Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

Colonial Trauma And Testimony In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein And Jamaica Kincaid’S Autobiography Of My Mother, Leana Rene

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle to examine the colonial trauma and loss found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of My Mother, not just on a character level, but in a much larger colonial context. Some scholars have suggested that Shelley’s monster is a symbol of a colonized other (due to his appearance and certain features he has). Kincaid’s Xuela is for sure a colonized other because of the heritage of her mother. This thesis explores their abandonment by their creators as the abandonment of colonized nations from their colonizers. Even now, formerly colonized …