the toni morrison society

DISSERTATIONS 2008-2011

    Abeysinghe, Nayana P. "Intergenerational Memory in the Work of Francophone Caribbean Women Writers." Ph.D. Columbia University, 2010. 

    Adams, Catherine Lynn. "Africanizing the Territory: The History, Memory and Contemporary Imagination of Black Frontier Settlements in the Oklahoma Territory." Ph.D. Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2010. 

    Anderson, Melanie R. "The Beloved Paradise: Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison from "Song of Solomon" through "Love"." Ph.D. The University of Mississippi, 2009. 

    Armengot, Sara Scott. "Typology and the Promised Land in Twentieth-Century Inter-American Literature and Film." Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University, 2008. 

    Atchison, Steven Todd. "The Spark of the Text: Toward an Ethical Reading Theory for Traumatic Literature." Ph.D. College of Arts & Sciences: English, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. 

    Atieh, Majda Ramadan. "The African American Tafsir (Interpretation) of the Islamic Harem: Female Resistance in Morrison's 'Paradise'." Howard U, 2008.   

    Bailin, Deborah Juliet. "Prehistoric to Posthuman: Animality, Inheritance, and Identity in American Evolutionary Narratives." Ph.D. English Language and Literature, University of Maryland, College Park, 2010. 

    Baker, Alyce R. "The Presence, Roles and Functions of the Grotesque in Toni Morrison's Novels." Ph.D. English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2009. 

    Banks, Michelle D. "Phenomenal Fictions: The Dynamics of Connection in Two Contemporary American Multi-Textual Constructs, Paul Auster's "the New York Trilogy" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved", "Jazz", and "Paradise"." Ph.D. The University of Western Ontario (Canada), 2008. 

    Bealer, Tracy Lyn. ""Something Which Abrogates": Eros, the Body, and the Problem of Liberation in Twentieth-Century American Literature." Ph.D. University of South Carolina, 2008. 

    Brassaw, Mandolin R. "Divine Heresy: Women's Revisions of Sacred Texts." Ph.D. University of Oregon, 2008. 

    Brooks, Kinitra Dechaun. "The Black Maternal: Heterogeneity and Resistance in Literary Representations of Black Mothers in 20th Century African American and Afro-Caribbean Women's Fiction." Ph.D. Comparative Literature, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. 

    Bryant-Berg, Kristy A. ""No Longer Haunted"?: Cultural Trauma and Traumatic Realism in the Novels of Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison." Ph.D. University of Oregon, 2009.

    Campbell, Andrea Kate. "Narrating Other Natures: A Third Wave Ecocritical Approach to Toni Morrison, Ruth Ozeki, and Octavia Butler." Ph.D. Washington State University, 2010. 

    Carr, Nicole Racquel. "The Rastafari Presence in Toni Morrison's "Tar Baby", "Beloved", and "Song of Solomon"." M.A. Florida Atlantic University, 2010. 

    Carruth, Allison. "Global Appetites: Literary Form and Food Politics from World War I to the World Trade Organization." Ph.D. Stanford University, 2008. 

    Case, Menoukha R. "Ori and the Ethical Subject: Pro Indigenous Readings of African Diaspora Literature in Yoruba." State U of New York, Albany, 2008.  

    Chan-Malik, Sylvia. "From Orientalism to American Ummah: Race-Ing Islam in Contemporary U.S. Culture, 1978-2008." Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2009. 

    Clerico, Bethany Aery. "Caribbean Hauntings and Transnational Regionalism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature." Ph.D. English, State University of New York at Albany, 2011. 

    Cochran, Shannon M. "Corporeal (Isms): Race, Gender, and Corpulence Performativity in Visual and Narrative Cultures." Ph.D. Womens Studies, The Ohio State University, 2010. 

    Coleman, Lois Annette. "Michelle Cliff's Fiction: Rescuing the Past, Engendering Frontier Consciousness." Ph.D. University of Connecticut, 2008. 

    Cooper, Maria Elizabeth. "When the Bough Breaks, the Cradle Will Fall: A Jungian Analysis of Motherhood and Child Homicide in the Literature of Maxine Hong Kingston and Toni Morrison." M.A. Southern Connecticut State University, 2010. 

    Cox, Sandra. "Ethical Engagement: Critical Strategies for Approaching Autoethnographic Fiction." Ph.D. English, University of Kansas,  2011. 

    Cranwell, Anne Louise. ""Don't You Talk About My Mama!" Black Women Writers and Motherhood in the Era of the "Underclass"." M.A. Sarah Lawrence College, 2010.

    Cruz, Daniel Shank. "A Third Way to Change: Violence against Whites in African American Novels from the 1970s." Ph.D. English, Northern Illinois University, 2011. 

    Delcoco-Fridley, Lea Johanna. "Defining Motherhood: The Plight of the Non-Traditional Mother in Multi-Ethnic American Women's Literature." Ph.D. English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2011. 

    Dyen, Jonathan. ""I'll Never Be Hungry Again": Sectionalism, Economic Resistance, and the Trope of the Civil War in American Fiction, 1894--2010." Ph.D. Boston University, 2011. 

    Easton, Marlaina. "Resisting Multiple Oppressions: An African American Lesbian's Counter-Narrative." Ph.D. Union Institute and University, 2010. 

    Evans, Carina Antonina. "Loving Blackness: The Neo-Slave Narrative and Contemporary Revisions of Blackness." Ph.D. English, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009. 

    Evans, Casey Dawn. ""They're Us": Infectious Trauma and the Zombie Apocalypse." Ph.D. University of Arkansas, 2009. 

    Fenstermaker, Amy. "Bridging the Gap between (White) Metafiction and (Black) Self-Reflexivity." Ph.D. University of Rochester, 2008. 

    Fernandez, Shalini Teresa. "Medea Redux: Considering Community in Selected Rewritings of the Medea Myth." U of California, Irvine, 2008.  

    Fishbone, Carol A. "Transcending Stereotyped Motherhood: The Social Construction of Mothers under Duress in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and 'Song of Solomon' and Cynthia Ozick's 'the Shawl' and 'the Cannibal Galaxy'." Drew U, 2008.  

    Freeman, Williamenia Miranda Walker. ""Their Past in My Blood": Paule Marshall, Gayl Jones, and Octavia Butler's Response to the Black Aesthetic." Ph.D. The University of Southern Mississippi, 2010. 

    Freiz, Ihab M. "The Narrative of Aging: The Portrayal of the Aged in Toni Morrison and Ernest J. Gaines." Ph.D. English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania,  2011. 

    Frydman, Jason. "Reciting Trans-Atlantic Literature: Orality, Creolization, and Intertextuality." Ph.D. Columbia University, 2008. 

    Glocke, Aimee. "Is the Black Aesthetic Dead?: Positing the Black Aesthetic as the Foundation for the Black Novel." Ph.D. Temple University, 2008. 

    Goodhead, Dokubo M. "Toward a Critical Realist Reading of African and African Diaspora Literatures." U of Washington, 2009.  

    Grogan, Christine. "The Wound and the Voiceless: The Insidious Trauma of Father-Daughter Incest in Six American Texts." Ph.D. English, University of South Florida, 2011. 

    Hanna, Monica. "Resistance Histories: Contemporary Literary Reconstructions of National History." Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Western Illinois University, 2009. 

    Harack, Katrina Marie. "The Heterological Writer and the Gift of Art: Writers on Writing, Ethics, and Performativity in Twentieth Century America." Ph.D. University of California, Irvine, 2008. 

    Harrison, Katherine Cora. "Tales Twice Told: Sound Technology and American Fiction after 1940." Ph.D. Yale University, 2010. 

    Harvey, Meredith. "The Archetypal Wise Woman in Postcolonial Works of Magical Realism of the Americas: An Examination of Rudolfo Anaya's "Bless Me, Ultima", Toni Morrison's "Paradise", and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Cien Anos De Soledad"." Ph.D. Idaho State University, 2010. 

    Hennessy, C. Margot. "Raiding the Inarticulate: Postmodernisms, Feminist Theory and Black Female Creativity." Ph.D. English, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2010. 

    Hite, Michelle S. "Sisters, Rivals, and Citizens: Venus and Serena Williams as a Case Study of American Identity." Ph.D. Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University, 2009. 

    Jacobi, Kara E. ""They Will Invent What They Need to Survive": Narrating Trauma in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction." Ph.D. University of Miami, 2009. 

    Johnson, Terrence Lamark. "Tragic Soul-Life: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Redemption of American Democracy." Ph.D. Brown University, 2008. 

    Jones, Jacqueline M. "Where I Want to Be: African American Women's Novels and the Journey toward Selfhood During the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements." Ph.D. Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2010. 

    June-Rodgers, Pamela Beth. "Bodily and Narrative Fragmentation: Wounds, Scars, and Feminist Healing in Selected Novels by Postmodern Multiethnic American Women." Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2009. 

    Jung, Sun-Kug. "Dialogism and Multiculturalism in the Work of Morrison, Silko, Anzaldua, and Vizenor." U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2010.  

    Kang, Sooyoung. "Tracing the Maternal: Memory and Writing in Contemporary American Women Writers of the Diaspora." Ph.D. English, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2008. 

    Kellett, Brandi Bingham. "Haunting Witnesses: Diasporic Consciousness in African American and Caribbean Writing." Ph.D. English (Arts & Sciences), University of Miami, 2010. 

    Kilgust, Barbara J. "The Borders of Community: Looking at the Roles of Talk in U.S. Regional Literature." Ph.D. The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, 2008. 

    Kim, Kwang Soon. "The Location of Black Identity in Toni Morrison's Fiction." Ph.D. English, Purdue University, 2010. 

    Kitchiner, La'Nisa S. "Signifying Structures: Representations of the House in African-American and Black Southern African Women's Writing." Ph.D. African Studies, Howard University, 2010. 

    Lang, Maya. "The Hypochondriac: Bodies in Protest from Herman Melville to Toni Morrison." State U of New York, Stony Brook, 2008

    Lee, Sun-Jin. "Reading Myth and Mythic Reading: Critical Mythogenesis in Post-1960s American Women's Writing." Ph.D. Texas A&M University, 2010. 

    Lespinasse, Patricia G. "The Jazz Text: Wild Women, Improvisation, and Power in 20th Century Jazz Literature." Ph.D. Columbia University, 2010. 

    Liang, Ying. "A Comparative Study of Eighteenth to Twentieth Century Chinese and American Country-of-Women Utopian Fictions." Ph.D. Comparative Literature, 2008. 

    Lillvis, Kristen. "Fantasies of Maternal Unity in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century African Diasporic Women's Fiction and Science Fiction." Ph.D. English, University of Kansas, 2011. 

    Lobnik, Mirja. "Nomad Memory: Inscribing Orality in Literatures of the Americas and South Asia." Ph.D. Emory University, 2010. 

    Ludwig, Kathryn. "Postsecularism and Literature: Prophetic and Apocalyptic Readings in Don Delillo, E. L. Doctorow and Toni Morrison." Ph.D. English, Purdue University,  2010. 

    Mackie, Diane DeRosier. ""Most Brought a Little of Both": The "Bible" as Intertext in Toni Morrison's Vision of Ancestry and Community." Ph.D. English, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2010. 

    Magosaki, Rei. "Sexing the City: Contemporary U.S. Women Writers and the Global Metropolis." Ph.D. University of Virginia, 2008. 

    Mahurin, Sarah. "American Exodus: Migration and Oscillation in the Modern American Novel." Ph.D. Yale University, 2011. 

    Marotta, Melanie A. "The Influence of Rural and Urban Areas on the Female Communities in the Works of Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison." Ph.D. English and Languages, Morgan State University, 2009. 

    Marshall, Courtney Denine. "Sisters in Crime: Black Femininity, Law, and Literature in American Culture." Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, 2009. 

    McCormick, Stacie Selmon. "The Open Wound: Writing Black Female Bodies." Ph.D. English, City University of New York, 2011. 

    McFarlane, Caryl. "'Claiming Ownership of That Freed Self:' Toni Morrison's American Counter-Narrative." Rutgers U, New Brunswick, 2008.  

    Merlino, Matthew. "Contemporary Historical Fiction and the Unsettling of America." U of Pennsylvania, 2008.  

    Millar, Rosemary Veronica. "A Liveable Place: (Anti)Utopianism and the African-American Literary Imagination." Ph.D. University of Virginia, 2010. 

    Mishra Tarc, Aparna. "Literacy of the Other: Making Relations to Language." York U, 2008.

    Moss, Katie. "The Power of Timelessness and the Contemporary Influence of Modern Thought." Ph.D. Georgia State University, 2008. 

    Musgrave, Megan L. "Phenomenal Women: Magical Activism in Postmodern Feminist Fiction." Loyola U, 2008.  

    Muth, Katie Ruth. "After: U.S. Literary Culture, 1989--Present." Ph.D. English & American Literature, Washington University in St. Louis, 2010. 

    Oman, Patricia. "There's No Place for Home: The Modern Displacement of Local Discourse." Ph.D. University of Oregon, 2010. 

    Patey, Helen Frances. "Freedom Fighters: The Violent Pursuit of Existential Freedom in Selected 20th Century American Narratives." Ph.D. Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada), 2008. 

    Peay, Aisha. "Reading Democracy: Anthologies of African American Women's Writing and the Legacy of Black Feminist Criticism, 1970--1990." Ph.D. English, Duke University,  2009. 

    Perez, Lorna Lynnette. "Unhomely Spaces: Us Latinas, Empire, Nation." Ph.D. English, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2008. 

    Perez, Richard. "Transamerican Ghosts: The Face, the Abyss, and the Dead of New World Post-Coloniality." Ph.D. English, City University of New York, 2008. 

    Perry, Michael Aaron. "Writing Blue: Performing Spirituality, Freedom, and Repetition in Blues Literature." Ph.D. Arizona State University, 2008. 

    Pitts, April. "Democracy and Dystopia in Post-Watergate American Fiction." Ph.D. English, Wayne State University, 2009. 

    Poll, Ryan Howard. "Main-Street Modernity: U.S. Narratives of Nationalism, Imperialism, and Exceptionalism." Ph.D. English, University of California, Davis, 2009. 

    Ramlagan, Michelle N. "(Re)Placing Nation: Postcolonial Women's Contestations of Spatial Discourse." Ph.D. English (Arts & Sciences), University of Miami, 2011. 

    Remigio, Myra. "Adolescent Empires: Identity, Liminality, and Advocacy in Contemporary American Literature." Ph.D. English, The George Washington University, 2008. 

    Ribas-Casasayas, Alberto. "Haunting Contemporary Narrative: Juan Rulfo, Toni Morrison, Carlos Fuentes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Martin Amis." Harvard U, 2008.  

    Rodriguez, Jennifer Leigh. "Morphing the Gothic: The New Voice of Gothic Literature among Contemporary Women Writers." D.Litt. Drew University, 2008. 

    Rogers, Katina L. "Trauma and the Representation of the Unsayable in Late Twentieth-Century Fiction." Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2010. 

    Sato, Paula Kaye. "The Gothic or the Monstrous: African American and Caribbean Nightmares." Ph.D. University of Virginia, 2008. 

    Schmidt, Amy L. "All over God's Creation: Global Jim Crow in the Texts of Lillian Smith, Richard Wright, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evelyn Scott, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison." Ph.D. University of Arkansas, 2011. 

    Serpell, Carla Namwali. "The Ethics of Uncertainty: Reading Twentieth-Century American Literature." Ph.D. Harvard University, 2008. 

    Showalter, Anne. ""Chosen to Deliver": Black Female Jeremiads in American Literature and Culture." Ph.D. English, 2011. 

    Sieck, Jennifer Johns. "Mixtheory: Non-Linguistic Communal Expression in African American Literature." Ph.D. Human Sciences, The George Washington University, 2010. 

    Sierra, Erick Samuel. "Thinking the Body Transcendent: Racial Violence and the Mystical Imaginary in Contemporary American Literature." Ph.D., Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick,  2010. 

    Smiles, Robin Virginia. "Romance, Race and Resistance in Best-Selling African American Narrative." Ph.D. English Language and Literature, University of Maryland, College Park, 2009. 

    Spottke, Nicole. "Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents: Women Writing of Home in Gendered Spaces." Ph.D. University of South Florida, 2009. 

    Stadt, Kevin. "Blood and Truth: Violence and Postmodern Epistemology in Morrison, Mccarthy, and Palahniuk." Ph.D. English, Northern Illinois University, 2009. 

    Strong, Justina. "Landscapes of Memory: The Cartography of Longing." U of Alabama, 2010.  

    Sy, Kadidia. "Women's Relationships: Female Friendship in Toni Morrison's "Sula" and "Love", Mariama Ba's "So Long a Letter" and Sefi Atta's "Everything Good Will Come"." Ph.D. Georgia State University, 2008. 

    Tait, Althea Letisha. "Redefining Women's Beauty through Toni Morrison: A Black Feminist Reading." Ph.D. English and Languages, Morgan State University, 2008. 

    Taylor, Deborah. "Reading Utopian Narratives in a Dystopian Time." Ph.D. English Language and Literature, University of Maryland, College Park,  2008. 

    Taylor, Ordner W., III. "The Romantic Beloved: The Influences of "the Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Frankenstein" on Toni Morrison's "Beloved"." Ph.D. English and Languages, Morgan State University, 2009. 

    Thomas, Ketty. "The Lazarus Crisis: Subjectivity, Language and Sacrifice in Cultural Narratives." Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2008. 

    Thompson, Elizabeth Rose. "Saving the Southern Sister: Tracing the Survivor Narrative in Southern Women's Modern and Contemporary Novels and Plays." Ph.D. The University of Memphis, 2010. 

    Thorsson, Courtney. "Women's Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels." Ph.D. Columbia University, 2009. 

    Tolbert, Tolonda Michele. "To Walk or Fly?: The Folk Narration of Community and Identity in Twentieth Century Black Women's Literature of the Americas." Ph.D. Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick, 2010. 

    Tomlinson, Yolande M. S. "To Fanon, with Love: Women Writers of the African Diaspora Interrupting Violence, Masculinity, and Nation-Formation." Ph.D. Emory University, 2010. 

    Tu, Chao-Mei. "Historical Narrative in Fiction: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Contemporary American and Chinese Fiction by Women Writers." Ph.D. English, Purdue University, 2008. 

    Tuttle, Tara. ""Biting Temptation": An Examination of the Eden Myth in the Southern Fiction of William Faulkner, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison." Ph.D. University of Louisville, 2008. 

    Veric, Charles Samuya. "Techniques of the Face: An Essay on Everyday Embodiment, Representation, and Consciousness." Ph.D. Yale University, 2011. 

    Wallace, Kristi Monique. "The Road in Picture: Fellini, Demme, Kassovitz." U of Oregon, 2008.

    Ward, Desiree Lynne. "Weaving with Threads of Hope: Postmodern Narrative Strategies and the Novel." Ph.D. The University of Texas at Dallas, 2010. 

    Watson, Khalilah Tyri. "Literature as Prophecy: Toni Morrison as Prophetic Writer." Ph.D. Georgia State University, 2009. 

    Weiss, Daniel. "Cormac Mccarthy, Violence, and the American Tradition." Ph.D. English, Wayne State University, 2009. 

    Wilson, Christine Renee. ""Ever Learning to Dwell": Habitability in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Literature." Ph.D. Michigan State University, 2008. 

    Winters, Joseph Richard. "Remembering the Dismembered: The Work of Mourning and Hope in Adorno and Morrison." Ph.D. Princeton University, 2009. 

    Yoo, JaeEun. "Ghost Novels: Haunting as Form in the Works of Toni Morrison, Don Delillo, Michael Ondaatje, and J. M. Coetzee." Ph.D. Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick, 2009. 

    Zumfelde Pagano, Amy C. "Surviving Survival: Trauma, Testimony and Text in Slavery and Holocaust Fictional Narratives." Ph.D. Comparative Literary Studies, Northwestern University, 2009.