Siegfried Kracauer is mostly known for the work on film theory he wrote during his post-war exile to North America. This thesis proposes to examine a lesser known and far more complex portion of his oeuvre, namely the vast body of essays and monographs he produced throughout the 20s and 30s as editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, which offer not only a cultural diary of the Weimar republic but also a critique of modernity and the many upheavals it engendered. Using both a detailed analysis of his own work as well as an examination of the various critical responses it elicited, this study aims at exposing the paradoxical complexity of Kracauer's stance towards modernity and its various mass cultural manifestations, a complexity which has unfortunately often been misjudged and reduced to a mere middling position. Indeed, because of his refusal to opt for a definite position, to either fully embrace or reject modernity, Kracauer has often been miscast as a mere seeker of compromise, a thinker who tried to make edges rounder and ease tensions. This thesis is an attempt to prove that far from trying to annihilate the tensions of the modern era, Kracauer in fact sought to cultivate them. He may have refused to opt for a definite stance---be it a "yes" or a "no"---towards modernity, yet his position is not to be reduced to a tepid "maybe", but ought to be seen, rather, as a truly Janusian simultaneous "yes" and "no" towards it. In our age of extreme relativism, where tension is to be avoided at all costs, there is some valuable insight to be gained from Kracauer's obstinate fight against comfortable compromises of any kind.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2003. / Adviser: Jose Alvarez-Junco. Submitted to the Dept. of History. Includes bibliographical references. Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, August 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

The aim with this thesis is to investigate how the creative element of the compositional process can be improved, and to research how a composer can develop and sublimate his or her aesthetics. As a part of the research process two pieces of music have been composed, one for the chamber ensemble Norrbotten NEO and one for the symphony orchestra NorrlandsOperans symfoniorkester. The compositional processes of the two pieces are described in detail and the thoughts and ideas that emerged during the two separate composing processes are the main basis of the concluding discussion of this thesis. The thesis also contains a more theoretical section where creativity, learning styles and the aesthetics of the modernistic era, among other things, are discussed. The final section of the thesis is a concluding discussion that argues that one effective way to improve the creative flow in the compositional process is to initially not work with exact pitches. Regarding aesthetics the thesis claim that aesthetic values are uttermost personal and that it therefore is pointless for a composer to try to acclimatize to the surrounding world. The thesis contends that it is preferable for a composer to try to understand his or her own aesthetic values and thereupon, in a personal and genuine way, share them with the rest of the world.

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In response to early technologies of seeing, hearing, and moving at the turn of the twentieth century, modernist authors, poets, and artists experimented with forms of textual production enmeshed in mechanical technologies of the time. Unfolding a literary history of such mechanical forms, this dissertation sees modern manuscripts as blueprints for literary production, whose specific rules of assembly model historical mechanisms of cultural production in practice during their period of composition. Central to this analysis is the concept of the inscriptive procedure, defined as a systematic series of strategies for composing, revising, and arranging a literary text that emerge in the context of that text’s specific political and technological environment; in so doing, inscriptive procedures use composition as a material act that works through a set of political circumstances by incorporating them into the signifying process of the physical text. As such, procedurally authored texts do not neatly instantiate in the form of the print book. Reading modern manuscripts instead as media objects, this dissertation applies the physical operation of a given old media mechanism as a hermeneutic strategy for interpreting an author’s inscriptive procedure. It unspools the spectacular vignettes of Raymond Roussel, plays back the celluloid fragments of Marcel Proust, decrypts the concordances of Samuel Beckett, and processes a digital history of Djuna Barnes’s editorial collaboration with T.S. Eliot. Rather than plotting a positivist literary genealogy, this dissertation instead traces an ouroboros mode of literary critique that emerges in its own wake, as digital experiments with textual manipulation reveal analog bibliographic arrangement procedures. Using the methods of contemporary scholarly editing to undertake a procedural archaeology of experimental literature, this dissertation unearths an analog prehistory of digital humanities practice, one that evolves alongside the mechanisms of old media as they lead to the advent of the digital age. In so doing, it unfolds a historicity of cultural form, one whose mechanical and ideological apparatuses participate in the development of early methods in humanities computing. / Graduate / 2018-06-21

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ABSTRACT This research report explores A. S Byatt’s ambivalent relationship to postmodernism through a critical engagement with two of her recent novels, Possession and The Biographer’s Tale. Both use the techniques, while simultaneously constituting a critique, of postmodernism. The novels challenge postmodernism, indicating Byatt’s misgivings about the continuing suitability of this mode of literary representation. Possession is examined in detail, while The Biographer’s Tale is used to provide a backdrop to the discussion of Byatt’s viewpoints. Possession is a pastiche of styles, incorporating some of Byatt’s favourite literary forms. Postmodernism allows this experimentation but disregards qualities the author values highly, such as a celebration of traditional literature and the emotional affectiveness of history. Possession considers the positive and negative aspects of the literary movement. This thesis examines Byatt’s negotiation with postmodernism and the contribution of her critical attitude towards the success of Possession.