Due to copyright restrictions, the collection contains both open access and university access theses. University access items are only available to SDSU users, and on-campus visitors. Non-SDSU users wishing to access restricted materials may request items through their institution’s interlibrary loan services.
Materials deposited prior to April 2026 are archived in this repository for research, reference and recordkeeping. If previously archived PDFs files are not fully accessible and you would like a remediated file or other information about the materials, please contact us at openprairie@sdstate.edu or 605-688-5567.
Theses/Dissertations from 2025
Panem’s Pitfalls: Reading The Hunger Games as a Critique of Noncritical Media Consumption, Madison Phipps
Alligator Blood: How Novels Show What We Cannot Say, Ben Vukovich
Theses/Dissertations from 2023
Writing Young Adult Fiction: Reflections on Narration and Theme in Young Adult Literature, Kimberly Davidson
Theses/Dissertations from 2022
The Terrors of Everyday Life: The Gothic Novel as a Woman's Conduct Guide to Survival, 1791-1817, Jessica Berg
Middle American Gothic, Jordan Heisler
Deforming the Knight: Gawain's Descent into Monstrosity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Hannah Held
Mitakuye Oyasin : Pedagogy and Design in Composition I, Jody Lee Rust
Theses/Dissertations from 2021
ETDS from 2018
Life Sucks: Classifying Transgressive Fiction, Jena Christianson
ETDS from 2017
Reflection and Acceptance: Small Town Ghosts Represented in Poetry, Adam Junker
Speak, Little Mute Girl: Representations of Mute Women in Film, Honor Schwartz
ETDS from 2016
A Poetic Response to Cancer: Scars, Mortality, and the Doctor-Patient Relationship, Jodi Andrews
Queering the Spheres: Non-Normative Gender, Sexuality, and Family in Three Victorian Texts, Randi Mihajlovic
Within and Without: Psychoanalysis, Trauma Theory, and the Healing Narrative, Carrie Crisman Oorlog
ETDS from 2015
Death of the Cowboys: George W. Bush, 21st Century Westerns, and the Failure of Masculine Performance, Mark Brenden
The Roots of the Orange Tree : Metaphor in Anthony Burgess’s Alternative Reality, Lindsey Clouse
The Gathering Darkness: J.R.R. Tolkien's Exploration of Evil, David Alden Herbener
Composing a Literary Adoption Memoir and Self Through Creative Nonfiction Memoir Writing, Jamie K. Nagy
ETDS from 2014
Relationships, Representations, and the Balance of Power in P.G. Wodehouse's My Man Jeeves, A Damsel in Distress, and Piccadilly Jim, Casey Alsaker
Beyond Performance: Issues of Female Agency in Eliza Haywood's Fiction, Aubrey Berger
Shifgrethor as the Deterministic Theme in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Amber Hanson
Empowering Students with Critical Pedagogy : Encouraging Social Change in the Composition I Classroom, Katherine Highfill
No More 'Flawless Victory': Exploring the Inability of the Warrior to Reintegrate into the Domestic State in Post-9/11 War Narratives, Jonathan Koehler
They, Too Sing America : Braided Narratives About Immigrants and the American Dream, Sheryl Kurylo
From Novel of Ideas to Pop Phenomenon: The Transmission of Atlas Shrugged into Popular Culture, Stephen E. Snyder
Consuming Masses:The Zombie Figure in Twenty-first Century Post-apocalyptic Literature and Film, Susanna Vander Vorste
ETDS from 2013
Post-9/11 SF Films: Terrorism, Warfare, and Dystopia, Jacob Herrmann
Analyzing Nabokvo's Rendering of Metalanguage and Phonaesthesia in the Gift and Dar, Natalia Vasilyeva
ETDS from 2012
A Rhetorical Examination of the Barack Obama Phenomenon in the 2008 Presidential Campaign, Steve Binkley
The Crooked End of Nowhere: Fantastic Fiction and its Adoption of the Gothic and Uncanny, Amanda Braun
Moments of Grace: Bridging Noir Fiction with Rural-regional LIterature, Thomas P. Flynn
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A View Into the Colonial Abyss, Tamara Joelle Voight
Theses/Dissertations from 2011
An Analysis of Ontological Succession in Icelandic Saga Literature, Richard H. Ganci
A Fellowship of Limbs: The Process of Shifting Poetic Perspectives, Sara Olivier
Theses/Dissertations from 2010
Inverting the Hierarchy: Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger, and the Literary Legacy of Richard II, Nicholass Giedt
Songs of Heaven and Stuff of Earth: Geoffrey Chaucer's Prioress and the Medieval Body-Soul Debate, Kathleen M. Grode
Saving the Sorceresses, Shrews and Side-notes: Marion Zimmer Bradley's Feminist Arthurian Redaction, Bridget R. Nordquist
Theses/Dissertations from 2009
Non-Conformist Fiction in 1950s America : Social Criticism in Invisible Man, The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit, and On the Road, Shirley Renee Even
The Evolution of an Artist: Hemingway Writes the Spanish Civil War, Tony Hendrickson
In the Name of the Spirit: The Secularization of American Evangelicalism in Esther, The Pit: A Story of Chicago, and Elmer Gantry, Emily S. Olson
Theses/Dissertations from 2008
"Each One a Pilgrim of Four Billion Years" : Religious Perspectives on Animals in the Prose of Annie Dillard and Gary Snyder, Benjamin Michael Barondeau
Man Or Mouse?: Representations of Masculinity in American Television and Film, 1998-2008, Jose Iglesias-Urquizar
The Rhetoric of Remediation: Metaphor and Context in SDSU Writing Center Discourse, Amber L. Jensen
The Speculative Spirit of the American Businessman: The Stock Market in the Fiction of William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser, Colleen S. Poindexter
Ravaging the fruited plain : use and abuse of the land in Faulkner's Go down, Moses and DeLillo's Underworld, Howard Schaap
Theses/Dissertations from 2007
Extending The Female Role to The Public Realm : Elizabeth Gaskell's Absent, Yet Omnipresent, Characters, Brandi Jo Fuglsby
Edith Wharton's Male Protagonists : Artists and Advocates of The "Republic of The Spirit", Katherine A. Pavel
Theses/Dissertations from 2006
Americanizing The Hero : Thoreau's Extension of Carlylean Heroism, Rebekah Billings
Renewing the Curriculum: Cultural Studies in The College Composition Classroom, Kameo Crable
Low-swinging Chariots : The Automobile and Fateful Nostalgia in The Magnificent Ambersons, One of Ours, and The Great Gatsby, Darin D. Halvorsen
The Legacy of Hawthornean Guilt in Faulkner's Fiction, Jennifer Kluck
Looking Forward : E.M. Forster's Changing Liberalism, Nathan Serfling
Theses/Dissertations from 2005
Wild Cat Dreaming: The Dreaming Experience as a Means of Constructing the Individual in Mudrooroo Nyoongah/Colin Johnson's Novels, Nicole Leigh Biever
Theses/Dissertations from 2004
"A Certain Slant of Light": Emily Dickinson and Synaesthesia, Erin J. Pavlovic
Theses/Dissertations from 2003
Riding the Fence, Leaning to the Left, and Bending Over Backward : Awkward Positions in Teaching Gender Studies Within the College Composition Classroom, Julie Bergan Abraham
Transcendence in the Literature of the 1920s: Religion, Violence, and Solace, Glen Enander
Analysis and Performance: A Two-Pronged Approach to Making the Ballad Tradition Woman-Friendly, Kate Baum Fjelstad
Computer Technology's Impact on College Composition, Deana Hueners
The Reinterpretation of American History from the Perspectives of the Outsiders in E. L. Doctorow's Novels, Jaerim Kim
"Shall I Speak for Thee?" Lucrece, Lavinia, and the Language of Rape, April Myrick
Was That a Question?: A Study of High-Rise Terminals, Jill M. Spindler
Theses/Dissertations from 2002
Choice and the Victimization that Results : The "Special" Women of Edith Wharton, Sandy Buelow
Leslie Marmon Silko and James Welch's use of the Travel Novel Genre and Native American Gazes in Gardens in The Dunes and The Heartsong of Charging Elk, Jason Benjamin Currie-Olson
The "Art" of Edith Wharton's Fiction : The Legend and Portrait of Beatrice Cenci, Amy M. Einspahr
Art in Mourning : Surviving The Survivors in Maus, Sheri A. Morey
Writing Minnesotan : A Critical Analysis of Dialect and Culture in Upper Midwestern Regional Literature, Devonna Preteau
The Terror of Insanity : A Study of Hawthorne's Schizophrenic Protagonists, Jaclyn Raw
In Praise of Motherhood and Domesticity : A Re-examination of the Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin, Tanya Larson Vanderlinde
Theses/Dissertations from 2001
The Gump Slump : Challenging Anti-Intellectualism in the College Composition Classroom, Kelly Susan Bradbury-Veldhuisen
"Do not weep" : The Healing Narrative in the Twentieth Century American War Novel, Naomi Joy Stapleton
Music As Resource : Comfort and Redemption Through the Use of Blues and Jazz in African American and Native American texts, Michael L. Torrence
Spiritual Victims : Violence Against Women in the Works of Flannery O'Connor, Sarah A. Tupa
Theses/Dissertations from 2000
Allure and Appreciation of Natural History in the Writings of Gene Stratton Porter, Cheryl Sahm Birkelo
The Forgotten Bestseller : Timothy Shay Arthur's Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, and What I Saw There or How to Properly Blend Elements of a Genre : The American Potboiler, Christopher Sean Harris
Love : Inspiration to Transcendental Self-reliance in Alcott's Works, Tamara Arlynn Mannes
Theses/Dissertations from 1999
Willa Cather and Bess Streeter Aldrich : Portraying Realistic Women of the Plains in The Cult of True Womanhood, Kristen Haar
Harvesting Their Stories : South Dakota Writers' Perspectives on Pioneering Women 1870-1900, Cynthia A. Stupnik
The Internet and Critical Thinking in the First-Year Composition Classroom, Amy Thompson
On the Dangerous Edge of Things : Moral Dilemmas in Greeneland, Jung Hun Um
Theses/Dissertations from 1998
"Straight Naturalism With All The Guts" : Frank Norris and the Evolution of American Naturalism, Mary A. Akkerman
The Rhetoric of Oliver Stone's JFK, Jason T. McEntee
E-prime and the General Semantics Paradigm : Devolution, Revolution, or Evolution?, Lisa J. Roberts
The rhetoric of imperialism in the Lewis and Clark journals : Camp Dubois to the Mandan Villages, Joan K. Warner
Theses/Dissertations from 1997
The Universal Female : Female Characters as Catalysts in William Blake's Vala or The Four Zoas, Jeanne A. James-Hansen
Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko : Two Approaches to Traditional Keres Myths, Cecilia Ragaini
The Witness of Landscape : Annie Dillard and Jose Maria Arguedas in Accord with Nature, Susan Helfert Shaw
A Portrait of a Prairie Daughter : The Development of Beret Holm's Character in Rølvaag's Trilogy, Renee Harms Van Der Werff
Universality and the Self-discovery Narrative : Three Works by Contemporary Writers, Paula L. Wehmeyer
Theses/Dissertations from 1996
Images of Women's Power and Powerlessness in the Texts of Lillie Devereux Blake, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, and Susan Petigru King, Karen J. Jacobsen
A Tolkien Tapestry : Interwoven Epic Threads in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Alan Christopher Jalowitz
The Evolving Frontier in the Works of Sigurd F. Olson, Steven R. Juenemann
Senior English and Freshman Composition : Bridging the Gap, Nan Noteboom
Literature v. Technology : Don DeLillo's Postmodern Contribution, Matthew B. Quigley
Jean Toomer: Writing a Painting, Ellen K. Sigl
Theses/Dissertations from 1995
The Erotic Female Voice of Charlotte Mew, Penni Elizabeth Pearson
Modern Theories of Assessment: A Comparison and Proposal, Amy L. Siebring-Jurrens
"Unutterable Wo": An Attempt to Achieve the Creative Male Self Through Feminine Influence in the Life and Work of Edgar Allan Poe, Catherine A. Twitero
An Examination of the Spiritual Conflicts Faced by Louise Erdrich's Chippewa Characters, Jennifer Leigh Widman