Transfigurations of the image of the Other in Czech travelogues of the long 19th Century Abstract of the dissertation thesis Mgr. et Mgr. Jan Heller The thesis focuses on constructions of the image of the Other in Czech travelogues of the 19th century. The travelogue is a peripheral literary genre, both an artistic text and a historical source, and thus enables the viewer to combine perspectives of literary criticism and historical anthropology. Special attention is paid to religious motifs owing mainly to the fact that this theme has been left out of focus in the present research thanks to the emphasis on the linguistic and historic character of the Czech national emancipation movement. The intention of the thesis is to describe literary techniques in the individual travelogues (direct representations, narrative strategies, topics, attributes of characters) and the function they serve in the building of the image of the Other and thus of the image of oneself at the same time. The goal ...

The thesis in this essay states that Ántonia Shimerda and Lena Lingard in My Ántonia achieve a higher degree of woman emancipation because of their active response to prevailing power structures and that Cather uses the hardships and disappointments of these young women to highlight these power structures. Therefore, My Ántonia can be regarded as a novel taking a stand against patriarchal power structures. The primary text is My Ántonia by Willa Cather, which is analysed with the help of Foucault’s theory of power and Judith Butler’s gender theories. The essay discusses which power structures are affecting Ántonia Shimerda and Lena Lingard and how these obtain a higher degree of woman emancipation due to their response to these power structures. Furthermore, the essay also deals with which inequalities in society that are highlighted by Cather in My Ántonia and how this is made.

This presentation explores the role the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (commonly referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau) played in western North Carolina’s reconstruction. It may seem ironic that an agency tasked with aiding the adjustment from slavery to free labor was in the southern mountains, but the irony dissipates in light of the evidence. The Conservative Party’s resumption of local control in 1865 led white Unionists to embrace the Republican Party and black political cooperation two years later, a move that would have been impossible without the Freedmen’s Bureau. Its agents represented the most tangible source of federal power in the mountain counties, and as such helped build relationships between black and white mountaineers that allowed the Republicans to sweep the pivotal local and state elections of 1868.

As the ¿War on Terror¿ evolves into the ¿Long War¿ against Islamo-fascism, it demands an enduring commitment to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies. This policy is based on the requirement to maintain control in a fractured and unpredictable global environment, while paying little attention to the underlying issues that lead to insecurity. It is an approach that is manifestly failing, as the continuing problems in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate. Moreover, ¿control¿ implies the maintenance of a global order that focuses on power remaining in the hands of a transnational elite community, principally focused on North America and Western Europe, but extending worldwide. This elite largely ignores socio-economic divisions and environmental constraints, and sees continuing stability as being best achieved by the maintenance of the status quo, using force when necessary. This collection of essays by Professor Paul Rogers argues that this post-Cold War security paradigm is fundamentally misguided and unsustainable. It concludes with two new essays on the need for a new conception of global security rooted in justice and emancipation.

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In this essay I examine how conceptions of gender can expand the emancipatory ability of feminism. To achieve this the essay analyzes and discusses two conceptions of gender. The first can be found in Virginia Held’s “The Ethics of Care”, while the second can be found in Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s “Feminism without Borders”. By comparing these the essay examines the limits of a stricter conception of gender, in comparison to a more complex conception of gender. These are in turn compared to Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” and Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”.  Through the analysis and discussion, it is shown that stricter conceptions of gender give a more simplified view of the real lives of women in different parts of the world. These conceptions may include ideas about contextuality and social factors such as race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, but these are added to an already established idea of “the woman”. Through complex conceptions of gender these social factors are instead viewed as intersected with gender. Gender is thus seen as a social construct, contextually differentiated by different conceptions of both sexuality and gender expression, as well as other social factors. These social factors are seen as both constructed and used by systems and power structures to oppress women. Complex conceptions of gender can thus expand the emancipatory ability of feminism by bringing both an intersectional and materialistic perspective into view. This perspective shows how gender can both be constructed in problematic ways through discursive representations and feminist theories, but also shows how gender is constructed through social practices and are used to affect women in a material way.