The elaborated intrusion (EI) theory of desire is a cognitive model that describes the processes involved in craving as intrusive thoughts that are elaborated upon leading to dissonance when desires are not met. While the theory is based on a wide body of research, certain theoretical predictions have not been fully examined. Specifically, EI theory argues that mental imagery has a central role in craving, and predicts that attempts to suppress substance-related intrusive thoughts and mental imagery is related to increased craving. Further, EI theory suggests that elaboration of craving imagery is related to attention and working memory processes, however, there are questions about whether differential performance in these domains is related to craving. The current study examined the relationship between attention/working memory performance and alcohol craving in a sample of 119 young adult males. Additionally, metacognition was examined to clarify the phenomenological aspects of craving within EI theory. Attention and working memory performance did not significantly predict intrusive thought and mental imagery elaboration. Individuals with high craving reported significantly higher levels of anxiety, thought suppression, and greater strength and frequency of craving-related mental imagery. They were also more likely to try to control their own thoughts and make negative judgments on their ability to do so. The strength of craving-related intrusive thoughts, not mental imagery, was the most significant predictor of craving. Implications for the understanding of craving and treatment recommendations based on the findings are discussed.

The scope of LGBTQ characters in fiction is wholly limited. When an LGBTQ character makes his or her way into a story, that character is usually flat and static and becomes a caricature rather than a whole character. My critical introduction maps the creation of each of my thesis stories and applies them to patterns that I have discovered while reading Victorian and contemporary literature that stereotypes, isolates, and/or punishes LGBTQ characters. I discuss the idea of displaced desire in Victorian works by Kate Chopin, M.E. Braddon, Oscar Wilde, and Sheridan Le Fanu, and also the stereotyping of characters in contemporary novels ala JK Rowling’s and Cassandra Clare’s novels. Then, in my body of fiction, I take those same patterns and turn them around so as to expose heteronormativity and filter it through a monstrous lens.

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The purpose of this essayis to find out how masculinity, based in Raewyn Connells theoriesabout hegemonic,subordinated, complicitand marginalized masculinities,is constructed in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego, is the main object for the analysis.It becomesclear that there aretwomaintypes of hegemonic masculinity, one very strict and disciplined among the priests in the Jesuitschools Stephen attends to, and one of a more intellectualkind at the University.The strong influence from the Catholic church in Ireland is however noticeable in every context Stephen presentshimself. Also, there areseveral examples of subordination, complicity and marginalization among the men in the novel.

Over the course of Theocritean scholarship there has been a tendency to try to fill the narrative gaps that he leaves in his poems, and this tendency has led to various interpretations of each of the Idylls. While some see this as a puzzle to be solved, a sort of literary exercise for Theocritus' fellow poetae docti and the erudite court of Ptolemaic Alexandria, this study will examine these narrative gaps as opportunities for each audience member to explore his or her own beliefs, especially regarding love. Theocritus does not lead his audience to a specific conclusion, but he only raises questions. This study shows how the Idylls pose questions that correlate with those that Plato and Hellenistic philosophers address in their discussion of love. Is love a divine blessing, madness, or both? What are the symptoms of lovesickness? Can lovesickness be cured? Is passion part of human nature? What are the benefits of love? Once the reader has in mind the questions that are raised in philosophy and the earlier poetic tradition, it becomes clear that Theocritus is posing the same questions. He uses the images of love in the poetic tradition to explore these topics in a way that conjures allusions to philosophical texts. Once I have examined the poetic and philosophical background, I turn to the Idylls themselves. I organize my discussion of the poems according to the three types of lovers in Plato's Symposium: procreators, poets, and immortals. Procreators are those who seek to give birth in the body, for example Simaetha in Idyll 2. These lovers are portrayed as afflicted with lovesickness without a viable cure, and as treading the line between animal and human. Poets give birth in the mind with their poetry, for example the speaker of Idyll 12. Although suffering from lovesickness, poets have a remedy, poetry. Finally, immortals give birth to true virtue, such as the Ptolemies in Idyll 17. These monarchs are so loved by the gods for their virtue that they are made immortal and are allowed to live on Olympus with the gods. The layers of meaning revealed in the allusions to the poetic and philosophical traditions do not show Theocritus as promoting a favorite doctrine, rather, he promotes questions about desire, lovesickness, remedies, humanity, persuasion, the power of poetry and immortality. When we look at Theocritus as a heuristic poet, we can better understand the value of his poetry and his mastery in using narrative gaps to raise questions for his audience.

This thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the American social system and its depiction in American fiction, principally in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!? and How can one disentangle the workings of race, gender, and sexuality in the American social system, when such a knot depends upon queer desire for its strength and energy to an exaggerated degree? Ultimately, I argue that one way to pull these threads apart is to implement a queer deconstructive approach informed by narrative theories of desire, but to begin to answer this question, I contend that the Romantic version of Satan is inherently queer and that as Byronic heroes, Ahab and Sutpen’s queerness deconstructs the binaries that would ensure the “success” of their designs by magnifying and critiquing the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class are predicated on socially constructed and interlocking binaries to assure the supremacy of (those who at least appear to be) powerful white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender men like Ahab and Sutpen. In my analysis of the queer impulses of Ahab and Sutpen, I draw on Jaime Harker’s model of the Southern social system as predicated on an “unholy trinity” formed by the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to advance a new approach to interpreting triangular relationships of power and desire in the in the American novel (Harker 112). In my analysis of Sutpen, I layer romantic triangles inspired by the work of René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) over the triangle of the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to explore the ways in which mediated desire between “whores,” “niggers,” and “queers” disrupts cultural hegemony. Queer erotic dynamics involving Ahab are more often bivalent than triangular, but both Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! feature queer erotic desire across racial boundaries, that reveal deep racial fantasies. I maintain that both novels are palimpsests of queer desire and that as Byronic heroes Ahab and Sutpen, though not the characters most frequently discussed in queer readings of Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!, produce, benefit from and blend back into the queer milieu of each text. I end by arguing that Sutpen’s Hundred metonymically stands in for the American South and that the Pequod represents The American Project in its entirety. It is my view that these novels model a hermeneutic (part: whole) relationship that makes them especially apt choices for probing this uniquely American matrix of social power and for highlighting the transformative potential of partially unearthed counter-narratives.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (June 28, 2006) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

"Desire and Hope" is three short animations. The main concept in these three animations is human desires; the goal in each animation was to explore a ways to tell this concept by adding some level of ambiguity, so viewers can watch it through their own vision. / Master of Fine Arts

Architectural form is both an expression of human desire and built edifice directly related to construction methods. It follows that the responsibilities of the architect seeking new form must extend to the instrumentation of tectonic machines and devices, which are also appropriately new. This thesis proposes a revitalization of the relationship between the architect and machines as a means of restoring intimacy, immediacy, and delight to the act of building. What follows is a presentation of images, photographs, and models related to the design and development of an architecture machine, and related constructions. / Master of Architecture