Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Afropolitan Hackers: Redefining Anglophone African Literature
    (2022) Faradji, Sara; Ray, Sangeeta; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the twenty-first century, we are witnessing a resounding boom in the production and reception of Anglophone African literature. Novelists like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole, Lauren Beukes, and Dinaw Mengestu have achieved critical acclaim in Africa, the U.S., Europe, and beyond. My dissertation examines how these writers are reshaping our understandings of African literature and criticism. I explore how “African Boom” writers resemble computer hackers that break existing conventions and actively rebuild those systems for the better. They adeptly learn the “code” of Anglophone literature, but then they “break into” the literary canon, steal the master’s tropes, and modify the literature to be even more effective and resonant among academic and popular audiences. My dissertation specifically engages with the writing of authors who I call Afropolitan hackers. These writers distinctively reflect Afro-cosmopolitan sensibilities in both their fictional and critical works. As they receive high praise from reputable academic and popular literary critics, Afropolitan hackers make bold, dynamic changes to the very literary canon they studied and disrupted. In order to demonstrate how African Boom writers are Afropolitan hackers, I consider how they challenge past and present concerns in postcolonial literature. Specifically, I examine how some of them are “hacking” three classic literary tropes: the flâneur, the griot, and the scammer. By simultaneously debunking and extending traditional theoretical expectations of the African narrative, select Africa-based and migrant Afropolitan authors challenge the notion that their writing must epitomize a single story if they seek to appeal to a global audience.
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    WAITING FOR 2008 OLYMPICS: POLITICS BETWEEN PEOPLE, THE WEST AND THE CHINESE STATE
    (2010) Zhang, Tan; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this dissertation, I primarily examine the power complex formed by the People/the peoples, the Chinese state and the West, particularly its embodiment before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. This dissertation will adopt Giorgio Agamben's theorizing of People/peoples to map the dialectical power dynamics through which the state sovereign of China tended to reinforced itself through hosting the Beijing Games. In addition, by engaging critical theories of cultural studies, I hope to avoid structural formalism caused by relying on one particular theory. Thus, by bringing post-colonial theories, theories of intersectionality, theories of transnational feminism and theories of globalization together, I want to capture the role discursively played by the West that shape and reshapes the People/the peoples. The focus of my empirical study is the People/the people. Each chapter explores one group of individuals - the peoples confined by constructed identities. According to Agamben, the People/the peoples are nothing but pure construction by the power of the state. Although the People/the peoples are sometimes "fragmentary multiplicity of needy and excluded bodies" (Agamben, 1998), it is often the case that the People/the peoples resist the power, acquire new subjectivities, and even actively engage in power negotiation with the state and the West. In this sense, the People/the peoples are not what Agamben theorized "bare life" that can only unconditionally subject themselves to the power. Instead, they carry the potential to disrupt power construction by forming transcendental subjectivity. Following Andrews' (2008) suggestion of embracing Physical Cultural Study, I employ a variety of qualitative methodologies to articulate the dynamic power complex. By doing so, I hope to make my limited contribution to breaking the confines that the power used to construct the People/the peoples, and possibly leading China to its proper place in this cosmopolitan world.