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Item Exploring satire in the early postmodern American war novel(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Brown, Kolby Elizabeth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert BennettAfter the Second World War, young soldier-writers such as Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, James Jones and Joseph Heller responded to the cultural impact and horrors of World War II by engaging a satire that was meant to not only expose problems of society, but inspire change. Too often, readers mistake satire for pure entertainment. Although satire has a longstanding reputation as comedy, satire is a vital weapon for democratic societies to challenge lies, corruption and the abuse of power. By focusing attention on a diverse range of satiric expression, this thesis aims to fill a gap in the scholarship on early postmodern American war novels and the way they attack systems that objectify and dehumanize human bodies for the agenda of war.Item Haunting : from postwesterns to postmodern historiographies(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2015) Hanson, Daniel Lee; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinThe postmodern era has issued a challenge to either/or binary structures and the hegemonic master narratives built upon them. Within American Studies, the sub discipline of postwestern studies recognizes the effects of this postmodern turn through the emergence of 'ghost westerns.' These film and literary expressions reveal the manner in which spectral manifestations interrupt the narrative of American exceptionalism housed within the Western genre by privileging previously marginalized voices and confounding a binary reality. This thesis examines the functionality of haunting from its Gothic Enlightenment origins to its emergence within the genre of the West with a specific focus on a postwestern awareness of these ghost Westerns. However, to further privilege the trope, and to further disrupt the real v. the imagined binary, haunting is also taken outside of the 'Western frame,' as postwestern scholars have called it, and applied to several contemporary post-Civil War historiographies. Because historians are also navigating the postmodern 'turn,' many of the same cultural and epistemological hegemonies scrutinized by postwestern scholars are also evident within contemporary historiographies. By illustrating how contemporary historians are 'haunted' by these same cultural structures, spectrality becomes an interdisciplinary tool which aides a postmodern America confronting its 'exceptional' identity and the binary epistemological structure which enables such hegemonic narratives.Item Modernism's tragic end : T.S. Eliot's long labor with the negative(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2001) Maxwell, James BowerItem I'm so bored with the U.S. -and beyond : theorizing the emergence of postmodern slackers and global Generation X culture(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2008) Paliobagis, Ariana Jade; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert BennettThe generation which came of age in the late 1970s through the 1980s has often been described as a cohort of slackers, lazy layabouts who shamelessly rejected the previous generation's passionate attempts at revolution. I argue instead, however, that Generation X, as Canadian writer Douglas Coupland termed it, is responsible for a revolution of its own, but its lack of resemblance to any previous social upheavals has caused it to be misunderstood by many. The failure of the youthful rebellions of the sixties and the shallow response to this of the eighties - selfish materialism - prompted this new generation to abandon both group movements and self-advancement; rather, many members of Generation X found that rejection of received ideas and identities - particularly those based in and created through traditional appreciations of and relations to time and place - allowed them to create identities and modes of living which are meaningful and viable in a global postmodern world, attitudes that take advantage of the fragmentation of identity experienced in the postmodern era rather than fighting the general lack of connection brought about by the cultural and economic realities of the period. Through passivity, inaction, acceptance of mediocrity and boredom, the preference for the individual over the community, and their ability to deftly negotiate the rapid increase in world consumer capitalist economies and global information and communication technologies, postmodern slackers have disassociated themselves from systems of any sort: religious, economic, political, familial, or cultural. As a result, these young men abandon the accepted de rigueur "accomplishments" of adulthood such as marriage, family, home, and career, instead opting to create identities, homes, families and careers out of a hodgepodge of cultural detritus, including both high and popular culture. They accept this fragmentation of identity as a matter of course rather than allow it to produce significant anxiety, as in previous generations, and as a result, are acutely prepared to thrive in the global postmodern era even as they redefine the meaning of success.Item The place of story and the story of place : how the convergence of text and image marks the opening of a new literary frontier(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2007) Lynn, Marie Elizabeth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinWhile certain scholars are lamenting that literature has become less relevant in these postmodern times, I have found that this is not at all the case. What is actually happening is that literature is the process of change, due in no small part to our blossoming visual culture. Interweaving Native American and dominant culture literatures, this document explores the ways narrative has historically played a critical role, not only in constructing human identity, but also in defining our relationship with place. More recently, new literary hybrids, with various degrees of intertwining text with image, are proliferating. These literatures of image are propelling us beyond postmodernism into a new era.Item Buffy at play : tricksters, deconstruction, and chaos at work in the whedonverse(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2007) Graham, Brita Marie; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Linda Karell; Michael Sexson (co-chair)The television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer - in its entirety - encompasses a collection of ideas, languages, semiotic representation, artistic expression, and even scientific curiosity that is not easily reducible and has few true parallels. The Whedonverse, as fans refer to it, has become a semiotic domain in much the same vein as Star Trek or Star Wars, reaching beyond its one-time niche market into the realm of pop culture iconography. The text's simultaneous admixture and denial of discrete genres, from comedy to action, from horror to melodrama, marks it as a truly unique creation. While textual vampires have always been important barometers of our society, we need an understanding not only of vampires, but of the trickster construct to more fully understand how Buffy works - and plays - and in what ways the myths and symbols of pre-colonial storytelling tie in to post-modernism, deconstruction, and even contemporary scientific inquiry, such as chaos theory.