Date Awarded
2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
American Studies
Advisor
Susan Donaldson
Committee Member
Francesca Sawaya
Committee Member
Michelle Lelièvre
Abstract
My Master’s Thesis is comprised of two essays that review two contemporary American texts. Through genres of the gothic and historical fiction, these texts confront America’s violence of the past and present. The first essay, “Desiring and Dispossessing: Whiteness in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God,” investigates the novel’s reliance on a gothic genre as an affective strategy to confront whiteness’ specter of self-destruction. The second essay, “Escaping Through The Underground Railroad,” reconsiders the movement of escape and theorizes the action as a miraculous but forever-incomplete movement toward alternative ways of being--a theorization that could be useful for the present day. Both essays approach fiction as a way to encounter and reconcile the histories and structures of violence of America.
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/S2BH3G
Rights
© The Author
Recommended Citation
Quinn, Zarah Victoria, "Escaping through the Past, Haunted by the Future: Confronting America through Child of God and the Underground Railroad" (2017). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. William & Mary. Paper 1516639664.
http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/S2BH3G
