Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

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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2008 - 200912010 - 20131

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    The Presence of Ghosts in African American Literature
    (2013) Adamson, Laurie; Wong, Edlie; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The enslavement of Africans in the Americas was also a repeated trauma experienced across generations. The lives of some individuals exemplify the widespread experience of suffering and degradation. The first half of this paper explores how writers of historical fiction represent the lives of those individuals, namely Margaret Garner and Tituba of Salem. In their respective novels, both Toni Morrison and Maryse Condé claim a connection to the ghosts of Garner and Tituba. What ethical questions emerge from such a relationship? Is the ghost a projection of the needs of the living; do these writers use the dead to authorize their texts? In other words, does the choice to bear witness through writing have more to do with the demands of a living readership than the needs of the ghost? The second half of the paper reads in Corregidora by Gayl Jones and Praiseong for the Widow by Paule Marshal what Beloved and I, Tituba are unable, or unwilling, to accomplish. That is the possibility of redress, of using memory as a political tool through which to claim a lost heritage. This half of the paper also questions whether remembering through writing moves the trauma from private, inconsolable grief to public, political grievance.
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    Entertaining Ghosts: Gettysburg Ghost Tours and the Performance of Belief
    (2008-05-05) Thompson, Robert Charles; Frederik Meer, Laurie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Gettysburg is the site of the largest battle and death toll during the entire American Civil War. Ghost tours are a tourism business and performance genre that arose out of the notion that the spirits of these dead soldiers have lingered on since the battle. Some tourists join a ghost tour in hopes of encountering a ghost, but almost all tourists expect to be entertained. My project is to define the ghost tour as a distinct genre and examine each of the elements that comprise a ghost tour performance. I argue that the most effective ghost tour is the tour that is best able to render ghosts as a potential truth and perform potential truth as a form of entertainment. How do ghost tour guides render ghosts' presence a genuine possibility for their tour groups? How might we understand performance and entertainment as a means to activate sincere belief?