English literature

This thesis examines contradictions in approaches to fashion cataloging and exhibition by considering how the fashion artifact is used as physical evidence for public memory of the past. As a memorial practice and timekeeper, fashion demands a complex cultural understanding of artistic production, aging, and history. How does this understanding of fashion as a cultural index and narrative challenge our knowledge of history and the problems inherent in trying to produce a historical narrative through cloth? Where do we fall short in dress reconstructions and our understanding of time and aging through approaches to fashion and dressing? How do these considerations challenge cultural attitudes toward fashion's role in helping understand death and aging in the larger cultural lexicon? By addressing fashion's relationship to time and what might be termed the death aspect of dress as connected to bodies from the past, we allow for a less biased approach to historic fashion that will account for more regional, communal, and individual tastes in dress. This method of inquiry permits a more balanced understanding of dressing ideals across socioeconomic levels regarding garment production and reproduction. Continually addressing the personal in fashion reinforces the unique nature of each garment and its relationship with the body as part of fashion's corporeal register. Keywords: Fashion Artifact, Garment Production, Garment Reproduction, Reconstruction, Corporeal, Embodiment, Eastern Time, Historicism, Public Memory, Memorial, Aging, Western Time

Author Keywords: Corporeal, Embodiment, Fashion Artifact, Garment Reproduction, Historicism, Public Memory

In this thesis I argue that Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872) disrupts conventional narratives of the idealized maternal role in the Victorian era, "the angel in the house" by confronting and giving a voice to the often overlooked realities of maternal suffering. Rossetti accomplishes this by fostering the conversation regarding the challenges inherent in motherhood. Sing-Song has been dismissed by critics as inappropriate for its intended child audience. However, such assessments rely on outdated assumptions and fail to recognize the intention behind the poetry collection. The subtle coding of the rhymes for a maternal audience has largely been overlooked. Rossetti deliberately represents the psychological and emotional complexities of motherhood, offering a more realistic portrayal of the mental health challenges that may accompany the maternal experience. In turn, Sing-Song challenges the idealized mother figure of the Victorian era and represents a more nuanced understanding of motherhood.

Keywords: motherhood, idealized, maternal mental health, the angel in the house, infant death

Author Keywords: idealized, infant death, maternal mental health, motherhood, the angel in the house

This thesis creates an adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest that reshapes the play through a focus on queer identities. Specifically, through setting the play at a Drag club and changing the characters accordingly a nuanced view of how gender roles shape the interactions we have with ourselves, our society, and our environment. The chapters that proceed the adaptation provide evidence and supporting clarification for the ideas brought up in the adaptation.

Author Keywords: Adaptation, Drag, Gender, Queer, Shakespeare

This thesis creates an adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest that reshapes the play through a focus on queer identities. Specifically, through setting the play at a Drag club and changing the characters accordingly a nuanced view of how gender roles shape the interactions we have with ourselves, our society, and our environment. The chapters that proceed the adaptation provide evidence and supporting clarification for the ideas brought up in the adaptation.

Author Keywords: Adaptation, Drag, Gender, Queer, Shakespeare

This case study's fan fiction and its subsequent non-RPF romance novel version reveal a complex blend of the fan fiction, romance novel, intimatopia, pornography, slash fan fiction, Real Person Fan Fiction, and Men's Hockey Real Person Fan Fiction genres and subgenres. Intimatopia's ideological framework provides a specific method for the romance novel's reordering of self and society, as well as a description of the resulting ordered society and self. As analysis of the reader comments left on the Archive of Our Own fan fiction reveals, intimacy is also critical to the fan fiction's community, because the reader is driven to comment by the text's affective power. The relationship between the reader and the text is primary for the reader, whereas the author's primary aim is to seek an intimate relationship with their readers. There is a conceptual link between the literary and social contexts through their privileging of intimacy as a mode of interaction for the texts's characters, readers, and authors.

Author Keywords: Archive of Our Own, community, fan fiction, intimatopia, Men's Hockey Real Person Fan Fiction, romance novel

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, print death notices have increased in number, length, and deviations, often as the only form of public recognition for the deceased. This thesis provides close readings through feminist and anti-ageist lenses of ninety print death notices, published in The Peterborough Examiner and Peterborough This Week between October 2019 and October 2021. These readings inform and illustrate the deindividualization of older women in death notices as the product not only of the limitations of language and format, but of a community that panders to regional public interests and traditional ageist tropes of femininity to create worthy public subjects. An exploration of ambiguities, contradictions, and overdeterminations that break with conventions of death notices reveals unintentional makeovers, deindividualization, and the sidelining of older women as subjects of their own memorials and photos in an extension of the systemic and internalized gendered ageism older women experience in life.

Author Keywords: Ageism, COVID-19, Death Notices, Deindividualization of Women, Feminism, Older Women

This thesis examines how co-creators Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro's 2014 graphic work, Bitch Planet, is in all conceivable ways a seminal and prescient example of — to use their term — "non-compliance" in the comics form and industry. From its inception as a feminist dystopia, written by a white woman and illustrated by a Black man, in an industry that is over-represented by white men, Bitch Planet is a prime example of activist comics that is situated perfectly within the "Blue Age" of comics, to use the term coined by comic scholar Adrienne Resha. This is evident in the main narrative of Bitch Planet in which, in an industry still over-represented by white characters, the main cast of characters are four Black women and one Japanese-American woman, each of whom we see come up against a theologically patriarchal white supremacist system that imprisons them for crimes that are gendered, racialized, classist and ableist. DeConnick and De Landro's collaboration with other artists extends from Laurenn McCubbin's satirical paratextual in-universe advertisements on the back page of each comic which complement Bitch Planet's main narrative to an invitation to world- building to the greater comic community, allowing creators with marginalized identities to craft short comic stories that satirically and deeply explore the socio-political issues developed in the main narrative of Bitch Planet. The final act of "non-compliance" comes out of the expansion of authorship of Bitch Planet to the readership via the letters pages, and beyond: highlighting readers' Twitter messages, connecting with them through Tumblr, and posting pictures of fan "non-compliant" tattoos within the pages of Bitch Planet.

Author Keywords: Bitch Planet, comics, critical race studies, dystopia , gender studies, intersectional feminism

This thesis creates an adaptation of act five, scene three of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus that reshapes the play by focusing on female empowerment through the character Lavinia. Specifically, by using other Shakespearean characters' dialogue that can speak towards her situation, I have written a monologue and stage directions for Lavinia. The same patriarchal superstructures which existed in the West during the time of Shakespeare and at the time of the play's setting—and which still exist today—ensure that Lavinia remains silenced. Through my adaptation, I aim to challenge these structures in a meaningful way by returning both voice and agency to Lavinia.

Author Keywords: Adaptation, Agency, Metamorphosis, Patriarchy, Revenge, Voice

This thesis presents a critical history of stand-up comedy alongside rhetorical analyses of specific stand-up routines and performances to argue for stand-up's efficacy as a therapeutic artform. Through analysis of the history, function, and content of satire, this thesis presents stand-up comedy as an artform utilized for more than just simple laughter. Stand-up comedy, as a form and genre, provides the unique ability to engage with difficult subject matter, traumatic experiences, and offense for the benefit of both listener and audience in a way that subverts, therapizes, and equalizes instances of discrimination, trauma, and denigration.

Author Keywords: Abjection, Offense, Satire, Stand-up Comedy, Therapy

This three-part history explores Web 2.0's ability to make music products a collaborative, ongoing creative process that is reflective of early twentieth century live-music publics, where the realization of a performance was actualized by performers together with their audience in a shared physical space. By extension, I follow the changing dynamic of the producer/consumer relationship as they transitioned through different media and formats that altered their respective roles in music making. This study considers the role that rock ideology, specifically that of the 'indie-rock' habitus, plays in shaping both a rock artist's desired image and a fan-base's expectations. How rock musicians use the internet reveals their own views on authenticity in recorded music and the extent to which they are willing to participate in a public with their audience. Primary case studies used are: Neil Young, Dave Bidini, Beck Hansen and Joel Plaskett.

Keywords: popular music; indie-rock; Web 2.0; rock music collaboration; fan participation; publics; authenticity; habitus; Neil Young; Dave Bidini; Beck Hansen; Joel Plaskett; Song Reader; Scrappy Happiness; Canadian music

Author Keywords: authenticity, fan participation, indie-rock habitus, popular music, rock music collaboration, Web 2.0