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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
For submission guidelines, click here
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
By University | By Year
Rowe, Joyce A. "The Equivocal Ending and its Relation to Narrative Structure in Some Classic American Novels: The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Ambassadors, The Great Gatsby," Columbia University, May 1985. (11, 12)
This dissertation explores the significance of American idealism as it is revealed through the study of the equivocal endings of classic American novels. The four works chosen, representing disparate historical periods, share a remarkably similar, uniquely American pattern. Each is centered on a protagonist loyal to an ideal vision of social reality which is tested and defeated in the course of the work, only to be resurrected, however equivocally, in the ending. Explication reveals the distinctive structural and thematic features which make this convention plausible to the reader—denying one option, enforcing another—and so illuminates conflicting authorial intentions and cultural commitments.
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