Lists of approved MA English theses from recent years:
2008-2009 Approved Master’s Theses
Akyeampong, Claudia (M.F.A. Poetry)
Rumblings from A Talking Drum
Advisor: Lou Asekoff
Baez, John (M.A. English)
Oral Otherness: Written Utterance in the Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde and Jean Genet
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Bagatourian, Bianca (M.F.A. Playwriting)
Remnants of a Liquid World
Advisor: Mac Wellman
Baker, Annie (M.F.A. Playwriting)
Circle Mirror Transformation
Advisor: Mac Wellman
Barker, Tanya (M.A. English)
The Paradox of the Thing: British Imperialism and the Making of a British National Identity
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Bartnik, Catherine (M.A. English)
Becoming the Grail King: Fate and Development in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival
Advisor: Karl Steel
Beckim, Chad (M.F.A. Playwriting)
Mercy
Advisor: Mac Wellman
Brown, Donald (M.A. English)
Impressionism Along the Shores of Balbec: The Practice of Impressionism in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Advisor: Janet Moser
Brule, Michelle (M.F.A. Poetry)
Where the Wind Blows
Advisor: Julie Agoos
Carey, Anna (M.F.A. Fiction)
The Leftovers
Advisor: Fiona Maazel
Childers, Jodie (M.F.A. Poetry)
Private Property
Advisor: Julie Agoos
D’Alessandro, Mario David (M.A. English)
Contextualizing Alisoun: A Survey and Evaluation of Competing Critical Approaches to “The Wife of Bath” and her Quest for Power and Ability to “Speak”
Advisor: Karl Steel
Deal, Lance (M.F.A. Poetry)
The Spine of the Snowman
Advisor: Julie Agoos
DiGiacomo, Jason (M.A. English)
Waugh in the 21st Century: An Examination of Evelyn Waugh’s Comedic World
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Dobran, Ryan (M.A. English)
Clarity and Silence in George Oppen’s “Of Being Numerous”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Fraggetta, Amanda (M.A. English)
Discovering America: Reimagining Nabokov’s Lolita as a Travel Narrative
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Gartland, Neal (M.F.A. Poetry)
The Viscous Jamboree
Advisor: Julie Agoos
Ginger, Kelly (M.F.A. Poetry)
Here, Now, Always
Advisor: Julie Agoos
Gioe, Jamie (M.A. English)
Oedipa and the Riddle of Reality in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Goettel, Diane (M.A. English)
Identity in Space and Place: Perspectives on Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Grushkin, Daniel (M.F.A. Fiction)
Stories of the Hour
Advisor: Jenny Offill
Harte, Erin (M.F.A. Fiction)
Don’t Scare Her Off Before She Starts: A Short Story Collection
Advisor: Fiona Maazel
Hauser, Christina (M.F.A. Fiction)
Coast is Clear: A Novel
Advisor: Jenny Offill
Herceg, Jozeph (M.A. English)
Live Through This: J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Martin Amis’s London Fields, and the New Necropolis
Advisor: James Davis
Holland, Timothy (M.A. English)
The Troubles in Joyce’s Dublin: Political, Religious, and Literary Hegemony in Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Advisor: Moustafa Bayoumi
Hopes, Adrianne (M.F.A. Fiction)
Dirty Little Animals
Advisor: Ernesto Mestre
Islam, Tanwi (M.F.A. Fiction)
Bright Lines
Advisor: Fiona Maazel
Kikoler, Jennifer (M.F.A. Fiction)
On the Head of a Thief Burns His Hat: Stories
Advisor: Amy Hempel
Krywicki, Jarad (M.A. English)
Hamlet Goes Whaling: Suspension and Interpretive Deferment in Hamlet and Moby-Dick
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Ladjache, Siobhan (M.A. English)
Derrida’s Hostile Hospitality: Re-imagining Belonging
Advisor: Moustafa Bayoumi
Lemkowitz, Jake (M.F.A. Fiction)
Alante!
Advisor: Catherine Texier
Lewington, Robert (M.A. English)
The Alchemist in Performance: Staging Ben Jonson for the Contemporary Audience
Advisor: Martin Elsky
Lioce, Michael (M.A. English)
An Introduction to Flashman
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Lucadamo, Elizabeth (M.A. English)
The Struggle for Identity: Individual Identity as defined by Individual Trial and Experience versus Identity as a Function of Societal Enforced Roles
Advisor: Carey Harrison
Macrides, Kalle (M.F.A. Playwriting)
NOIR
Advisor: Mac Wellman
Mantia, Cheryl (M.A. English)
The Gothic Catholic: A Study of How Catholicism is Presented in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, or The Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797)
Advisor: Carey Harrison
Marschall, Wythe (M.F.A. Fiction)
The Gyrosphyrinx; or, L’Incroyable Pouvoir Des Filature Harpie: A Novel
Advisor: Jenny Offill
McQuibban, Samantha (M.F.A. Poetry)
Split Tongue
Advisor: Julie Agoos
Miller, David (M.F.A. Poetry)
Field Recordings
Advisor: Marjorie Welish
Murtha, Megan (M.A. English)
“Time Passes” in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse As A Framed Work Of Post-Impressionism
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Neale, Julia (M.A. Liberal Studies)
Conscious Identity: An Introductory Analysis of the Components of Personal Identity
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Olga Pester (M.F.A. Poetry)
window open/window closed
Advisor: Julie Agoos
Ostrowski, Julie (M.A. English)
How Joyce Carol Oates Explores Urban Crises in Them and The Falls
Advisor: Julia Hirsch
Oyola, Osvaldo (M.A. English)
Collection, Identity and the Narratives of Brooklyn in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Parfrey, Ian (M.F.A. Poetry)
Brain Surgery with Fork
Advisor: Richard Pearse
Plaunt, Chloe (M.F.A. Fiction)
New Moon: Stories
Advisor: Josh Henkin
Price, Jeffrey (M.F.A. Fiction)
Brothers in Time
Advisor: Fiona Maazel
Quartuccio, Peter (M.A. English)
The Analyst and the Unknown: Objective and Subjective Detective Fiction in Poe and Joyce
Advisor: Geoff Minter
Russo, Joseph (M.A. English)
Queer Shamanism: Genet’s Thresholds of Becoming
Advisor: Karl Steel
Sande, Melissa (M.A. English)
Double Entendre: Hybrid Culture as the Psychological Equivalent of Sexual Trauma in Jean Rhys’s Postcolonial Novels
Advisor: Moustafa Bayoumi
Sherwood, Normandy (M.F.A. Playwriting)
Switch Blade Girls
Advisor: Mac Wellman
Skinner, Deborah (M.A. English)
The Issue of Women and Voice in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome
Advisor: James Davis
Stevens, Elizabeth (M.F.A. Fiction)
The Crony: A Novel
Advisor: Jenny Offill
Tandy, Catherine (M.A. English)
My Soul is a Pawn Shop: Consumerism and Numinism in Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Tucker, Lindsey (M.A. English)
Lisette Model: Obscuring the Identities of Art and Documentary in Photography
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Wolff, Ian (M.A. English)
Nonquest of Nonidentity in Nonplace: Postotherness in Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Workman, Emily (M.A. English)
Gender Binaries and Imperialism: Milton’s Paradise Lost
Advisor: Kathleen Haley
2007-2008 Approved Master’s Theses
Abrahim, Anastasia
“Jane Austen: The Realistic Romance Writer”
Advisor: Geraldine De Luca
Acloque, Serene
“Wandering Women of Turn- of –the Century American Literature: Situating Prostitution in The House of Mirth”
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Ali, Yasmin I.
“Disillusioned Mothers: Portraits of Mothers and Motherhood in Postcolonial Literature”
Advisor: Moustafa Bayoumi
Bethge, John
“The Informed Citizen: The Manchurian Candidate, Catch-22, and the Struggle for Individuality”
Advisor: Thomas Boyle
Bose, Sharbari
“Giving the Moment Whole: Female Narrative Silence in Bloomsbury’s Anti-Imperial Dialogue”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Callahan, Clare
“’After’ Theory”
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Chin, Sarah
“Mirrors and Memories: Dystopian Science Fiction and Empowerment in Young Adult Literature”
Advisor: James Davis
Dance Jr., Alphonso
“Symbolism and Imagery of Denial and Acceptance in Richard Wright’s Native Son: Bigger Thomas’s Struggle to Express His Humanity”
Advisor: Marie Buncombe
Dougherty, Nivia
“History and Memory in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: The Conflict of Remembering and Forgetting the Past”
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Durka, Agnieszka
“The Art of Portraiture in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady”
Advisor: Geoff Minter
Fairall, Holly
“Gnomon’s Land: The Colonial Voids of Dubliners’ ‘Childhood Trilogy’”
Advisor: Thomas Boyle
Fayerberg, Daniel
“Surviving Austen: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Textual Survival of Jane Austen’s Novels During the Twentieth-Century”
Advisor: William Reeves
Flippin, Lakiska
“The African American Feminine Gothic”
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Fuks, Yevgenya
“Hyperreality Revealed: The Function and Significance of Hyperreality”
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Georgianna, Don
“Truman Capote and the Nonfiction Novel”
Advisor: Carey Harrison
Gersch, Jason
“Creating the Preface-Lens: Interpreting the Underlying Sociopolitical Dichotomies of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Gjoni, Iva
“Time in Wonderland”
Advisor: Robert Viscusi
Gore, Catherine
“Representing Animals: Animals in Human Consciousness in Romantic Poetry”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Heffner, Rachel
“Divine Imagination: ‘Words About God’ in the Children’s Fantasy Fiction of Madeline L’Engle”
Advisor: Geraldine DeLuca
Hogan, William
Funny Bones: Black Comedy and the Body in The Revenger’s Tragedy”
Advisor: Ellen Belton
Infortunio Jr.,Thomas
“The Re-Makynge of Gawain: Artifice, Nature and Redemption in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Lenahan, Holly
“Anglo-Norman vs. Parisian Influence on Chancery English”
Advisor: John Roy
Leotaud, Crystal Joanne
“The People Could Fly: An Examination of the Negro Spirit”
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Lewis, Shell
“An Elevated State of Mind: Woolf’s Androgyny and Anzaldua’s Mestiza Consciousness”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Mitchell, Kean
“On the Use of Creole in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain
Advisor: John Roy
Mondano, Nicole
“A Study of Transnational Women Writers, Their Female Protagonists, and the Criticism That Surrounds Their Work”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Nicholson, Charlene
“Sexuality in The House of Mirth and The Awakening”
Advisor: James Davis
Rutman, Sharon
“Twentieth Century Hell and the Possible Utopian Alternative Through the Novels of Upton Sinclair
Advisor: Geoff Minter
Ryan, Sheila
“Adolescent Girls and the Scarlet Letter”
Advisor: Prof. Viscusi
Sadykov, Leah
“Prisoners of Language: Revisiting the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis”
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Scanson, Thomas
“Marketing Manhood: Langston Hughes’s Queer Passing on The Big Sea”
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Simmons, Paulanne
“The Musical as Literature: Notes on the Creative Process”
Advisor: Cary Harrison
Stein, Roberta
“The Key Factors Influencing the Depictions of Male-Female Relationships in the Novels of E.M. Foster and Virginia Woolf”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Suszynski, Christina
“If I Am A Woman Of My Word, What Words Do I Use?”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Tavares, Frank
“Complicity and Rebelliousness in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
Advisor: George Cunningham
Tepas, Simon
“Hunter S. Thompson and the New Journalism: Fear and Loathing for the Daily News”
Advisor: Geoff Minter
Ucciardino, Jack
“Questions of Identity in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, and Playback”
Advisor: Robert Viscusi
Uzzilia, Suzanne
“The Language of Political Estrangement in Three West Indian Novels”
Advisor: Rennie Gonsalves
Wallach, Miriam
“Stand By Me: Defending Lois Lowry’s The Giver Against Censorship”
Advisor: Nancy Vighetti
Wilson, Constance
“Gender and Education in the Works of Ama Ata Aidoo and Tsitsi Dangarembga”
Advisor: James Davis
2006-2007 Approved Masters Theses
Agius, Ryan
“Narrative Voice and Authorial Presence in Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ and Kafka’s ‘A
Hunger Artist’”
Advisor: Thomas Boyle
Arts, George
“Reference as a Text Construction Agent with a Focus on Anaphora”
Advisor: John Roy
Beharry, Anjinie
“What explains Milton’s God in Paradise Lost?”
Advisor: Ana Acosta
Berardi, Diane
“An Evaluation and Case Study of E-Learning”
Advisor: Geri DeLuca
Carosone, Michael
“The Marginalization of Italian-American Writers and Italian-American Literature”
Advisor: Geri DeLuca
Chwala, Gregory
“Byron in Missolonghi: Greek Love and The Private Gone Public”
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Cohen, Diane
“The Female Bildungsroman During Colonialism and Dictatorship”
Advisor: Rennison Gonsalves
Coiffe, Dorothea
“The Alphabet is Never a Neutral Technology: A History of Writing Systems in Twentieth Century Turkmenistan and Other Areas of Central Asia”
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Cox, Margaret
“Evolution of the African American Woman’s Psyche”
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Cucaj, Xhenete
“Re-Positioning the Feminine Role: A Study of Assia Djebar’s Quartet”
Advisor: Moustafa Bayoumi
Davis, Maudelin
“Henry James and His Feminine Influences”
Advisor: William F. Browne
DePasquale, Elizabeth
“A Lady’s ‘Verily’ is as Potent as a Lord’s: A Search for Non-Binary Female Subject Positions in Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter’s Tale”
Advisor: Ellen Belton
English, Bridget
“The Splendid Mirage: Bohemian New York and the Search for a Modern American Identity in Fitzgerald and Cather”
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Esdaille, Elroy
“Race as a Social Construction in the Works of Charles Chestnutt and James Weldon Johnson”
Advisor: James Davis
Everitt, Ryan
“The Connotative Denaturalization of Bleak House”
Advisor: Ellen Tremper
Fogarty, Patrick
“Exodic or Hybrid Literature? A Post-Colonial Analysis of Swift’s Drapier’s Letters and Joyce’s
Ulysses”
Advisor: Patricia Laurence
Gaske, Jaime
“Realizing Myths and Symbols in Contemporary Literature”
Advisor: Nancy Vighetti
Gutman, Emilya
“To Be or Not to Be ‘Black No More’: The Essential Dilemma of the Harlem Renaissance”
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Hoffman, Rabecca
“Gender Differences in Cinematic Storytelling Styles: Bound vs. High Art”
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Holmes, Renee
“Charles Chestnutt’s Paul Marchand, FMC and Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson: The Reconstruction of Race and the Revision of Slavery”
Advisor: George Cunningham
Huliaris, Eugenia
“The Paradigm Shift from New Criticism to Feminism in Daisy Miller and The Age of
Innocence”
Advisor: James Davis
Jones, Tashara
“An Investigation Through the Thinking of Bigger Thomas: In Richard Wright’s Native Son”
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Korbl, Angela
“Out of the House of Arabic into the House of Latin”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Lemma, Erica
“The Battle for Equality: Huck Finn and the Color Line”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Lukszo, Ursula
“Geography of the Ordinary: Locating BioPolitics in “The Time Before” and the Time Now in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale”
Advisor: Rowena Lee Quinby
Maharaj, Nira
“Mule/Muse: Women in Jean Toomer’s Cane and Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men”
Advisor: Martha Nadell
McCabe, Matthew
“An Examination of January in Chaucer’s ‘Merchant’s Tale’”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
McGee, Kristi
“Oedipa Maas in Pursuit of Signs”
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Murphy-Wedlock, Kristine
“Female Empowerment in a Time of Crisis: Fierce and Forceful Females in The Grapes of Wrath”
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Moss, Tinamarie
“Children’s Literature: An Archetypal Journey”
Advisor: Geri DeLuca
Navarro, Lauren
“Jane’s Mission of Agency: An Ethos of Domestic Happiness”
Advisor: Ellen Tremper”
Nemtsin, Karina
“The Demystification of Female Sexuality and Identity in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Nugent, Patrick
“Gifts for the Great Potluck: Metaphor and Form in Danger on Peaks”
Advisor: Matthew Burgess
Plunkett, Michael
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds and the Horizontal Use of Literary Reference”
Advisor: Robert Viscusi
Polenski, Michael
“Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams: In the Woodlands of the Ojibway”
Advisor: Robert Viscusi
Porter, Julia
“ ‘There Be Soul-Artists’: The Effects of the Spiritualism Movement on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing”
Advisor: Patricia Laurence
Roslyn, Rey
“Empowering Women Through African Literature”
Advisor: Geri DeLuca
Shetty, Shilpa
“Globalization and Tourism in A Small Place, The God of Small Things and Transmission”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Shury, Donna
“African Guyanese Folk Music: A Cultural Heritage”
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Starr, Jessica
“The Shadow Heroics of Social Masochism in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre”
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Teitel, Michael
“The Imperial Smile: Notes on the Face of Imperialism”
Advisor: Dillon Brown
Tescher, Jeremy
“Words are Things: The Significance of Language in Blood Meridian”
Advisor: James Davis
Thame, Nicola
“Ideologies Challenged and Then Reaffirmed: Wide Sargasso Sea’s Assumption of Colonial Power ”
Advisor: Dillon Brown
Vella, Tinamarie
“The Forgotten Blemish: Remembering Filipino History Through Literature”
Advisor: Renison Gonsalves
Washington, Phyllis
“Ebonics – A Legitimate Language”
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Wei, Zhaoxia
“Nineteeth Century New York City in Washington Square and The House of Mirth”
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Willis, Karen
“Black Women Writers and Virginia Woolf’s Androgynous Mind”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
John Yi
“Identity and Chinese Aesthetics in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos”
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
