This dissertation delineates a range of literary endeavors engaging the gothic contours of child life in early to mid-twentieth century America. Drawing fresh attention to fictional representations of the child in modernist narratives, I show how writers such as William Faulkner, Djuna Barnes, Jean Toomer, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Anne Porter turned to childhood as a potent site for negotiating cultural anxieties about physical and cultural reproduction. I reveal the implications of modernist technique for the historical formation of American childhood, demonstrating how these texts intervened in national debates about sexuality, race, and futurity. Each dissertation chapter adopts a comparative approach, indicating a shared investment in a specific formulation of the gothic child. Barnes and Faulkner, in creating the child-woman, appraise how the particular influence of psychoanalysis on childhood innocence irrevocably alters the cultural landscape. Faulkner and Toomer, through the spectral child, evaluate the exclusionary racial politics surrounding interracial intimacy which impact kinship structures in the U.S. South. Welty and Porter, in spotlighting the orphan girl-child, assess the South’s gendered social matrix through the child’s consciousness. Finally, Faulkner, in addressing children as a readership in his little-known gothic fable, The Wishing Tree, produces a compelling site to examine the relationship between literature written for the child and modernist artistic practice.

The aim of my dissertation, as the title indicates, is to determine the relationship between modernism and fragmentation. The objective, however, is twofold. In addition to the argument through which I explicate the neglected discussion of the connection between modernism and fragmentation, this paper reveals the thought processes and artistic influences crucial to my own development as a painter. The majority of artists I discuss have informed my practice stylistically as well as aesthetically. The thesis therefore serves not only as a theoretical discussion but also as a partial justification of my personal conceptions regarding my work, on which I will elaborate in appendix. This paper demonstrates that the resolution of all things depends upon the collection, selection, arrangement and rearrangement of fragments, including my painting and this paper itself / Master of Arts

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Université de Montréal, 2002. / Adviser: Livia Monnet. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

It is generally agreed that modernism is a period and movement rich in interdisciplinary collaboration. What is often contentious in understandings of the modernist period is to whom modernist artists addressed their projects. On the one hand, traditional scholarship has tended to view modernism as an essentially elitist project practiced among a closed set orbiting around British and American expatriate coteries: Ezra Pound and his “Ezuversity,” Stein and her Paris Salon, Woolf and the Bloomsbury circle. On the other hand, recent scholarship in modernism has sought to expand the field to included modernisms practiced in different time periods, in different countries, and by a wider range of artists. While my project is firmly situated in the work of the so-called high modernists, my operatically focused approach, which sees Pound, Stein, and Woolf engaging directly with mass culture by way of opera (albeit in different ways and to different aims), suggests that we need to re-think the way in which we have mythologized the period, even where these “high” modernists are concerned. In chapter one, I read Pound’s operatic endeavors as alternative means of translation. Though these pedagogical projects valorize the art they “translate” for its unique difficulty, the use of opera and later, radio opera, as the means to translate this art demonstrates an interest in democratizing this difficulty. This is a remarkable inconsistency given Pound’s undisputedly fascist allegiances. Chapter two, which focuses on Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts, shows how the prospect of writing an opera helped Stein to forge a new connection between playwright and audience in the theatre. What I am calling the “envoiced landscape” is an anti-patriarchal, enabling alternative to teleologically driven narrative that defeats authorial control by way of play. Chapters three and four turn to Woolf’s conspicuously hybrid novels, The Waves and Between the Acts. Both works question the nineteenth-century notion of music’s capacity to transcend language, embracing instead a distinctly operatic frame of reference, as Woolf celebrates the novel as an omnivorous but democratic, open-ended, contingent form, endlessly capable of incorporating and co-opting other genres. Whereas The Waves enacts a critique of the Gesamtkunstwerk played out on the Wagnerian stage, Between the Acts considers the social text played out among opera’s audiences, positing, then critiquing, a Brechtian reevaluation of Wagnerian aesthetics.

It is generally agreed that modernism is a period and movement rich in interdisciplinary collaboration. What is often contentious in understandings of the modernist period is to whom modernist artists addressed their projects. On the one hand, traditional scholarship has tended to view modernism as an essentially elitist project practiced among a closed set orbiting around British and American expatriate coteries: Ezra Pound and his “Ezuversity,” Stein and her Paris Salon, Woolf and the Bloomsbury circle. On the other hand, recent scholarship in modernism has sought to expand the field to included modernisms practiced in different time periods, in different countries, and by a wider range of artists. While my project is firmly situated in the work of the so-called high modernists, my operatically focused approach, which sees Pound, Stein, and Woolf engaging directly with mass culture by way of opera (albeit in different ways and to different aims), suggests that we need to re-think the way in which we have mythologized the period, even where these “high” modernists are concerned. In chapter one, I read Pound’s operatic endeavors as alternative means of translation. Though these pedagogical projects valorize the art they “translate” for its unique difficulty, the use of opera and later, radio opera, as the means to translate this art demonstrates an interest in democratizing this difficulty. This is a remarkable inconsistency given Pound’s undisputedly fascist allegiances. Chapter two, which focuses on Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts, shows how the prospect of writing an opera helped Stein to forge a new connection between playwright and audience in the theatre. What I am calling the “envoiced landscape” is an anti-patriarchal, enabling alternative to teleologically driven narrative that defeats authorial control by way of play. Chapters three and four turn to Woolf’s conspicuously hybrid novels, The Waves and Between the Acts. Both works question the nineteenth-century notion of music’s capacity to transcend language, embracing instead a distinctly operatic frame of reference, as Woolf celebrates the novel as an omnivorous but democratic, open-ended, contingent form, endlessly capable of incorporating and co-opting other genres. Whereas The Waves enacts a critique of the Gesamtkunstwerk played out on the Wagnerian stage, Between the Acts considers the social text played out among opera’s audiences, positing, then critiquing, a Brechtian reevaluation of Wagnerian aesthetics.

English abstract Title: Islam and the limitations of the public will of choice. The purpose of this paper have been to investigate how three modern Islamic theorists view the limitations of the public free will of choice based upon their interpretation of the Islamic theology and doctrine. The paper focuses to highlight how all three chosen Islamic theorist interpret the Islamic doctrine based upon my elected theses and more specifically pinpoint were the free will of choice ends, and Islam as a religion starts to take hegemony. The paper’s aim is to further an understanding that in the modern world and as a effect of increased literacy, Islam has been somewhat inclined to split into several Islamisms, based upon the variety of fatwa’s on the Islamic doctrine that is available online. Therefore it remains to the modern day Muslim, to individually decide whether they choose to follow the message of the Holy revelation in the Quran or trust a mufti’s fatwa in their everyday life as a Muslim. The material used and analyzed in this paper is prime source material. That has been written by my chosen theorists themselves and this prime source material, form the core of their interpretation of Islamic theology which I have used trying answer my theses. The conclusions drawn from this paper is that all three theorists share three concepts of the Islamic doctrine and that is the need for tawhid, idjtihad, theology and the umma to form a ample and righteous life in modern day Islam. During the course of the paper it has become evident that the theorist Qutb and Mawdudi do share the doctrine of Islam as the natural religion of the world and that violence can be justified to bring the believers together under Muslim doctrine and rule, therefore limiting the public will of choice based upon their interpretation of Islamic theology.

Jag har i min undersökning inriktat mig på konsten utanför konsthistorieskrivningen.De verk jag har valt att studera är tre offentliga skulpturer placerade iEslöv- Leda och svanen, Prima Veraoch Morgon. Dessa verk är valda då dealla kom till staden under 1950-talet och inget av dem är gjort i denmodernistiska tradition som konsthistorien berättar om för tiden. På detta sättfår jag även möjlighet att uppmärksamma konst i en liten stad som annars intebrukar ges så mycket plats. Även om motiven har klara likheter och går att seur ett genusperspektiv, då de alla föreställer unga nakna kvinnor, är varkengenus eller motiven i sig något jag fokuserar på i min undersökning. Jag har velat se på vilket sätt den konst jag har undersökt skiljer sig frånden konst konsthistorien berättar om vid den här tiden.  De undersökta verken följer en mer klassiskbildtradition av föreställande motiv medan konsthistoriska översiktsverk vidden här tiden fokuserat mycket på abstrakta uttryckssätt, stränga geometriskaformer, nya material och skulpturer som utmanar betraktarens upplevelse avrummet. I konsthistorisk mening kan de verk jag har undersökt kanske inteklassas som moderna, men att de därmed inte skulle vara intressanta uttryck försin tid är fel och därmed borde även dessa verk nämnas i konsthistoriskaöversiktsverk.Samtiden verkar ha uppskattat dessa skulpturer, även om en av dem – Leda och svanen av Helge Högbom, väcktedebatt i stadsfullmäktige när den skulle köpas in. Det fanns de som ansåg attstaden inte hade råd med sådan utsmyckning och att om man tvunget skulle ha enskulptur fick det vara en som var mer tilltalande än den här. Prima Vera av Michele Paszyn har blivitmer omtalad de senaste åren än när hon kom till Eslöv men hon ansågs både dåoch nu som en av stadens förnämsta offentliga skulpturer. Morgon av Nils Möllerberg skänktes till staden av Sparbanken ochdet ansågs som en mycket fin gåva till det nya modernistiska medborgarhuset.Placeringen är en viktig del när det kommer till offentliga verk och därförnågot jag undersökt närmare hos dessa tre skulpturer. Leda och svanen köptes in specifikt för den plantering hon står i,man ville skapa en centralpunkt. Hennes närvaro gör att planteringen blir tillen fast plats och inte bara en yta som blev över mellan husen. Prima Vera ställdes från början i enrelativt undanskymd plantering bredvid kyrkan, men på grund av flerastöldförsök flyttades hon till en mer synlig plats framför gamla rådhuset 2011.Morgon står bredvid eldstaden imedborgarhuset. Det är en olycklig placering då man där inte har möjlighet attgå runt verket vilket gör att man missar ryggtavlan. Konstnären Möllerberg ärkänd för sina vackert skulpterade ryggar och just denna skymda rygg är särskiltintressant då man där tydligt ser att kvinnan knäpper sin Bh vilket förklararnamnet på skulpturen. Som utgångspunkt för min uppsats har jag använt Maria Görts avhandling Det sköna i verklighetens värld då hondär visar upp det glapp som finns mellan konsthistorien och konsten som inspireratmig i min undersökning.

Thesis--Düsseldorf, 1975. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-271).

With no doubt, staging Hassan Moghaddam’s play Ja’far Khan Returns from the West in 1922 contributed a lot to improving the modern theater movement in Iran. Before this drama, the Iranian theater was pressing for a compelling pattern to free this old genre from the old structures of theater and provide it with the opportunity to explore novel areas. In traditional Iranian theatre, the dramatic expression was mostly in the form of dance and mime; puppetry, and Islamic religious epic drama (ta`ziyeh-khvani). Ja’far Khan Returns from the West opens up a new window to the traditional Iranian theatre and helps with establishing the fundamental principles of modern theatre in Iran. Moghaddam does not focus on the stories of kings as in the old comic theatre; nor narrates elegies or reenacts the martyrdom of Imam Hossein. The author, on the other hand, rather than depicting stories about old Persia, tries to address and criticize one of the major issues of his own time: the infatuation of the majority of young Iranians with the West; their alienation from their own culture; their devotion to assimilation with the West and taking it as a model; their belief in surrendering to the Western civilization totally and unconditionally. Unfortunately although the play became one of the most celebrated pieces at the time, after its author’s early death, Moghaddam’s works and influence gradually diminished. Even in landmarks of theatre history in Iran, little effort is devoted to introducing the late author to the new generation of theatre enthusiasts. This paper seeks to bring the significance of Hassan Moghaddam and his works, especially Ja’far Khan Returns from the West, into attention and discuss the importance of the play in general and its relation to westernization in particular. / text