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Item Open Access Arthur Miller: A Writer of Tragedy(1967-08) Smith, Phyllis Shuff; Herrin, Virginia; EnglishThe purpose of this study is to prove that Arthur Miller, American playwright, accomplishes his stated aim--the creation of drama similar in purpose and spirit to that of the classical Greeks. This thesis goes a step beyond Miller's statement to maintain that Miller, while achieving his goal, uses the same austere general form that the Greeks employed. Since Miller mentions only one critic of Greek drama by name, H. D. F. Kitto, in his frequent references to the social drama of the Greeks, Professor Kitto's analyses and interpretations of the classical plays are used as the major source for the material on the Greek drama.Item Embargo Deadly Reflection(East Carolina University, 2023-05-09) Fornes, Brad Mark; EnglishDeadly Reflection is a fictional horror novel in which a group of young adults are stalked by a mysterious and sinister entity known as the Old Man, who only appears to them in mirrors or other reflective surfaces. The novel not only focuses on the elements of terror, but also showcases the lives and relationships of the characters the Old Man is menacing. This work aims to break genre conventions by presenting a racially diverse group of characters from differing backgrounds while also showing an understanding of the genre and its necessary conventions. As a work of creative fiction, Deadly Reflection features fully realized characters, a structured plot, and use of carefully crafted prose and descriptions to tell the novel’s story.Item Open Access Ubiquitous in Time: Towards a Description of the Supernatural Folklore of Time Travel(East Carolina University, 2023-04-21) Budasoff, Adam; EnglishThe proliferation of mass-media representations of time travel has, since the late 1800s, created a metatraditional perception that all such variants originated from that selfsame sphere of influence. This has manifested most strongly in the view that prior to H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine, notions of time travel and time travelers were not extant. Seeking to prove this belief incorrect, the following thesis charts out an evolutionary pathway for time travel which demonstrates not only strong historical roots within folk traditions of the past, but a very much vibrant and active practice today. The contemporary manifestations analyzed within this work include the time slip phenomenon as reported by first-hand experiencers, ostensive practices inspired by supernatural time travel lore, and a look at the uncanny figure of the time traveler who often sits at its core.Item Open Access AM I WHO I SAY I AM? THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE: BIOMETRIC IDENTIFICATION IN HEALTHCARE(East Carolina University, 2023-05-01) Banville, Morgan Catherine; EnglishGrounded in surveillance studies and technical communication, this study defines biometric identification technologies as personal identifiers of the body, focusing specifically on how neonatal nurses use and perceive such technologies within the context of the United States healthcare system. As biometric identification and authentication becomes more commonplace within various sectors such as healthcare and medical-adjacent, it is crucial for technical communicators to return to the origins of biometric implementation to inform current interventions, and to question the reasons behind the urgency of implementing such technologies for efficiency, security, and compliance. Drawing from a corpus of communication materials from biometric companies, questionnaires, and ten interviews with neonatal nurses, this study explores the justification of implementing biometric technologies, including how biometric technologies are defined. Data analysis was conducted using interlocking surveillance, a framework that addresses sites of surveillance and their levels of awareness, advocacy, and transparency of normalized surveillant practices. This study contributes to understandings and perceptions that neonatal nurses have of biometric technologies in healthcare and extends far past the scope of privacy. Even so, privacy in this study is situated as both a tradeoff and illusion of choice: you can change your password, but you can’t change your fingerprint. Because the U.S. has a preoccupation with security and surveillance technologies, this study can better inform technical communicators how to intervene in and implement decision-making practices. In particular, this study argues that neonatal nurses are technical communicators: they communicate and negotiate specialized information. The findings contribute to redefining what it means to be a technical communicator, re-rhetoricizing how technical communication is represented in the medical sector. Further takeaways from the study influence future coalitional work, questioning and revising normalized surveillance including ethics of biometric use, and localization of community input and participatory approaches for design of and intervention in communication materials.Item Open Access ENCOURAGING PREVENTIVE ACTION BY EMPLOYING EFFECTIVE RHETORIC IN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION OF THE ZIKA HAZARD AND ASSOCIATED RISKS(East Carolina University, 2022-07-26) Morris, Abigail L; Frost, Erin A; Morse, Tracy A; Kain, Donna; Ding, Huiling; EnglishThreats from Zika and other emergent arboviruses (arthropod-borne viruses) often receive little scholarly attention across most disciplines thanks in no small part to the traditional view that most emergent disease discourse is only immediately relevant to those in medical and economic fields. The reality is that any time endemic threats pose risks to public welfare or become threats to national health and security, scholars from all fields should reevaluate how their current and developing skills and knowledge could be employed to help prevent and/or minimize negative outcomes when outbreaks seem likely. Scholars in the fields of rhetoric and technical communication have developed skills and knowledge that would render us particularly well suited to work with those in medical, economic, and public communication fields to develop or remediate tools and resources to alter potential outbreak outcomes in positive ways if we were offered or willing to claim a seat at their table. This study utilizes surveying of residents in Harlingen, Texas, regarding Zika as a springboard into research on public health communication failures as represented by technical documents designed to communicate health and safety information about Zika and validated by revision of those documents to increase their effectiveness in encouraging proactive prevention behaviors and retention of health knowledge.Item Open Access ENCOURAGING PREVENTIVE ACTION BY EMPLOYING EFFECTIVE RHETORIC IN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION OF THE ZIKA HAZARD AND ASSOCIATED RISKS(East Carolina University, 2022-07-26) Morris, Abigail L; Clark, Erin (Erin A.); EnglishThreats from Zika and other emergent arboviruses (arthropod-borne viruses) often receive little scholarly attention across most disciplines thanks in no small part to the traditional view that most emergent disease discourse is only immediately relevant to those in medical and economic fields. The reality is that any time endemic threats pose risks to public welfare or become threats to national health and security, scholars from all fields should reevaluate how their current and developing skills and knowledge could be employed to help prevent and/or minimize negative outcomes when outbreaks seem likely. Scholars in the fields of rhetoric and technical communication have developed skills and knowledge that would render us particularly well suited to work with those in medical, economic, and public communication fields to develop or remediate tools and resources to alter potential outbreak outcomes in positive ways if we were offered or willing to claim a seat at their table. This study utilizes surveying of residents in Harlingen, Texas, regarding Zika as a springboard into research on public health communication failures as represented by technical documents designed to communicate health and safety information about Zika and validated by revision of those documents to increase their effectiveness in encouraging proactive prevention behaviors and retention of health knowledge.Item Restricted Wild Horses(East Carolina University, 2022-03-23) Shope, Ashten L; Bauer, Margaret Donovan, 1963-; EnglishWild Horses is a Literary Fiction novel that intersects with Queer and Indigenous Literature. The narrative is a close third point of view following the perspectives of primary protagonist, Amanda Sloan (Mara), her father, Joel Sloan, and Jonathan (Jack) Aldridge. The plot explores the issues of trans-female identity, sex trafficking, addiction, Queer-family dynamics, Indigenous rights, and the overcoming of societal violence. The novel's primary narrative is juxtaposed with the Umatilla version of the Sahaptin myth, Coyote and the River Monster, a traditional origin story told by many tribes of the Columbia River basin in Oregon. The thesis is the first section of the novel, which opens with teenage Mara being coyoted back over the US-Mexican border after her sex-reassignment surgery where she then finds herself embroiled in a sex trafficking ring. She is trafficked with other trans women, many of whom are trans women of color. The narrative alternates both in POV and time between teenage Mara/adult Amanda, Joel, and Jack. In the subsequent chapters, Amanda returns to her hometown of Little Creek, Oregon to rebuild her family's derelict ranch and reestablish herself within her homeland.Item Open Access Women's Rights and Religious Bias in Dystopian Speculative Fiction: A Closer Look at Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God and Christina Dalcher’s Vox(East Carolina University, 2022-04-27) Macomber, Kelli D; Gueye, Marame; EnglishSpeculative fiction provides a perfect vehicle to examine the state of women's rights. Through the Intersectional Feminist lens, I consider the speculative projections within Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God and Christine Dalcher's Vox, as well as the impact that religious doctrines have on the possible outcomes the books illustrate. I use recent events to illustrate the type of contemporary actions that influenced Erdrich and Dalcher in their writing.Item Open Access The Humanization of 20th Century Europe’s Perpetrators: How Humanizing Our History’s Perpetrators Can Better Our Future(East Carolina University, 2022-04-13) Hutchens, Hali; Huang, Su-ching; EnglishThis thesis examines the need for the humanization of 20th-century Europe's perpetrators, the Nazis, through literature. The purpose of this project is to make clear why the standpoint that Nazis were once ordinary citizens is not detrimental but rather helpful in our understanding of the Holocaust. I focus on literary works Der Vorleser (The Reader), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and The Dutch Wife, as they support my argument that the humanization of perpetrators can be educational. Within these chapters, I discuss the psychological explanations of how and why a moral person dehumanizes him/herself in order to take part in mass genocide, the relationships between the Nazis and their complicit-by-extension loved ones, and how such ideologies affect future generations. Essentially, I propose that novels which humanize fictional Nazis are useful in our strife to create a future society in which extraordinary evil, such as seen during World War II, is a thing of the past.Item Restricted Josephus, Messianism and the Jewish uprising of A.D. 65 : interpretations and analysis(East Carolina University) Osborne, Jason M.; Papalas, Anthony J.Item Open Access Item Open Access Changing Nature: Stacy Alaimo and Cary Wolfe at ASLE(2014-12-03) Feder, HelenaItem Open Access Rethinking Multiculturalism: theory and nonhuman cultures(2010) Feder, HelenaItem Open Access Item Open Access Contradiction Is Not Disappointing: An Interview with Michael Hardt(2019-08-19) Feder, HelenaItem Open Access "The Universe is Imaginative": An Interview with David Robertson(2017) Feder, HelenaItem Open Access Science and Social Change: A Conversation with Robert Sapolsky(2019-03-07) Feder, HelenaItem Open Access "Never Waste a Good Crisis": An Interview with Mary Mellor(2018-07-19) Feder, HelenaItem Open Access This Still Present Moment: an Interview with Gary Snyder(2016) Feder, HelenaItem Open Access “The Ingenious Unravelling of Evidence”: Empathy, Extinction, and Wells’s The Croquet Player(2019-09-01) Feder, HelenaWhile we are increasingly challenged to imagine a world without humans, we have also become increasingly attentive to the subject of empathy, in popular culture, the humanities, and the sciences. In The Time Machine (1895), and a number of essays on evolution or extinction, H. G. Wells articulated a speculative evolutionary theory, a vision of nature unencumbered by everyday anthropocentricism. His little-known 1936 novella, The Croquet Player, continues his evolutionary story of humanity by turning to the future’s entanglement with the past and culture’s entanglement with nature. Prescient, Wells’s novella speaks to the parallel phenomena entangled in the strange relation between extinction and empathy.