This thesis examines the intersections of visual culture with processes of folklorization in Maritime Canada between 1964 and 2007. Throughout this thesis, I explore how visual culture helps make history public in the Maritimes for local and tourist audiences alike. Ultimately, I question which visions succeed when it comes to looking at this “region’s” past in order to visualize its future. I outline chapters that consider how Nova Scotia’s first provincial gallery, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS), labelled the cultural production of local self-taught artists “folk” art and, by collecting these objects, became the foremost expert in a category of artistic expression it had itself created; how the provincial state ideologically and economically invested in a certain “folk” aesthetic by gathering objects under the authority of a few prominent collectors; how those institutions and collectors who sought to develop contemporary folk art for the art market also became concerned with the new confrontation of a global mass culture by the last few decades of the twentieth century; how the AGNS transformed self-taught artist Maud Lewis from a local tourist attraction in the 1960s into an internationally recognized cultural icon by the 1990s through the institutionalization of her life story’s public history; and how those with state and corporate authority came to brand the Maritimes for global tourism at the turn of the twenty-first century, by employing what they understood to be the region’s strongest cultural resources. Part of my rationale here is to explore what it means to label the cultural production of self-taught artists “folk” art and the implications of state and corporate investment in this cultural form for the public narrative associated with the experience of culture in Maritime Canada. I posit a complex hegemonic relationship here between relatively powerful artworld professionals and relatively powerless self-taught artists that speaks both to the inequities and contradictions of a capitalist liberal order. In doing so, I also tackle the broader implications of writing “the history of region” in an age of “global” analyses. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-25 13:45:16.05

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This study calls for a re-evaluation of contemporary regionalist literary theory. It argues that traditional models of the discourse have been too heavily influenced by nineteenth century realist aesthetics and political ideologies. Because most scholars continue to interpret regionalist texts according to a resolutely empirical reading of geography, literary regionalism has fallen out of touch with the new kinds of "unrealistic," generic landscapes that now dominate North American culture in the postindustrial era. Drawing heavily on recent work by postmodern geographers such as Edward Soja, David Harvey, Michael Dear and Derek Gregory, this project updates regionalist theory by "re-placing" the artificially stabilized reading of geography that dominated the nineteenth century with a more self-consciously spatialized reading of what Soja calls our contemporary "real-and-imagined" places. By grafting together traditional regionalism and postmodern spatial theory we improve on both contributing discourses. In a "postmodern-regionalist" literary criticism, traditional regionalism sheds its reputation for theoretical naivete, while the elusive abstractions of postmodern theory gain a real-world referent, and a specific geographical index. When we "read postmodernism regionally" - - when we aggressively interrogate where this kind of fiction comes from and the places it represents - - we realize that the canons of postmodern fiction in Canada and the United States have been influenced by two very different spatial epistemologies. Rather than being "determined" by their real geographies, Canadian and American postmodernism have been more directly influenced by two different readings of geography. Works by Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, and Don DeLillo demonstrate that American postmodernism often interprets social space according to what Henri Lefebvre calls the idealistic "the illusion of transparency," while texts by Canadian postmodernists such as Robert Kroetsch, Wayne Johnston and Guy Vanderhaeghe tend to fall under Lefebvre's more materialistic "illusion of opacity." The ambiguous figure of Douglas Coupland - - a Canadian writer most critics treat as an American - - puts the spatial conventions of postmodernism in both countries in sharp relief. In an American postmodernism, dominated by generic suburban settings, regions will almost always be seen as imaginary projections, while in a Canadian postmodernism, dominated by the Prairies, regions will almost always retain some sense of their material reality.

The European Union (EU) has comparative advantage in regional integration. Moreover, regionalism is a growing phenomenon, as both the growing number of regional trade agreements and literature on new regionalism indicate. In this context, the EU has incorporated regional integration into European development policy as a strategy to help integrate the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states into the global economy, with the negotiation of region-to-region reciprocal free trade agreements, called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA). This thesis examines the extent to which the Pacific may constitute a region, for the purposes of the Cotonou Agreement, along cultural, political and economic dimensions of regional cooperation. This is in order to measure the potential for regional integration in the Pacific, as well as to test the applicability of the EU's regional template of development in this context. A theoretical framework is developed, based on the political economy of regional cooperation among developing states, in order to apply a series of propositions to the test the integrative potential of the Pacific region. The key finding is that regionalism in the Pacific is easily politicised. Anthropological evidence and economic analysis also confirm the informal nature of regional cooperation in the Pacific works against global imperatives for deeper regional integration, as Pacific islanders have generally not subscribed to a common identity, and the welfare benefits from regional free trade are shown to be minimal. Consequently, the Pacific accepts the EPA platform in order to maintain the development partnership with the EU, rather than because regional free trade is the most desired vehicle for development in the region. A trade agreement will therefore be concluded with the Pacific ACP states, but its form and timing remain the key issues for clarification.

Writing a thesis is like writing a story book, this book is a story of the 17-year-old Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). It serves as a case-study of inter-regionalism, one of the newest cooperative mechanism in today’s international arena. Among a variety of cooperative frameworks, namely, multilateral global governance, effective multilateralism, regionalism, regionalisation, inter-regionalism is much less explored. This research determines how the rise of inter-regionalism influences the actors in the international arena and vice-versa. The key actors in inter-regionalism and their interaction are explored. Existing studies in the field of inter-regionalism in general and on the ASEM process in particular have been theory-led. There is a significant deficit of empirically-driven research in the field. In order to comprehensively understand inter-regionalism and the ASEM process, this research incorporates a substantial empirical focus. An unprecedented array of primary data is used. A variety of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods are employed to generate this unique and comprehensive empirical analysis of ASEM. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates the persistent state-centrism and lack of actorness of regions and regional organisations as independent actors in the ASEM process. Nation-state remains the primary actor in inter-regionalism; yet, they turn to bilateralism when more concrete cooperation or affairs have to be handled. The proliferation of sideline meetings, although as by-product, becomes one of ASEM’s key added-value to international relations. The empirical analysis also finds that inter-regional fora like ASEM offer participants regular information and views updates and promote socialisation among government officials in the official track and among the involved individual from civil society in the unofficial track.

The embryonic ideas for this thesis began to form in two seminars I attended in 2000 while studying for a Masters at the University of Chicago. The first of these, W. J. T. Mitchell's 'Verbal and Visual Landscapes', must be given credit for introducing me to a short essay by Martin Heidegger entitled 'Die Kunst und der Raum' ('Art and Space'), which got me thinking about the 'special character' of space (Heidegger 1973: 4). In addition, Professor Mitchell's specific approach to landscape, that it should be considered as a verb rather than a noun, made me consider the ontological implications of the relationship between space and power that is witnessed both in and through landscape when approached as 'a process by which social and subjective identities are formed' (Mitchell 1994: 1).

Disertacijos buvo sumodeliuota taikant sisteminę knygos kultūros tyrimo paradigmą. Pirmojoje dalyje sprendžiama regioninės knygos kultūros teorinė problema (apibrėžiamas regionas ir regioninė kultūra, išgryninama regioninės knygos kultūros samprata, apibrėžiama XX a. pirmosios pusės Žemaitijos regiono teritorinė erdvė, nustatomos bendrakultūrinės integracijos sąlygos ir išryškinamas žemaičių regionalistinis kultūrinis sąjūdis). Antrojoje dalyje įvertinama regiono leidybos organizacija, išryškinant leidybos dinamiką, centralizaciją, leidėjų sudėtį ir kontrolę bei iškeliant leidybinės kultūros prioritetus, detaliai nagrinėjamas regiono poligrafijos įmonių tinklo susiformavimas ir funkcionalumas, pogrindinių spaustuvių sudėtis, veiklos apimtys ir tikslai, taip pat analizuojama knygrišystė, kaip spaudos pramonės ir amatininkystės dalis. Trečiojoje dalyje analizuojamas knygų visetas pagal autorių teritorinę kilmę taip pat atliekant prozopografinę analizę gilinant Lietuvos ir lietuvių autorių kontingento sudėties link. Viseto sandaros analizėje taip pat susitelkiama į kalbinės, teminės ir tipologinės struktūros raidą. Dėsninga, kad regiono bendruomenės dalyvavimas knygos versle buvo adekvačiai proporcingas regioninės kultūros plėtrai, todėl kiekviena leidybinė iniciatyva pirmiausia kėlė regiono kultūrą, o tik vėliau jos brandesnė dalis galėjo turėti įtakos ir lietuvių nacijos poreikių raidai. / Dissertation was modeled using a systematic study of the book culture paradigm. The first part of the book dealt with the regional cultural theoretical problem (defined region and the regional culture, purify the concept of regional book culture, defined the twentieth century. Žemaitijos the first half of the region's territorial space, the conditions laid down general cultural integration and some regional highlights the Samogitian Cultural Movement). The second part assesses the publishing organization in the region, highlighting the dynamics of publishing, centralization and control of content publishers and publishing by bringing the cultural priorities of the depth at the region of the printing company formation and functionality of the network, underground printing houses in the composition, scope of activities and objectives, as well as analyzes of bookbinding, the printing industry parts and crafts. The third section analyzes the books by author Visetas territorial origin as well as the analysis of the deepening prozopografinę Lithuania and Lithuanian contingent link. Visetas structure analysis also focuses on the linguistic, thematic and typological structures. It is natural that the participation of the regional community in the book business was proportional to the expansion of regional culture; therefore every publishing initiative primarily elevated the region’s culture and only later its more sophisticated parts could exert impact on the development on the needs... [to full text]

Santraukoje pristatomas disertacijos temos aktualumas, tyrimo problema, istoriografija, šaltinių bazė, tyrimo objektas, tyrimo tikslas, uždaviniai, metodologija, ginamieji teiginiai, darbo naujumas ir išvados. Pateikiama informacija apie autoriu, jo mokslinę produkciją. / In summary of the doctoral dissertation are: relevance and the research problem, historiography, primary resources, the object of the research,the aim of the resear, tasks, methodology, the defended claims, the newness of the research, conclusions, and information on the author.

The Jackalope in the Room is an installation of sculptural and found objects that have been altered or contextualized in a way that conflates strangeness with normality. Many of the items in the installation were given as gifts or found in thrift stores, and have been modified to communicate a broader cultural or psychological meaning. Often this meaning is related to personal anecdotes and stereotypes attached to the objects that, in turn, seek to complicate popular narratives and cultural myths—many of which relate back to my experiences in northern Alberta. Northern Alberta is a liminal, near-mythical place where our ideas about remote environments collide with mass industrialization. These shibboleths have a pervasive quality that allows me to construct an uncanny web of associations using often banal source materials.

This thesis employs a dynamic form of the gravity model and data from 1988-2005 to estimate the effects of RTAs in SSA on intra-African trade. The thesis proposes a better approach to examining member-nonmember trade relations of RTAs. This thesis is unique because it uses System GMM estimator to overcome econometric issues associated with estimating dynamic models. The results suggest that COMESA and SADC has led to a significant increase in intra and extra-RTA trade. ECOWAS has increased intra-ECOWAS trade but decreased extra-ECOWAS trade. ECCAS has had a negative impact on both intra-ECCAS and extra-ECCAS trade flows. The proposed approach of examining member-nonmember relationships provides better estimates. A comparative analysis is made to shed light on how high or low the trade creation effect of RTAs in SSA are. The results of this thesis support the view that the impact of RTAs in SSA is higher than perceived. / x, 61 leaves ; 29 cm