The Last Educations: Genre, Place, and the American University

The Last Educations: Genre, Place, and the American University consists of three interlocking novellas dealing with themes of change and dislocation in contemporary Texas, focused on the institution of the modern university, an institution that itself is undergoing rapid and irreversible change. Crucial to the dissertation is a thorough understanding and demonstrated proficiency of the genre of the novella. The creative text will illustrate how the novella can be used to achieve narrative depth and insight into the changing social context of the contemporary individual; the critical introduction will discuss the history of the genre and its emergence in recent years as a powerful vehicle for the depiction of change. The overall subject of the creative text is change, and the ways in which individuals react to change?changes to the institutions to which they devote their lives, and changes in the localities and regions they inhabit. The immediate setting for the novellas is the contemporary university, an institution currently undergoing transformations which will have implications for all of American society.