My work seeks to reveal the relationships between woman and man, woman and self, and woman and the space which she inhabits. Through personal memoirs and everyday observations the private becomes public, and moments of intimacy transpire. Intimacy requires dialogue, transparency, reciprocity, and self-disclosure, all things that I have been reflecting upon in my work over the last two years. Relationships are formed within the works and through the experience of the viewer with the art. Figures and abstraction coexist next to one another informing the viewer of things familiar, creating closeness, while also spatially confusing the viewer, creating a distance. Moments are filtered through abstraction and illuminated through touch. These moments, while often small and fractured, combine together to create a full and complete reflection of the self and the other.

Subjects rated 12 female body shapes with respect to their physical attractiveness, and the extent to which they would be expected to possess various personality characteristics. The shapes were varied using 3 levels of overall weight and 4 levels of body shapeliness. The sample was modified to control for socioeconomic factors and results are based on 297 undergraduates from Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic racial backgrounds. Loglinear analyses revealed that men and women, regardless of racial background, rated shapely underweight females as most physically attractive, sexy, and ideal for a woman, followed by normal weight figures of similar proportion. African Americans, women in particular, judged the shapely normal weight figures more favorably than the other subjects. Multidimensional scaling and subsequent frequency analyses showed that those figures judged as most attractive, sexy, and ideal were also expected to be fairly emotionally stable, and most successful and interpersonally competitive, but least faithful, kind, and family-oriented. Overweight female shapes, while rated as least physically attractive, sexy, and emotionally stable, were expected to be most family-oriented, kind, and faithful. Shapely normal weight figures were judged to be attractive and sexy, and were assumed to possess a moderate amount of the personality traits in question. The results suggest that Caucasian and Hispanic subjects prefer shapely underweight women, while African Americans, particularly women, find shapely underweight and shapely normal weight women to be physically appealing. African American women also rate shapely normal weight women favorably with respect to personality traits. This perceptual difference may help inoculate them from developing eating disturbances and account for the low prevalence rate of eating disorders in African Americans compared to women of other racial backgrounds. It is suggested that future research identify those beliefs, values or behaviors that seem to inoculate African American women from developing eating disorders. Once identified, mental health professionals may facilitate their development in those women who are likely to have eating problems.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to introduce the notion of ugliness as an aesthetic category, concerning the question of its position in the aesthetic experience, based in particular on the conception of difficult beauty by Bernard Bosanquet. The first part of the thesis discusses the possibility of aesthetic experiencing of unpleasantness and so specifies ugliness as inherently aesthetic category, in comparison to the unaesthetic response of disgust. The second part of the thesis deals with the question of position of ugliness and the feeling of unpleasantness if ugliness is an adequate part of the aesthetic experience which is regarded as excellent and contributing. The solution offered by Bosanquet in his conception of difficult beauty however isn't fully sufficient and therefore the last chapter introduces the problem of ugliness from a different viewpoint which emphasizes the negativity and disturbance of ugliness, impossible to dissolve. The key feature of ugliness is the ambivalent link amongst the repulsion and the attraction in aesthetic experiencing. The attribution of a meaning in the whole of the aesthetic experience, i.e. the possibility of attaining new insight thanks to ugliness, may however lead to a tendency to the reconciliation of ugliness. The original unpleasantness and...

L'objet de cette étude consiste à étudier la philosophie de Fârâbî et d'Avicenne, afin d'en dégager les pensées et les réflexions de ces deux philosophes en ce qui concerne l'esthétique. Nous avons essayé d'analyser plusieurs textes dans lesquels ils ont traité la notion de beauté. Cette analyse nous permettra de comparer l'esthétique de Fârâbî et d'Avicenne avec leurs principales origines, à savoir l'aristotélisme et le néoplatonisme. Ensuite, la présentation détaillée de leurs réflexions esthétiques nous montrera que leurs contributions aux sujets relatifs à la beauté, à la perfection, à la délectation esthétique, à l'imagination, etc. portent certaine originalité qui est le résultat d'une hybridation de deux grandes écoles philosophiques, à savoir l'aristotélisme et le néoplatonisme. / The aim of this thesis is to study the philosophy of Fârâbî and Avicenna, in order to identify the thoughts and reflections of these two philosophers in terms of aesthetics. We tried to analyze several texts in which they treated the notion of beauty. This analysis will compare the aesthetics of Fârâbî and Avicenna with their main origins, namely, Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. Then, the detailed presentation of their aesthetic reflections shows us that their contributions to topics related to beauty, perfection, aesthetic pleasure, imagination, etc. bear some originality, which is the result of a hybridization of two great philosophical schools, namely Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism.

The aim of this thesis The comparison of the ancient-art and ancient-philosophy views of the man in the world is to discuss ancient man's featuring in the world, both from the philosophical and artistic point of view. The following chapters, comparing both creative activities, deal with the most important topics closely related to the perception of the ancient man and his world. In particular, the thesis focuses on the relation to the divine and the concept of the ideal beauty. This work's goal is to state, by comparing philosophy and visual arts, whether philosophical thinking has always corresponded with visual arts; and how much they have influenced each other. Keywords The relationship of art and philosophy, ancient Greece, God, beauty, movement.

The main aim of the graduation thesis "Reflection of a girl's world in the magazine Bravo Girl!" using Critical Discourse Analysis is to identify ideology hidden in the texts of the mentioned magazine and to analyze all forms of the ideology "us" against "them". The theoretical part focuses on the significant concepts related to a text and its analysis and simultaneously deals with social and psychological aspects of gender socialization process. Special attention is paid to topics such as family, school, friends, new technologies and media. The author finds them to be a dominant source of influence in the life of teenage girls. The analytical part presents a girl's world from the Bravo Girl! point of view and inspects the language used by girls and the magazine. It attempts to estimate to which extent the magazine through language reflects values, attitudes and priorities of teenage girls and what is the role of the magazine in this. The qualitative method of semiology analysis is applied on press advertising. Keywords Magazine, ideology, language, teenage girls, stereotypes, beauty myth

Diese Diplomarbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem zeitgenössichen Trend des Körperkultes und mit dem Mythus der Schönheit, mit seinen biologischen und kulturell historischen Wurzeln. Ich versuche aufzuklären, warum die Schönheit in der heutigen Gesellschaft so geschlechtsbedingt ist. Und warum gerade die Frau mit dem schönen Geschlecht identifiziert wird. Weiter studiere ich gesellschaftliche Mechanismen, die eine Jagd nach dem perfekten Körper legitimieren. Ich beschreibe auch ihre Folgen auf der individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Ebene.

This diploma thesis deals with eating disorders, their causes and displays. It is based on the assumption that former patients are able to assess what was the main cause of their problems. The theoretical part defines particular eating disorders, their history, risk factors of their emergence, diagnosis, epidemiology and health complications accompanying this diseases. The practical part focuses on obtaining information by friendly interview with open questions. The qualitative research includes case studies of six women, four of them are over the age of 20 years and two of them over the age of 40 years. The main objective was to discover how they were affected by the school environment in relation to her own body and what attitude do they have to the prospective prevention programs at our schools. The part with recommendations tries to enlarge already existing prevention programs at schools. There are some proposals for cooperation between schools and professional institutions, workshops with patients and some suggestions to lessons of Health education. Further there are mentioned some projects focused on interpersonal relationships and healthy lifestyle. Finally, there are some suggestions focused on education of teachers and parents of students in the prevention of ED.

Notre étude répond a l'intitulé « La Dialectique ombre et lumière dans la poésie de Baudelaire et Senghor ». Elle s'attache à décrire la sémantique de ces deux métaphores de la condition humaine dans les œuvres de nos auteurs, sous l'autorité méthodologique de la stylistique de Spitzer et de la thématique richardienne. De fait, bien plus qu'un simple ornement, ombre et lumière traduisent au mieux leur pensée et décrivent la structure des œuvres. Ainsi, sont-elles une matrice génératrice d'une esthétique, d'une philosophie, et d'une religion parfois dissonante. Opportunément, le travail tente de mettre en lumière l'apport de Baudelaire dans la poésie senghorienne. Il établit que, contrairement à ce que certains critiques ont écrit, et à ce que Senghor à laisser entendre, sa poésie n'est pas influencée par celle du poète français. Ce dernier agit plutôt comme un révélateur, en lui faisant prendre conscience de la beauté de l'Afrique et de la femme noire, leur véritable point de rencontre / Our study answers to the title "The Dialectic shadow and light in Baudelaire and Senghor poetry". It strives to describe semantics of these two metaphors of the human condition in the work of our authors, under the methodological authority from Spitzer stylistics and from Richardřs themathic. Ac-tually, more than a simple ornament, a shadow and a light translate at best as possible their thought and describe the structure of the work. So, they are a generative matrix of aesthetics, a philosophy, and a sometimes dissonant religion. Conveniently, the work tries to highlight Baudelaire contribution in the Senghor poetry. It establishes that, in opposition to what some critics wrote, and in what Senghor let understand, his poetry is not influenced by that of the French poet. This last one acts rather as a revelation, by making him become aware of the beauty of Africa and black woman, their real meeting point

The four novels Hyperion, The Fall ofHyperion, Endymionand The Rise of Endymionconstitute the Hyperion Cantosby the American science fiction writer Dan Simmons. Thisgalactic-empire,epic,science fictionnarrative containsa plethora ofliterary references. The dominant part comes from the nineteenth-century Romantic poet John Keats. The inclusion of passages from his poetry and letters is pursuedin my analysis.EmployingLubomír Doležel’scategorizations of intertextuality—“transposition,” “expansion,” and “displacement”—I seek to show how Keats’s writings and his persona constitute a privilegedintertext inSimmons’s tetralogyand I show its function.Simmons constructs subsidiary plots, some of which are drivenby Keats’s most well-known poetry. In consequence, some of the subplotscan be regarded as rewrites of Keats’s works.Although quotations of poetry have a tendency to direct the reader’s attention away from the main plot,slowing down the narrative,such passages in the narrativesevokeKeats’s philosophy of empathy, beauty andlove,which is fundamental for his humanism.ForKeats, the poet is a humanist, giving solace to mankind through his poetry. I argue that the complex intertextual relationships with regards toKeats’s poetryand biographyshow the way Simmons expresses humanism as a belief in man’s dignity and worth, and uses it as the basis for his epic narrative.