"You Can't Be Shakespeare And You Can't Be Joyce": Lou Reed, Modernism, And Mass Production, Daniel C. Jacobson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes a reevaluation of the overlooked connections between American popular music and modernist literature’s scope and formal experimentation which arose in the mid-20th century. Because Lou Reed’s ever-changing persona situates his work uncomfortably between high art and pop-culture, modernism and “post-modernity,” literature and music, and ethics and aesthetics, I intend to consider Reed as this dissertation’s empty, refracted center. One that will allow for a critique of several major intellectual movements, both inside and outside the academy, that continue to influence thinking about art, ethics, and material culture. Additionally, I hope to show that the work of a …

From The Corner Of One's Soul: The Methods Of Negotiating Tension In Cormac Mccarthy's Blood Meridian Or The Evening Redness In The West, Julian Pena

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a practical and meaningful reading of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, one that is rooted in the claim that both Judge Holden and the Kid reflect two different methods for negotiating a tension impinged upon them by their external circumstances. Using a theoretical framework that is inspired by the social psychological Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, this thesis provides an extensive analysis of the novel’s fictional universe, Judge Holden, and the Kid. Such an analysis elucidates the violent nature of Blood Meridian’s universe and further reveals the character of Judge Holden …

Further Toward Minor Literatures, Aaron Hammes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Minor literature is literatures of the minoritarian, not simply that produced by (cultural, ethnic, racial, gender-expressive, sexual, ability, age) minorities. Further Toward Minor Literatures operates from this decisive distinction to trace the contours and potentialities of one minoritarian literature, the contemporary transgender novel in the US and Canada. This study is premised in part on putting the fiction itself on a plane with theoretical and critical sources, creating a dialogue that does not privilege one discourse over the other. Minor literature is self-theorizing, perhaps even authotheoretical, in its expressing and fulfilling the mobile orientations of its minoritarian communities. This study …

Grappling With The Aftereffects Of Modernism In American Literature And Culture: Spiritual, Political, And Ecological, Joseph Neary

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Joe Neary examines various texts within contemporary American culture, including David Foster Wallace’s short story, “Good Old Neon,” Harmony Korine’s film, Spring Breakers, Richard Powers’ novel, The Overstory, and Bruce Holsinger’s book of criticism, Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror.

Addictive Potential: Regimes, Transformations, Circulations, Kayleigh E. Shield

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis employs a poststructuralist framework to consider the possibilities for agency and resistance in consumer capitalism. The argument begins with an examination of figures who emerged in nineteenth century psychiatric discourses, and the roles that those figures play in poststructural and postmodern critiques of psychoanalysis and psychiatry, specifically in the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I then argue that David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest presents us with a new figure—the addict. My reading of Wallace is informed by poststructuralist critiques of psychiatric power and by Wallace’s own affinity for the fiction of Franz Kafka. I …

Topics Of The Sky: Ashbery's Involving Search For The Poem, Tom M. Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An essay lived by John Ashbery's Three Poems with special attention to the possibility of cosmic relevance. This paper attempts to imagine priorities and needs proper to celestial bodies. Three Poems is the consciousness that gives possibility to the text, while Blanchot, Nietzsche, and other thinkers ground its exploration in philosophical analysis.

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Reimagining Movements: Towards A Queer Ecology And Trans/Black Feminism, Gabriel Benavente

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to bridge feminist and environmental justice movements through the literature of black women writers. These writers create an archive that contribute towards the liberation of queer, black, and transgender peoples.

In the novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler constructs a world that highlights the pervasive effects of climate change. As climate change expedites poverty, Americans begin to blame others, such as queer people, for the destruction of their country. Butler depicts the dangers of fundamentalism as a response to climate change, highlighting an imperative for a movement that does not romanticize the environment as heteronormative, but …

Spaces Of Collapse: Psychological Deterioration, Subjectivity, And Spatiality In American Narratives, Andrew Papaspyrou

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis studies the relationship between spatiality and subjectivity within the context of modern and contemporary American narrative. Combining a psychoanalytic approach with phenomenological considerations, I set out to analyze the ways in which spatial structures mediate madness, paranoia, the compulsion to repeat, and uncanny anxiety. Space serves a primary focus of my analysis, and I outline the different ways that language and consciousness construct space. Considering the work of William Faulkner, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Auster, and Mark Z. Danielewski, I argue that particular spaces, such as houses and cities, represent or contribute to particular forms of psychological psychosis …

We Are Standing In The Nick Of Time: Translative Relevance In Anne Carson's "Antigonick", Michelle Alonso

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The complicated issues surrounding translation studies have seen growing attention in recent years from scholars and academics that want to make it a discipline and not a minor branch of another field, such as linguistics or comparative literature. Writ large with Antigonick, Carson showcases the recent Western push towards translation studies in the American academy. By offering up a text that is chaotic in its presentation, she bypasses the rigid idea of univocality. By giving the text discordant images, she betrays the failed efficacy of sign and signification, and by choosing a text to be performed and mutually participated …

Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory, Rock Lamanna

Departmental Honors Projects

While postmodern theory and literature is typically viewed as either “anti-humanist” or a rejection of Humanism, this essay reconsiders these assumptions by exploring ethical questions in early postmodern novels and theory, referred to as “proto-postmodernism.” For proto-postmodernists such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, Humanism—the ethical framework that asserts a centered “self” and a collective “metanarrative” of human progress—causes and legitimates violence, yet in their theories and literature, they promote the humanist value of dignity in their critiques of modern ethics and politics. To examine this hybrid stance toward Humanism, the first section situates …

Toward An Ontology Of Exhaustion: On The Affective Structures Of Masculinity In The American Oilfield, John W. Jepsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What is the significance of the oil encounter in the lives of men living and working in the modern oilfields of the United States? Engaging with both literary examples of the lives of men in the Interior West and the personal experiences and reflections of the author, this essay seeks to examine the connections between ideology and place as it works to shape the identity and affect of men in America's oilfields, ultimately ending in them identifying with the very resources their activities seek to exploit and exhaust. Utilizing Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia as its moral touchstone, this essay works …

Stanza My Stone: On The Death Of God And The Nature Of Poetry, Ariella Joann Kust

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

"The Imagination And Construction Of The Black Criminal In American Literature, 1741-1910", Emahunn Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation examines the origins of the perception of black people as criminally predisposed by arguing that during eighteenth and nineteenth-century America, crime committed by black people was used as a major trope in legal, literary, and scientific discourses, deeming them inherently criminal. Furthermore, I contend that enslaved and free black people often used criminal acts, including murder, theft, and literacy, as avenues toward freedom. However, their resistance was used as a justification for slavery in the South and discrimination in the North. By examining a diverse set of materials such as confessional literature, plantation management literature, (social) scientific studies, …

The Binding Of Abraham: Inverting The Akedah In Fail-Safe And Wargames, Hunter B. Dukes

Journal of Religion & Film

This article draws upon Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death to trace how two exemplars of atomic bomb cinema reinterpret the Binding of Isaac (Akedah). Released during the twin peaks of Cold War tension, Fail-Safe (1964) and WarGames (1983) invert the Akedah of Genesis 22. In both films, an act of sacrificial patricide accompanies or replaces the sacrifice of an Isaac-like son. When viewed in the context of Cold War cultural politics—events such as Norman Morrison’s Abrahamic self-immolation and Kent State’s rejection of George Segal’s sacrificial memorial— the inverted Akedah emerges as …

The World In Singing Made: David Markson's "Wittgenstein's Mistress", Tiffany L. Fajardo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In line with Wittgenstein's axiom that "what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest," this thesis aims to demonstrate how the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy can best be bridged through the mediation of art. The present thesis brings attention to Markson's work, lauded in the tradition of Faulkner, Joyce, and Lowry, as exemplary of the shift from modernity to postmodernity, wherein the human heart is not only in conflict with itself, but with the language out of which it is necessarily constituted. Markson limns the paradoxical condition of the subject …

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

Dirty Modernism: Ecological Objects In American Poetry, Michael D. Sloane

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines how early-to-mid twentieth century American poetry is preoccupied with objects that unsettle the divide between nature and culture. Given the entanglement of these two domains, I argue that American modernism is “dirty.” This designation leads me to sketch what I call “dirty modernism,” which includes the registers of waste, energy, animality, raciality, and the sensual. Reading these registers, I turn to what I call “ecological objects,” or representations of how nature and culture come together, which includes trash, natural resources, inanimals, and tools. Through an ecocritical mode of analysis, I introduce dirty modernism with the Baroness Elsa …

The "Vast And Terrible" Trauma: American Literary Naturalism, Ethics, And Levinas, Tyler Joseph Efird

Doctoral Dissertations

In an 1896 essay, Frank Norris wrote that the reading world should abandon those “teacup tragedies” to which it had grown accustomed and embrace a new literature that would depict a “vast and terrible drama.” Realism, Norris claimed, could not be used to achieve an earnest portrait of the conditions that mark individual lives under capitalism. Instead, the world needed a romantic wrestling with the forces of existential inscrutability. Also, the perceived need for literature to depict a clear ethical system needed revising from the perspective of American literary naturalism, a school long denigrated for apparent moral vacuity. Through excruciating …

The Politics Media Equation:Exposing Two Faces Of Old Nexus Through Study Of General Elections,Wikileaks And Radia Tapes, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The important identity of a responsible media is playing an unbiased role in reporting a matter without giving unnecessary hype to attract the attention of the gullible public with the object of making money and money only.After reporting properly the media can educate the public to form their own opinion in the matters of public interest. Throughout the centuries, the world has never existed without information and communication, hence the inexhaustible essence of mass media. The government has the power to either make or reject whatever that will exist within its environment. It also determines how free the mass media …

Story Of An Intern, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

“Story Of an Intern” tells you the story of an young boy who manages to get an internship in a global media giant. His struggles and amazements begins when he finds himself out of internship and struggles to get a foothold in media. In the way he analyzes the odds and evens of Indian media industry and media tycoons while most of the time finding himself rejected. His experiences while in search of a job carries him to different places and allows him to meet some interesting people who makes an imprint on his life and he finds himself falling …

Mass Media And Communication In Global Scenario, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The idea behind putting these research papers and research articles in this book is to give various aspects of communication, a platform where from readers may go through them at one go. The book deals with the research articles and papers dedicated to core areas of Journalism and Mass Communication. The papers and articles compiled in this book touches the need of students,academicians and researchers on most challenging areas and topics.In the collection of these papers author has discussed about Community Radio,FM Radio,Communication Science, Organizational Communication,Media Accounatbility,Language Discourse,Higher Education,Tevision Studies,Traditional and Digital Media,Disaster Management and Media,Wikileaks and Social Media,Terrorism and …

“Human Relations Movement In View Of Interpersonal Relations With Emphasis On Mayo’S Work”, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Human relations movement refers to the researchers of organizational development who study the behavior of people in groups, in particular workplace groups. It originated in the 1930s' Hawthorne studies, which examined the effects of social relations, motivation and employee satisfaction on factory productivity. The movement viewed workers in terms of their psychology and fit with companies, rather than as interchangeable parts, and it resulted in the creation of the discipline of human resource management. An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range in duration from brief to enduring. This association may be based on …

International Terrorism And Television Channels:Operation And Regulation Of Tv News Channel During Coverage Of Terrorism, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

The concept of globalization or internationalization of certain wars, which were result of terrorist activities worldwide , as well as the high attention of terrorism coverage broadcast worldwide might open up better opportunities to journalists – particularly to those who work in democratic countries like U.S.A and India – to improve their coverage. The context is the key: the context of the operation methodology, follow of guidelines of regulatory bodies,and of the journalistic culture and of the global environment. It is very important how media presents consequences of terrorist acts, how information is transmitted to public. Television and press have …

Freedom Of Media In India: A Weapon To Kill Enemies Or Protection Guard For Public-The Two Sides, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

"The press [is] the only tocsin of a nation. [When it] is completely silenced... all means of a general effort [are] taken away." --Thomas Jefferson "Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression" is a fundamental right of the citizens of India. This is mentioned in Part III of the Constitution of India - Article 19(1). This Article is so wide in scope that Freedom of the Press is included in Freedom of Speech and Expression. It includes the right of free propagation and free circulation without any previous restraint on publication. The freedom of speech and expression does not give …

An Analytical Study Of 'Sanskrit' And 'Panini' As Foundation Of Speech Communication In India And World, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

samskrtam or for short sanskrit or samskrtā vāk is an ancient sacred language of bharatavarsha that is the language of Hinduism and the Vedas and is the classical literary language of India. The name Sanskrit means "refined", "consecrated" and "sanctified". It has always been regarded as the 'high' language and used mainly for religious and scientific discourse. There are still hundreds of millions of people who use Sanskrit in their daily lives, but despite these numbers, its cultural worth is unsurpassed. The language name samskrtam is derived from the past participle saṃskṛtaḥ 'self-made, self-done' of the verb saṃ(s)kar- 'to make …

Radio In India:The Fm Revolution And Its Impact On Indian Listeners, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

If you ask most people who invented Radio, the name Marconi comes to mind. Usually KDKA Pittsburgh is the response when you ask about the first Radio station. But are these really Radio's firsts? In the interest of curiosity and good journalism, we set out to determine if these were in fact Radio's firsts. Broadcasting began in India with the formation of a private radio service in Madras (presently Chennai) in 1924. In the very same year, British colonial government approved a license to a private company, the Indian Broadcasting Company, to inaugurate Radio stations in Bombay and Kolkata. The …

A Decisive Social Media: Domination Of Social Media In Deciding News Content-A Case Study Of American Media And Trayvon Martin Tragedy, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

More than a quarter of Americans (27%) now get news on mobile devices, and for the vast majority, this is increasing news consumption, the report finds. More than 80% of smartphone and tablet news consumers still get news on laptop or desktop computers. On mobile devices, news consumers also are more likely to go directly to a news site or use an app, rather than to rely on search — strengthening the bond with traditional news brands. Almost immediately after the February 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin, the conversation about the case began simmering on Twitter. But it was nearly …

-“An Analysis Of Concepts,Componants And Tools Of Research Process And Methodologies”, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Research is an endeavor to discover answers to intellectual and practical problems through the application of scientific method. “Research is a systematized effort to gain new knowledge”. -Redman and Mory. Research is the systematic process of collecting and analyzing information (data) in order to increase our understanding of the phenomenon about which we are concerned or interested. The purpose of research is to discover answers through the application of scientific procedures. The objectives are: To gain familiarity with a phenomenon or to achieve new insights into it – Exploratory or Formulative Research. To portray accurately the characteristics of a particular …

Higher Education In India : The Glory Of Past,The Challenges Of Today And The Road For Tomorrow, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Universal education of all children in literacy has been a recent development, not occurring in many countries until after 1850 CE. Even today, in some parts of the world, literacy rates are below 60 per cent (for example, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh). Schools, colleges and universities have not been the only methods of formal education and training. Many professions have additional training requirements, and in Europe, from the Middle Ages until recent times, the skills of a trade were not generally learnt in a classroom, but rather by serving an apprenticeship. Each generation, since the beginning of human existence, has …