Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Two Million "Butterflies" Searching For Home: Identity And Images Of Korean Chinese In Ho Yon-Sun's Yanbian Narratives, Xiang Jin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the representation of Korean Chinese searching for home in relation to Korean diasporic identity. Home as a sense of identity is both personal and collective. It is also a reflection of one’s psyche and emotion. For Korean Chinese, searching for a place to call home in between their host-homeland China and original homeland Korea involves many aspects of meaning, the home of an individual, of a family, and of a community. Therefore, the third cultural region Yanbian, the Korean Chinese Autonomous Prefecture of China, and Yanbian narratives become the central issue of this thesis. I first offer …

The Meadow: A Novel, Scott Albert Winkler

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE MEADOW: A NOVEL

by

Scott A. Winkler

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor George Clark

The Meadow considers the question of how all Americans, both civilians and military personnel alike, are affected by the United States’ military actions. Set during the Vietnam era, The Meadow tells the story of Walt Neumann, who is torn between his dream of going to college and his father’s insistence that his sons serve their nation as he did in World War II. Circumstance unexpectedly enables Walt to pursue his dream, but he also comes to realize the source …

Glimpses Of World War Ii In Denmark: Memory And History In Frayn's Copenhagen And Sibbern's Resistance Scrapbook, Adriana Pinegar

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between history and memory is long and complex. While some theorists argue that they are at odds with one another, this thesis explores the necessary relationship between the two. Using Michael Frayn's 1998 play, Copenhagen, and the scrapbook of a Danish police officer and resistance fighter during World War II, the author posits the central role of uncertainty in the negotiation of individual memory and history. The position of the observer or witness to history affects the way the past is remembered and recorded. Individual witnesses, even and perhaps especially where they stray from the accepted historical narrative, …

Pherc. 698 Cr. 3-4: A New Edition, Justin Asay Barney

Theses and Dissertations

The following is a new edition of PHerc. 698 cr. 3-4, including an introduction, English translation and commentary. An in-line reprint of PHerc. 19, including a new English translation, is also included for continuity of thought and language.

State Of Love And Love Of State In Chaucer's Epic, Troilus And Criseyde, Robert Allen Fuller

Theses and Dissertations

Chaucer scholars have long recognized the generic complexity of Troilus and Criseyde, but they have tended to read it primarily as a tragedy or romance or as a text whose genre is sui generis. The following essay attempts to read Troilus and Criseyde as an epic and to articulate how such a generic lens would reorient readings of the text. To do so, fresh definition is given to the term “epic,” and insights from genre theory are drawn upon. Ultimately, Troilus and Criseyde is an epic poem because it invests within the composite hero of two lovers the fact that …

Finnishness And Colonization In Akseli Gallen-Kallela's Representations Of Africa, Camille Kathryn Richey

Theses and Dissertations

Akseli Gallen-Kallela is often discussed as the national painter of Finland, as one who helped define Finnishness when Finland was still a colonized area of Russia. However, his trip to Africa from 1909-1911 shows where Gallen-Kallela acts as a pictorial colonizer himself, not only sympathizing with the Africans but representing them through a European cosmopolitan lens, as purer and closer to nature, but still inferior. The assumptions inherent in his representations of Africa reveal that Gallen-Kallela is not only a colonized subject but a colonizer of his own country.

Dear Satellite, Kara Van De Graaf

Theses and Dissertations

This creative dissertation explores issues of female identity in contemporary American culture in an extended sequence of lyric-narrative poems. In these poems, speakers must try to negotiate female identity through examining the range of available aesthetic positions offered to women by art, social and cultural identities, and familial relationships as we understand them in western culture.

Most often, the book revolves around questions of body, and attempts to think through how modes of aestheticization-- and fetishization-- of certain qualities of "femaleness" have constructed the ways that women can act and be in the contemporary world. In order to examine the …

José María Arguedas Y La Decolonialidad: Lectura De "Todas Las Sangres" Y "El Zorro De Arriba" Y "El Zorro De Abajo", Iván Andrés Espinosa Orozco

Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to understand José María Arguedas’s literary production through the

lens of decolonial theory. The first chapter is an introduction to the objectives of this

project. Next, the second chapter is based on an approach to the concepts of decoloniality

and postcolonial studies, which serve as a theoretical background for the purpose of this

thesis. The third chapter is based on a decolonial reading of Arguedas’s "Todas las

sangres", which leads to problematize the aspects related to identity in Peru. The fourth

chapter is based on the analysis of Arguedas’s "El zorro de arriba y el zorro de …

Recombinant, Ching-In Chen

Theses and Dissertations

The hybrid texts (poems and prose) in the following dissertation investigate female and genderqueer lineage in the context of labor smuggling and trafficking. In this book-length project, I examine the challenges of communal memory by juxtaposing voices from Asian, African and indigenous communities in the Americas. Set in a speculative future, these voices simultaneously inhabit their own spaces and share pathways, a theme developed through manipulation of white space on the page. The narrative speculates about the origins of M. Lao, a snakehead matriarch who has created a business empire from a fictional edu-tainment park, CoolieWorld, which traffics in the …

That's Debatable!: Genre Issues In Troubadour Tensos And Partimens, Kelli Mcqueen

Theses and Dissertations

The troubadour repertory consists of an elaborate complex of genres, some of which are dialogs that employ argumentation in the form of a debate or contest. The precise classification of these debate songs, especially the tenso and partimen genres, involves a measure of controversy that arose in the fourteenth century and continues today. Modern scholars in both literary and musical disciplines reference the dispute in their study of these songs, but largely gloss over the controversy to uphold the traditional parameters of their own disciplines. For literary scholars, this means treating these dialogs as lyric poetry, and musicologists tend to …

Sardanapalus And Gender: Examining Gender In The Works Of Byron And Delacroix, Stacey Schmiesing

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the gender standards as portrayed in Lord Byron's play Sardanapalus (1824) and Eugène Delacroix's painting Death of Sardanapalus (1828). These Romantic artists were part of a movement that changed gender rules forever. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought about a culture that was more visual than ever and symbols of gender identity were everywhere. Rules of masculinity evolved from valuing raw power to including middle class virtues like moderation. Women continued to be objects of male desire but also began to represent the nation and its history. To explore the specific gender relationships within Byron's play and …

The Matriarchal Nimbus: Matthäus Gutrecht The Younger's The Holy Kinship, Camille J. Jacobsen

Theses and Dissertations

In The Holy Kinship (1500-1510), the artist Matthäus Gutrecht the Younger defies convention by portraying the importance of matriarchy, via the semiotics of the nimbus. Within Christian art, the nimbus has been widely used as a signifier of divinity. Saints and angels, as well as members of the Holy Family, are often depicted nimbed in the history of art. In particular, men of divine status are frequently nimbed, as Christianity was predominantly patriarchal. However, there are several cases in which women are also represented with this divine signifier. One work in which the nimbus as a signifier of matriarchal status …

The Terrifying And The Beautiful: An Ecocritical Approach To Alexandre Hogue's Erosion Series, Ann K. Hartvigsen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the work of Texan painter Alexandre Hogue, and specifically how his 1930s Erosion Series, paintings of wind-ravaged farms during the Dust Bowl, promotes environmental attitudes long before America had a well developed ecological language. It analyzes the Erosion Series in the context of Hogue's personal land ethics and those of his artistic contemporaries, showing that the 1930s series strives to depict the devastation caused by both drought and aggressive farming practices. A comparison of Hogue's work to Regionalist artists like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood reveals that Regionalists' depictions of land during the 1930s created an …

Betende Hande: Albrecht Durer's Self-Portrait As A Gothic Church, Christine Heathcote

Theses and Dissertations

In 1508 Albrecht Dürer, famed German printmaker and Nürnberg citizen, was commission by Jakob Heller of Frankfurt to paint a large altarpiece for a new church. The Heller Altarpiece was the second commission of the printer since his training in Venice, Italy (1504-1507) to paint like an Italian master. In order to prepare for such a commission, Dürer spent over a year creating drawings of black ink and white chalk on blue Venetian paper to serve as inspiration for the large painting. However once the painting was complete, the artist held onto these ink and chalk drawings as part of …

Reevaluating The New Testament Text Of Didymus The Blind: An Examination Of The New Testament References In P. Byu 1, Michael Robert Trotter

Theses and Dissertations

In 1941 a large cache of papyri preserving the writings of Origen and Didymus the Blind were discovered in Tura, Egypt. 43 years later 22 signatures from the Tura papryi containing Ps. 26:10–29:2, 36:1–3 from Didymus the Blinds' commentary on Psalms were acquired by Brigham Young University. These signatures remain unpublished at present. This paper examines Didymus' use of the New Testament in this hitherto unpublished section of his commentary and seeks to reevaluate past scholarship on the New Testament text of Didymus in light of this new data. In addition to providing an inventory of all the New Testament …

Elevating The Other: A Theoretical Approach To Alexander Mcqueen, Keri Rowe

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between art and fashion in order to first, justify fashion as an art form, and second, demonstrate the applicability of critical theory to the study of fashion through an examination of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2006 menswear collection, titled “Killa,” presented in Milan, Italy, in 2005. “Killa,” loosely based on William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies and its 1963 film adaptation, opens with crisp, white, tailored suits worn by neatly groomed models. Steadily throughout the collection, these tailored suits are exchanged for wide-legged, cropped shorts, and tanks in browns and beiges. By the end, …

Unacknowledged Victims: Love Between Women In The Narrative Of The Holocaust. An Analysis Of Memoirs, Novels, Film And Public Memorials, Isabel Meusen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation combines cultural theory and gender theory with literary criticism to evaluate the treatment of lesbians during the Holocaust and in narratives about the Holocaust. Responding to the kissing-scene controversy of the Berlin memorial for the homosexual victims of the Holocaust I claim that lesbian women’s experience of suffering is downplayed and disappears under the umbrella term ‘homosexuals.’ Employing a critical historical conceptualization of “lesbian love,” I consider examples from Claudia Schoppmann’s Days of Masquerade and Verbotene Verhältnisse as well as the personal estate of political activist Hilde Radusch to trace the personal view lesbians have of themselves. Shifting …

Making The Irrational Rational: Nietzsche And The Problem Of Knowledge In Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master And Margarita, Brendan Mooney

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is twofold: first, to explore the influence of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, and second, to use Nietzsche’s unpublished essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (written 1873) to examine the problem of knowledge in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (written 1928-1940).

In existing scholarship on Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita, the novel’s epistemological underpinnings are a topic that remains relatively unacknowledged. The “supernatural” element presents an opportunity to examine the manner in which man interacts with unprecedented phenomena, that is, phenomena that do not …

Female Representations In Contemporary Postmodern War Novels Of Spain And The United States: Women As Tools Of Modern Catharsis In The Works Of Javier Cercas And Tim O'Brien, Joseph P. Weil

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, the notion of women being used as tools of modern catharsis is explored through the comparative analysis of the Spanish novel Soldiers of Salamis (2001) by Javier Cercas, and the American novel The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien. The two novels, separated by linguistic and national traditions, and personal choices by each author, will both be evaluated for their unique postmodern treatments of war, memory, and verisimilitude. Expanding from this base and through an application of feminist theory, the female representations—which are partly crafted by an unconscious masculine language—will be deconstructed for their intended and …

The Trialectics Of Transnational Migrant Women’S Literature In The Writing Of Edwidge Danticat And Julia Alvarez, Jennifer Lynn Karash-Eastman

Theses and Dissertations

While a considerable critical field has developed around US Latino writing, due to the historical, cultural and sociolinguistic barriers between the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, critical investigations of these migrant literatures are often not bridged, but rather isolated into respective Haitian-American and Dominican-American designations. My comparative, critical framework defines the interactions between gender, culture and the diverse spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola, the Atlantic and the United States. The carefully differentiated objects of study that I articulate in each chapter offer a desirable interdisciplinary orientation inclusive of gender theory as well as cultural studies. …

Resurrectio Mortuorum: Plato’S Use Of Ἀνάγκη In The Dialogues, Joshua B. Gehling

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s Thesis, entitled “Resurrectio Mortuorum: Plato’s Use of Ἀνάγκη in the Dialogues,” features an extended consideration of Plato’s usage of the word ἀνάγκη as a dialogical response in the writings of Plato. Hopefully, it will highlight the uniqueness of this particular response in the context of many other affirmative responses used in the dialogues. The first section of the thesis (I) will lay out what I take to be Plato’s conception of his philosophical project and where ἀνάγκη fits into this picture. The texts there considered will be mainly “The Seventh Letter” and the Phaedrus. With this interpretive …

H.P. Lovecraft & The French Connection: Translation, Pulps And Literary History, Todd David Spaulding

Theses and Dissertations

Weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft captured the zeitgeist of the modernist movement, despite his association with popular fiction. Lovecraft’s post-mortem climb from the margins of the American literary system to its center is indicative of his influence on “mass” and “elite” cultures alike in the second half of the twentieth century and onward. Lovecraft’s influence is not restricted to American culture, but it spread like an airborne virus to other cultures, and to France in particular. His imaginative weird fiction, a unique combination of horror and science fiction, has been translated into more than 25 languages from Bengali to …

Destination Hong Kong: Negotiating Locality In Hong Kong Novels 1945-1966, Xianmin Shen

Theses and Dissertations

Recent clashes between China and Hong Kong have attracted worldwide attention. Behind such clashes, I see anxieties over the Hong Kong identity. Based on Ackbar Abbas' theorization of the "politics of disappearance" in Hong Kong, this dissertation focuses on the postwar period in Hong Kong from 1945 to 1966. I argue going back to this historical era, which help us understand how Chineseness in Hong Kong influences people’s imagination of Hong Kong. Concentrating on four novels written between 1945 and 1966, this dissertation pays close attention to the ways in which the (re)interpretations of Chineseness in these Hong Kong novels …