RSS 1.0English Graduate Theses
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An Evaluation of the Validity of English Placement Tests at Imam Abdurrahman Bin Faisal University: A Critical AnalysisThis study examines the validity and reliability of English placement exams at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University and their ability to forecast academic success in English foundation courses. Using a quantitative correlational approach, the research analyzed data from 300 students to assess the relationship between placement test scores and subsequent course grades. Findings indicate that test scores moderately predict course performance, explaining about 38.4% and 36.2% of the variance in grades for two core courses. However, significant variability in test effectiveness across different academic disciplines suggests that the exams may not consistently capture diverse academic needs and language proficiencies. The study recommends targeted refinements in the exam structure and scoring to enhance fairness and accuracy in student placements, addressing specific disparities found across disciplines. These adjustments are crucial for better aligning placement procedures with the educational demands and language competencies at the university.
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Confronting The Over-sexualization of Afro-Latina Women in The Bluest Eye and The Poet XAfro-Latina women experience over-sexualization within contemporary society in ways that their white, female counterparts do not experience. Since the Reconstruction era, black women have been stereotyped as being promiscuous and oversexed. These sexualized stereotypes have carried weight within society for generations and have begun to encroach on other minority races, such as Latina women. Within their novels, The Bluest Eye and The Poet X, Toni Morrison and Elizabeth Acevedo do not shy away from discussing sex, sexualized stereotypes, and how sex impacts young women of color. Instead, they have confronted over-sexualization in their coming-of-age novels about Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl living in Loraine, Ohio during the 1940s, and Xiomara Batista, a young Dominican teenager living in Harlem, New York during the 2000s. Both authors utilize the complicated world of a teenage girl in a society that is accepting of negative sexualized stereotypes and challenge the over-sexualization through their main characters. This thesis analyzes how both authors confront the over-sexualization of Afro-Latina women to give a voice to young women who may be suffering in silence, and who are struggling to navigate a world that tells them they are only valued for what their body can give to a man.
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Death Unto BloomThis is a narrative screenplay that focuses on a fictional dark fantasy world populated by both humans, and the monstrous ice beings that hunt and threaten their survival. It is a narrative that jumps between characters and scenes, not focusing solely on one main character in particular, in order to tell an overarching story. Other genres present in this screenplay's influences are gothic horror, post-apocalyptic, and religious horror.
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Garden Rememory In My Garden (Book) By Jamaica KincaidMy Garden (Book) is a collection of essays by Jamica Kincaid. In My Garden (Book) rememory is part of the storytelling and the overall narrative structure. Rememory appears as a recursive happening that allows Kincaid space to return to the historical record to offer recovery. Rememory is present in Kincaid's connection to Antiguan botany and a past that flourishes in the modern present; it exists as a bridge upon which much of the western African diaspora flows. Rememory is also present in the narrative structure of My Garden (Book). Kincaid shakes up the expectations of a narrative form; she breaks sentence structure with thought interruptions, jumps through time and place, inserts lists, and letters, and disrupts categorization and order, such as chapter titles. Rememory becomes an active agent in the narrative storytelling of the garden, excavates otherwise forgotten narratives, and demands a change in thinking, form, and the historical record.
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Smoke Follows Beauty“Smoke Follows Beauty” is a poetry collection reflecting childhood experiences in the US South with a positionality concretely in the present. With a concise style, the collection considers racial and class divisions by engaging with family conflict and personal memory.
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From Inexperienced To Passion-Driven: Navigating The Working WorldThis thesis follows the adolescent life of Sofia Perez, who acquires a job for the first time at 15 years old. She documents her first experience within the working world in this piece, and also discusses relationships she has made along the way. Over the course of seven years, she blossoms from a shy introvert, to an outgoing and positive spirit. She dives into the good and bad of the workplace, as well as how her strong work ethic has made her the person she is today. From hyperventilating on the first day, to leading a team with ease, Sofia is at the beginning of her career, and ready to find her place in the working world. Her journey started at a retirement community called Bayview, and the six years she spent there were transformative. She hopes for every young teen getting a job for the first time to experience a job that they love, even if it may challenge them or not be in their desired field.
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Scar Of NoxAfter witnessing her Papa's soul ripped from his body by the Unhallowed worshippers of the underGod, Nox has undergone the rigorous training of the Divine Shadows, an elite and secret force run by the Church of Adonex, god of Afterlifes. Fueled by the desire to free him, she prepares for the Rite of Death, the ritual that will give her incredible power. Before she can do that, she must overcome two obstacles--balancing her mistrust and fear of Adonex, the god who scarred her face the night Papa was taken, and learning to get along with her Tomas, her newest and most stubborn scholar-in-training yet. Follow Nox into the darkness as she hunts the Unhallowed, their Desecrated victims, and the truth behind the events that changed her life forever. This thesis is an exercise in writing for young adult audiences and exploring the use of fantasy as a way of discussing deeper topics. Nox herself is an exploration into the mind of a young woman facing trauma and pursuing closure that forces her to constantly choose between giving respite to the dead or saving the living, representing the often-difficult battle of attempting to overcome the past and plan for the future at the same time, a struggle I believe many readers can relate to.
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A Key Without A LockThe first five chapters from the book A Key Without A Lock.
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Emotional FlashbacksA collection of non-fiction poetry and prose that focuses on enduring and overcoming emotional trauma.
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Journeying Through The In-Between: An Exploration Of Liminality In José Saramago’sblindness, All The Names, And The CaveThis thesis focuses on the concept of liminality and the presence of liminal states in José Saramago’s trilogy of novels, Blindness, All the Names, and The Cave. Defined by qualities of disorientation and ambiguity, liminality speaks to being in a state of “in-between,” which, I argue, is applicable to the central characters in each of these texts. Specifically, I examine how Saramago’s characters experience these liminal states, as well the qualities of the liminal states themselves, which share many - though not all - of the same characteristics as labyrinths and caves. To that end, I trace the liminal journeys of the central characters in each novel, the actions required to successfully complete their journeys, and how the culmination of these journeys manifest as an achievement of change engendered by realization, epiphany, and clarity of consciousness. This thesis is divided into three chapters, bookended by introduction and conclusion. In the first chapter, I detail the history of liminality and define the “liminal state” and “liminal subject.” I also discuss how Saramago’s characters can be considered liminal subjects, and the events that precipitate the characters’ entrances into their respective liminal states. The second chapter features the analysis of the beginning stages of the characters’ liminal journeys - the “descents into darkness and the “confrontations with death” - and introduces the concept of “concentric liminality,” as well as the parallels between liminality and symbolic existence. The third chapter explores the final stage of the liminal journey, the “ascension to light,” and the processes by which the characters can achieve their transformations and exit their liminal states.
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Exploratory Theatrics: Muriel Spark's Treatment Of A Woman's Absurd In The Driver's Seat, Memento Mori, And "The Portobello Road"Muriel Spark is sharp in her wit and delivery. She has been known to ‘hold her own’ among male writers of the contemporaneous period -- no small feat. for a woman who came of age in the 1930s. She writes dark -- veering towards sinister -- novels, novellas, and short stories, but what is striking about each of them is her uncanny ability to portray the absurd, a field rarely penetrated by women at all. In the chosen texts, Spark creates at once a sense of agency for the women characters, and an overarching lack of control over the universe in which they exist. Using select feminist theory alongside critical analyses of the absurd, this thesis aims to illuminate the ways Spark’s unique storytelling creates space for women in male-dominated terrain. This includes both the arena in which she chose to write, and in the circumstances she sets up for her characters.
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Mosaics Of Wholeness: Healing Through Queer Indigenous Self-Telling In Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A History Of My Brief Body And Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad IndiansThis thesis examines texts by two queer Indigenous writers, Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree) and Deborah A. Miranda (Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen), to consider how writing about the self—what the Western literary canon commonly terms “memoir” or “autobiography”—is a form of healing in the afterlife of settler-colonialism. Through close readings of Belcourt’s essay collection A History of My Brief Body and Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, this thesis explores how Belcourt and Miranda both invent and reclaim the Indigenous self through the construction of metaphorical mosaics which, in their assembled wholeness, reflect a kind of “living through” of colonialism. Within this framework, this thesis goes on to argue that the stories of the self crafted by Belcourt and Miranda effectively reconstruct the queer Indigenous embodied self, writing against the colonial imagination with assertions of non-heteronormative sexual desire.
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English Language Ideologies in ELT: Presence and Practices in Oaxaca, MexicoAs the English language continues to expand globally, studies have found that socially constructed beliefs and ideological values around the role and status of English greatly influence the institutional policies and practices of English language teaching (ELT) programs. This study describes the findings of a phenomenological study conducted among EFL educators in Oaxaca, Mexico regarding the presence of English language ideologies in ELT programs. Findings revealed that sociocultural, linguistic, and economic ideologies affect institutional policies, access, and representation. Takeaways from this study suggest that English language ideologies impact institutional and programmatic practices in ways that relate to educational access, hiring practices, native speakerism, and an asymmetry between public and private educational systems.
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Stories: Creating and Mirroring CommunityThis is the portfolio of my work throughout my master’s program. I highlight five projects where I explored community as it is depicted or described in literature. I end with a final paper exploring how literature itself can be a connecting point for community in the real world through studying the work of Dawnland Voices. In my projects, I considered: community of a nation as formed by literature (examining Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity” and Harjo’s American Sunrise; community as a source and subject of healing in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony; community formed over shared meals in young adult literature; community as found family in television shows; community and perspective in the classroom; and community seeking its own thriving through literature and social media.
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Emotional FlashbacksA collection of non-fiction poetry and prose that focuses on enduring and overcoming emotional trauma.
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From The Inside (A Collection of Personal Essays)I’ve always favored nonfiction stories that roused my emotions and curiosity, and compelled me to scrutinize every sentence and word for meaning. Such stories often awakened memories of my own that I’d treasured but had allowed to fade. In my own writing of essays, I’ve found myself reviewing old photos and mementos, taking trips to the local library, comparing my remembrances with those of relatives and friends. I hope readers will see in these essays something familiar and perhaps revive hidden, cherished memories from their own lives. Versions of these essays have appeared in the following publications: “Hallmark Moment” and “My Precious Stuff,” Biostories; “324 Bridge Street,” The Salem News; “Unrecognized” (under the title “Healthcare Unseen”), Focus on Faulkner; and “Rousing Bits of Assorted Wholes,” Adelaide Literary Magazine.
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Adapting the Language of Postcolonial Subjectivity: Mimicry and the Subversive Art of Kent MonkmanThis thesis explores the complex means by which Native American colonial subjectivity is constituted by a hegemonic epistemology that imbricates race, gender, and sexuality through a language of social hierarchy. By way of racial and gender marginalization, the Native American subject has become a means of authenticating the dominant Euroamerican class. 19th century artists of the American frontier, such as George Catlin and Paul Kane, contributed to an aesthetic tradition that perpetuated the silencing of a Native North American voice and upheld the social hierarchy instituted during colonialism. Through a close reading of the queer and racial images in Canadian/Cree artist Kent Monkman's paintings Artist and Model and Si je t'aime, prends garde a toi,which confront Catlin and Kane's aesthetic legacy, this thesis explores the question of resisting the social oppressions of colonial subjectivity through consenting to that subjectivity.
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Terrorizing Islam: Building American Identity in the 9/11 NovelIn the years after 9/11, a number of novels appeared that purported to examine the perspectives of both Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and American Muslims . While ostensibly giving their American audiences an insight into an Islamic perspective, what these novels are actually unconsciously doing is using their Muslim characters to create a new sense of American identity in the post-9/11world where older conceptions of American identity have been disrupted by the violent intrusion of an alien presence . Drawing upon the work of Edward Said and Toni Morrison, this thesis will examine the ways John Updike's Terrorist, Amy Waldman's, The Submission, and Don DeliIIo's Falling Man, construct a Muslim Other in order to create an American identity. The presence of the Muslims in these novels serves as an occasion for the Americans to explore their new identities after 9/11,where American exceptionalism and such American qualities once constructed as intrinsic and essential as freedom, inviolability, and tolerance are called into question
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Picture This: Representation, Photographs, and the Contemporary American MemoirThis thesis explores significant issues of representation pertinent to the contemporary American memoir such as "truthfulness," memory, and trauma. It also examines the ways in which individual memoirists encounter and address these issues, especially in regards to the memoirists' incorporation of photographs into their narratives . The central works discussed in this thesis include the following memoirs: Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir (2012) written by Jenny Lawson, Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate (2012) written by Judith Kitchen, and Dorothy Allison's 1996 memoir Two or Three Things I Know For Sure. Chapter one of this thesis focuses on issues of representing one's story "truthfully" and Lawson's use of photographs as "proof' of her hard-to-believe stories in Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir ) . The next chapter centers on the representation of memory and postmemory, as well as Kitchen's use of photographs in her attempt to revive the past in Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate. The final chapter is concerned with troubles of representing trauma and Allison's use of photographs in Two or Three things I Know For Sure to potentially help her say what she struggles to say with words alone. Throughout this thesis, the ways in which the photographs function as well as to what extent they aid and/or complicate representation is explored in addition to the question of why they are being included in memoir more and more frequently .
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What She Left Behind and Other StoriesWhat She Left Behind & Other Stories is a collection of short stories in which the emotional and mental stability of the characters is explored. In writing these stories, I wanted to know: What happens when someone gives away so much of themselves that there is nothing left? Why do we hand ourselves over to begin with? What is it like to live through the sudden onslaught of a mental disorder? What are the different ways we cope with love? With loss? And above all, I wanted to explore the challenge of narrators who are unreliable because of the way these mental and emotional factors play on their ability to rationalize.
