Bad Roads: Feral Transport Media in American Narrative Art, 1913-1977

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dc.contributor.advisorWolfe, Caryen_US
dc.contributor.advisorComer, Kristaen_US
dc.creatorBurch, Paul W.en_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-30T15:58:07Zen_US
dc.date.created2024-08en_US
dc.date.issued2024-06-26en_US
dc.date.submittedAugust 2024en_US
dc.date.updated2024-08-30T15:58:07Zen_US
dc.descriptionEMBARGO NOTE: This item is embargoed until 2030-08-01en_US
dc.description.abstractIn Bad Roads: Feral Transport Media in American Narrative Art, 1913-1977, I devise the biopolitical and critical regionalist framework of “the bad road” to read for moments of textual ferality in early-to-mid century American literature and film. This framework is based around an understanding of transport media—technologies of mobility, infrastructures, adjacent landscapes—as constructs that mediate and include through exclusion. In what follows, I read for the presence and function of transport media in a diverse array of narratives drawn from the pre and post-interstate eras of twentieth century America. Conducting these analyses demonstrates how both transport media, and the narratives that incorporate them, are uniquely prone to rupture and immunitary failure: moments when a protected inside becomes an outside, or an excised other makes an unheralded return. I refer to this dynamic of containment and rupture as the “bad road.” By applying the “bad road” framework to authors such as Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison, and N. Scott Momaday, I unpack how the work of narrating mobility in an American colonial context is particularly fraught as the project of modernization is marked by an irrepressible plurality: cultural, geographic, interpersonal, temporal. By setting my project against the backdrop of a crystallizing culture of the “good road” as mobile privatization, I determine that how an author employs, avoids, or is subjected to, the permutations of the bad road, is intimately linked to their cultural positioning. Reading for these differences is crucial to considering the perils and possibilities of mobility in the United States—past, present, and future.en_US
dc.embargo.lift2030-08-01en_US
dc.embargo.terms2030-08-01en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationBurch, Paul W.. Bad Roads: Feral Transport Media in American Narrative Art, 1913-1977. (2024). PhD diss., Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/117773en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/117773en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectAmerican literatureen_US
dc.subjectfilm Studiesen_US
dc.subjectmedia studies: media theoryen_US
dc.subjectpetrohumanitiesen_US
dc.subjecteco-criticismen_US
dc.subjectposthumanitiesen_US
dc.subjectcritical regionalismen_US
dc.subjectbiopoliticsen_US
dc.subjecttransport technologyen_US
dc.subjectSteinbecken_US
dc.subjectCatheren_US
dc.subjectMomadayen_US
dc.subjectMorrison.en_US
dc.titleBad Roads: Feral Transport Media in American Narrative Art, 1913-1977en_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentEnglishen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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