Theses and dissertations published by graduate students in the Department of English, College of Arts & Letters, Old Dominion University, since Fall 2016 are available in this collection. Backfiles of all dissertations (and some theses) have also been added.
In late Fall 2025, all theses will be digitized and available here. In the meantime, consult the Library Catalog to find older items in print.
Theses/Dissertations from 1992
Thesis: The American Schoolyard: A Critical Study of Charles Bukowski's Short Fiction, Jonathan D. Weiss
Theses/Dissertations from 1991
Thesis: Touch Her, Carol Jensen Bliefernich
Thesis: Lessons From Home, Leslie T. Clark
Thesis: A Record of the Present Moment: A Comparison of the Early and Later Narrative Work of Gertrude Stein, Elisa Stuber Cohen
Thesis: Mothers and Daughters: A Study of Edith Wharton, Patricia K. Waller
Theses/Dissertations from 1990
Thesis: From Aristotle to IBM: Classical Rhetoric and the Teaching of Technical Writing, Kathleen S. Scharf
Thesis: Looking for Literary Metaphor on Film: A Structuralist Study of East of Eden, Doctor Zhivago, and To Kill a Mockingbird, Charles D. Weaver
Theses/Dissertations from 1989
Thesis: Spatiality in Ulysses and Cubism, Lingchei Chen
Thesis: Pet Rock, July A. Jolly
Thesis: Virginia Woolf's Keen Sensitivity to War: Its Roots and its Impact on Her Fiction, Jane Hamovit Lauter
Thesis: Beetle Wings and Other Savory Tidbits, Krystyna Rozanski Stefansky
Theses/Dissertations from 1988
Thesis: Discovery and Denial: Exploring Reality and Possibility in Original Prose, Deborah Porter Bryson
Thesis: Gesture Studies, Andrea Virginia Collins
Thesis: The Color of Life and Other Stories, Mary Jane Oksanen Morewitz
Thesis: Faulkner: Misogynist or Philogynist?, Imane Nejjar
Theses/Dissertations from 1987
Thesis: Stress Assignment in English, Said Abdessamad
Thesis: Over My Shoulder, Marvel Mustard
Thesis: Worlds Away From Home, Renee Ellen Olander
Thesis: Benchmarks, Mina Ryan
Theses/Dissertations from 1986
Thesis: Walk Naked in The Garden, Gale Coffin Arnoux
Thesis: Boxing time: What time is it? it's time to quit, William J. Pascarosa
Thesis: This Blood in All of Us, Dorothy Roberta Tobe
Theses/Dissertations from 1985
Thesis: "Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end." The Significance of Conscious Choice: Four Original Stories, Ellen C. Barclay
Thesis: Skinned, Mary Ann Campbell
Thesis: Belief and Betrayal in Fiction: Four Original Stories, Betty Ann Lanigan
Thesis: The Ring of Single Solutions, Deborah Anne Plummer
Thesis: Litotes: of the Unforgotten, R. K. Puma
Theses/Dissertations from 1984
Thesis: To Sing Like the Hermit Thrush, Gwen McAlpine
Thesis: Biographical Themes in T. S. Eliot's Early Poetry, Jeo-Yong Noh
Thesis: "A Terror and a Dream": Domestic Imagery in the Poetry of Anne Sexton, Frances S. Waters
Theses/Dissertations from 1983
Thesis: Three Disappearances, Mari LoNano Polansky
Thesis: Character and Mood in Prose: Nine Original Pieces, Georgianna A. Schroeder
Theses/Dissertations from 1977
Thesis: Unifying Principles in the English Renaissance Sonnet Sequence, Deborah Fairfield Heatwole
Thesis: The Priest in Gulliver's Travels, Mary Virginia Green Mathews
Thesis: Samuel Becket's Use of "Silence", Russell V. Watkins
Theses/Dissertations from 1976
Thesis: Vitruvian Influence in the Design of the Fortune Theatre, 1600-1621, James Boyd Crawford
Thesis: An Exploration of the Roots of the Feminist Heroine in the Lives and Selected Works of Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy, Pamela L. Smith
Theses/Dissertations from 1975
Thesis: Fresh-Robed/ In Flesh: The Incarnation Theme in the Poetry of C. S. Lewis, Margaret P. Anderson
Thesis: The Use of Analogy in the Learning Process in Piers the Plowman, Carol Eason Jones
Theses/Dissertations from 1974
Thesis: Animal Imagery in the Comedies of Ben Jonson and William Congreve, Carl Raymond Ludwigson
Thesis: John Galsworthy and the Theme of Unhappy Marriage and Divorce: 1895-1911, June Moosbrugger
Theses/Dissertations from 1973
Thesis: The Expression of Despair in Three Hardy Novels, Brenda J. Casey
Thesis: Poe's Humor in Theory and Practice, Celinda V. Claxton
Thesis: A Study of Nonstandard English in Reading in the Junior High Schools of Portsmouth, Virginia, Gail Biery Kettlewell
Thesis: Faulkner's Concept of Innocence: A Study of Horace Benbow, Thomas Sutpen, and the Convict in The Wild Palms, Sandra Sayre Moll
Thesis: Visual Imagery in the Shorter Fiction of D. H. Lawrence, Archie Leland Simmons
Theses/Dissertations from 1972
Thesis: Durability of Addison's Criticism of Milton, Vivian Marguerite Duke
Thesis: The Stage History of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Kathy Lynn Emerson
Thesis: Political Concepts in the Novels of Carson McCullers, Ronald Flowe
Thesis: The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins: An Incarnation of Love, Jenny Norman
Theses/Dissertations from 1971
Thesis: Non-Standard English in Norfolk City Schools, Louise A. DeVere
Thesis: Saint Joan as Tragedy in Terms of Tragic Rhythm and Ritual, Terry A. French
Thesis: An Analysis of Byron's Attempt to Reform the English Stage Through His Venetian Plays, Linda J. Fuller
Thesis: Hemingway's Key West Women: A Study of the Female Characterizations of To Have and Have Not, Nancy Glover Lobaugh
Thesis: Hemingway's Key West Women: A Study of the Female Characterizations of To Have and Have Not, Nancy Glover Lobaugh
Thesis: The Theme of Despair in the Short Poems of Thomas Hardy, Janet Yarbrough Meyer
Thesis: Distance and the Search for Identity in Six Novels of Iris Murdoch, Anne B. Peterson
Thesis: Menippean Satire in Sheridan's The Critic, George A. Renn III
Thesis: Hawthorne's Obsessed Characters, Peggy Diane Wagner
Theses/Dissertations from 1970
Thesis: Defoe's Theory of Evil, Jeanette Martin Bass
Thesis: Emily Dickinson's Poetics, Edith Lodge
Thesis: The Knit of Identity in Some Fiction by Elizabeth Bowen, Vi Christensen Mullin
Thesis: The Intensification of American Confessional Poetry in the 'Sixties: Robert Lowell and Some Leading Questions, H. C. Nash
Thesis: Major Themes in the Works of Ernest Dowson, Alison Charles Phillips
Thesis: The Form of Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son: A Study in Mixed Modes, David Lee Smith
Thesis: The Uses of Processions in Shakespeare's Plays, William F. Sodini
Thesis: Occult Symbolism in W. B. Yeats's The Herne's Egg, Sandra Ford Swift
Thesis: The Conflict of Purposes in Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession", Marlie Parker Wasserman
Theses/Dissertations from 1969
Thesis: William Blake and Isaac Watts, Lois Ballard
Thesis: The Poetry of Hart Crane: An Analysis of the Concept of Regeneration, Shirley S. Hafezi
Thesis: The Fragmented Individual in the Poetry of John Crowe Ransom, Jahaila Morris Harper
Thesis: The Stage Yankee in the Plays of Eugene O'Neill, Sue Farquharson Law
Thesis: A Study of Evil in Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, Kwitoslawa Pascnyn
Thesis: A Re-evaluation of Marlowe's Use of the Classics in Hero and Leander, Naomi M. Patz
Thesis: John Skelton's Satire of the Burial Rites of the Roman Church in "Philip Sparrow", Jean M. Regone
Thesis: Love Scenes in Benjamin Disraeli's Novels, Norman Steven Smith
Thesis: Stephen Crane's Use of Figurative Language, Carol Jackson Verser
Thesis: Concepts of Suffering in King Lear, Emma Jean Westcot
Theses/Dissertations from 1968
Thesis: Eros Philia and Agape in Herman Melville, Mary Barnes
Thesis: The Crystal Prison of Elinor Wylie: The Conflicts of Her Life in Her Poetry, Frances F. Carney
Thesis: Universality Through Particularity: Theme and Technique in the Short Poems of William Carlos Williams, Barbara J. Finfrock
Thesis: An Examination of Sir Edwin Arnold's The Light of Asia and The Light of the World, J. Karl Nicholas
Thesis: Anatomy of a Failure: Structure Theme and Point of View in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned, Felice Abram Stern
Thesis: Whitman's View of the Nature and Function of His Poetry, Claudia M. Storminger
Thesis: The Function of Some Comic Elements in the Wakefield Plays in the Towneley Cycle, Frances E. Whitehall
Theses/Dissertations from 1967
Thesis: The Bloomsbury Group: Agent of Evolution, Rashelle Altschul
Thesis: Falstaff, a Product of Historical and Moral Traditions, Emily Stacy Apelt
Thesis: Pope as a Maker of Ballads, Mary M. Dossin
Thesis: Robert Browning's Treatment of Nature in His Poetry, 1841-1855, Mary B. Gard
Thesis: Sandburg's Ambivalence Toward the City, Gloria Grant
Thesis: The Family Tree of Fanny Burney's Evelina, Frances McEntee Martin
Thesis: The Eighteenth Century Background of Canto IV Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Dorothy Cox Moore
Thesis: The Ironies in Billy Budd and Melville's Evaluation of Man, Lon Dean Vance
Theses/Dissertations from 1966
Thesis: Thomas Shadwell: The Sentimental Characteristics of His Comedies, Ramona Hartley Hamby
Thesis: The Hobbesian Villain in Dryden's Heroic Plays, Margaret Norman Simmons
Theses/Dissertations from 1965
Thesis: 1 Tamburlaine: A Comedy, Caroline Heath Tunstall
Thesis: The Renaissance Epyllion: A Study of a Comic Genre, Juanita Josephine Whitaker