English Masters Papers
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FROM PAGES TO PLACES: SITUATING KELLY ET AL.’S THE ROBOT ZOO: A MECHANICAL GUIDE TO THE WAY ANIMALS WORK IN REAL-LIFE CONTEXT
(North Dakota State University, 2024)The Robot Zoo: A Mechanical Guide to the Way Animals Work (1994), written by John Kelly, Dr. Philip Whitfield and Obin, consists of textual descriptions and visual images of sixteen robot animals. Among them, my discussion ... -
Jacques Lacan and Mary Shelley: Repressed Abandonment in Frankenstein
(North Dakota State University, 2010)Mary Shelley's early life was fraught with developmental problems. Like Victor Frankenstein's Creation, she lacked a genuine chance to experience what Jacques Lacan calls the Real with her mother. While some readings ... -
"Putting on My Feminist Pants": How Academic Feminists Use Clothing to Construct Professional Identity
(North Dakota State University, 2010)Feminism has traditionally been concerned with issues of women's bodies; however, an examination of women's bodies in clothing has been largely overlooked, especially in relation to feminists themselves. Constructing ... -
Off The Beaten Warpath: Native Representation and Themes in Chris Claremont’s X-Men
(North Dakota State University, 2023)“Off the Beaten Warpath”: Native Representation and Themes in Chris Claremont’s X-Men Chris Claremont, the long-time writer on several X-Men titles, used the opportunity to develop his own cast of original and highly diverse ... -
Lord of the Living Souls: Dominion and the Spiritual Lives of Animals in Milton's Paradise Lost
(North Dakota State University, 2010)This paper examines Milton's views of the spiritual status of animals as presented in Paradise lost. It discusses how Milton enters into discussion with the discourses of 111 theology, philosophy, and both antique and ... -
Enculturating Gender: Examining Bestselling Children's Picture Books
(North Dakota State University, 2010)This research examines gender depictions in 20 current bestselling children's picture books. I argue that children's picture books, specifically those aimed at children 0-5 years of age, portray gender in a way that ... -
The Feminist Cure: Feminist Identity As a Shield from Hyper-Sexualized l'vledia Induced Self-Objectification in College Women
(North Dakota State University, 2010)This paper explores the impact of hyper-sexualized media on college women in terms of inducing self-objectification and/or inhibiting feminist identity. The survey and resulting analysis showed participants' feminist ... -
The Power to (Re )Produce: Biological Determinism in McTeague.
(North Dakota State University, 2010)In McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, Frank Norris explores life among the working class of Polk Street. Through his unflattering portrayal of all the immigrant characters in the novel, Norris demonstrates his well-documented ... -
Time to Play the Religion Card: Messiah Complexes in Battlestar Galactica
(North Dakota State University, 2010)In 2003, Battlestar Galactica (BSG) was re-invented from its 1978 roots and updated to a post-apocalyptic narrative that reflects numerous issues in current American culture, including the influence of religious rhetoric ... -
Analysis of a Facebook Freakout: Rhetoric of Agency in the Places Privacy Debate
(North Dakota State University, 2011)New technologies often generate fear regarding privacy threats, and social networking sites like Face book have lately experienced the brunt of the criticism. Face book users, even as they post greater amounts of information ... -
"Building a Class Library": Emphasizing Summary in Teaching Source Use
(North Dakota State University, 2011)The study presented here is a qualitative study evaluating four objectives for teaching source use, ones I emphasized in my Spring 2011 classes with an assignment called the "Building a Class Library Assignment." I relied ... -
Rematerializing the Contact Zone : Discovery and Exploration in the First Year Writing Classroom
(North Dakota State University, 2011)This study investigates Mary Louise Pratt's "contact zone" theory and argues that the contact zone has undergone a dematerializing process from a place with clear geographical and material connections to an imagined ... -
Taking Persephone: The Rhetoric of Consent in Rachel Smythe's Webtoon Lore Olympus (2018)
(North Dakota State University, 2023)Lore Olympus is a webtoon that reimagines the taking of Persephone in an animated, comic style. In this paper, I discuss the rhetoric of consent through a visual analysis using the intersecting fields of classical reception, ... -
The Monster-as-Slayer in Blade (1998): Blade and Posthuman Identity
(North Dakota State University, 2023)Blade (1998) features an African American half-vampire whose goals seem contradictory: save the humans that would fear and hate him. A new character trope, the monster-as-slayer, is introduced in the movie’s eponymous hero, ... -
A Reader Response Approach to Storytelling and Tabletop Games: The Player's Experience of Dungeons and Dragons and Its Pedagogical Applications
(North Dakota State University, 2023)Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a role-playing game (RPG) that has exploded in popularity since its conception in the 1970s. This paper aims to examine how D&D, and other RPGs like it, can be utilized within an academic ... -
Writing Fires: Writing Instruction, Student Learning Perceptions, and the Importance of Connection in the Age of COVID-19
(North Dakota State University, 2022)The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it devastating and potentially long-lasting impacts to the world. From economic upheavals, political ramifications, and educational disruptions, COVID-19 has changed the face of many ... -
Nostalgia for the 24th Century: How Nerd Billionaires Use Star Trek for Self-Promotion
(North Dakota State University, 2022)This paper examines how tech industry leaders, who I dub “nerd billionaires,” use references to Star Trek (ST) as a way to connect with the positive impression fans have of its utopian world. I show how they use ST to imply ... -
The Not-So-Universal Experience: A Content Analysis of Regional and National Secondary and Postsecondary Standards for Writing
(North Dakota State University, 2022)In this paper, I analyze six sets of high school and college standards and outcome statements on students writing to identify how expectations of students writing vary in their respective educational levels. I include local ... -
“I Am a Priest”: The Construction and Adaptability of Identity in the Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
(North Dakota State University, 2022)The following paper investigates the construction and adaptability of identity, especially in regard to gender, religion, and culture in Louise Erdrich’s novel The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. The goal ... -
Indigenous Ecocriticism and the Relationships Between Humans and Nature in Catherine Knutsson’s Shadows Cast by Stars
(North Dakota State University, 2022)In the midst of the climate crisis, Young Adult dystopian literature offers a glimpse of the possible dark futures in store for all of us. Yet Indigenous Young Adult literature revises the natural world not as the enemy ...