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Space & Distance As I Require: The Journals And Prose Fragments Of Philip Whalen 1950-1966, Brian Unger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Space & Distance As I Require: The Journals & Prose Fragments of Philip Whalen 1950 - 1966 presents the early journals, prose fragments, and a few unpublished poems and essays by San Francisco Renaissance and Beat Generation poet Philip Whalen (1923-2002). This work includes a scholarly apparatus with both general literary and textual introductions, a critical bibliography that reflects my literary-historical concerns, brief section introductions, annotations, and an informal concordance with Whalen's poetry utilizing The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen (ed. Rothenberg, 2007) as a reference work.

Philip Whalen was an Irish-American writer with roots in small town Oregon, a …

American Manpower: Work And Masculinity In The 1970s, Victoria Ludas

All Open Access Legacy Dissertations and Capstone Projects

This paper is about three things, as examined over the course of the 1970s: the changes in the state and dependability of work, the pressures of masculinity as felt by heterosexual white men over the age of 20 in the working and middle classes, and what occurred because of the relationship between work and that masculinity. To understand 3 the third, it is necessary to understand the first two, and what happened in both cases during the decade. Even disregarding the male-female dynamic in the increase in women at work, the state of employment changed in massive and permanent ways. …

Forget Burial: Illness, Narrative, And The Reclamation Of Disease, Marty Melissa Fink

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a theoretical and archival analysis of HIV/AIDS literature, this dissertation argues that the AIDS crisis is not an isolated incident that is now "over," but a striking culmination of a long history of understanding illness through narratives of queer sexual decline and national outsiderhood. Literary representations of HIV/AIDS can be read as a means of resistance to the stigmatization of people of color, women, immigrants, and queers, debunking the narratives that vilify these subjects as threats to national security and health. In drawing connections between illness, history, and the African diaspora, my work adopts a queer theoretical approach to …

Engaging The Eighties: Ethics, Objects, Periods, Kevin L. Ferguson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a recent decade in American history whose unique notion of self-periodization generated important questions of ethical engagement and withdrawal. Situated during a time of an increasingly complex relationship between literature and theory, thinkers in the 80s self-consciously shifted towards making claims about their present moment which were based on the logic of rupture, and which thus created an either-or logic of pessimism or optimism in response to this rupture. These kinds of self-periodizing notions generally are collected under the rubric "postmodernism" and the first chapter deals with a transatlantic movement between theorists such as Fredric Jameson and …

The Bloomberg Way: Development Politics, Urban Ideology, And Class Transformation In Contemporary New York City, Julian Brash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the links between a development project, a particular urban ideology, and processes of class transformation in contemporary New York City. The city's postindustrial transformation, especially since the 1970s fiscal crisis, has created a newly dominant corporate elite consisting of executives and high-level professionals. This ruling class alliance has begun to supersede the city's older, real estate-centered traditional growth coalition, as emblematized by the political rise of billionaire ex-CEO Michael Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg, along with other ex-corporate executives in his administration, implemented a private-sector inspired corporate, technocratic, and antipolitical approach to governance in general and urban and economic …

Ana Mendieta, The Iowa Years: A Critical Study, 1969 Through 1977, Julia P. Herzberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the artistic development of Ana Mendieta (born Cuba, 1948; died United States, 1985) from 1969 to 1977 when she lived in Iowa City, attended the University of Iowa, worked as an art teacher, and established herself as an artist. Mendieta is known for her early performance pieces and earth-body sculptures. From the late 1980s her work has been increasingly included in the contexts of feminist art history, performance, photography, work in nature, body art, self-representation, Cuban art, and transcultural identity. Collected by major museums throughout the United States, her work has begun to be included in surveys …