Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Assimilated Asian American As American Action Hero: Anna May Wong, Keye Luke, And James Shigeta In The Classical Hollywood Detective Film, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pressing The Public: Nineteenth-Century Feminist Periodicals And “The Press”, Maria Dicenzo

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pulling Up Roots: Border-Crossing And Migrancy On Southern Alberta’S Irrigation Frontier, Jenny Kerber

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hunger, History, And The Shape Of Awkward Questions: Reading Sarah Klassen’S Simone Weil As Mennonite Text, Tanis Macdonald

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Witnessing From A Distance: Postwar Literary Representations Of The Holocaust, Miriam Carolin Raethel

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis concerns itself with the possibilities and limits of witnessing the Holocaust from a distance. It analyzes the ways in which the notion of distance—temporal, geographical, linguistic, and aesthetic—influences, shapes, and alters the act of bearing witness to a remote historical event, which, because of its enormity, seemingly defies the act ofwitnessing and thus ofrepresentation. This study investigates the long-lasting impact ofthe Holocaust on subsequent generations, particularly on third-generation descendants ofvictims and perpetrators, and explores how the traumatic legacy ofthe Holocaust locates new forms of representation within the context ofpostmodernism, which, because of its emphasis on fragmentation, on the …

The Maritorious Melodrama: Film Noir With A Female Detective, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

Feminist critics tend to disagree whether the parachuting of women into traditionally male roles—for example, that of detective—results in a feminist representation. The female detective of the 1930s, however, can be seen to offer a decidedly positive feminist hero in that she defies the stereotype of the “masculine” (i.e. unnatural) woman—especially when one considers the time in which she appeared and representations of female detectives in contemporary film. Despite popular conceptions of classical film, Hollywood did offer progressive representations of working women, ironically in the decade characterized by economic and social upheaval during the Depression. The prolific female detective of …

Icyireze In Rwanda Fifteen Years Post-Genocide, Madelaine Hron

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Itsembabwoko ‘À La Française’? Rwanda, Fiction And The Franco-African Imaginary, Madelaine Hron

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

This article explores the literary representation of the genocide in Rwanda, and by extension, that of the Franco-African imaginary. Since the horrific events in 1994, “Rwanda” has become a discursive epiphenomenon, be it in global human rights, African or francophone contexts. Literary works about itsembabwoko, mostly published in France, now represent both a varied and a substantial corpus in Francophone literature. Problematically, however, France played a critical, if not insidious, role in the 1994 Tutsi genocide. This paper therefore examines to what extent Francophone literature about Rwanda is shaped by French politics. Specifically, it contrasts Franco-African texts produced as part …

Improvising Chicago, Tamas Dobozy

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

d, 7(1):101-127 (provide link). Reproduced with permission.

Phantoms Of Old Forms: The Gothic Mode In The Dramatic Verse Of Tennyson And Browning, Michael E. Ackerman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

My dissertation, “Phantoms of Old Forms: The Gothic Mode in the Dramatic Verse of Tennyson and Browning” situates Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning within a lineage of writers who experimented with the Gothic mode in dramatic and verse forms. This study is, in the first instance, an experiment in applying a specific strain of Gothic critical theory, one that addresses issues of gender, to canonical literary materials not ordinarily approached in that light. Definitions of the Gothic are notoriously elusive, and this project is not an assertion that the Gothic is always, in all of its manifestations, about gender. …

Saltwater Sacraments And Backwoods Sins: Contemporary Atlantic Canadian Literature And The Rise Of Literary Catholicism, Andrew Peter Atkinson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the 1990s, Canadian readers were offered a new literary trend: the Atlantic Canadian Catholic novel. In this dissertation, I examine works from six authors whose writing reflects the scope of this trend and I argue for a consideration of their collective impact on our social imaginary. The bulk of my argument is devoted to an examination of the Catholic religious content in the five novels and one memoir: David Adams Richards’ Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998); Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees (1996); Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven (1996); Wayne Johnston’s Baltimore’s Mansion: A Memoir (1999); Patrick Kavanagh’s Gaff …

The Three Sam Spades: The Shifting Model Of American Masculinity In The Three Films Of The Maltese Falcon, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon—starring the quintessential hard-boiled private detective, Sam Spade—was adapted for the screen not once, but three times: The Maltese Falcon (also known as Dangerous Female) directed by Roy Del Ruth (US, 1931); Satan Met a Lady directed by William Dieterle (US, 1936); and The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston (US, 1941).1 It is the last of these films, according to critics, that follows the novel most closely and is the version Hammett liked best, although he had no direct involvement with the production of any of the three films. And it is …

Torture Goes Pop! : Screening The Praxis Of Torture In Films & On Tv, Madelaine Hron

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mis-Education And The Crisis In Male Subjectivity: William Godwin’S Middle Novels, 1799–1817, Lisa-Marie Lynn Butler

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the tumultuous period of the 1790s, the English anarchist philosopher William Godwin was a seminal figure whose 1793 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness stood as a touchstone for the reform movement in Britain. Godwin is primarily known today as the author of Political Justice and Things As They Are; Or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, a 1794 novel which many readers, past and present, have regarded as a fictionalized allegory of the philosophical claims outlined in Political Justice.

Although his fame as a novelist largely rests on this one popular novel, …

Chinoiserie In The Novels Of Robert Hans Van Gulik, Daniel Franklin Wright

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis considers the cultural transactions that occur in Robert Hans van Gulik's Judge Dee stories, a set of "Chinese" investigative fiction works written by a Dutchman in English. These works are investigated through the interpretive lens of chinoiserie --an extension of Edward Said's Orientalism, named for a design aesthetic that featured the creation of "Chinese" goods by European artisans who were less interested in closely emulating Chinese styles than in creating fashionable exotica for the domestic market. Chinoiserie investigates the alterations done to foreign cultural products as they are changed to meet the domestic culture's preferences and expectations. The …

'Intervital' Spaces: The Representation Of Liminal Epiphany In Tennyson's Death Poems (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), Somaya Sami Reda Saber Sabry

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The epiphanic moments in Tennyson’s symbolic poems about death can be understood as covert or dialogical explorations of a poetics of transition from pragmatic to imaginative experience. In this way Tennysonian representations of the death of culturally symbolic characters juxtapose the prevalent “Victorian” Utilitarian voice of authority and the now marginalized “Romantic” voice of creative vision.

Through the study of the epiphanic motif in Tennyson’s poems we discover an inherent death paradigm according to which Tennyson describes his characters’ journeys of death through three imaginative spaces: the centre, the liminal and the marginal. The liminal in this paradigm features the …

"Designed Anarchy" In Mavis Gallant's The Moslem Wife And Other Stories, Tamas Dobozy

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Negotiating Audiences: Confronting Social Issues In Theatre/Or Young Audiences, Maria Dicenzo

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

Resume: Cet article examine les problèmes pratiques, esthétiques et idéologiques auxquels sont confrontées les troupes de théâtre qui produisent des pièces portant sur I'expérience vécue des jeunes et qui les présentent en milieu scolaire Si I'école permet I'accès à la culture théâtrale à des groupes d'enfants défavorisés, il n'en reste pas moins que cet accès est contrôlé par des adultes (commissions scolaires, enseignants, parents et bailleurs de fonds). À cet égard, l'expérience de deux troupes, Ie Catalyst Theatre d'Edmonton et la Company of Sirens de Toronto, montre les difficultés que soulèvent l'exploration de sujets comme la violence à la maison …

An Unblinking Gaze: Readerly Response-Ability And Racial Reconstructions In Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye' And 'Beloved', Lara Mary Fulton

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examines Toni Morrison's reconstruction of racial representations in The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Morrison stresses the need for a transformation of current representations of black and white culture in her critical study, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, in which Morrison examines how black culture has been (mis)represented and (mis)perceived by white Western culture and discourse. She argues that idealized and valorized notions of "whiteness," white identity, and white culture have been constructed from denigrating, binary oppositional (mis)perceptions of "blackness," black identity, and black culture. These stereotypical (mis)perceptions maintain white cultural dominance over …

"One Tricky Coyote": The Fiction Of Thomas King, Giselle Rene Lavalley

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis evaluates the literary achievement of Thomas King from an individual Aboriginal perspective by examining specifically his novels, Medicine River and Green Grass, Running Water, with reference to his short stories. It argues that textual readings which merely impose the Western literary tradition upon Aboriginal texts invariably limit their scope of interpretation and understanding. The study of Aboriginal literature necessitates a holistic approach that involves historical, political, and cultural contextualizations.

I note briefly the cultural differences between my own response and non-Aboriginal responses, the latter mostly in the form of reviews, and proceed to analyze issues present in …

"In The Business Of Believing Women's Stories": Feminism Through Detective Fiction (Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton), Nora Martin

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis undertakes to show the way in which texts of the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction can encourage a feminist attitude in their readers. While some critics insist that the hard-boiled genre is incompatible with feminism due to what they believe is its inherent misogyny, there are a number who have argued eloquently to the contrary. This thesis is not so much concerned with proving the compatibility of feminism with the hard-boiled genre, as it is with showing, through the examination of specific strategies of particular texts, that hard-boiled texts by women authors not only allow a feminist sensibility …

The Chorus In Elizabeth Cary's 'Tragedy Of Mariam', Viona Falk

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examines Elizabeth Cary’s use of the Chorus in The Tragedy of Mariam (pub. 1613). Imitating classical dramatists, Cary portrays the Chorus as a specific cultural group. Mariam’s Chorus consists of “a company of Jews” whose commentary on the play’s events is informed by its participations in patriarchal culture. The Chorus’s prescriptions for wifely virtue and judgements of Mariam’s moral standing frequently contain contradictions. Comparing the contradictions in the Chorus’s statements with similar contradictions in early modern domestic conduct guides, I argue that Cary uses the Chorus to interrogate patriarchal ideology. I consider Cary’s employment of the Chorus in …

Gender And The Search For Identity In Gwendolyn Macewan’S Julian And Noman Stories, Anne Marie Martin

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis looks at the theme of gender and the search for identity in three fictional works of Canadian poet and novelist Gwendolyn MacEwen. The works considered are her first novel Julian the Magician (1963) and her two collections of short stories Noman (1972) and Noman’s Land (1985).

The thesis examines the way self-identity is characterized and considers the way gender is presented in relation to the self. The work shows the development of MacEwen’s idea of self from a creative eternal force equivalent to the Christ image in Julian the Magician to an eternal force that finds its expression …

Invisible Presences: Virginia Woolf And Biography, Stephanie Kirkwood Walker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The principal concerns of this thesis are the connections that Virginia Woolf made between writing, revelation, women and biography, set in the historical and literary contexts of her life in England from the late nineteenth century to her death in 1941. Her vision of biographical form, language and the biographical self is assessed within the environment established by her father, her Victorian childhood and education, Bloomsbury attitudes and a spirituality shaped by her Anglican heritage and her experiences of gender. My contention is that her novelist’s sense of the relationship between fact and fiction, her critical analysis of the significance …

“The Greatest Human Travail”: Faith And The Context Of Rhetoric In Zora Neale Hurston’S Dust Tracks On A Road, James Cameron Hall

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Zora Neale Hurston was a controversial in the Harlem Renaissance. Her little studied autobiography could be helpful in resolving many of the unanswered questions. However, critical responses have mostly been negative. Critics have questions her portrayal of social reality, particularly black/white relations. If the autobiography is examined in terms of the internal dynamics of the Harlem Renaissance and the political situation of blacks during the Second World War, with special attention paid to the development of Hurston’s religious faith, a different interpretation is possible.

This thesis examines Dust Tracks on a Road as Hurston’s apologia, an autobiographical defense of faith. …

Approaching The Scarlet Letter: Spatiality As Theme And Method, Susan L. Scott

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Although my goal is ultimately to undersatnd Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the emphasis of this thesis is upon ways of approaching that goal. Only the last chapter is directly about the text of that romance. In the first chapter I consider the state of the field, religion and literature, with a view to identifying my own position in it. In the second, I look at the cultural historical contexts for reading the story, specifically, the seventeenth century Puritans and the nineteenth century American romance. The third chapter focuses on variants of the idea of spatiality, for instance, sacred space, topophilia, …

Daughters Of A Jesting God: The Religious Sensibility Of Margaret Laurence, Patricia Stibbards-Watt

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

No abstract provided.

The Hero With Three Faces, Rebecca Susanne Larson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

A study of the relationship between myth and literature in relation to: 1) the origin and form of myth as literature developed through the Legend of King Arthur; and 2) the function of myth as literature tracing Dr. Philip Potter’s motif of salvation through the novels Zorba the Greek, Don Quixote and The Once and Future King.