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Home » Opinion » Columns
Another View: U.S. Postal Service's financial woes are a problem of politics, not parcels
Few agencies interact more regularly with individual citizens than the United States Postal Service (USPS), which delivers to more than 150 million addresses six days a week across the country, from the most isolated villages to the most densely populated cities.
For six years in a row, Americans have named the Postal Service, which is older than the country itself, the most trusted federal agency.
Despite this, the conventional wisdom - that an agency losing billions of dollars a quarter because everyone's on the Internet necessitates sharp cuts in service lest taxpayers be on the hook - is highly misleading.
Granite Staters deserve to know the story behind the headlines. So too, do the Granite State's political representatives, with the fate of this venerable American institution likely up to the next Congress. Few states would be more affected by cuts in service than New Hampshire, with its many small towns and rural areas, its large number of small businesses and its high proportion of elderly residents.
The Postal Service is a topic that should unite Republicans and Democrats, conservatives, moderates and liberals - and, of course, the independents that abound in New Hampshire. There's never been, and shouldn't be, anything partisan about the post office. Here are some easily verifiable facts about the actual financial situation.
The Postal Service is financially self-sufficient. It pays for itself by the revenue it earns selling stamps and other products. Taxpayers don't fund it, and haven't for 30 years.
Moreover, the Postal Service's financial performance has been admirable. Through the mid-2000s, the USPS had annual profits in the low billions. Since 2007, in the worst economy since the Depression, it's had an average annual loss from postal operations of about $1.2 billion, unsurprising given the mass unemployment, extensive business failures and high foreclosure rates. Today, on-time deliveries and worker productivity are at record highs.
The oft-cited multibillion sea of red ink has little to do with the mail; much to do with politics. In 2006, Congress mandated that the Postal Service do something no other agency or company in the country has to do - pre-fund future retiree health benefits. Moreover, lawmakers set a highly aggressive level: pre-funding for the next 75 years, paid within a decade.
This mandate accounts for 80 percent of all USPS red ink, $11.1 billion alone in just-completed fiscal 2012. Without it, the Postal Service could readily have weathered the tough economy. This artificial crisis has exhausted the agency's savings, borrowing authority and periodic profits. Beyond that, it's distracted the Postal Service from doing what it's always done: develop a business plan to meet the challenges of an evolving society while seizing the opportunities.
Rather than rushing through a flawed bill in a lame-duck session, the new Congress should start over in January and fix pre-funding. That would eliminate the biggest drain on postal finances. It also would relieve the crisis atmosphere, letting the postal community focus on developing a forward-looking plan.
Opportunities abound. The very Internet that provides challenges also provides opportunities. More folks pay bills online but they're also ordering goods online - packages that require delivery. This exploding e-commerce market already is boosting Postal Service revenue - in fiscal 2012 alone by 8.7 percent - as FedEx and UPS turn to its highly efficient universal network to deliver their packages cost-effectively.
The USPS provides the world's most affordable delivery service. It's rooted in the Constitution. It unites this vast land. It anchors a $1.3 trillion mailing industry employing 7.5 million private-sector Americans, including 42,160 in New Hampshire.
It's critical to small businesses, which are open weekends and need to send and receive financial documents. Ending Saturday service would impose added costs on New Hampshire's small businesses, with 289,779 employees. It also would disproportionately affect the elderly, rural communities and people who need medicines on weekends.
Under a program President George W. Bush began and President Obama continues, letter carriers, of whom one-quarter are military veterans, have voluntarily trained to deliver medicines to residents in several metropolitan areas (including Boston) in event of a biological attack. The "Carrier Alert" program protects the elderly and disabled living alone. Letter carriers annually conduct the country's largest single-day food drive, replenishing food banks nationwide. All for free, and without a dime of taxpayer money.
For 200 years, the Postal Service has faced technological innovations such as the telephone, fax machine or telegraph, emerging stronger each time. If lawmakers address the pre-funding fiasco - rather than reducing services to Americans and their businesses - it can do so once again.
Fredric Rolando is president of the National Association of Letter Carriers.
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HNHH "What's my Name with Charles Ramsey!" Video
By Jen DeLeon
Posted May 15, 2013 at 01:47 PM
Behold HNHH "What's my Name with Charles Ramsey!" Video, a new offering from HNHH, which was released on Wednesday, May 15th, 2013. HNHH's rap artistry continues to improve with every release, something which is most definitely evidenced on HNHH "What's my Name with Charles Ramsey!" Video. His ever - expanding catalogue is definitely better for it, and we're looking forward to the next piece of the puzzle - aren't you?This week Broady pays homage to neighborhood hero, Charles Ramsey. How well do you know your hip hop lyrics?! New episode every Wednesday!
How does this compare to HNHH's previous work?
Did y'all catch HNHH's latest visual for HNHH "HNHH Hotties Behind-The-Scenes Photoshoot: Briyonza" Video?
If you dig this, visit HNHH's profile for the latest info, news, songs, and mixtapes. Check out HNHH's Facebook and Twitter.
Tags: hotnewhiphop, what's my name

subset: commoncrawl


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Thanks! I'd been after a Pinarello ever since I got into cycling seriously at 14. 12 years later I finally found myself in a position to get one. It's pretty much stock except for Michelin tyres and tubes, fi'zi:k tape and the Arione saddle. »
Hi all I've been following this website for a while now and decided to bite the bullet and sign up. This is my current ride, pretty entry level and not as cool as some of your rides, I know, but it rides pretty smoothly. »


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Now even beginning guitarists can play 16 Neil Young classics! Includes easy arrangements in notes & tab for: After the Gold Rush • Cinnamon Girl • Harvest Moon • Heart of Gold • Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) • Like a Hurricane • Old Man • Rockin' in the Free World • Southern Man • and more, plus photos and lyric sheets.
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The late Senator Sam Ervin from North Carolina once said, "Park is one of the finest human beings the good Lord ever created and he has one of the most important characteristics of all—an understanding heart."
Park was a complex and multi-faceted man, and a true entrepreneur. He made a fortune in the food industry before becoming a media giant in nearly half of the United States. He was also a modest man and an admitted workaholic who rarely discussed business in social settings. He never made an issue of his success and was vital, tough, and giving.
Roy H. Park was born in Dobson, North Carolina, in 1910. A precocious student, he graduated from high school at age 15. Entering North Carolina State University, after turning down an acceptance at Duke University, partly because he could drive his brother's roadster there, he studied business and journalism. After he crashed his brother's car, he took a job as an office boy in the Associated Press bureau in Raleigh to repay him. By the time he left, he was covering the Governor's Office and hobnobbing with the most influential people in North Carolina.
After graduation, Park sought a job in public relations and advertising with the North Carolina Cotton Growers Cooperative Association. To get the job he took his resume in a colored envelope to the post office and asked the postmaster to put it in the Co-op's box while he watched. Then he waited by the box until a person came to pick up the mail, and stepped up and politely asked him to open the easily identifiable envelope first. The strategy worked. The person turned out to be the head of the Co-op and Park got the job.
During a 10-year stint at the Cooperative, he initiated a program to revitalize the public image of cotton fabrics. One of his innovations was to stage "cotton balls," highly publicized cotillions hiring big name bands where every participant dressed in cotton formal wear.
Impressed with Park's achievements in Raleigh and with the Cooperative Digest magazine started by young Park, H. E. Babcock, founder of the Grange League Federation (now Agway throughout New York State) invited Park to head the huge Cooperative's foundering advertising agency. Babcock promised Park that he could earn-out ownership if he was successful. In less than five years, Park acquired the company and employed 125 people, with several branches in other cities.
Park's ad agency was retained to handle the successful agricultural electorate of New York State Governor Thomas E. Dewey's campaign for the Presidency in 1948. With Park's help, Dewey won over the farmers, despite losing the election to Harry Truman.
Ithaca became home and eventually the headquarters for Park Communications. Dorothy Park said she and Roy planned to live in Ithaca only for a few years with the notion they would eventually move back to North Carolina. Their fondness of Ithaca quickly grew, and it became their permanent home.
In 1949, the Grange League Federation asked Park to find a trademark name under which they could sell their excess food products, and he went after the top name in eating—Duncan Hines. Hines, famed for his guidebooks and display signs recommending top restaurants nationwide, was synonymous with gourmet cuisine. Using their common interest in watches to gain an audience, Park soon broached his idea of introducing and merchandising fine foods that would bear the Duncan Hines name, convincing him that his name was the only one worthy of a line of fine foods.
Premium-priced Duncan Hines Cake Mix was the first product, and it soon vaulted to number one on the nation's grocery shelves. Park pioneered over 100 additional products that were credited with liberating America's homemakers from the drudgery of the kitchen. The Duncan Hines brand revolutionized the entire food industry and was one of the first franchises in America.
When Proctor & Gamble purchased the company in 1956, Park could have comfortably retired. Instead, he began a second career in communications. Starting in 1962, with H. E. Babcock's son (a communications executive) as his point man, Park Communications acquired or built 22 radio stations, 11 television stations, and 144 publications, 41 of them daily newspapers in 24 states. At the time of Park's death, Park Communications generated more than $160 million in annual revenues, and his media properties reached nearly one-fourth of all American households.
Park's influence was felt across the nation. In addition to leading a number of charitable causes, he worked closely with the North Carolina Commission on Literacy and the North Carolina State University Development Council, where his efforts helped propel the institution into the Top Ten for corporate support. Park was originator of the New York State Publishers Foundation, which supports programs for newspapers in education, literacy, and journalism. He was also instrumental in the growth of Ithaca College, serving as President of the Board of Trustees for many years. The Park School of Communications was named after him.
The senior Park's association with Cornell goes back to the launch of his Duncan Hines foods enterprise in the 1950's, researching American eating habits through Cornell expertise and laboratories to perfect his food products. In the 1960's, he served on the Advisory Council for the NYS College of Agriculture and the Agricultural Experiment Stations at Cornell, and from 1971 through 1972, he co-sponsored seminars in Cornell's Department of Communication Arts through his company.
In 1977, Park was named a member of the Advisory Council of Johnson and also an honorary member of the marketing fraternity at Cornell. And in 1983 he helped to create the Lewis H. Durland Memorial Lecture Series bringing prominent business speakers to the campus in honor of his friend, the former treasurer of Cornell University.
A substantial amount of the proceeds from the sale of Park Communications after his death in 1993 went to fund Park Foundation, Inc. The Foundation is dedicated to education, public broadcasting, environment and other selected interests.
In February 2003, trustees of the Park Foundation announced the formation of a second family Foundation, Triad Foundation, Inc. The trustees explained that the new structure would allow the two foundations to pursue the philanthropic objectives that best reflected the diverse interests of their respective boards.
The original Park Foundation was formed in the 1960's, Park said, adding that "Triad will base its grantmaking on the interests my father and mother expressed during the nearly 30 years they served together on the Park Foundation board."
Serving as directors and officers of Triad Foundation, Inc. are Roy H. Park, Jr, and his children Roy H. Park, III and Elizabeth Park Fowler. "Therefore the name 'Triad,'" Park said, "which is defined as a 'union or a group of three, especially of three closely related persons, beings or things.' Our pyramid logo transected into three parts by the 'T' represents our three families and the three parts of the country in which we reside," he said.
In June 2003, the directors of Triad Foundation, Inc. announced that the Triad Foundation had assumed full responsibility for the Park Leadership Fellows Program at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and had re-named the fellowships the "Roy H. Park Leadership Fellowships."
"The new name reflects the desire of the Triad directors to honor the legacy of my father, Roy H. Park," explained Roy H. Park, Jr. president and chairman of the Triad Foundation. He noted that there will be no change in the management of the fellowship program, which since 1997 has provided over $12 million to support tuition, stipends and enrichment opportunities for nearly 170 students.
Roy H. Park, Jr. has continued his father's involvement with Cornell University. A graduate of Johnson, Park has served as a member of its Advisory Council since 1996 and as a trustee of Cornell University since 1999. Park is president and CEO of Park Outdoor Advertising of New York, Inc., headquartered in Ithaca.
In addition to Johnson fellowships, Triad has assumed full responsibility for the graduate fellowships at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Those fellowships have also been re-named the "Roy H. Park Fellowships."
Triad will also continue Roy H. Park's support for the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, specifically for plant research with strong promise for improvements in human health and medicine. "My father became a director of this private research laboratory in 1984, and remained so until he passed away," said Roy H. Park, Jr., who currently serves as vice-chairman of the Institute.
The Triad Foundation will also focus on early childhood and elementary education programs, on marine and tropical ecology, on selected scientific research and on human service, youth and other community-based programs in the communities in which its directors reside.
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Here is the place where you can post your Jazz Link so that we can network as far as we can. Make sure to identify who you are and what you do!
Members: 460
Latest Activity: Apr 3
Started by Wendell Holmes Jr, Sep 23, 2011. 0 Replies 1 Like


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This is actually something quite remarkable, because as far as I know, I haven't seen anyone else, ever, get to offer their readers a free, premium press release through PRWeb, and it is not like they have an affiliate program (at least that I have heard about), or easy to find promotion codes.
Are Press Releases More Cost Effective Than PPC Advertising?
Not long ago I wrote about how PRWeb can be used to grab some useful backlinks on pages that might experience reasonable qualified traffic, especially from members of the press, or owners of quality websites.
MyBlogLog – Social Networking Opportunity
I decided to write a second MyBlogLog post in a row, just to give a positive indication of how MyBloglog can and should be used.
I just received a contact request from Joe Beaulaurier of PRWeb. He had visited my blog, maybe liked what he read, and had also already joined my community. There is a fair chance he has also subscribed to my RSS feed.


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This retro hip-hop coming-of-age film was not on my radar and wouldn't have been due to the description, despite being an Audience Award winner at Sundance 2008. Read morePublished 9 months ago by Day2
This movie is perfect in every way. The soundtrack is perfect, the characters spot on and unforgettable, the plot is highly relatable and the pacing is also spot on. Read morePublished 10 months ago by Dakota McDaniel
People who are very nostalgic about the year 1994 may like this more than I did. Much of it is your basic naive boy meets experienced girl. Read morePublished 10 months ago by mr. contrarian
this is the best movie ever especially for Josh Peck fans! it is a must buy! a true classic! loved it!Published 11 months ago by Bianca Brummell
one of the best movies I've seen top ten in my book and very relatable, even if you've never done or sold drugs eveyones had a crush felt rejected and been used by people that you... Read morePublished 17 months ago by holl23
The Wackness is most definitely anything but wack,it is a funny touching story of a teenage boy who happens to be a loner and who also has a crush on a schoolmate named Stephanie... Read morePublished 22 months ago by Edward Rivera
You will love the relationship between Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck. Great indie movie that showcases great acting with some great actors that deserve more credit than they get.Published 23 months ago by Alicia Miller
The movie got shipped pretty quickly, was nicely packaged, and it worked. I think that's all that is required of a dvd.Published 23 months ago by Lau
|From this Discussion
|Mary-Kate Olsen in The Wackness - good or bad?
I read somewhere she was on screen for a total of 15 minutes, which after seeing the film seems a lot more accurate than 3-4.
May 9, 2009 by Arg! | See all 5 posts


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My family just moved back from Italy been there 6 years.Hopefully moving back for another 5 yrs.There is nothing like European food .Fresh Mozzerella,Proscuitto and always fresh basil Panini's are the Bomb light refreshing and oh so delicious!!! Awesome job Emeril.
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JERRY'S QUARTERS, TEXAS. Jerry's Quarters is on Farm Road 50 at the Burleson County border and the junction of Independence and Yegua creeks, thirteen miles north of Brenham in extreme northern Washington County. The site, at an elevation of 198 feet, is lower than the surrounding area. The community is based on agriculture and was developed in the 1960s. It was listed as a community in 1990.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Carole E. Christian, "JERRY'S QUARTERS, TX," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hrj22), accessed December 18, 2014. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
For more information about towns and counties including physical features, statistics, weather, maps and much more, visit the


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CaveThis photo was shot on film. Taken by grad with a Lomo LC-A+ (available in our Online Shop) loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 64 film in Baden, Austria. These tags describe this photo: 35mm, expired, cave, baden, 64, ektachrome, lca, lomo, cross-process, xpro, wien, vienna, epr, and kodak. Date: 2013-10. Time: Afternoon. This photo can also be found in the album Vienna - Baden.
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Fifth in a series.
WASHINGTON — Newly elected congressional Democrats had just a week to savor their victories before coming face to face with a harsh reality of Washington.
At a party-sponsored orientation session, the freshmen — many still giddy from winning close races in which they espoused grand plans to change the Capitol's toxic atmosphere — were schooled in their party's simple list of priorities for them.
Raise money. Raise more. Win.
The newcomers were told to devote at least four hours each day to the tedious task of raising money — so-called dialing for dollars — so they could build a war chest and defend their seats, according to those present. That's twice as much time as party leaders expect them to dedicate to committee hearings and floor votes, or meetings with constituents.
Some members were flabbergasted. One rolled his eyes and walked out of the room.
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Tajin Hotel, Papantla
20 Traveller
Reviews - Tajin Hotel
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Top Local Tips for Papantla
El Tajin: not to be missed El Tajin is a Unesco World Heritage Site and it is not difficult to see why. There are some stunning views, in a very green and lush environment. At the entrance you will get a chance to see the Voladores but they only do their show at certain times and only if there are sufficient tourists. Ask what their plans are when you buy the ticket. To see the show you will have to exit the site (if you got in already) but the guard will allow you back in.
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- tajin hotel veracruz
- Address: 104 Jose de J. Nuñez y Dominguez - Papantla - 93400 - Mexico
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- Emporio Veracruz Hotel Veracruz, Mexico
- Rancho La Puerta And Spa Hotel Tecate, Mexico Distance: 3.5 km / 2.2 mi
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- Los Patios Hotel Cabo San Lucas, Mexico Distance: 6.5 km / 4.1 mi
- Crowne Plaza Mexicali Hotel Mexicali, Mexico Distance: 6.5 km / 4.1 mi
- Emporio Tijuana Hotel Tijuana, Mexico Distance: 7 km / 4.4 mi
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- Las Palmas Hotel San Felipe, Mexico Distance: 8 km / 4.9 mi
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- Hacienda del Rio Hotel Tijuana, Mexico Distance: 8.9 km / 5.5 mi
- Camino Real Tijuana Hotel Tijuana, Mexico Distance: 8.3 km / 5.2 mi


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Is it Eggers' Prerogative to Change His Mind?
The 10th anniversary edition of David Foster Wallace's doorstop novel INFINITE JEST features an introduction from McSweeeney's guru Dave Eggers. But when Traver Kauffman, proprietor of the litblog The Rake's Progress, did some digging, he found Eggers' original review of the novel – and discovered his opinion had changed drastically in 10 years.
Not surprisingly, many greeted the apparent flip-flop with some confusion and defense of Eggers. "I've never understood why people were so eager to take him down; Eggers is the most charitable person I've ever met," said Stephen Elliott. And while Kauffman agrees that "it's OK to change your mind, I think we can all agree, but isn't it important to own up to it?" Because, he continues, "when you've set yourself up as a literary arbiter, you're held to a higher standard: major changes in your critical stance demand a mention–even a passing one, lest you risk the appearance of intellectual dishonesty."
So now Kauffman is going to put his money where his mouth is, offering a blank check to Eggers to explain his flip-flop. The money started at $49, then Matthew Tiffany, who originally questioned the flip-flop, then matched the sum, and now Kauffman has raised the stakes to $109. And Ed Champion has pledged to interview Eggers for his Bat Segundo show and ask about the flip-flop. Criticism aside, Kauffman points out, it's all for a good charitable cause…


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Billions of dollars every year are spent on stapling stomachs, weight loss pills, and diabetes medications…Yet being vegan, let alone raw vegan, is considered RADICAL and TOO EXPENSIVE?
Invest in your health and your future, so you won't have to spend thousands of dollars in hospital bills down the road.
You only have one body.


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Thelma Grimes, The Explorer Posted:
It's going to only take one of the current majority to do the right thing and vote to table, or against, the proposed golf course purchase and…
David Safier Posted:
Every year around this time, my wife and I make a $400 donation to public schools and I write a column about it. It may sound like I'm braggin…
Logan Burtch-Buus Updated:
Last month, during Blizzard Entertainment's annual BlizzCon convention, Blizzard president and co-founder, Mike Morhaime, announced that a pur…
Darcie Maranich/Special to Tucson Local Media Posted:
My grandparents—who winter in Yuma—drove up for Thanksgiving. They stayed three nights, during which time we ate, drank and were generally mer…
Thelma Grimes, The Explorer Posted:
After more than a month of speculation, the Oro Valley Town Council finally thought it was time to include those taxpaying citizens in on the …
Oro Valley's top officials know the town's recently unveiled plans to raise sales taxes and to purchase the El Conquistador golf and recreation facilities seem rushed and unorthodox – but it's a rare opportunity that may never come around again, they say.
Two people were attacked by a man with a machete early this morning at about 3:05 a.m. on 2600 block of East Copper Street.
Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday aimed at forcing the federal government to protect Arizona's diminishing cactus ferruginous pygmy owl population under the Endangered Species Act.
After more than a month of speculation, the Oro Valley Town Council finally thought it was time to include those taxpaying citizens in on the secret that they were going to be buying a golf course for $1 million. They stress that it comes with a community center though.
Mayor Hiremath, Council Members Waters, Snider, and Hornat have all just been re-elected to the town council by wide margins. This is the same group that, during their first term, doubled the Utility tax. Now they are proposing to buy the El Conquistador Country Club and raise the Town's sales tax to pay for it. We all agree that Oro Valley needs a community center, but we do not agree on whether or not we need to rush into making a commitment that not all desire.
The Marana Police Department is investigating four recent reports of vehicles being stripped of tires and rims from residential areas, leaving the vehicles on blocks.
The Marana Town Council approved use of funds for the Marana Heritage Park and changed some of the town's policies on background checks during their meeting last Tuesday. The council also honored a longtime employee and heard feedback from the citizens' forums.
Pima County has terminated its contract with Select Development and Construction, who was tasked with the widening of Magee Road between La Cañada Drive and Oracle Road. County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry says the contractor did not perform in accordance with the contract terms, provisions, and requirements in the timeframe allotted.
The Oro Valley Town Council will vote tonight (Dec. 17) on whether to purchase the golf and other recreational amenities of the El Conquistador resort, spending $1 million to acquire the property and committing to a half-cent sales tax increase for improvements and its continued operations.
Signing in from multiple locations may be the cause.


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SSL and IPs problem.
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19th April 2008, 20:53
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I did followed the steps listed in the official ISPConfig documentation to create a CSR. Ok, here's what I did:
- Enabled SSL Checkbox
- In the SSL Tab, filled all the information in text-boxes
- In the drop down, selected "Create Certificate"
- Wait for a minute
- In the drop down, selected "Save Certificate"
- Restarted apache and everything working fine (I can access https:// with the popup).
Now, to replace the self-signed cert with trusted cert.
- In the SSL tab, copied the "SSL Request" and sent it to CA.
- They gave me the certificate, and I relaced the default "SSL Certificate" with the one CA gave me.
- "Save certificate"
- Restarted apache, and it stopped working.
As I said, I've tried this with two different CAs. One of them required the SSLCertificateChainFile, I uploaded the chain file and entered the required line the "Apache Directives (Optional)." Both of them give the same error.
Also, I am still confused about the IPs. Should I get more public IPs or Private IPs?
Sorry for being a pain. I am working on it as hard as I can. Thanks for your time.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
Department: Department of English
- Infinite Hallways: "Parabola Heretica" and Other Journeys
- This creative thesis collects five fictional stories, as well as a critical preface entitled "Fractals and the Gestalt: the Hybridization of Genre." The critical preface discusses genre as a literary element and explores techniques for effective genre hybridization. The stories range from psychological fiction to science fiction and fantasy fiction. Each story also employs elements from other genres as well. These stories collectively explore the concept of the other and themes of connection and ostracization. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc407839/
- Shakespeare and Modeling Political Subjectivity
- This dissertation examines the role of aesthetic activity in the pursuit of political agency in readings of several of Shakespeare's plays, including Hamlet (1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), The Tempest (1610), the history plays of the second tetralogy (1595-9), Julius Caesar (1599), and Coriolanus (1605). I demonstrate how Shakespeare models political subjectivity—the capacity for individuals to participate meaningfully in the political realm—as necessitating active aesthetic agency. This aesthetic agency entails the fashioning of artistically conceived public personae that potential political subjects enact in the public sphere and the critical engagement of the aesthetic and political discourses of the subjects' culture in a self-reflective and appropriative manner. Furthermore, these subjects should be wary auditors of the texts and personae they encounter within the public sphere in order to avoid internalizing constraining ideologies that reify their identities into forms less conducive to the pursuit of liberty and social mobility. Early modern audiences could discover several models for doing so in Shakespeare's works. For example, Hamlet posits a model of Machiavellian theatricality that masks the Prince's interiority as he resists the biopolitical force and disciplinary discourses of Claudius's Denmark. Julius Caesar and Coriolanus advance a model of citizenship through the plays' nameless plebeians in which rhetoric offers the means to participate in Rome's political culture, and Shakespeare's England for audiences, while authorities manipulate citizen opinion by molding the popularity of public figures. Public, artistic ability affords potential political subjects ways of not only framing their participation in their culture but also ways of conceiving of their identities and relationships to society that may defy normative notions of membership in the community. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc407853/
- To Be the Child of the Priest
- This collection of creative non-fiction essays is written from the perspective of a Protestant Christian church leader's daughter emerging into adulthood and independence. She labors to define her relationship with God, family, and friends and to determine the complicated, but pervasive role of faith in her life while coping with depression and anxiety; a brain aneurysm and malformation among other health problems; working in an all-male environment in the Houston Chronicle Sports department; the death of her grandparents; the death of a Muslim friend in a murder-suicide shooting; and her troubled relationship with an agnostic friend. Although she expresses her doubts in each scenario, she identifies purpose in the trials and accepts the challenges that accompany being the child of the priest. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc407765/
- Alchemies
- This thesis consists of a collection of poems and a critical preface. The preface is a discussion of Elizabeth Bishop's descriptive mode, as demonstrated by three of her poems: "Sandpiper," "The Monument," and "Santarém." I argue for Bishop's descriptions as creative acts, and examine the gestures that help her make the reader aware of the shaping power she exercises. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc283793/
- The Girl Disappeared: the Prostitute of La Isla De Santa Flora
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The novella, The Girl Disappeared, focuses on the life of Emalia, a street kid from Mexico. She is taken from the streets of Veracruz and forced into a life of prostitution on the fictitious island of La Isla de Santa Flora. The primary conflict that drives the action of the story is her pending choice between escaping her life of slavery and saving another young woman who is on the verge of being forced into a life of prostitution as well. The novella, as a literary piece, dwells on the question of character agency and explores the multilayered nature of code switching. Language for these women becomes a tool in their struggle against their captives and a means of self-preservation, or sanctuary, as they use their growing bilingualism to foment a limited agency, to act in their own defense. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271917/
- Homeward Bound: Short Stories
- This collection contains a preface that discusses the role of landscape and place as they are used in fiction, particularly when they are colored by the writer's own memories of home. The preface is followed by four original short stories, three of which relate to a fictional small town in Texas. "Under the Surface" involves two young boys who begin to relate thoughts of the dead body they find to their own absentee mother. "Tommy" explores a young man's memories of his recently deceased friend, as well as the gossip of a small town. "Stubborn" depicts a man's struggle after his wife has delivered an ultimatum. "Out of the Valley" is about a father and daughter questioning what it means to be normal. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271837/
- Mr Secrets and Social Media: the Confession of Richard Rodriguez
- Richard Rodriguez's works create troubling situations for many scholars. Though numerous critics see him as the penultimate Chicano writer, many others see his writing as only pandering to the elite. However, all politics and controversies aside, he is a writer whose ideas upon language and public confession have been revolutionary. Throughout the thesis, I argue that Rodriguez's ideas upon language and identity are applicable to the social media landscape that we reside in currently, especially the public confession. Also, I use deconstructionism, along with postmodern criticism, to illustrate the changing arc of Rodriguez's confession from his first autobiography to his final one. In his first memoir, Rodriguez remains in the closet upon his sexuality, and the reader only catches glimpses of the 'real' character inside his work. In the second memoir, the reader sees a better glimpse because of his coming out; yet, even in this regard, he does not do so wholly and still leaves his confession unfinished. By the third, he applies themes and problems seen in his first and second works to discuss our browning nature, and how we are all sinners and that we desire to confess our sins. In my assessment of Rodriguez, I argue throughout all my chapters upon a measure of irreconcilability between the private world of the Hispanic immigrant family and the public sphere that they are forced to inhabit because of his citizenship and education. This irreconcilability creates a drastic limiting of identity for the author that Rodriguez is forced to navigate which creates his desire for confession. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271788/
- Specter
- This dissertation is a collection of poems preceded by a critical preface. The preface considers the major changes within the elegy from the traditional English elegy—the touchstone poems for this genre being Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais," and Tennyson's "In Memoriam"—to the contemporary elegy and argues that many of these changes showcase contemporary elegists' active refusal and reversal of the time-honored traditions of the form. The preface is divided into an introduction and three sections, each of which recognizes and explores one significant alteration—or reversal—to the conventions of the form as established by early English elegists. The first discusses the traditional elegiac tradition of consolation in which the speaker, after displaying a series of emotions in reaction to the death of a loved one, ultimately finds comfort in the knowledge that the deceased lives eternally in heaven. This convention is contrasted with a common contemporary rhetorical movement in which the speaker not only lacks comfort by the end of the poem, but often refuses any kind of consolation, preferring instead to continue his grief. The second recognizes and explores the traditional elegiac tradition in which the speaker, listing the virtues of the beloved, replaces the real, historical person with a symbol which represents what society has lost due to this death. This convention is contrasted against a common contemporary theme in which the speaker, in an attempt to evoke authenticity, portrays the deceased subject not as a romanticized symbol, but as a real human being. The final section discusses the definition of the traditional elegy as a reaction to the literal death of a loved one and contrasts this with the more fluid contemporary understanding of the elegy as a poem about loss—either a literal or metaphorical death—and a poem which need not display conventional aspects of mourning but rather a wide variety of responses to the problem of loss. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271896/
- Warrior Women in Early Modern Literature
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Fantasies about warrior women circulated in many forms of writing in early modern England: travel narratives such as Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of Guiana (1595) portray Amazon encounters in the New World; poems like Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) depict women's skill with a spear; and the plays of Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and others stage the adventurous feats of women on the battlefield. In this dissertation, I analyze the social anxieties that emerge when warrior women threaten gender hierarchies in the patriarchal society of early modern England. The battlefield has traditionally been a site for men to prove their masculinity against other men, so when male characters find themselves submitting to a sword-wielding woman, they are forced to reimagine their own masculine identities as they become the objects acted upon by women. In their experience of subjectivity, these literary warrior women often allude to the historical Queen Elizabeth I, whose reign destabilized ideas about gender and power in the period. Negative evaluations of warrior women often indicate anxiety about Elizabeth as an Amazon-like queen. Thus, portrayals of warrior women often end with a celebration of patriarchal dominance once the male characters have successfully contained the threat of the warrior woman through marriage or death. I argue that these depictions of containment indicate a common desire to maintain patriarchal superiority during and after Elizabeth's reign. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271872/
- Bodies and Other Firewood
- The chakra system consists of seven energetic vortexes ascending up the spine that connect to every aspect of human existence. These vortexes become blocked and unblocked through the course of a life, these openings and closings have physiological and mental repercussions. Knowledge of these physical and mental manifestations, indicate where the chakra practitioner is in need, the practitioner can then manipulate their mind and body to create a desired outcome. These manipulations are based upon physical exercises and associative meditations for the purpose of expanding the human experience. As a poem can be thought of as the articulation of the human experience, and the chakra system can be thought of as a means to understand and enhance that experience, it is interesting and worthwhile leap to explore the how the chakras can develop and refresh the way we read and write poetry. This critical preface closely reads seven poems, one through each chakra, finding what the chakras unveil. Here, each chakra is considered for its dynamic creative capabilities and for its beneficial potentiality in the reading and writing process, finding each chakra provides tools: idea generators with the potential to free the poet from usual patterns of creativity while broadening vision and expressivity. In this collection of poetry poems are experiences chopped into consumable units that show and tell the constant negotiation between what is actually happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc177180/
- The Fifth Humor: Ink, Texts, and the Early Modern Body
- This dissertation tracks the intimate relationship between writing and the body to add new dimensions to humoral criticism and textual studies of Renaissance literature. Most humor theory focuses on the volatile, permeable nature of the body, and its vulnerability to environmental stimuli, neglecting the important role that written texts play in this economy of fluids. I apply the principles of humor theory to the study of handwritten and printed texts. This approach demonstrates that the textual economy of the period—reading, writing, publishing, exchanging letters, performing all of the above on stage—mirrors the economy of fluids that governed the humoral body. Early modern readers and writers could imagine textual activities not only as cerebral, abstract concepts, but also as sexual activities, as processes of ingestion and regurgitation. My study of ink combines humoral, historical materialist, and ecocritical modes of study. Materialist critics have examined the quill, paper, and printing press as metaphors for the body; however, the ink within them remains unexamined. This dissertation infuses the figurative body of the press with circulating passions, and brings to bear the natural, biochemical properties that ink lends to the texts it creates. Considering the influence of written and printed materials on the body in early modern poetry and drama requires consideration of the murky liquid from which these texts were composed. For early moderns, writing began with the precise, anatomical slicing of a goose feather, with the crushing of oak galls into wine or rainwater, with the application of heat and ferrous sulfate. These raw materials underwent a violent transformation to fill early modern inkwells. As a result of that mystical concoction, the fluid inside these vessels became humoral. The ink on a page represented one person's passions potentially invading the body of another. Therefore, ink serves as more than a metaphor for any particular humor. Pen and paper work as extensions of the body, and serve at turns as a mechanism of balance or imbalance. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc177241/
- The Invisible Dragon
- This collection of memoir essays chronicles the author's 19 year struggle with chronic depression. "The Invisible Dragon" explores the onset of the disease and its cure. "The Silent Typewriter" looks at how it affected the author as a writer. "Roses for Trish" discusses how it affected his wife. "My Mother's Son" explores the possibility that he inherited depression from his mother. The final essay, "The Dragon Returns" probes the author's life in 2012 with the probability that he has a personality disorder. The preface examines several depression memoirs and explores the strategies used by William Styron, Elizabeth Wurtzel and Kay Redfield Jamison to prevent sliding into the pitfalls inherent in a linear structure. Among these are the use of alternative structures, language, characterization, focus and imagery. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc177182/
- Antigravity
- This dissertation contains two parts: Part I, which discusses the elegy of possessive intent, a subgenre of the contemporary American elegy; and Part II, Antigravity, a collection of poems. English elegies have been closely rooted to a specific grief, making the poems closer to occasional poems. The poet—or at least the poet's speaker—seeks some kind of public consolation for (often) a private loss. The Americanized form does stray from the traditional elegy yet retains some of its characteristics. Some American elegies memorialize failed romantic relationships rather than the dead. In their memorials, these speakers seek a completion for the lack the broken relationship has created in the speakers' lives. What they can't replace, they substitute with something personal. As the contemporary poem becomes further removed from tradition, it's no surprise that the elegy has evolved as well. Discussions of elegies have never ventured into the type of elegy that concerns itself with the sort of unacknowledged loss found in some contemporary American poems of unrequited love. These poems all have speakers who willfully refuse to acknowledge the loss of their love-objects and strive to maintain control/ownership of their beloveds even in the face of rejection. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149563/
- Challenge the Silence
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This collection of personal essays about incest, abuse, and depression explores the lasting effects of an invisible childhood. The essays follow the protagonist from the age of five to her early twenties. Her brother, at a young age, becomes sexually abusive of her and her sisters, and her parents fail to protect their daughters. The family is divided as the older girls strive to defend their little sisters, while their parents attempt to excuse their son. When her brother is finally sent away, the protagonist is left to salvage what remains of her relationships with her parents. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc283840/
- The Hostess
- The following is a critical preface and portion of a novel-in-progress produced during my master's program in creative writing at the University of North Texas. The preface analyzes the way time and point of view work together to create or determine structure in fiction, as well as provide added meaning. In order to explore these topics I focus on two novels, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, and speak to how these elements have influenced my own writing style in The Hostess. The Hostess is a story about a group of twenty-something's working together in a restaurant located in a Mid-West, college town, told from multiple character perspectives, as they struggle to choose between pursuing their passions and creating stability in their lives. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149674/
- Irony, Humor, and Ontological Relationality in Literature
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The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate ontological relationality in literary theory and criticism by critically reflecting on modern theories of literature and by practically examining the literary texts of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde. Traditional studies of literary texts have been oriented toward interpretative or hermeneutic methodologies, focusing on an independent and individual subject in literature. Instead, I explore how relational ontology uncovers the interactive structures interposed between the author, the text, and the audience by examining the system of how the author's creative positioning provokes the reader's reaction through the text. In Chapter I, I critically inquire into modern literary theories of "irony" in Romanticism, New Criticism, and Deconstructionism to show how they tend to disregard the dynamic dimension of interactive relationships between different literary subjects. Chapter II scrutinizes Wilde's humor in An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) in order to reveal the ontological relationships triggered by a creative positioning. In chapter III, I examine Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400) and the laughter in "The Miller's Tale" in particular, to examine the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of its interactive relationships. In Chapter IV, I explore Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Othello (1603-4), and The Winter's Tale (1609-11) so as to show how artistic positioning creatively constructs a relational system of dynamic interactions to circulate social ideals and values. In so doing, this dissertation is aimed at revealing the aesthetic values of literature and the objective scope of literary discourse rather than providing yet another analytical paradigm dependent primarily on a single literary subject. Thus, the ontological study is proposed as an alternative, yet primary, dimension of literary criticism and theoretical practice. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149621/
- Practical Astronomy
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This dissertation is a collection of poems preceded by a critical preface. The preface considers Anthony's Hecht's long poem, "The Venetian Vespers," and the ways in which the temporally unsettled situation of the poem's speaker parallels a problem facing narrative-meditative poets. The preface is divided into two main sections that explore divisions of this larger conflict. The first discusses the origins and effects of the speaker's uprootedness in time, and the ways in which he tries to both combat and embrace this dislocation by temporarily losing himself in the immediacy of observing visual art. In this section I connect the dilemma of the speaker, who wishes to escape his memory by focusing outwards, to the dilemma of a representational poet who, despite his position towards the past, must necessarily confront or recollect memories and emotions in order to create authentic descriptions or characters. The second section focuses on the production and appreciation of artistic works (both visual and literary) and how the meaning, production and appreciation of beauty are inseparable from its existence within the physical limits of time. Here I discuss the significance of Hecht's character who is surrounded with beauty yet describes himself as a person who only observes and does not create anything. Through this character, I argue that Hecht reveals a fundamental conflict that exists between artistic creation and chronological time, and that his poem embodies a particular and paradoxical view of beauty that resonates deeply with the motivations and struggles of writing poems. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149687/
- Set for Life: a Novel
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This collection of six chapters is an excerpt from a novel based on the book of Job, as told through the viewpoint of a contemporary woman from Texas. A preface exploring the act of starting over, fictionally and creatively, precedes the chapters. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149574/
- The Useful Arts
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This creative nonfiction dissertation is a series of braided narratives that chronicle the author's career as a trombonist in the John Smith Ensemble. As an amateur trombonist, the author is shocked to be hired as a professional musician for an orchestra that plays on PBS and at Carnegie Hall. She quickly realizes, however, that the job requires her to play the trombone quietly in front of an unplugged microphone while a CD recording of another, more talented trombonist is blasted out toward an unknowing audience. The job also requires the author to tour around America. The scenes of from this tour are braided with scenes wherein she reflects on her life as a professional fake musician and her past failed attempts at getting a job. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc283812/
- After the Planes
- The dissertation consists of a critical preface and a novel. The preface analyzes what it terms "polyvocal" novels, or novels employing multiple points of view, as well as "layered storytelling," or layers of textuality within novels, such as stories within stories. Specifically, the first part of the preface discusses polyvocality in twenty-first century American novels, while the second part explores layered storytelling in novels responding to World War II or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The preface analyzes the advantages and difficulties connected to these techniques, as well as their aptitude for reflecting the fractured, disconnected, and subjective nature of the narratives we construct to interpret traumatic experiences. It also acknowledges the necessity—despite its inherent limitations—of using language to engage with this fragmentation and cope with its challenges. The preface uses numerous novels as examples and case studies, and it also explores these concepts and techniques in relation to the process of writing the novel After the Planes. After the Planes depicts multiple generations of a family who utilize storytelling as a means to work through grief, hurt, misunderstanding, and loss—whether from interpersonal conflicts or from war. Against her father's wishes, a young woman moves in with her nearly-unknown grandfather, struggling to understand the rifts in her family and how they have shaped her own identity. She reads a book sent to her by her father, which turns out to be his story of growing up in the years following World War II. The book was intercepted and emended by her grandfather, who inserts his own commentary throughout, complicating her father's hopes of reconciliation. The novel moves between two main narratives, one set primarily in 1951 and the other in the days and weeks immediately prior to September 11, 2001. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115051/
- "Almost Astronauts": Short Stories
- In this collection of short stories, I abduct experiences from my own life and take them on an imaginative journey. I experiment with elements of structure and point of view, often incorporating the magical or surreal to amplify the narrator's internal landscape. As demonstrated in the title story, "Almost Astronauts," these stories all deal with a sudden and sometimes destructive shift in the narrator's perspective. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115120/
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Naturalist Playwright
- This study explores Charlotte Perkins Gilman's use of the dramatic form to challenge Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism by offering feminist adaptations of Darwin's theories of natural and sexual selection. As she does in her career-defining manifesto, Women & Economics (1898), Gilman in her lesser-known plays deploys her own brand of reform Darwinism to serve the feminist cause. Despite her absence in histories of modern drama, Gilman actively participated in the establishment and development of this literary, historical, and cultural movement. After situating Gilman in the context of nineteenth-century naturalist theater, this thesis examines two short dramatic dialogues she published in 1890, "The Quarrel," and "Dame Nature Interviewed," as well as two full-length plays, Interrupted (1909) and the Balsam Fir (1910). These plays demonstrate Gilman's efforts to use the dramatic form in her early plays to "rehearse" for Women & Economics, and in her later drama, to "stage" the theories she presents in that book. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115172/
- A New Literary Realism: Artistic Renderings of Ethnicity, Identity, and Sexuality in the Narratives of Philip Roth
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This dissertation explores Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959), the Ghost Writer (1979), the Counterlife (1986), the Facts (1988), Operation Shylock (1993), Sabbath's Theater (1995),and the Human Stain (2000), arguing that Roth relishes the telling of the story and the search for self within that telling. with attention to narrative technique and its relation to issues surrounding reality and identity, Roth's narratives stress unreliability, causing Roth to create characters searching for a more complex interpretation of self. Chapter I examines Roth's negotiation of dual identities as Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus feels alienated and displaced from Christianized America. the search for identity and the merging of American Christianity and Judaism remain a focus in Chapter II, which explores the implications of how, in the Ghost Writer, a young Nathan Zuckerman visits his mentor E.I. Lonoff to find him living in what he believes to be a non-Jewish environment—the American wilderness. Chapter II also examines the difficulties of cultural assimilation in "Eli, the Fanatic," in which Eli must shed outward appearances of Judaism to fit into the mostly Protestant community of Woodenton. Relative to the negotiation of multiple identities, Chapter III considers Sabbath's attempt, in Sabbath's Theater, to reconcile his spiritual and physical self when seeking to avoid his inevitable death. Exploring a further dimension of the search for self, Chapter IV traces the legacy of stereotyped notions of identity, considering ways in which Roth subverts stereotypes in the Human Stain. the search for identity and its particular truths remains a focus of Chapter V, which explores Roth's creation of an unstable reality through the Counterlife, the Facts, Operation Shylock, and the Human Stain, suggesting that the literary imagination matters more than truth in fiction. in its attention to Roth's focus on identity, race, and narrative technique, this dissertation contributes to the evolution of criticism addressing the social significance of the major works of Philip Roth. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115092/
- Road Debris
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This dissertation comprises two parts: Part I, which discusses the growing trend in project books in contemporary poetry, and Part II, a collection of poems titled, Road Debris. There is an increasing trend in the number of project books, which are collections of poetry unified in both thematic and formal ways. the individual poems in a project book share overt connections which allow the book to work on many different levels, blending elements of fiction and non-fiction or sharing a specific theme or speaker. While these books have the advantage of being easily memorable, which might gain poets an edge in book contests, there are also many risks involved. the main issue surrounding project books is if the individual poems can justify the book, or do they seem too repetitive or forced. As more poets, especially newer ones, try to use the project book as a shortcut to publication, it can result in poorly written poems forced to fit into a particular concept. By examining three successful cotemporary project books—The Quick of It, by Eamon Grennan; Incident Light, by H. L. Hix; and Romey's Order by Astory Riley—this essay discusses how these books work in order to understand the potential of the project book. All of these books work in distinctly different ways, yet they all fall into the category of project book. While project books will inevitably result in poor imitations, it allows books of poetry to expand and explore in different directions. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115068/
- Running a Family
- This thesis contains two parts. the preface theorizes memory and examines the author's own experience writing her identity. Part II is a memoir framed with the process of training for a marathon. the marathon acts as a narrative thread that pulls together scenes of memory from the author's childhood which features the author running away from home on several occasions. Running a marathon and running away from home intertwine to allow the writer to draw conclusions about her life and her family. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115149/
- Superior Mirth: National Humor and the Victorian Ego
- This project traces the wide and varied uses of patriotic (and, at times, jingoistic and xenophobic) humor within the Victorian novel. a culture's humor, perhaps more than any other cultural markers (food, dress, etc.), provides invaluable insight into that nation's values and perceptions—not only how they view others, but also how they view themselves. in fact, humor provides such a unique cultural thumbprint as to make most jokes notoriously untranslatable. Victorian humor is certainly not a new topic of critical discussion; neither is English ethno-cultural identity during this era lacking scholarly attention. However, the intersection of these concerns has been seemingly ignored; thus, my research investigates the enmeshed relationship between these two areas of study. Not only do patriotic sentiment and humor frequently overlap, they often form a causational relationship wherein a writer's rhetorical invocation of shared cultural experiences creates humorous self-awareness while "inside" jokes which reference unique Anglo-specific behaviors or collective memories promote a positive identity with the culture in question. Drawing on and extending the work of James Kincaid's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter, Harold Nicolson's "The English Sense of Humor," and Bergson's and Freud's theories of humor as a social construct, I question how this reciprocated relationship of English ethnic identity and humor functions within Victorian novels by examining the various ways in which nineteenth-century authors used humor to encourage affirmative patriotic sentiment within their readers. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115168/
- "Valentine's Day" and Other Works
- The following collection includes three short stories and two essays compiled with a critical preface. "Valentine's Day" explores the limits of friendship and love in various situations including, two road trips (one fictional and one factual), pet ownership, and the impersonations of Frank Sinatra. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115171/
- "The Way It Goes": Stories
- This collection of short stories attempts to examine the role of a changing and often indifferent world has in the way various characters achieve maturity. Though the past is not always obvious in each story, each protagonist is characterized as holding onto some aspect of his or her past life in a way that is detrimental to their growing as human beings. the stories attempt to portray the indifference of the world as it moves forward to the plight of these characters, and to portray the manner in which they each come to terms with such a world and with their own lives. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115183/
- My Whine, Your Wine
- Grapes hold the flavors of the lands where they grow, and when you make wine from them, those flavors of the land come through. Tasting wine from a place you've been can bring you back to that place with aromas and notes indicative of that place. A bottle of wine changes every day, and how it will taste depends on the moment you choose to release it from the glass walls. I have a vested interest in wine, because it is a living thing. I am compelled to make wine because its characteristics are like personality traits. Although some of those characteristics are harsh at times, I appreciate them all. Each trait plays an important role in the balance, the overall personality. Like my own personality flaws, wine's harsh tones can smooth over time. My relationship with wine is constantly evolving, with every new varietal, vintage, batch and blend. Believe me, after some of the jobs I had before my first day at Su Vino, I cherish every moment of my winemaking career. My Whine, Your Wine is the story of how it all started. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115041/
- Noctilucent
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This dissertation is composed of two parts. Part I discusses the evolution of meditative poetry as a genre, with a particular emphasis on the influence of women poets and feminist critical theory. Part II is a collection of poems. Although several popular and critically-acclaimed poets working today write meditative poems, meditative poetry as a genre has not been systematically examined since M.H. Abrams's essay on the meditative mode in Romantic poetry, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric." Because one of the driving forces of meditative poetry is a longing for, or recognition of, a state of perception that lies between individual being and some form of universal ordering principle, meditative poetry might seem to be antithetical to a postmodern world that is fragmentary, contingent, and performative; indeed, earlier definitions of meditative poetry, tied to historical and cultural understandings of the individual and the Universal, no longer reflect "how we know" but only "how we knew." However, this essay argues that there is a contemporary meditative structure that allows for a continued relationship between the individual and the Universal without resorting to the essentialism implicit in the genre as traditionally described. This new structure owes much to feminist theory, in particular écriture féminine, which models a method for recovery of self in language that would seek to efface it. In order to expose the boundaries of the contemporary meditative mode, and to outline its relationship to écriture féminine, this essay analyzes meditative poems from four contemporary poets: Kay Ryan, Jorie Graham, Linda Gregerson, and Linda Bierds, and contrasts contemporary variations on the genre with earlier traditions, identifying an evolved form that better reflects a postmodern rhetoric. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc103295/
- Relativity In Transylvania And Patusan: Finding The Roots Of Einstein's Theories Of Relativity In Dracula And Lord Jim
- This thesis investigates the similarities in the study of time and space in literature and science during the modern period. Specifically, it focuses on the portrayal of time and space within Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (1899-1900), and compares the ideas presented with those later scientifically formulated by Albert Einstein in his special and general theories of relativity (1905-1915). Although both novels precede Einstein's theories, they reveal advanced complex ideas of time and space very similar to those later argued by the iconic physicist. These ideas follow a linear progression including a sense of temporal dissonance, the search for a communal sense of the present, the awareness and expansion of the individual's sense of the present, and the effect of mass on surrounding space. This approach enhances readings of Dracula and Lord Jim, illuminating the fascination with highly refined notions of time and space within modern European culture. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc103399/
- A Boy in a Canoe
- The dissertation consists of a collection of personal essays about hunting and fishing. Because the essays are narratives and contain dialogue, characterization, description, themes, etc., they fall under the genre of creative nonfiction. The dissertation has two parts. Part I consists of an essay that discusses the author's struggle to combine creative nonfiction with outdoor writing and also describes the author's dilemma of writing about hunting, a topic that is often controversial at the university, while a graduate student. Part II of the dissertation consists of narratives that recount the author's hunting and fishing experiences that occurred in North Texas and in the mountains of New Mexico. The essays discuss fishing for trout and hunting for deer, wild boars, quail, and duck. Three major themes are developed throughout the dissertation. The first theme describes the close relationship that exists between the author and his father. This closeness is partly due to the time that they have shared during decades of hunting and fishing together. The second theme discusses the ethics of hunting and especially focuses on which methods of hunting are ethical and which methods are not. The third theme explores the complex and sometimes unpleasant interactions that occur between sportsmen when they encounter each other while hunting and fishing. This theme explores the give and take attitude that must exist in order for sportsmen to get along. This attitude is necessary because no two outdoorsmen view the outdoors and hunting and fishing in quite the same way. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc84264/
- "Civilizations without Boats": Stories
- This collection consists of a critical preface and nine short stories. Extrapolating from the work and legacy of Michel Foucault, the preface theorizes a genre of "heterotopian fiction" as constitutive of a fundamentally ethical approach to narrative creativity, distinguishing its functional and methodological characteristics from works that privilege aesthetic, thematic, or technical artistry. The stories explore spaces of madness, alterity, incomprehensibility, and liminal experience. Collection includes the stories "Mexico," "Civilizations without Boats," The Widow's Mother," "Guys Like Us," "Everything You'd Hoped It Would Be," "A Concerned Friend," "Crisis Hotline," "Coast to Coast," and "The Ghosts of Rich Men." digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc84222/
- Re-Envisioning an Eighteenth-Century Artifact: A Postmodern Reading of Tristram Shandy
- The interjection of a new and dynamically different reading of Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is imperative, if scholars want to clearly see many of the hidden facets of the novel that have gone unexamined because of out-dated scholarship. Ian Watt's assumption that Sterne "would probably have been the supreme figure among eighteenth-century novelists" (291) if he had not tried to be so odd, and the conclusion that he draws, that "Tristram Shandy is not so much a novel as a parody of a novel" (291), is incorrect. Throughout the thesis, I argue that Sterne was not burlesquing other novelists, but instead, was engaging with themes that are now being examined by postmodern theories of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean François Lyotard: themes like the impenetrability of identity ("Don't puzzle me" (TS 7.33.633)), the insufficiency of language ("Well might Locke write a chapter upon the imperfections of words" (5.6.429)), and the unavailability of permanence ("Time wastes too fast" (9.8.754)). I actively engage with their theories to deconstruct unexamined themes inside Tristram Shandy, and illuminate postmodern elements inside the novel. However, I do not argue that Tristram Shandy is postmodern. Instead, I argue that if the reader examines the novel outside of its usual context inside the eighteenth-century novel, there are themes that are apparent in the narrative which have gone unexamined because of the way it has been classified inside academia, and that postmodernist theory allows for these themes to be re-examined in the postmodern culture in which we now reside. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc84181/
- Reconsidering Regionalism: The Environmental Ethics of Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Willa Cather
- This study identifies environmentalist themes in the fiction and nonfiction of Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Willa Cather and argues that these ideals are interdependent upon the authors' humanistic objectives. Focusing on these three authors' overlapping interest in topics such as women's rights, environmental health, and Native American history, this dissertation calls attention to the presence of a frequently unexplored but distinct, traceable feminist environmental ethic in American women's regional writing. This set of beliefs involves a critique of the threats posed by a patriarchal society to both the environment and its human inhabitants, particularly the women, and thus can be classified as proto-ecofeminist. Moreover, the authors' shared emphasis on the benefits of local environmental knowledge and stewardship demonstrates vital characteristics of the bioregionalist perspective, a modern form of environmental activism that promotes sustainability at a local level and mutually beneficial relationships among human and nonhuman inhabitants of a naturally defined region. Thus, the study ultimately defines a particular form of women's literary activism that emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century and argues for these authors' continued theoretical relevance to a twenty-first-century audience increasingly invested in understanding and resolving a global environmental predicament. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc84189/
- Teleport
- This collection consists of a critical preface exploring the similarities between serialized comic books, realist fiction and the author's own writing. The principle discussion concerns continuity, the connecting tissue between ancillary works of fiction, chronology, the function of time in the narrative of related stories, and the function of characters beyond the stories they inhabit. The stories within the collection revolve around an eccentric ensemble of suburban youth whose demoralized and violent actions are heavily influenced by defining moments of their past. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc84176/
- Backflow: A Collection
- This collection consists of a critical preface and nine essays. The preface analyzes, first, how the imagination influences the personal journey of a writer, and second, the techniques authors use, mainly form, time, and space, to enact the imagination and propel the reader into an imagined narrative. The essays explore themes of loss, mental illness, the rift between the "real" and the "imagined" life, and the intangibility of memory itself. Collection includes the essays "Into the Snow," "No Longer a Part," "Borderland," "Still Wounds," "What Stays in Las Vegas," "Remnants," "The Root," "Your Father," and "The Land Lord." digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc103346/
- Dead Fox Run: A Collection of Stories
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This collection consists of a critical preface and five linked short stories. The preface analyzes the usage of violence in literate and other forms of media, and specifically the ways in which literature can address violence without aggrandizing or stylizing it. The stories explore this idea through the lens of the lives of two young men, following them from boyhood marked by violence to adulthood crushed by the trauma of the American Civil War. Collection includes the stories "Dead Foxes," "Cow Pen," "Fatherless," "Woodsmoke," and "Brotherhood." digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc68046/
- Generosity and Gentillesse: Economic Exchange in Medieval English Romance
- This study explores how three English romances of the late fourteenth century-Geoffrey Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal, and the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight-employ economic exchange as a tool to illustrate community ideals. Although gift-giving and commerce are common motifs in medieval romance, these three romances depict acts of generosity and exchange that demonstrate fundamental principles of proper behavior by uniting characters in the poems in spite of social divisions such as gender or social class. Economic imagery in fourteenth-century romances merits particular consideration because of Richard II's prolific expenditure, which created such turbulence that the peasants revolted in 1381. The court's openhanded spending led to social unrest, but in romances a character's largesse strengthens community bonds by showing that all members of a group participate in an idealized gift economy. Positioned within the context of economic tensions, exchange in romances can lead readers to reexamine notions of group identity. Chestre's Sir Launfal unites its community under secular principles of economic exchange and evaluation. Using similar motifs of exchange, the Gawain-poet makes Christian and chivalric ideals apparent through Gawain's service and generosity to all those who follow the Christian faith. Further, Chaucer's Franklin's Tale portrays hospitality as a tool to create pleasure, the ultimate goal of service. Although they present different types of group identity, these romances specify that generosity and commerce can illustrate the ideals of a poem's community and demonstrate to the audience model forms of behavior. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc68047/
- The Lexicographer's Daughter: A Memoir
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This creative nonfiction dissertation is a memoir of the author's search for the somewhat mysterious hidden past of her father, the lexicographer Charles J. Lovell, who died in 1960, when the author was nine. Her father's early death left the author with many unanswered questions about his past and his family and so she undertakes a search to answer, if possible, some of those questions. Her search takes her to Portland, Maine; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Pasadena, California, where she tries to discover the facts and uncover the forces that shaped her father's life. Along the way, she realizes how profoundly his death affected and shaped her own life, contributing to the theme of loss that pervades the memoir. In addition, she begins to realize how much her mother, Dixie Hefley Lovell, whose significance she previously overlooked, shaped her life. Ultimately, she comes to understand and accept that some of her questions are unanswerable. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc68004/
- The Mind's Eye and Other Stories
- This collection contains a preface entitled "Of Other Worlds" and the following short stories: "The Mind's Eye," "Waking," "The Conquest of the World," "Persephone," and "Extradition." This creative thesis includes a blend of science fiction and literary realism short stories, which are collectively concerned with questions of time, narration, and the use of language. As well, the preface discusses science fiction theory, narrative strategies such as the use of the first person perspective, and the author's theory of composition. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67999/
- Miscegenated Narration: The Effects of Interracialism in Women's Popular Sentimental Romances from the Civil War Years
- Critical work on popular American women's fiction still has not reckoned adequately with the themes of interracialism present in these novels and with interracialism's bearing on the sentimental. This thesis considers an often overlooked body of women's popular sentimental fiction, published from 1860-1865, which is interested in themes of interracial romance or reproduction, in order to provide a fuller picture of the impact that the intersection of interracialism and sentimentalism has had on American identity. By examining the literary strategy of "miscegenated narration," or the heteroglossic cacophony of narrative voices and ideological viewpoints that interracialism produces in a narrative, I argue that the hegemonic ideologies of the sentimental romance are both "deterritorialized" and "reterritorialized," a conflicted impulse that characterizes both nineteenth-century sentimental, interracial romances and the broader project of critiquing the dominant national narrative that these novels undertake. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67958/
- School Governance and Student Achievement: Revealing Factors Beyond the McCarty-Ramsey Model
- The purpose of this study was to identify and investigate the specific superintendent leadership type and underlying factors that support significant student achievement gains in communities where misalignment with the McCarty-Ramsey model exists. Utilizing a mixedmethod research strategy, contributing school districts were identified through a survey developed by McCarty and Ramsey. This survey indicated that districts could show positive student achievement gains while exhibiting misalignment among these factors. While all four types of superintendent leadership style were revealed in the survey, a prevalent superintendent leadership types was associated with the misaligned districts showing significant academic growth. This study indicated the professional advisor or the professional advisor/decision maker superintendent had the greatest achievement results in misaligned districts. The second investigation phase involved school districts that met two criteria: misalignment with the McCarty-Ramsey model, and three years of significant student achievement gains, as measured by the California Academic Performance Indicator. Interviews were conducted with identified school board presidents and superintendents to reveal practices or initiatives promoting these results. The interview protocol consisted of a series of open-ended questions regarding effective leadership and programs. The second finding revealed the effective superintendent focuses efforts on five specific district leadership actions identified by researchers such as Waters and Marzano. More specifically, this study revealed two practices were present in top performing school districts. First, a narrow focus on non-negotiable instructional practices across the district, and frequent monitoring by the superintendent, site and district leadership teams including follow - up debriefings regarding implementation of district expectations. These findings have significance in districts dealing with challenges among the community power structures, board types or superintendent leadership. This research shows that regardless of the political challenges, budgetary issues, or relationship chaos that might exist in the district and community, the professional advisor superintendent who has established clear district wide instructional expectations and, who consistently ―inspects the instructional program has a significant, positive impact on student achievement. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67996/
- Unmaking Progress: Individual and Social Teleology in Victorian Children's Fiction
- This study contrasts four distinct discursive responses to (or even accidental remarks on) the Victorian concept of individual and/or social improvement, or progress, set forth by the preeminent social critics, writers, scientists, and historians of the nineteenth century, such as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Macaulay Matthew Arnold, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Spencer. This teleological ideal, perhaps the most prevalent ideology of the long nineteenth century, originates with the Protestant Christian ethic during and in the years following the Reformation, whereupon it combines with the Enlightenment notions of rational humanity's boundless potential and Romanticism's fierce individualism to create the Victorian doctrine of progress. My contention remains throughout that four nineteenth-century writers for children and adults subvert the doctrine of individual progress (which contributes to the progress of the race) by chipping away at its metaphysical and narratalogical roots. George MacDonald allows progress only on the condition of total selflessness, including the complete dissolution of one's free will, but defers the hallmarks of making progress indefinitely, due to his apocalyptic Christian vision. Lewis Carroll ridicules the notion of progress by playing with our conceptions of linear time and simple causality, implying as he writes that perhaps there is nothing to progress toward, no actual telos on which to fix our sights. Oscar Wilde characterizes moral development as nothing short of self-inflicted cruelty, consigning his most scrupulously moral-minded characters to social subversion or untimely death (the dark reflection of MacDonald's compulsory selflessness). And finally, Rudyard Kipling toys with historical substitutes for conventional progress, such as repetitive cycles, deviating from historical unidirectionality and linear development. He often realigns his characters with their intractable fates at the conclusions of his narratives, echoing Carroll's suggestion that perhaps our goals are delusional. I conclude that while each individual author fails to holistically undermine the doctrine of progress, taken collectively, these four fantasists represent a heretofore unexamined repudiation of the Victorian era's most enduring metaphysical conceits. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67995/
- Fashioning the Domestic Ideology: Women and the Language of Fashion in the Works of Elizabeth Stoddard, Louisa May Alcott, and Elizabeth Keckley
- Women authors in mid to late nineteenth century American society were unafraid to shed the old domestic ideology and set new examples for women outside of racial and gender spheres. This essay focuses on the ways in which Elizabeth Stoddard's The Morgesons, Louisa May Alcott's Behind a Mask, and Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House represent the function of fashion and attire in literature. Each author encourages readers to examine dress in a way that defies the typical domestic ideology of nineteenth century America. I want my readers to understand the role of fashion in literature as I progress through each work and ultimately show how each female author and protagonist set a new example for womanhood through their fashion choices. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc33208/
- Henderson Street Bazaar and Other Stories
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The preface, "Against Buses: Charles Baxter and the Contemporary Epiphany" deals with the epiphany as a potential ending to short stories. Baxter holds that epiphanies are trite and without purpose in today's fiction. I argue that Baxter's view, while not without merit, is limiting. Beginning with James Joyce and Katherine Anne Porter and moving to my own work, I discuss how some epiphanies, particularly false ones, can enhance rather than detract from excellent fiction. Five short stories make up the remainder of this thesis: "Dedication," "Taking it with You," "Transition to Flowers," "Profile in Courage," and "Henderson Street Bazaar." digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc33222/
- A Chorus of Trees
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This two-part thesis includes a critical preface and a collection of my poems. Using three poems-Louise Glück's "Lullaby," Bob Hicok's "Poem for My Mother's Hysterectomy," and Nick Flynn's "Memento Mori"-the critical preface examines how, in poetry, the transformation of a body negotiates trauma and triggers a conceptual shift, the creation and revision of identity, and the release of the duende's inspirational force. The collection of poetry that follows seeks to transfigure the body as a way to explore the nuanced traumas of human experience. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30485/
- Literature in the Age of Science: Technology and Scientists in the Mid-Twentieth Century Works of Isaac Asimov, John Barth, Arthur C. Clarke, Thomas Pynchon, and Kurt Vonnegut
- This study explores the depictions of technology and scientists in the literature of five writers during the 1960s. Scientists and technology associated with nuclear, computer, and space science are examined, focusing on their respective treatments by the following writers: John Barth, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Despite the close connections between the abovementioned sciences, space science is largely spared from negative critiques during the sixties. Through an analysis of Barth's Giles Goat-boy, Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Asimov's short stories "Key Item," "The Last Question," "The Machine That Won the War," "My Son, the Physicist," and Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is argued that altruistic goals of space science during the 1960s protect it from the satirical treatments that surround the other sciences. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30511/
- "Among Waitresses": Stories and Essays
- The following collection represents the critical and creative work produced during my doctoral program in English. The dissertation consists of Part I, a critical preface, and Part II, a collection of seven short stories and two nonfiction essays. Part I, which contains the critical preface entitled "What to Say and How to Say It," examines the role of voice in discussions of contemporary literature. The critical preface presents a definition of voice and identifies examples of voice-driven writing in contemporary literature, particularly from the work of Mary Robison, Dorothy Allison, and Kathy Acker. In addition, the critical preface also discusses how the use of flavor, tone, and content contribute to voice, both in work of famous authors and in my own writing. In Part II of my dissertation, I present the creative portion of my work. Part II contains seven works of short fiction, titled "Among Waitresses," "The Lion Tamer," "Restoration Services," "Hospitality," "Blood Relation," "Managerial Timber," and "Velma A Cappella." Each work develops a voice-driven narrative through the use of flavor, tone, and content. Also, two nonfiction essays, titled "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" and "Tracks," close out the collection. "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" describes the impact of methamphetamine addiction on family relationships, while "Tracks" focuses on the degradation of the natural world by human waste and other forms of pollution. In total, this collection demonstrates my approach to both scholarly and creative writing, and I am grateful for the University of North Texas for the opportunity to develop academically and achieve my goals. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28429/
- Can These Bones Live? A Collection of Stories
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The collection concerns itself with race, gender, masculinity, marginalization, the act of violence as a means of self expression, identity and the performance of identity, love, and loss. The collection also uses historical events-more specifically, events that are central to black culture in Northeast, Ohio- to situate the characters and witness their response to these historical events. I strive to illustrate blackness as both political and fragmented with the characters in my collection. My characters believe that what they are doing-exacting violence, abusing women, disrespecting each other- is somehow the normative; that somehow what it is that they have learned is how they should perform black identity. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28431/