College of Arts and Sciences

Past Thesis Projects (ENG 690)

Search Online Theses: https://search.proquest.com/

2019

  • Dakota Carlson, Thesis (M.A.), 2019, "Anxiety, Desire, and De-Glamourization in the Films of Joe Swanberg"
  • Kate (Kellner) Ivy, Thesis (M.A.), 2019, "UnTaming a Shrew: Exploring How Editors and Adapters Can Work to Combat Misogyny and Abuse in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew"
  • Nicholaus Nusbaumer, Thesis (M.A.), 2019, "Believe in Meat: The Human-Animal Relationship Reimagined"
  • Tralynn Pullen, Thesis (M.A.), 2019, "Writing Center Use Among Transfer Students"
  • Grace Sheley, Thesis (M.A.), 2019,"Postmodernism, Music, and Meaning: Listening To Gaddis's JR"
  • Kristin Sheppard, Thesis (M.A.), 2019
  • Nicole Steinbaugh, Thesis (M.A.), 2019, "Gender in the Ghost Story"
  • Rhobie Underwood, Thesis (M.A.), 2019, "Post Colonial Novels and Disability Studies: Sorrayya Kohan's Noor and Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters"

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

  • Amal Alajmi, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Language, Truth, and Terror: Rhetoic [i.e. rhetoric] and Television in the Middle East"
  • Michael Baumann, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Consuming the Composition Classroom: A Consumer Imageword Praxis -- from is to as if Logics"
  • Stephen Finlay, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Notes of Woe: The Hidden Love Letters in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage"
  • Andrew Hoogheem, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Mapping the Beyond: A Postsecular Reading of Walker Percy’s The Second Coming and Lost in the Cosmos"
  • Katherine Kelley, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "A Critical Examination of Rubric Use for Evaluating Individual Writing Assignments in the Undergraduate Classroom"
  • Kathleen MacLennan, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Incorporating Ethics into the Writing Classroom: Facilitating Critical Thinking when Writing about Contemporary Social Issues"
  • Sara Naslund, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Is Chivalry Undead?: Feminism and Contemporary Vampire Fiction"
  • Katherine Schutte, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Blogging as a Method for Situating Students within Academic Communities"
  • Owen Thompson, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Extraordinary Heroes, Ordinary Whiteness: Re-centered Normative Whiteness Among Marvel and DC Comics Superheroes"
  • Charity Weiss, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Team Jacob v. Team Edward: A Battle for Popular Young Adult Fiction and New Media Literacy in the Post-process First-year Composition Course"
  • Tracey Winbigler, Thesis (M.A.), 2010, "Skyscapes in Cather and Pioneer Journals: Faith on the Victorian/Modernist Divide"

2009

  • Emily Brackman , Thesis (M.A.), 2009, "Food in the American Experience: A Rhetorical Analysis of Attempts to Change How We Grow and Consume"
  • William Iavarone , Thesis (M.A.), 2009, "From Partial Fires, the Divine within the Individual: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Theory on Individualism and Humanism"
  • Holly Luetkenhaus , Thesis (M.A.), 2009, "The Creep Factor: The Blurring of Familial and Romantic Love in Emma and Clueless"
  • Anne Schnarr, Thesis (M.A.), 2009, "Forms of Terror: Words, Images, and Terrorism in the Novels of Kathy Acker and Don DeLillo"

2008

  • Charity Adama, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "Song of Liberation: An African Woman’s Poetic Experience"
  • Zachary Dilbeck, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "Tolkien and his Dwarves : Crafting a Legacy"
  • Patricia Druckenmiller, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "The Writings of Ella Cara Deloria: Toward Revitalizing Culture and Language"
  • Susan Gray, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "Traits of Orality and Literary and their Permutations and Effects in Computer Mediated Communication"
  • Tsugumi Murata, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "The Relationship between Japanese Literature and Nature: The Conflict between Humans and the Environment in The Life of Canoe-Dog Gaku"
  • Bridgette Parsons, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "Unifying Contradictions: American Nationalism in the Popular Culture and Literature of the Vietnam War"
  • Caroline Rohner, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "’Let Other Pens Dwell on Guilt and Misery’: National Identity and Mansfield Park"
  • Andrew Scott, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "Saving Worlds, Sustaining Ourselves: Sustainability and Speculative Fiction"
  • Flannery Scott, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "The Scapes: Skin, War, Love"
  • Joe Weinberg, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "Reiterating Writing: User Centered Design and Discount Peer Response"
  • Carl White, Thesis (M.A.), 2008, "William Faulkner’s Frenetic Flyers of World War I"

2007

  • Christopher Bevard, Thesis (M.A.), 2007, "Nightmares of Others: The Narrative Construction of Selves in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe, R. L. Stevenson, and David Lynch"
  • Lindsay Miller, Thesis (M.A.), 2007, "Modes of Consciousness and Routes of Escape in Dickens"
  • Evelyn Norton, Thesis (M.A.), 2007, "Gwendolyn Brooks: The Unremitting Voice of Passionate Representation in African-American Children's Literature"

2006

  • Douglass Bourne, Thesis (M.A.), 2006, "Fingers in the Dirt"
  • Janet Sales de Oliveira Francisco, Thesis (M.A.), 2006, "Authority and Assessment in Critical Pedagogy with Emphasis on Paulo Freire’s Works"
  • Christopher Hazlett, Thesis (M.A.), 2006, "Discourse and Hegemony: Prisons, Education and Radical Pedagogy"
  • Christine Kienol-Berlett, Thesis (M.A.), 2006, "Flowers from Someone Else"
  • Erin Moore, Thesis (M.A.), 2006 "The Dead Speak: A Dialectic Analysis of Shopping Malls and the Postwar American Consumer"
  • Brent Robinson, Thesis (M.A.), 2006, "In Complete Submission"
  • Sarah Williams, Thesis (M.A.), 2006, "The Blue Room"

2005

  • Ellen Donaghy, Thesis (M.A.), 2005, "The X Factor Representing Generation X in Popular Culture and Media"
  • David Hoogenboom, Thesis (M.A.), 2005, "Mineral Hills"
  • Kristina Koch, Thesis (M.A.), 2005 "A New Textbook for the Research Paper: Theoretical and Practical Justifications"
  • Lisa Spears, Thesis (M.A.), 2005, "Threshold"
  • Susan Wittmer, Thesis (M.A.), 2005, "Leaves"

2004

  • Joseph Bradley, Thesis (M.A.), 2004, "Crossing the Stream"
  • Chiponda Chimbelu, Thesis (M.A.), 2004, "A Translation and Contextualization of Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard’s "Entre Ciel et Terre" and "La Fiévre""
  • Noah Roderick, Thesis (M.A.), 2004, "The Historical Novel and the Postcolonial Paradigm"
  • Amy Walker, Thesis (M.A), 2004, "Vampires: Villains, Victims, or Heroes?: The Role of the Author in Influencing Readers"

2003

  • Kristin Bivens, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "Uncommon Voices: An Examination of the Revolutionary Writings of Anna Green Winslow and Sally Wister"
  • Dana Bisignani, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "Tea"
  • Tara Der-Yeghiayan, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "Ghost Fiction and the Study of Self in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, Edith Wharton's "Afterward" and Virginia Woolf's "A Haunted House""
  • Laurie Kallevig, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "Post Card: Notes from South Asia"
  • Cary Leiter, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "In Memoriam: A Play in Three Acts"
  • Robert Levey, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "An Investigation of the Sublime and its Role in the 19th Century Literary and Ideological American Landscape"
  • Marsha Posz, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "Science and Pseudoscience of the Mind in the Development of Gothic Literature"
  • Donna L. Smith, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "Critical Thinking and Active Learning in Hyper-reading: Pedagogy for the 21st Century"
  • Christine Trochesset, Thesis (M.A.), 2003, "How Keri Hulme’s The Bone People and Patricia Grace’s Potiki Measure Up to Salman Rush[d]ie’s Midnight’s Children in the Magical Realist Category"

2002

  • Carol Bollin, Thesis (M.A.), 2002, "Humor: Bombeckian Style"
  • Alan Jepsen, Thesis (M.A.), 2002, "Direction Finding"
  • Jane Kieseweiter, Thesis (M.A.), 2002, "Beyond the Supernatural: A Defense of Fantasy"

2001

  • Carolyn Handy, Thesis (M.A.), 2001, "Life Writing by Nineteenth Century Frontier Women: Sustaining the Conscience of Self Identity: Mississippi River Centered--Midcontinent Regions"
  • Tammy Hayes, Thesis (M.A), 2001, "Free and Easy Ways: A Two Act Play"
  • Margaret Hoffmiller, Thesis (M.A), 2001, "Writing toward Healing"
  • Chris Irish, Thesis (M.A.), 2001, "Alone in a Crowd"
  • Jennifer Wehrs, Thesis (M.A.), 2001, "There are Many Things in the World"

2000

  • Thomas Hansen, Thesis (M.A.), 2000, "Strike!"
  • Sharon Elizabeth Trotter, Thesis (M.A.), 2000, "Wake Up Strange Part 1 & Part 2"

1999

  • Susan Antlitz, Thesis (M.A.), 1999, "Writing as Membership: Electronic Communities in Writing Instruction"
  • Penny Clause, Thesis (M.A.), 1999, "Linking Adele Varens to the Women of Jane Eyre"
  • Douglas Julien, Thesis (M.A.), 1999, "Revolution on the Radio: Literature's Role in Understanding the Importance of Radio in Africa"
  • Kukuh Subagyo, Thesis (M.A.), 1999, "A Study of Hawthorne's Conceptions of Isolation as the Penalty and the Origin of Sin and as Sin Itself"

1998

  • Monica Berlin, Thesis (M.A.), 1998, ""Holding Language in their Throats": A Longpoem of Witness as a Solution to the Contemporary Language Crisis"
  • Sujata Chattopadhyay, Thesis (M.A.), 1998, "The Cultural Myths of America in Robert Schenkkan's The Kentucky Cycle"
  • John Dodd, Thesis (M.A.), 1998, "Wharton and Other States of Being"
  • Tara Hembrough, Thesis (M.A.), 1998, "Salvation Man Versus the Outer Darkness"
  • John Hunsaker, Thesis (M.A.), 1998, "Iowa: A Place to Grow"
  • Danielle Miller, Thesis (M.A.), 1998, ""Dawn Poems Written in Blood": Sylvia Plath's Redefining and Search of the Self--Breaking through Societal Roles"
  • Jane Wilson, Thesis (M.A.), 1998, "The Genre of Taboo-Challenging Discourse"

1996

  • Carole Francque, Thesis (M.A.), 1996, "Small Towns, Private Lives"
  • Paul Lewellan, Thesis (M.A.), 1996, "Power and Identity: Manifestations of Black and White Power in African American Literature"
  • Kimberly Linyard, Thesis (M.A.), 1996, "The Code"
  • Beth Rosenberg, Thesis (M.A.), 1996, "People of the Stinky Water"
  • Aaron Smith, Thesis (M.A.), 1996, "Culturally-Determined Victimization in Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland, Son of the Morning and Black Water"
  • Charles Tackett, Thesis (M.A.), 1996, "Assessing the Basic Writer at WIU: A Survey and Analysis of Selected Students Who Failed the University Writing Exam"

1995

  • Joni Brora-Tawesson, Thesis (M.A.), 1995, "The "Wildish Relationship of Integrity" in Mogambo, Picnic, and The Misfits"
  • Steven Felicelli, Thesis (M.A.), 1995, "Reception"

1994

  • Jane Albright, Thesis (M.A.), 1994, "Water, Sky, Woman"
  • Jennifer Davis, Thesis (M.A.), 1994, "Leaving the Country"
  • Thomas Kmetz, Thesis (M.A.), 1994, "Metaphor, Identity, and Place in Walden: Surveying Indeterminate Meaning for the Tree and the Farmer within Thoreau's Shifting Boundaries"
  • Katherine Nichols, Thesis (M.A.), 1994, "The Valley of Shadows: Francis Grierson's Philosophic Statement"

1993

  • Kathleen Adams, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "I Never had a Name"
  • Cynthia Anderson, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "The Problem of Female Authority in The Faerie Queene"
  • Michael Bottom, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "Hobbes, Horner, and Response: Interpreting Wycherley's The Country Wife"
  • Frank Bradford, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "H.D.'s Trilogy: The Palimpsest, Woman, and Myrrh"
  • Kelly Bradford, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "Margaret Atwood: The Significance of Storytelling"
  • Margaret Cary, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "Pearl"
  • John Malia, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "The Socialized Classroom"
  • Roger Rouland, Thesis (M.A.), 1993, "An Unmarked Way"

1992

  • Katherine Arbogast, Thesis (M.A.), 1992, "Hemingway's Heroines"
  • Deanna Cording, Thesis (M.A.), 1992, "Collaborative Learning and Peer Evaluation of Writing in the Twelfth Grade"
  • Dora Faries, Thesis (M.A.), 1992, "Tristram Shandy: A Humorist Rhetorical Strategy"
  • Amy Fauquet, Thesis (M.A.), 1992, "Common Ground: The Professional Writer and the World of Composition"
  • Eric Johnson, Thesis (M.A.), 1992, "The Texture of Spin Control in Highway News Stories Published in the Quincy Herald-Whig 1971-1991"
  • Ruthe Thompson, Thesis (M.A.), 1992, "The Unspoken Language: Corporeal Rhetoric in the Female Bildungsroman"

1991

  • Noel Berkey, Thesis (M.A.), 1991, "Thematic Development in Vonnegut's Philosophical Tales"
  • Toni Boyd, Thesis (M.A.), 1991, "Voices from the Periphery"
  • Mark LaFramboise, Thesis (M.A.), 1991, "Breaking Boundaries: Three Short Stories"
  • Natalie Neumann, Thesis (M.A.), 1991, "The Recovery and the Pain of Breaking Through"

1990

  • Stephen Fay, Thesis (M.A.), 1990, "Finding the Farm"
  • Rebecca Holdorf, Thesis (M.A.), 1990, "Windblown"
  • Lorraine Liverpool, Thesis (M.A.), 1990, "Student Attitudes toward Standard and Nonstandard English"
  • Gordan Reynolds, Thesis (M.A.), 1990, "Outskirts"
  • Joyce Sears, Thesis (M.A.), 1990, "Is there a Gender in this Text?: Reader Response to Fictional Voice"
  • Betsy Vick, Thesis (M.A.), 1990, "Female/Male Language: Our Stereotypes are Misleading Us"
  • Lisa Woerly, Thesis (M.A.), 1990, "The Search for Want"

1989

  • Rick Clemons, Thesis (M.A.), 1989, "Chronic Ulcers"
  • Jeff Miller, Thesis (M.A.), 1989, "Response Time"
  • Katherine Searle, Thesis (M.A.), 1989, "Gouged Shadows"

1988

  • Jacqueline Heath, Thesis (M.A.), 1988, "Male-Female Relationships in Selected Novels by Kingsley Amis"
  • Suzanne Kassing, Thesis (M.A.), 1988, "The Stranger and the Dream: Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, "The Great Dark," and The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts"
  • Jan Wolbers, Thesis (M.A.), 1988, "Spiritual Wisdom in Bradbury's Works"

1987

  • Daniel Ashton, Thesis (M.A.), 1987, "Once Upon a Theatre: A Mystery/Comedy-Farce in Three Acts"
  • Jennifer Dowdy, Thesis (M.A.), 1987, "P.D. James and the Modern World"
  • Hal Lander, Thesis (M.A.), 1987, "Conference Teaching and Collaborative Learning in the College Composition Class"
  • Joanne McGurk, Thesis (M.A.), 1987, "Malory's "Tristram": The "Essential Inadequacies""
  • Terrel Merrill, Thesis (M.A.), 1987, "Book One of The Psi Stone Saga: Into the Forge"
  • Therese Purdy, Thesis (M.A.), 1987, "The Effects of Parental Influence in the Fiction of Henry James"
  • Ruth Siedenburg, Thesis (M.A.), 1987, "If I Break You are You Mine?: The Poetry of Jorie Graham"

1986

  • Jim Courter , Thesis (M.A.), 1986, "Escape Routes"
  • David Cranton, Thesis (M.A.), 1986, "The Dance of Deep Heaven: Myth, Romanticism, and Christianity as Partners in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy"
  • David Haney, Thesis (M.A.), 1986, "Reverend John Scripps: Views of Man and Nature on the Illinois Frontier"
  • Lisa Knopp, Thesis (M.A.), 1986, "A Study of Audience Analysis and Invention in Two Classes of Freshman Composition"
  • Debra Miller, Thesis (M.A.), 1986, "Alleviating Writing Apprehension by Eliminating Teacher as Audience"
  • Wes Miller, Thesis (M.A.), 1986, "The Didactic Intent in Toni Cade Bambara's Technique"
  • Greg Romano, Thesis (M.A.), 1986, "The New Babel"
  • Chulam Whang, Thesis (M.A.), 1986, ""The Complete Consort Dancing Together": Technical Devices in Four Quartets"

1985

  • Kim Bullis, Thesis (M.A.), 1985, "The Process Approach to Writing and the Adolescent"
  • Fred Richard Felde, Thesis (M.A.), 1985, "Third Man In"
  • Karen Hogenboom, Thesis (M.A.), 1985, "Using Free Response to Literature in the Writing Classroom"
  • Mary Wehring, Thesis (M.A.), 1985, "No More Valentines"

1984

  • Charles Rogerson, Thesis (M.A.), 1984, "Rough Beasts"
  • Jeffery Swartz, Thesis (M.A.), 1984, "The Effect of a Preschool Environment on Writing Ability: A Study of Second Grade Writers"

1982

  • Charlene Bunnell, Thesis (M.A.), 1982, "The Gothic, Its Worlds and Visions"
  • Arlis Dejaynes, Thesis (M.A.), 1982, ""The Immortal Puzzle": The Question of the New Woman in the Novels of Thomas Hardy"
  • Pamela Englerth, Thesis (M.A.), 1982, "Clear Writing: A Proposal for the Application of Composition Practices to Business Report Writing"
  • Caimei Wang, Thesis (M.A.), 1982, "Black Humor: A Wonder in Contemporary American Literature"
  • Changkai Wang, Thesis (M.A.), 1982, "Jack London, a Victim of Individualism: A Study of London's World Outlook and its Embodiment in his Literary Creation"

1981

  • Janice Altmann, Thesis (M.A.), 1981, "Glories of the Past and Realities of the Present Keats and the Arcadian Imagination"
  • Kathleen Bassi, Thesis (M.A.), 1981, ""The Tales of the Province House" by Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Historical Perspective"
  • Randy Dejaynes, Thesis (M.A.), 1981, "Sins of the Fathers: A Study of the Orphan in Selected Nineteenth-Century British Fiction"

1977

  • Craig Rigg, Thesis (M.A.), 1977, "A Stirring Fills the Air: The Development of Hardy's Ameliorative Theories in his Major Fiction"