Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has emerged in the 1980's as a major health threat of epidemic quality. The panic and fear accompanying this epidemic have been more extreme than the relatively small numbers of cases might suggest, however. This paper contextualizes that panic within a discussion of the epistemological implications of AIDS as it articulates with the ideology of sexual identity and gender domination in North American culture. Based on an analysis of print media AIDS news-stories, from 1985 through 1987, books about AIDS, and AIDS urban legends, I determine that the 'epidemic of fear' that characterizes the AIDS epidemic is the inevitable outcome of AIDS complex and ineluctable corrosion of the symbolic foundations of the ideology of masculinism in North America. Through the development of a model of mass media news as revealed reality, and a discussion of the core resonant signs of that ideology, I argue that AIDS violates the meaningful integrity of the hegemonic discourse of sexual identity, gender and reproduction, and undermines the capacity for this "regime of truth" to sustain itself. By placing AIDS within the framework of a critical analysis of the significant potential for ideological transformation, I argue for a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the AIDS epidemic as a sickness event. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This qualitative study examined how 14 young women's sexual desire and agency was influenced by the messages communicated from their parents and the quality of the parent-child relationship. Previous research results were supported, such as: parents do not communicate about sex frequently, or only about limited topics; mothers communicate more frequently than fathers, and peers communicate more sexual information. Utilizing a postmodern, feminist position, themes of parental transmission of patriarchal social controls were found, such as: fear of being viewed as a slut, gender roles that demand female passivity, sex is scary, and young women are not to have sex, or only in the context of committed relationships. Implications for parenting practices and the importance of developing sexual agency are discussed. / Ph. D.

Dear All, Eros moves. In January of 2007 I decided to do research about Eros and his presence in architecture. I decided to do a thesis about LOVE. This thesis it is a story about me, since when you love architecture you give yourself completely to it. What you see in these pages, it's me: my life, my desires, my passion for architecture, my fears, my bad moments, my good moments, my joy--all of me. Desire in architecture seemed to me at that moment something with which I didn’t know how to start working. It was so abstract that, when considered, almost anything can be a desire, and maybe it is. But this thesis is a story of how desire opened for me an infinite world of imagination and wonder--how Eros made me love the drawing, the line, the color, the wall, the shadow, the material....the architecture. I have chosen to explore desire through the designing of a post office, theatre school, and retail shops. The site is in Washington DC, in between 7th and 8th streets SE, adjacent to Eastern Market. / Master of Architecture

Yes / This essay draws on insights taken from Lacanian psychoanalysis to rethink and resituate notions of the self and subjectivity within the theory and practice of experiential leadership development. Adopting an auto-ethnographic approach, it describes the author’s own experience as a participant in a programme of equine assisted learning or ‘horse whispering’ and considers the consequences of human-animal interactions as a tool for self-development and improvement. Through an analysis of this human/animal interaction, the essay presents and applies three Lacanian concepts of subjectivity, desire and fantasy and considers their form and function in determining the often fractured relationship between self and other that characterises leader-follower relations.

In February 2024 Sewanee Theatre and Dance produced Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. This thesis documents the role of the technical director from pre-production through closing. 3D Printing technology was used for this production to create scenery that evoked the imagery of 1940s New Orleans. This thesis also discusses the roles of a technical director and the challenges they face in the industry. A portion of this project was done remotely which provides a unique perspective of the role of a Technical Director.

This essay is a labyrinthine journey through desire, weaving together poems, irrational thoughts, and raw emotions. It features snippets from revered authors and the author’s own fictions, reflecting a quest to approach love, desire, and suffering. Love is painted as a vast, elusive universe, compelling one to confront their inner shadows. The essay challenges conventional morality, presenting alternative views on pain and trauma without offering a definitive map to love. It acknowledges the universal struggle to find personal meaning in love, often a confusing and transient phantom. Readers are invited to wander through the text, embracing their interpretations as much as the author’s. The writing is both a confession and a pilgrimage for redemption, seen as a self-immolation to cleanse the soul rather than self-destruction. This piece is not a polished artifact but a chaotic tapestry aiming to open doors to new understandings and possibilities for boundless love, despite societal constraints. The author leads readers through this maze of thoughts and emotions, encouraging a closer examination of pain and trauma. Ultimately, the essay highlights the necessity of finding individual meanings of love, acknowledging its stoic yet ephemeral nature. The author seeks to deeply connect with readers, inviting them to unravel the layers within the text.

Though Byron is known for his provocative denials of the importance of Shakespeare, his public derogations of the early modern playwright are in fact a pose that hides the respect he had for the playwright’s powerful poetic vision, a regard which is recorded most comprehensively in the Shakespearean references of Don Juan. Byron imitated Shakespeare by repeating and adapting the older poet’s observations on the imitative nature of desire and the structure of emulous ambition as a source of violence. His appropriations make his work part of the modern shift away from earlier European societies, wherein ritual means of mitigating desire’s potentially inimical impact on human communities were supplemented with an increased reliance on market mechanisms to defer the effects of emulation and resentment. Finding himself among the first modern celebrities, Byron deploys Shakespeare’s representations of desire to trace the processes that produced the arc of his own fame and notoriety. Drawing on his deep knowledge of Shakespeare, Byron’s poetic vision—in its observations on the contagious nature of desire—exhibits elements of Shakespeare’s own vivid depictions of imitation as a key conduit for his characters’ cupidity, ambitions, and violence. Exploring how he plays with and integrates these representations into his letters, journals, poetry, and plays, my dissertation investigates Byron’s intuitions on the nature of human desire by focusing on his engagement with one of literature’s greatest observers of human behaviour, Shakespeare.

The poetry of T. S. Eliot represents intense yet discriminate expressions of desire. His poetry is a poetry of desire that extenuates the long tradition of love poetry in Occidental culture. The unique and paradoxical element of love in Occidental culture is that it is based on an ideal of the unconsummated love relationship between man and woman. The struggle to express desire, yet remain true to ideals that have deep sacred and secular significance is the key animating factor of Eliot's poetry. To conceal and reveal desire, Eliot made use of four core elements of modernism: the apocalyptic vision, Pound's Imagism, the conflict between organic and mechanic sources of sublimity, and precisionism. Together, all four elements form a critical and philosophical matrix that allows for the discreet expression of desire in what Foucault calls the silences of Victorianism, yet Eliot still manages to reveal it in his major poetry. In Prufrock, Eliot uses precisionism to conceal and reveal desire with conflicting patterns of sound, syntax, and image. In The Waste Land, desire is expressed as negation, primarily as shame, sadness, and violence. The negation of desire occurred only after Pound had excised explicit references to desire, indicating Eliot's struggle to find an acceptable form of expression. At the end of The Waste Land, Eliot reveals a new method of expressing desire in the water-dripping song of the hermithrush and in the final prayer of Shatih. Continuing to refine his expressions of desire, Eliot makes use of nonsense and prayer in Ash Wednesday. In Ash Wednesday, language without reference to the world of objects and directed towards the semi-divine figure represents another concealment and revelation of desire. The final step in Eliot's continuing refinement of his expressions of desire occurs in Four Quartets. Inn Four Quartets, the speaker no longer carries the burden of desire, but language at its every evocation carries the cruel burden of ideal love.

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Rationale: Cigarette cravings are one of the most important clinical phenomena in tobacco addiction. A wide range of studies and research designs may help to increase understanding of the relationship between physical activity (PA) and cigarette cravings. Aims: (i) To investigate the acute effects of walking and isometric exercise on cigarette cravings, withdrawal, and attentional bias among temporarily abstaining smokers. (ii) To quantify the effects of short bouts of PA on cigarette cravings among temporarily abstaining smokers. (iii) To examine who most benefits from PA, whether changes in affect mediate these effects, and whether a specific attribute of PA is associated with cravings. (iv) To investigate whether any association between habitual PA and cravings in smokers could be found. Methods: A randomised controlled crossover trial with three arms addressed aim (i). A systematic review of literature and individual participant data meta-analysis using hierarchical modelling addressed aims (ii) and (iii). Aim (iv) was achieved by using linear regression modelling of cross-sectional data from a smoking cessation study. Results: No difference in cravings, withdrawal, and attentional bias between walking and isometric exercise versus control was found. Bouts of PA decreased cigarette cravings by approximately 30%. Moderate intensity PA provided increased benefit when compared with light intensity, whereas vigorous intensity did not confer additional benefits compared with moderate intensity PA. Also bouts of medium (10 minutes) and longer duration (≥15minutes) appeared to be more effective than short duration (≤ 5 min). No moderators and mediators of this association were identified. Habitual moderate intensity PA was the strongest predictor of cigarette cravings in smokers, MPSS was an additional predictor and alcohol consumption moderated the effects of habitual PA on cravings. Conclusion: Moderate intensity PA could be recommended to smokers to help decrease cigarette cravings.