Master of Arts / Department of English / Kimball Smith / This thesis stands as the first part of the earliest novel in a series that will appeal to the mass public, utilizing well-celebrated fairy tale elements and introducing old elements of courtly romance from the medieval literature period. In doing so, I have worked to create a fantastical world with obvious parallels to historical and present notions of society, culture, and human interactions, but with a new and interesting twist on concepts readers are familiar with. The universe I’ve created is able to be introduced in this first installment and gradually broadened as the series progresses to prevent exhaustive detail which may distract the reader. Also, it is restricted by specific laws in terms of magical abilities and power in order to give the reader boundaries to react within and prevent the unhelpful limitlessness that causes a loss of interest. The main character, Emily Fenhorn, is a thirteen-year-old girl who is fairly average in her adolescence. She’s neither the weakest nor the strongest character, leaving room for both growth and human frailty. The conflicts that affect Emily in this first installment center primarily on problems that teenagers deal with on a regular basis such as the need for acceptance, making new friends, making and dealing with enemies, popularity, and academic concerns. Unlike other thirteen-year-olds, Emily is plagued by a horrifying ‘gift’ that she doesn’t know how to control; a gift which ends up earning her place at Grimm’s Reformatory.

Utifrån fyra fantasybilder, vars gemensamma nämnare är att de föreställer ett eller flera monster, av tre olika konstnärer och en konstruktivistisk syn på kön ställer denna uppsats frågan Hur konstrueras kön i fantasybilder? Syftet med denna frågeställning är att genom bildanalyser och gestaltande arbete synliggöra hur föreställningar om könsroller och normer representeras och reproduceras i fantasybilder, bilder som barn och unga kommer i kontakt med genom bok- och spelomslag, reklambilder och serier. Uppsatsens didaktiska syfte är att beskriva en modell för hur arbete med frågor om könsroller, könsstereotyper och normer kan genomföras i skolan, främst i gymnasieskolan, genom användande av just fantasybilder. Genom att ställa fyra fantasybilder mot representationsteorier signerade Griselda Pollock och Erving Goffman, samt teorier om monster signerade Noël Carroll, Cynthia A. Freeland och Carol J. Clover tittar uppsatsen på hur kön gestaltas; på hur kvinnlighet och manlighet konstrueras och på vilka föreställningar om kön dessa representationer reproducerar. Uppsatsen innehåller även en kort beskrivning av begreppet fantasykonst samt ett förslag på hur monster kan definieras. Arbetets gestaltande del koncentrerar sig på att bryta mot de normer och att utvidga den snäva kvinnoroll som bildanalyserna identifierat. Gestaltningsarbetet blir så ett exempel på hur mindre könsstereotypa fantasybilder skulle kunna se ut och även en konkret visualiserad läroprocess. Uppsatsens slutdiskussion sammanfattar resultatet av bildanalyserna och förespråkar slutligen en kritisk inställning till dessa bilder vars förföriska yttre gestaltar och reproducerar föreställningar om könsskillnader som något självklart och "normalt". / <p>BI/Konst</p>

<p>Uppsatsen ingår i kursen Skapande svenska C som är en del av ämnet Litteraturvetenskap vid Umeå universitet</p>

In recent years, the young adult genre has become increasingly popular and is experiencing a "second golden age.” It might be expected in such novels, when written by women and featuring gifted female heroines, to find some kind of a feminist message. Indeed, the heroines are often perceived as strong and capable. However, they fall in line with several old gender stereotypes. The three novels chosen for this study are: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard and An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. I will show that women, although perceived as strong and capable on the surface, often conform to stereotypes. In order to do this I analyse how women are portrayed from different perspectives. Women are often perceived as passive in romantic situations, and objectified through the normative male gaze. It is interesting that also in novels written by women for women, the male gaze is prominent. Through this the female reader gains the desire to be objectified, implicitly from the narrative, which is something that works against women’s empowerment in society. Furthermore, the female protagonists rarely, or never, threaten patriarchy in any way and generally work toward reinstating patriarchy which is perceived as the only sensible option. Women in power, who do threaten patriarchy, are portrayed as sadistic witches.

This investigation combines contemporary Marxian political economy with Lacanian psychoanalysis to understand the discourse of finance capitalism, and to understand the dialectical seeds of the industry’s eventual destruction that were inherent within the hegemonic commodities of the era. These commodities, which include derivatives, futures, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and subprime mortgage loans, were ideological and communicative as well as profitable, and thus do a double duty under finance capitalism’s dominance. Lacan’s concepts of metaphor, fantasy, the quilting point, and the master signifier are extended in order to understand how subjects come to know themselves and their world through the terms given to them by capital. In addition, the rhetorical interventions of two chief ideologists for finance capitalism in the 1990s, Thomas Friedman and Alan Greenspan, are interrogated as exemplifications of the fantastical nature of late capitalism. / text

This paper looks at the different influences behind my senior art project. Chapter I discusses the history of ceramics and the ceramic artists whose work was influential for my project, specifically, Robert Arneson and Viola Frey. Chapter II looks at the non-ceramic artists whose work influenced my project by, Andy Goldsworthy and Sally Mann. It also talks about Land Art. Chapter III moves away from my artistic influences to discuss the main idea behind my project, which is my journey of self-discovery in New Zealand. Chapter IV looks to the influence of fantasy and science fiction genres on my project.

Master of Science / Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Todd W. Easton / The possibility of becoming a millionaire attracts over 200,000 daily fantasy sports (DFS) contest entries each Sunday of the NFL season. Millions of people play fantasy sports and the companies sponsoring daily fantasy sports are worth billions of dollars. This thesis develops optimization models for daily fantasy sports with an emphasis on tiered contests. A tiered contest has many different payout values, including the highly sought after million-dollar prize. The primary contribution of this thesis is the first model to optimize the expected payout of a tiered DFS contest. The stochastic integer program, MMIP, takes into account the possibility that selected athletes will earn a distribution of fantasy points, rather than a single predetermined value. The players are assumed to have a normal distribution and thus the team’s fantasy points is a normal distribution. The standard deviation of the team’s performance is approximated through a piecewise linear function, and the probabilities of earning cumulative payouts are calculated. MMIP solves quickly and easily fits the majority of daily fantasy sports contests. Additionally, daily fantasy sports have landed in a tense political climate due to contestants hopes of winning the million-dollar prize. Through two studies that compare the performance of randomly selected fantasy teams with teams chosen by strategy, this thesis conclusively determines that daily fantasy sports are not games of chance and should not be considered gambling. Besides creating the first optimization model for DFS tiered contests, this thesis also provides methods and techniques that can be applied to other stochastic integer programs. It is the author’s hope that this thesis not only opens the door for clever ways of modeling, but also inspires sports fans and teams to think more analytically about player selection.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Daniel A. Hoyt / This project is the first three chapters of a young adult novel, The Muses. Lily Bellows is singled out in infancy to become one of the Muses, humans given supernatural powers through enchanted golden masks. The six Muses (Faith, Wisdom, Pride, Obedience, Courage, and Desire) are telepathically linked to Illyria’s king so that he is better able to manage his emotions and thus rule more efficiently. Lily is destined to be the Muse of Faith, but her parents fake her death and keep her abilities secret until she heals her village of a deadly plague and the Muses consequently return for her. As Lily struggles to master fighting arts, healing skills, and the ability to manipulate emotions, she must also befriend the moody Prince Connor who will one day share her consciousness, and she must untangle the complicated feelings she has for Connor’s illegitimate brother, Ronan. While Lily’s fellow Muse initiates have been training since infancy, Lily joins them as a teenager, and she finds it nearly impossible to give up her family, her dreams and her individuality so she can make Prince Connor into a better king. When she has the chance to break the oath she swore to serve her country as its Muse of Faith, she must choose between power and individuality and determine whether she must submit to her destiny or create her own.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / Thesis advisor: Leslie Salzinger / <bold>White Weddings: Fantasy, Femininity and Consumer Desire</bold> Patricia Arend Advisors: Juliet B. Schor and Leslie Salzinger The white wedding, the dominant form of marriage ritual in America, is a key site for the study of gender inequality because it ritualizes, dramatizes and makes pleasurable patriarchal gender relations. While men and women are becoming more equal in education, the labor force and other social institutions, many women are opting for a traditional, highly gendered wedding ritual. This dissertation unpacks this paradox through the use of qualitative methodology on women's subjectivity and subconscious experience. My methodological strategy includes participant observation, survey research, free association narrative interviewing and photo-elicitation. These varied methods reveal not only that the majority of my respondents desire a traditional, white wedding complete with a standard package of goods and practices, but that in so enacting heteronormativity they seek a singular emotional and romantic experience. Study participants express varied attitudes to their own desire, however. Those without major ambivalence--both straight and a few lesbians--take their desire for a white wedding for granted, an attitude emerging with apparent seamlessness from their emotional experiences attending other people's weddings, the sharing of wedding-related evaluations, perspectives and activities through female-centered social networks, and their prior consumption of wedding related media. Wedding media are consumed by engaged women like an instruction manual, while others often view it with other women, socially. Not all of the participants' relationships to this ritual is so straightforward. Some feel guilty for wanting a wedding they have come to see as sexist or wasteful. They cope with this guilt through a complex process of dissociation and projection focused on other women- a process we find in other aspects of consumer society as well. In addition, a much smaller number of women who identify as lesbian selectively do not conform to the full white wedding format and feel good about their choices. Yet none of these women desire the "camp" elements found in previous studies of lesbian commitment ceremonies and most incorporate some aspects of the white wedding, indicating a trend toward greater conformity. Identifying as a feminist was not correlated with a desire for a particular type of wedding or the experience of desire, which I argue relates to the complex historical context of the movement for marriage equality, the cooptation of feminism by advertising as the "new consumer feminism" and contemporary third wave feminism, which emphasizes individual identity and a liberal politics of choice. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.