History Commons^™

The Passing Away Of Nature: Two Essays On Natural History, Domenic Hutchins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis begins by examining the natural-historical character of Theodor Adorno’s thought and corpus, 1931–1969, by way of engaging the centennial of the October Russian Revolution. In the first three chapters we attempt to read Adorno’s corpus as écriture or writing whereupon unconscious writing of history is transcribed. This literary-driven approach to Adorno’s work highlights the primacy of history for his thought, whence his late-Marxism issues that culminates in what we call a politics of experience. Given the historical experience we seek to make legible heretofore, in chapter four we briefly turn to the hyper-object of ongoing and future anthropogenic …

Les Passerelles De La Réécriture: Des Transpositions De "Soundjata" Aux Autoadaptations D'Ousmane Sembène, Elhadji Moustapha Diop

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Le présent travail porte sur une série de questions liées au transfert de formes narratives et expressives, d’un médium à un autre, d’un texte ou contexte à un autre. On suit un parcours se déclinant en deux mouvements : parti d’une discussion des théories de l’adaptation, de la réécriture, et des recherches sur la littérature orale, on en arrive à l’étude des pratiques effectives de la transposition et de l’autoadaptation. La Première Partie, « Discussions Théoriques », est consacrée à la littérature critique sur l’adaptation, y compris ses récents prolongements postmodernes et postcoloniaux. Dans la Deuxième Partie, « Études …

Scintillating Scotoma: Migraine, Aura, And Perception In European Literature, 1860-1900, Janice Y. Zehentbauer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation focuses upon the ways in which nineteenth-century physicians in the emergent field of neurology conceptualized and catalogued the neurological condition, migraine, and the ways in which European literary texts reimagined and interrogated such medical classifications. A recognized condition for hundreds of years, migraine in the nineteenth century became pathological; migraineurs became a “nervous” modern figure that haunted medicine and literary fiction. Anxieties regarding the construction of fragmented vision, bodies, gender, and consciousness render the migraine figure a relevant symbol for the modern era. The nineteenth-century medical treatises by Jean-Martin Charcot, Edward Liveing, and Hubert Airy reveal that a …

The Ha-Ha Holocaust: Exploring Levity Amidst The Ruins And Beyond In Testimony, Literature And Film, Aviva Atlani

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ABSTRACT

Jewish humour sheds a crude light on the social, political, and historical realities of the Holocaust. Paradoxically, contentiously, doses of levity during this period were very much a reality, and even a psychological necessity. The purpose of my thesis is to explore the historical, social, and political ramifications of such laughter provoking manifestations. In doing so, the nuances are highlighted which are found within the laughter of the ghettos, the transit camps, and the concentration camps. Furthermore, some of these jokes, and their subsequent variations, reappear within the discourse of children of survivors. The dissertation explores how some of …

Unmasking The Protester: The Meanings And Myths Of Collective Civil Resistance Movements In African American And Polish Postresistance Prose Fiction, Agnieszka Herra

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My contention is that the narrative framework of social movements, especially the ones deemed “successful” such as the American Civil Rights Movement and the Polish Solidarity Movement, reflects unity and collectivity within collective memory. During the period of the movements’ duration, this provides a clear rhetorical purpose: to give the appearance of unity in order to give effective voice to the demands. I argue that the voices that did not fit into the collective movements emerge subsequently to question this monologic language in literary form. This dissertation uses Bakhtin’s notion of dialogic language to argue that novels in the postresistance …

Talking Nonsense: Spiritual Mediums And Female Subjectivity In Victorian And Edwardian Canada, Claudie Massicotte

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study traces the development of mediumship in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Especially popular among women, this practice offered them an important space of expression. Concealing their own identities under spiritual possession, mediums ubiquitously invoked well-known historical figures in séances to transmit their opinions on current issues. As such, they were able to promote new ideas to interested audiences without claiming responsibility for their potentially controversial words.

While many studies have been conducted in the United States, Britain, and France regarding the significant role of mediumship in the emergence of women on the political scene, …

Myth, Language, Empire: The East India Company And The Construction Of British India, 1757-1857, Nida Sajid

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My thesis investigates the discursive strategies employed by the East India Company during the early colonial period to legitimize mercantile imperialism as an act of preservation for the fast-disintegrating political order that was the Mughal empire in India. By arguing that the interrelationship of myth, history and archive was essential to networks of trade and the establishment of political domination, my thesis offers a new reading of the representations of the political debates surrounding the Company’s scandals and imperial ambitions in the English public sphere. It further demonstrates the centrality of the India question in defining the contours of some …