Research in Western American Literature

Abstract

R I C H A R D H. C R A C R O F T Brigham Young University Research in Western American Literature The following items have been joyously gleaned from Dissertation Abstracts, and from notices sent to the editors of WAL. I have selected for inclusion only those dissertations about Thoreau and Twain which seemed pertinent to Western American literature. I have also included some selected dissertations by western historians. There seem to be a few substantial trends : (1) There is a sharp increase in the number of dissertations in American literature on women novelists and women’s studies; this trend is beginning to be manifest in studies of Western Americana. (2) There is an increase in the number of creative disserta­ tions being written. (3) There is still nothing being done in the area of Western American literature as comparative literature. (4) The number of theses and dissertations completed on topics relative to Western American literature is again down from last year, which, in turn, was down from the previous year. Please send notices of completed or in-progress studies relevant to the American West to: Richard H. Cracroft, Chairman, Department of English, A-246 JKBA, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. I. DISSERTATIONS COMPLETED Bassett, Arthur Ray Culture and the American Frontier in Mormon Utah, 1850-1896 (Ph.D.) Syracuse University, 1975 Beisman, Emeline B. The Prospector and the Pioneer: A Key to the Selected Short Stories of Bret Harte (Ph.D.) University of New Mexico, 1975 344 Western American Literature Brazil, John Russell Literature, Self, and Society: The Growth of a Political Aesthetic in Early San Francisco (Ph.D.) Yale University, 1975 Brown, Ellsworth Howard The History of the Flathead Indians in the Nineteenth Century (Ph.D.) Michigan State University, 1975 Burgrah, David Leroy The Genesis and Unity of Faulkner’s Big Woods (Ph.D.) Ohio University, 1975 Byrd, Forrest Mickey Prologomenon to Frederick Manfred (Ph.D.) University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1975 Camarillo, Albert Michael The Making of a Chicano Community: A History of the Chícanos in Santa Barbara, California, 1850-1930 (Ph.D.) University of California, Los Angeles, 1975 Carr, Duane Ralph John Steinbeck: Twentieth-Century Romantic. A Study of the Early Works (Ph.D.) University of Tulsa, 1975 Carroll, Mary Suzanne Symbolic Patterns in Henry David Thoreau’sA Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Ph.D.) Indiana University, 1975 Cocks, James Fraser III The Selfish Savage: Protestant Missionaries and Nez Perce and Cayuse Indians, 1835-1847 (Ph.D.) University of Michigan, 1975 DeLowry, Linda Diane Dynamic Patterns: A Thematic Study of the Works of John G. Neihardt (Ph.D.) University of Pittsburgh, 1975 Ducey, Cathryn Annette The Development of a Frontier Thesis: Mark Twain, Domingo Faustino Sarmineto, and Frederick Jackson Turner (Ph.D.) University of Hawaii, 1975 Du Pree, Robert Hickman From Analogy to Metaphor to Word Play: Thoreau’s Shifting View of the Relationship between Man and Nature (Ph.D.) Auburn University, 1975 Fielding, Lavina Attitudes Toward Experience in Western Travel Narratives (Ph.D.) University of Washington, 1975 (Irving, Parkman, Twain, Clarence King, Robert Louis Stevenson) Research 345 Gemes, Sonia Grace The Relationship of Storyteller to Community in the Tales of the South­ west Humorists, Mark Twain and William Faulkner (Ph.D.) University of Washington, 1975 Gherman, Dawn Lander From Parlour to Tepee: The White Squaw on the American Frontier (Ph.D.) University of Massachusetts, 1975 Gladsky, Thomas S. James Fenimore Cooper and the Genteel Hero of Romance (Ph.D.) University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1975 Goodliffe, Wilford Leroy American Frontier Religion: Mormons and Their Dissenters, 1830-1900 (Ph.D.) University of Idaho, 1976 Grimes, Geoffrey Allan The Evolution of the Mark Twain Persona (Ph.D.) Texas Tech University, 1975 Hafer, John William The Sea of Grass: The Image of the Great Plains in the American Novel (Ph.D.) Northern Illinois University, 1975 Harper, Roger John The Literary Reputation of American Nature Writers in NineteenthCentury British Periodicals (1865-1910) (Ph.D.) Bowling Green State University, 1976 Harrison, Richard Terrence The Unhoused Imagination: The Struggle for Imaginative Survival in Canadian Prairie Fiction (Ph.D.) University of Western Ontario (Canada), 1975 Hedin, Raymond William The First-Person Narratives of Crevecceur, Franklin...