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Events
Mar. 1 | 2012 Franklin Prize
Nominations for 2012 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize for the best-published book in American Studies due
Mar. 1 | 2012 Romero Prize
Nominations for 2012 Lora Romero Publication Prize for the best-published first book in American Studies due
Mar. 1 | Community Partnership Grants
Applications for the 2012 Community Partnership Grants Program to assist American Studies collaborative, interdisciplinary community projects due
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
By University | By Year
Gaddie, Griffin. "Homophony and Paronomasia in America: On the Validity of Puns," Bowling Green State University, May 1989. Advisor: Ray Browne (12, 18, 16)
A proposed “Reconstructive, Referentialist Semiotics” finds that “insignificant,” “accidental” visual, verbal resemblances, homologies—the basis of puns, metaphors—actually indicate valid, but suppressed empirical classes: homophones too/two/to describe one thing joining another; alphabetical letters mimic mechanical configurations of referents (T-Bone); the polysemic meanings of screw are linked by a common empirical class of action, screwing. But scholars’ readerly/writerly text fetishism—“Textualism”—detaches Language (and thought) from Things, obscuring the link between homophones, creating schizophrenia, alienation; widespread events in America—news, products, abecedaries, neuroses—can be described as attempts to recover the Lost World by acting out puns.
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