The Vernacular Discourse of the "Arab Spring:" An Analysis of the Visual, the Embodied, and the Textual Rhetorics of the Karama Revolution

The Vernacular Discourse of the "Arab Spring" is a project that bridges the divide between the East and the West by offering new readings to Arab subjectivities. Through an analysis of the "Arab Spring" through the lens of vernacular discourse, it challenges the Euro-Americo-centric legacies of Orientalism in Western academia and the new wave of extremism in the Arab world by offering alternative representations of Arab bodies and subjectivities. To offer this new reading of the "Arab Spring," it explores the foundations of critical rhetoric as a theory and a practice and argues for a turn towards a critical vernacular discourse. The turn towards critical vernacular discourse is important as it urges the analyses of different artifacts produced by marginalized groups in order to understand their perspectives that have largely been foreclosed in traditional cultural studies research. Building on embodied/performative critical rhetoric, the vernacular discourses of the Arab revolutionary body examines other forms of knowledge productions that are not merely textual; more specifically, through data gathered in the Lhbib Bourguiba, Tunisia. This analysis of the political revolutionary body unveils the complexity underlining the discussion around issues of identity, agency and representation in the Middle East and North Africa, and calls for a critical study towards these issues in the region beyond the binary approach that has been practiced and applied by academics and media analysts. Hence, by analyzing vernacular discourse, this research locates a method of examining and theorizing the dialectic between agency, citizenry, and subjectivity through the study of how power structure is recreated and challenged through the use of the vernacular in revolutionary movements, as well as how marginalized groups construct their own subjectivities through the use of vernacular discourse. Therefore, highlighting the political prominence of evaluating the Arab Spring as a vernacular discourse is important in creating new ways of understanding communication in postcolonial/neocolonial settings.

The Lie That Tells the Truth: Creating Truth in Fiction and the Novel Delivering Hope

What makes fiction believable is the truth behind the words. This Capstone Project explores the ways in which authors put the truth on the page while simultaneously fabricating stories. The Reflective Paper examines writing techniques used to make the reader trust the story and the storyteller. The Creative Capstone is the result of applying these craft skills to Delivering Hope, a novel in progress about a critically ill baby bringing a dysfunctional family back together. The author relies on her personal experience of high- risk pregnancy and preterm birth to help create truth in her fiction.

Mary, Quite Contrary: The Novels of Mary Davys, 1700-1727

As a relatively unknown author, Mary Davys (1674-1732) has garnered scant scholarly attention and little admiration for her work. Those who have written on Davys’s prose fiction most often mention the last three texts she published, Familiar Letters betwixt a Gentleman and a Lady (1716), The Reform’d Coquet (1724), and The Accomplish’d Rake (1727), yet rare mention is made of her first three novels. Moreover, of her later novels, many scholars read them as socially conservative and as representations of Davys’s support of and belief in patriarchy. My project disproves the long-standing and generally agreed upon conceptions regarding Davys’s writings and demonstrates the significance of her life’s work to studies of the novel. By investigating contemporary cultural issues, discussing the popular genres and modes of early eighteenth-century England, and comparing and contrasting Davys’s fiction to other authors’, I explore the myriad ways in which Davys experimented with the formal properties of the novel. Also, by closely examining each novel independently, I foreground Davys’s willingness to engage with charged contemporary topics such as rape, suicide, the laws surrounding inheritance, and male privilege. Not only does she engage with these topics; there is a discernable voice of protest imbedded in the narratives. At times, the techniques Davys employed and the plots she created in her work obscured her social concerns, yet with close reading, subversion also surfaces as one of Davys’s methods. An analysis of Davys’s experimentations with prose fiction and form illuminates the ways in which those innovations allowed Davys to criticize the culture in which she lived. Furthermore, an investigation of the whole of Davys’s work and the totality of her novels—looking at both form and content—exemplifies the importance of Davys for students of feminist thought and the development of the novel.

Rock 314: A Novel

During this Capstone project, the author composed and revised the introductory chapters of the novel Rock 314. This Capstone is comprised of the first four of those chapters and also includes a reflective essay that explores the many influences and inspirations that led to its creation. Rock 314 is a story about a lonely young artist who is unexpectedly taken away from the world he knows and finds himself flung across the cosmos in search of his kidnapped grandfather. This novel uses humor as a literary device to satirize contemporary society. In addition to an explanation of influences and story conception, the essay includes all cognitive decisions and discoveries made by the author throughout the evolution of this project.