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Abstract
TIRANA: A NOVELby
PATRICIA GILLESPIE
(Under the Direction of Reginald McKnight)
ABSTRACT
Tirana: A Novel is an academic satire set on a small college campus in northwestern Georgia and in the town and county that surround the college. The events of the novel unfold primarily during the spring semester of 2020, but the opening chapters contain flashbacks to the fall semester of 2019, and the novel closes with a 2021 epilogue. Through parallel plotlines, the narrative follows the fortunes and misfortunes of two protagonists, Associate Professor Jeremy Shull and Assistant Professor Amelia Brenner, both of whom teach in the Department of English at Tirana College. In addition to satirizing professorial hubris, the politicization of academia, and the institution of tenure, the novel examines issues of classism, job insecurity, and social-media addiction that are not exclusive to academia. Tirana combines satire with absurdist and dystopian elements, the latter thematic strongly influenced by Evgeny Zamiatin’s We and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. This dystopian tone is elevated by the emergence of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, which is incorporated into the narrative. Tirana can also be read as a contemporary version of the marriage plot, and as such pays homage to the novels of Jane Austen. INDEX WORDS: Academic Satire, Novel, Academia, Tenure, Classism, Social Media, Marriage Plot, COVID-19