story of the Congo, this thesis is a close textual reading of historical documents from Leopold, the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, and the lawyer Henry Wellington Waek, which support colonization, as well as documents from Congo Reform Association leader E. D. Morel. My ultimate goal in analyzing these texts is to offer insights into rhetorics of disgust and love beyond the immediate historical situation while at the same time drawing long overdue attention to this colonial circumstance.
Open Access
"We just needed a place we could write": composing transitions in a first-year student writing group
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Hammond, Kathryn, author; Jacobi, Tobi, advisor; Kiefer, Kathleen, committee member; Merolla, Andrew, committee member
A writing group could be beneficial for first-year college students because during that period of life, termed “late adolescence" (see Erikson; McAdams), many elements of identity are being negotiated. In connection with the changes related to college, many decisions are being made that will affect identity formation. Also, there is potential for an extracurricular writing group for this age group because the focused genre of writing during this first year is typically scholarly, not personal or reflective. Three main questions are guiding my research on this topic: 1) What are first year students’ perceptions of the outcomes of an extracurricular writing group? 2) Does writing through the transition to college raise awareness to identity formation? 3) How does experience-sharing in a writing group impact a students' transition to college? In order to address these questions, I am reviewing relevant literature to draw connections between identity formation, writing groups, and personal writing; I am facilitating a writing group for first-year students at CSU; and I am conducting post-writing group interviews so the participants can evaluate whether personal writing in a social context influenced them during their first year. The purpose of my thesis is tripartite. First, it will revisit expressive writing as valuable to the academic community. Secondly, it will argue for a place for a first-year writing group as a setting for personal writing beyond the classroom. Finally, this thesis synthesizes the potential positive outcomes of this college group through a survey of writing research, reflection on the facilitated writing group, and students’ reported perceptions of the writing group.
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Escape in the clouds: and other stories
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Schnee, Jeremy, author; Becker, Leslee, advisor; Doenges, Judy, committee member; Alexander, Ruth, committee member
This stories collected in this thesis explore the bounds of the imagination, the limits and depths of emotion, the barriers of thought, the shapes of character, and attempt to capture human experience in realistic and magical forms, as well as blending the real, surreal, and everything in between.
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Of
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Bohn, Jerrod E., author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Steensen, Sasha, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Prince, Eric, committee member
My thesis manuscript entitled Of is a book-length collection of poems broken into five sections. Over the course of the book, the poems move from concerns over the nature of the erotic to an examination of how consummation of the flesh can give rise to a creation. In this case, what is created or birthed is the hymn or song that names the world. Along with this naming comes an anxiety over language’s relationship to the natural world: by affixing names and “meaning” to natural objects are we allowing words and phrases to replace the actual objects themselves? Moreover, does language risk misnaming an object which, in a sense, causes damage to that object’s integrity that can be difficult to repair or recover? Drawing on Classical Greek and Roman poetry, ritual, and mythology as well as Judeo-Christian cosmology and iconography as source material, Of attempts to break down and reunite dichotomous ideas that ancient cultures viewed as harmonious rather than opposed. These dichotomies include: the Apollonian / the Dionysian, male / female, erotic / spiritual, song (poetry) / meaning (naming), and language / natural objects. The book remembers that the preposition “of’ is relational, that all things are always “of” or “emanated from” something else.
Open Access
Moving toward a newer understanding of writing anxiety in adult students using a critical emotion studies framework
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Smith, Carmody Leerssen, author; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; Davies, Timothy, committee member
Writing anxiety has been a part of composition scholarship for many years, but the research has failed to adequately address the effect it has on adult students. Early research on writing anxiety was primarily cognitively based and focused on quantitative data analysis such as Daly and Miller’s Writing Apprehension Assessment from 1975. These cognitively based research strategies are useful and valuable to composition and for understanding writing anxiety, but in this thesis I argue that it is now time we move beyond the notion that writing anxiety is an internal, mental barrier to writing success and instead look at the causes as well as strategies for alleviating writing anxiety through a critical emotion studies lens. By using a critical emotion studies framework, we can begin to understand writing anxiety as a social and cultural construct that is created through the individual’s relationship with writing.
Open Access
Voices that resonate: popular music subverting and reinforcing the rape script
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Davies, Ashley Marie, author; Thompson, Deborah, advisor; Coke, Pamela, committee member; Alexander, Ruth, committee member
As case after case of rape comes before the court and different prevention policies are tried, scholars and activists are frustrated by the continual prominence of sexual violence. Many believe that if our society viewed rape as a serious offence and prosecuted it correctly, fewer people would rape. Along with the number of sexual abuse cases, representations of rape, or rape narratives as I will call them, have infiltrated mainstream media; film, television, and music all share the horrific tales of rape victims and, in some cases, seem to uphold feminist standards by giving a voice to those who have previously been silenced both by the legal system and societal gender expectations. While scholarship has made the instances of sexual violence more visible and examined many aspects of rape (motivations, myths, the trauma of the victim, etc.), there is still much to be done to challenge the deeply entrenched rape culture we live in. In order to do so we must see how rape is constituted through discourse and how representations of rape affect those discourses. To see how rape narratives simultaneously perpetuate and question the authority that makes sexual violence possible, this work uses post-structural analysis to examine how rape is represented in popular music texts.
Open Access
Rhetorics of silence/listening and teaching trauma: Holocaust testimony in the composition classroom
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Miller, Teva, author; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; Alexander, Ruth, committee member
Many scholars and educators who have taught Holocaust testimony and literature in their classes have offered numerous pedagogical methods to outline best practices, ethical concerns, and student engagement. While some of these methodologies are particularly instructive for the first year college composition course, most do not address the gaps or silences found in Holocaust testimony. Other pedagogical methods tend to lack the affective component that is an unavoidable part of teaching trauma texts. In this thesis, I offer a heuristic that can be used in the composition classroom to engage with Holocaust testimony. I argue that there is a need for this heuristic because it not only attends to the affective economies that are vital and inseparable from reading and writing about Holocaust testimony, but also because it re-privileges silence as a powerful rhetorical act made by both survivors and secondary witnesses. It also works to destabilize and disrupt “sentimental” student responses that tend to thwart invested critical analysis and which often lead to dehumanizing depictions of victim as well as potential misappropriations of a victim’s or survivor’s words.
Open Access
Teaching Shakespearean drama through the Second Shepherds' Play: a guide to increased student motivation
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Colgrove, Misty Michelle, author; Eskew, Doug, advisor; Frank, Katherine, committee member; Souder, Donna, committee member
In this thesis, I discuss two types of theories currently used to direct literary curriculum in secondary English/Language Arts classroom. One group of theorists argues for the classics, while another argues for young adult literature. The traditionalists assert that the classics are rich enough to engage any student’s interest and to challenge the student to think critically. Advocates of young adult novels assert that teaching works above a student’s developmental level, like some classics may be, damages the student’s engagement with the text. Such damage, these theorists maintain, has in part caused the United States to largely be a non-reading society. They argue instead that young adult novels provide literature that is engaging and encourages enjoyment of reading. While there are instructional strengths to both sides of the argument, a middle ground between the two is needed in order for students to remain challenged and to enjoy reading. I argue for using companion pieces to aid in student motivation in the high school English/Language Arts classroom. A companion piece is a high-interest work that must have many of the same attributes as the classic work--the same plot, themes, symbols, allusions, settings, ideas, real world connections, humor, etc. Specifically, I argue that The Second Shepherds ’ Play should be used as a companion piece to Shakespearean drama because both share common themes, genre, literary techniques. settings, etc. The Second Shepherds’ Play is a fifteenth century mystery play that combines the nativity story with a farcical story of a sheep stealer, Mak, who deceives shepherds into believing that he has not stolen their sheep. However, the shepherds realize after visiting Mak and his wife. Gill, that their newborn child is actually the stolen sheep wrapped in cloth. The shepherds must then decide how to punish Mak. The play ends with a surprising shift to the announcement of Jesus’ birth and the nativity scene. While The Second Shepherds’ Play is not traditionally taught in secondary classrooms, it is a beneficial play for secondary teachers to incorporate into curriculum because it will help students to engage in the text itself through such research based strategies as humor, real life connections, and interdisciplinary connections. The critical thinking students engage in while studying The Second Shepherds ’ Play will also help prepare them to engage in a study of Shakespearean drama where critical thinking is also needed in order to interact with the text in a more meaningful manner than just knowing plot details. While I assert that The Second Shepherds’ Play should be used as a tool to prepare students for a study of Shakespearean drama, the focus of this thesis is on highlighting the benefits of The Second Shepherds’ Play through research based strategies. Shakespearean drama will not be discussed in great detail. However, introducing The Second Shepherds’ Play into the curriculum and facilitating student exploration of the text through research based strategies will help students to engage more deeply in Shakespearean drama and to be more motivated in the classroom.
Open Access
The lion, the old lady, and the golden thread: ontological and rhetorical dissonance in the children's literature of George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Sundermann, Isaac R., author; Frank, Katherine, advisor; Souder, Donna, committee member; Taylor, Ted, committee member
Starting from the premise that at least some works of children’s literature are written with the motive of engendering religious conversion or de-conversion among their readers, this thesis sets out to establish the rhetorical differences among these types of works as a basis for a uniquely religious form of criticism. To demonstrate this method, a focus is placed on the two most popular children’s books of George MacDonald (The Princess and the Goblin) and C.S. Lewis (The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe). The first section of this thesis consists of a review of relevant literature related to the intertwining of literary reputations between MacDonald and Lewis. The second section of this thesis argues that the respective soteriologies (salvation narratives) of MacDonald and Lewis act as windows into the ontological assumptions of each author. By first looking at these foundational assumptions, the rhetorical framework of each text becomes evident. These frameworks, explored through the lens of Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad, provide a basis for the differentiation of the two authors. They also locate the crux of Lewis’s misreading of his literary precursor MacDonald. Specifically, it is the universalism of George MacDonald (i.e. his belief that all will be saved) that creates a profound dissonance with the thought of Lewis, who held to a more orthodox narrative in which all humans ultimately arrive at a state of eternal damnation or eternal bliss.
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Zero's blooming excursion
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Schickling, Jared, author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Steensen, Sasha, committee member; Snodgrass, Jeffrey, committee member
This work covers a ten-year period, 1996 to 2006, finding the news and details of two and more lives together deriving from the planetary being involved in circumscribed localities--who prove so intimate with others as to seem suspicious. The work’s treatment, often explosions, of form, paints pictures while engaging in dialogue with itself. The work looks to its own performances in order to explore myth’s formation, potency, and reason for being. It examines the case for the lyric as a durable narrative form, inquiring into the actual and perceived histories of a locally embodied national psyche. It recovers various artifacts from recent history left behind which, upon resurfacing, are recognizable by their alterations. It embraces subjectivity, error, and frailty as operative ecological and social principals, arriving at readings of lives and texts transcending humanistic prejudices and presumptions.
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You aren't like the others
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Pratz, Whitney, author; Schwartz, Steven, advisor; Becker, Leslee, committee member; Malpezzi-Price, Paola, committee member
This thesis is a collection of short stories and one nonfiction piece. Each examines and explores the intricacies of human interaction and the disconnection that happens when one feels alone. The characters face difficult situations and in the end, each finds solace in the people surrounding him or her.
Open Access
Integrated reading and writing in community colleges: a qualitative study of developmental literacy education
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Church, Martin A., author; Doe, Sue, advisor; Kiefer, Kathleen, committee member; Davies, Timothy, committee member
The following thesis investigates the potential benefits that integrating reading and writing instruction provides to developmental students. In light of several bans on developmental education at four-year institutions across the country, the role community colleges play in providing literacy instruction appears to be increasingly important. This project strives to understand the potential to integrate developmental reading and writing instruction in community colleges by answering the following questions: To what extent are community college administrators aware of the literature on the reading/writing connection? What are the costs and benefits of integrating developmental reading and writing and what do the better curricula consist of? How do issues concerning developmental literacy education change in the context of community colleges when compared to four-year institutions? What administrative, programmatic, and organizational challenges do integrated developmental reading and writing programs create and how can those challenges be addressed? Based on my analysis of interviews conducted with seven developmental program administrators, representing five community colleges within the state, I conclude that organizational factors at these institutions strongly influence notions of literacy education and administrator’s ability to 111 implement programmatic revisions. Further, I argue that administrators’ efforts to implement effective forms of integrated developmental education must include not only a sound pedagogical grounding in reading and writing and a framework to account for specific challenges that arise at their institution, but also a better means for articulating developmental concerns to their college’s central administration, each other, and state officials.
Open Access
Metaphor-based approach to representing writing tasks
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Stoner, Frank, author; Kiefer, Kathleen, advisor; Merolla, Andrew, committee member; Doe, Sue, committee member
This document argues that the long-standing practice of imitation within the field of rhetoric, along with recent qualitative studies in rhetoric and composition, foster problematic attitudes of student deficiency. In this thesis, I propose a cognitive theory based alternative. Recent work in cognitive science, metaphor theory, and linguistics suggests that metaphors may be more significant than mere nourishes of style—they may be evidence of mental structures called schema that organize the human mind. 1 argue that certain generative metaphors can be drawn from students' own experiences to help them more successfully set goals, plan, and mentally represent writing tasks. This approach empowers students by focusing their attention on their own experiences rather than problematically requiring students to rely upon expert writing models.