Publication Date

2019

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Swanson, Diana L.

Second Advisor

Van Wienen, Mark W.

Degree Name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Legacy Department

Department of English

Abstract

In this critical and creative dissertation, I sketch a brief study of selected multicultural hybrid texts in contemporary US Anglophone literary studies; discuss their implications for reading, writing, and teaching; and present my own hybrid text.

Second-wave feminist and womanist theories and practices opened literary and cultural studies to new and exciting ideas and methods for reading, teaching, and writing both canonical and non-canonical Anglophone texts. One genre emerging anew by these theories, practices, and practitioners is the literary hybrid text, a multi-genre form composed of a variety of prose genres, poetry, drama, and/or visual imagery. Hybrid texts ask readers and writers to rethink both form and content.

In the spirit of this mostly unacknowledged tradition of critical/scholarly writings and creative texts that combine anti-hegemonic counter-narratives with creative writing, this dissertation merges the scholarly/critical with the creative, in this case original poetry, memoir, and critical writing deeply influenced and shaped by second-wave feminist and womanist concerns. The critical essays address literary questions including the cultural functions of the

hybrid text and the work of writers such as Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Essex Hemphill, Joanna Kadi, and Gustavo Pérez Firmat. Other essays concern cultural issues including eroticism, radical feminism, gay male sexuality, class, and disability. The poems illuminate my personal and political concerns about the self, others, sexuality, gender, and the machinations of the contemporary world and attempt to honor the art of poetry itself by creating it. Finally, the dissertation concludes with a flash fiction that in its brevity hopes to encapsulate the radical feminist and womanist interests that this project encompasses.

Extent

203 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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