Browsing English Language and Literature by Type "Master Thesis"
Now showing items 1-20 of 40
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Alternative Risk: A Diagnostic and Canadian Anti-Vaccine Case Study
(University of Waterloo, 2023-08-17)This thesis builds on a growing body of interdisciplinary risk scholarship that is taking place across the humanities and sciences. It combines Ulrich Beck’s sociological concept of “risk society”, legal scholar Dayna ... -
Beyond the Boundaries of English: Nonsense Language in Children's Literature
(University of Waterloo, 2018-09-04)This thesis examines the relationship between nonsense language and children’s literature. Nonsense language as a field of study provides linguists with a means of examining language within the bounds of natural languages ... -
Climate Change and Cultural Anxieties: An Exploration of Dystopian Novels from Before and After Global Warming
(University of Waterloo, 2018-08-31)Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century. However, despite the urgency of the problem, popular political narratives fail to address the issue, suggesting to constituents that climate ... -
The Collaborative Self: From Collectivity to Individuality and What Blogs Can Teach Us About Identity
(University of Waterloo, 2014-01-23)This paper uses blogs as a starting point for an examination of how identity is constructed collaboratively through a series of linguistically mediated social processes. The goal is to establish a theoretical framework ... -
Defining the Undefinable: Rhetorics of Democratic T̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ Interrogation
(University of Waterloo, 2017-03-09)Over the past decade and a half, public debate on the issue of torture has increased dramatically, with legal, political, and cultural discourses offering many, often conflicting, perspectives on the meaning and function ... -
The Department of Civic Images: Nature, Technology, and Urbanism
(University of Waterloo, 2012-08-31)The modern city is the cradle of human activity, and through it humankind has both the ability to strip the planet of life and the ability to create thriving social and ecological systems. Strategic and interactive urbanisms ... -
Dickens, Education, and Social Enrichment
(University of Waterloo, 2014-09-26)This thesis examines Charles Dickens’s criticism of Victorian education systems. This thesis considers three of Dickens’s novels: Hard Times, Nicholas Nickleby, and Great Expectations. By demonstrating the failure of ... -
Digital Darwin: Editing The Loves of the Plants as a Case Study of the Theory and Practice of Digital Editions
(University of Waterloo, 2016-04-26)Digital scholarly editing is an evolving field that allows for the rendering of complex print works that are rife with paratextual material. Erasmus Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants represents this kind of paratextually ... -
Does NME even know what a music blog is?: The Rhetoric and Social Meaning of MP3 Blogs
(University of Waterloo, 2008-09-19)MP3 blogs and their aggregators, which have risen to prominence over the past four years, are presenting an alternative way of promoting and discovering new music. I will argue that MP3 files greatly affect MP3 blogs in ... -
The Effects of Ambiguity: A Feminist Study of Human Signifiers in Human-Computer Interaction
(University of Waterloo, 2016-02-01)A lack of diversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields has been a popular topic of discussion and a persistent challenge in terms of recruitment, engagement, opportunity and equality spanning decades. ... -
Elements of the Gothic in the Works of Judith Thompson
(University of Waterloo, 2012-02-23)This thesis is an examination of the Gothic elements present in a selection of works by Canadian playwright Judith Thompson. The Gothic genre is marked by continual flux and adaptation, ensuring that its ability to inspire ... -
Fostering the Feral in Civilization: Reading Animal Characterization in Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
(University of Waterloo, 2016-08-31)Representations of the animal, although prominent in literature, are often overlooked as sources for rigorous analysis. When acknowledged, their interpretation is restricted to the realm of archetypal significance and ... -
Hannah More and Cheap Repository Tracts; Lessons in "Religious and Useful Knowledge"
(University of Waterloo, 2010-09-02)My thesis will discuss British Romantic period author and philanthropist Hannah More. I aim to portray her from a perspective that demonstrates her compelling and varying nature, that includes religion and rhetoric as ... -
Healing Through Presence: The Embodiment of Absence in the Plays of Daniel David Moses
(University of Waterloo, 2010-01-19)ABSTRACT In this thesis, it is argued that the performance of three plays written by Daniel David Moses: Brébeuf's Ghost, The Indian Medicine Shows and Almighty Voice and his Wife function as healing ceremonies. This ... -
Heroism "at a Pinch:" The Story of the Structures of Middle-earth
(University of Waterloo, 2016-09-15)Discussions of the heroic element in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings generally focus on Frodo and/or Aragorn. But Sam Gamgee is in some ways the best representative of the sort of heroism that Tolkien most admired, ... -
Hoax, Parody, and Conservatism in Harry Potter
(University of Waterloo, 2002)This essay examines the ideology or value system implicit in Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter series. Many of the images in the series, despite being fantastic or empirically unprecedented, are minor transformations of ... -
"Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour": William Blake's Visions of Time and Space in the Light of Eastern Traditions
(University of Waterloo, 2013-07-23)This thesis examines William Blake’s conceptions of time and space in the light of the philosophies of Hinduism and Islam. In order to perform this analysis, source material, often from rare and neglected texts, is utilized ... -
Horticultural Landscapes in Middle English Romance
(University of Waterloo, 2008-09-23)Gardens played a significant role in the lives of European peoples living in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By producing texts in which gardens and other cultivated landscapes are used as symbol and setting, ... -
How We Became Legion: Burke's Identification and Anonymous
(University of Waterloo, 2013-08-19)This thesis presents a study of how identification, according to Kenneth Burke's theory, can be observed in the media-related practices promoted by the cyber-activist collective Anonymous. Identification is the capacity ... -
The Interdependency of Myth and Magic in the Fionavar Tapestry
(University of Waterloo, 2016-09-15)Guy Gavriel Kay's high fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, contains an intricate system of mythological and magical interdependencies. Myth and magic are presented in the light of a traditional interaction, with a ...