The history of detective fiction has frequently centred on three key figures: Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle. These writers hold a privileged place in the canon of detective fiction and represent key sites in a linear narrative of development which has often overlooked the complexity and variability of the detective genre. This dissertation explores the disappearance of female writers from the critical history of detective fiction. Focusing on the mystery and detective narratives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, LT Meade, Baroness Emmuska Orczy and CL Pirkis, this project aims to restore these overlooked authors to critical view. As this dissertation will argue, the erasure of these writers (among others) from critical histories of detective fiction has led to studies of the genre being based on a limited data set. This unstable foundation has resulted in a number of problematic assumptions about the nascent detective genre; namely, that it is conservative, prescriptive and phallocentric. By exploring the work of overlooked and forgotten writers, this project aims to explore the paradigms which have governed their disappearance; at the same time, this dissertation will examine established critical models and interrogate entrenched assumptions and approaches to detective fiction. Chapter one explores the figure of the female servant as household spy in Braddon's novels and considers her role in opposition to Braddon's male detectives. Chapter two focuses on the collaboratively-authored crime fiction of LT Meade; in particular, it addresses the battle for narrative agency and control which occurs in her texts and examines the breakdown of gender and genre roles. Chapter three considers Orczy's work in the context of the anxiety of the author and explores the potentially restrictive nature of genre fiction. Finally, chapter four addresses CL Pirkis's detective fiction alongside her work in other genres and uses these texts to interrogate traditional models of detective fiction.

N/A

No description available.

The aim of this study is to take a closer look at how customization, or the lack thereof, affectsthe player to character emotional bond and identification in a digital game. Examining previousarticles and studies with similar aim, the lack of study pertaining to a certain game formatsurfaced and sparked a research interest. To gain some clarity into how character customization,and the identification and bond it inspires in players, would be affected by a non-audiovisualbranching stories digital game the researcher created a small game for this study. This paperexplores if previous research results on RPGs can be transferred to the format of a text-basednon-audiovisual branching story game. For this qualitative study, ten people, divided in twogroups, played a version of the game and answered follow-up questions in the form of aquestionnaire. In addition, some observations were carried out of the game play sessions. Theseanswers were studied to give the individuals perspective, as well as allowing for the study of thephenomena by reviewing multiple perspectives to distinguish patterns. The results indicate thatcaring for a character takes longer if the player is not allowed to customize it. It was also indicated that the actual customization was more important than the character created.

This dissertation deals with relations between parents and child institutions such as childcare, school and child health centers in terms of an institutionalization of childhood and expressions of parental identities in life stories. The empirical study consists of thematic life story interviews with parents focusing on their experiences of meeting and relating to these child institutions. A perspective on life stories as socially situated action and identity performance is adopted that views the life stories as co-constructed in between the interviewee and the interviewer. The aim of the dissertation is to contribute to an understanding of relations between parents and child institutions in Sweden that takes as its point of departure the expressions of parental identities. Methodologically, the dissertation also aims to further develop a way of working with life stories that makes the interviewer visible as co-constructor of life stories and expressions of identity. The analyses is focused on expressions of parental identities through the storytelling and in the stories told. Parental identities took shape and form as performances and constructions of, for example, social subordination in relation to preschool staff and other parents, helpful intervention in school helping an inexperienced teacher, worries about children being different from other children and not fitting in at preschool and of gratefulness for help and support from childcare staff when being short of time and money. The identity expressions were then analyzed in relation to recurrent discourses in research on relations between parents and childinstitutions. The results show that dominant discourses of relations between parents and child institutions tend to construct parents as a homogenous group, thereby concealing how gender, social class, ethnicity and age, and the subsequent different constructions of children and childhood, structure and influence the relations between parents and child institutions and thereby also the institutionalization of childhood. / Förskola och skola i samverkan. Ett reformerat utbildningssystem.

This collection consists of a critical preface and nine short stories. Extrapolating from the work and legacy of Michel Foucault, the preface theorizes a genre of “heterotopian fiction” as constitutive of a fundamentally ethical approach to narrative creativity, distinguishing its functional and methodological characteristics from works that privilege aesthetic, thematic, or technical artistry. The stories explore spaces of madness, alterity, incomprehensibility, and liminal experience. Collection includes the stories “Mexico,” “Civilizations without Boats,” The Widow’s Mother,” “Guys Like Us,” “Everything You’d Hoped It Would Be,” “A Concerned Friend,” “Crisis Hotline,” “Coast to Coast,” and “The Ghosts of Rich Men.”

Magister Artium - MA / This study aims to add to the rich body of work which explores our understanding of identity performances in narratives. It explores how a close knit group of five female friends use narrative structure and strategies to fashion alternative gender identities for themselves as black women who are agentive, and who actively push back against the stereotypes used to judge and evaluate their behavior. Using an interactional approach to narrative and identity (De Fina, 2003; De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2008, 2012), this study explores how participants, in their everyday conversations, exploit story form and narrative strategies to orient to, constitute, legitimize or resist gender ideologies. Drawing on data which consist of twenty-one hours of naturally occurring casual conversation between the five friends, I identify and group the stories in their conversations, and propose generic structures to describe them: reports, hypothetical stories and projections. With a flexible approach to structure, I show how these stories create a space for the negotiation of difference or for constructing presentations of ‘self’ versus ‘the other’. I argue that through structure and other evaluative devices, praise and blame are ascribed within stories, allowing participants to take certain positions in relation to the themes explored and relevant identity options. I also show the ways in which stories enable the participants to quite literally imagine possibilities for self and others within circumstances that have not and and may never happen. This creates a space for the affirmation of dreams and ambitions, and an exploration of the type of women they see themselves becoming: successful, rich, famous, strong, and admired African women.

The Glass Catamount is concerned with one James Frederick Curling, a young, up-and-coming senator from Delaware. As Curling moves up through his political party, suspicion of infidelity begins to rise to the surface as a woman from his past appears and claims to know intimate details about the senator. Her intentions are unknown, but as the senator's old friend and aide, Robertson Peters, finds himself drawn in by her stories, unsure if they are truth or fabrication, the longevity of the career of the senator, and possibly even his life, come into question. Themes of truth versus reality are dealt with throughout, and the act of sexual exploration and discovery is broken down and analyzed in the context of the senator's past and what he constructs as truth, whether it was always the way he claims or not. The glass catamount of the title is a symbol of the fragility and rarity of an understood self, appearing only briefly as it passes through the trees on its climb back up the mountain. / by Robert Slattery. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011.

In Rotten Oranges the characters explore the ramifications of relocation and various trapping of psychology. Each of the short stories presents pain piggybacking off of humor, in order to go spelunking in a field of study that does not deal with absolutes. The characters themselves try to illustrate the dangers of misdiagnosis and stereotypes. As a whole, the collection exhibits this sense of exaggerated realism, which focuses on spectacle and theatricality. A few of the stories access some magical qualities to deal with certain aspects of trauma. All of the pieces take place in Florida and utilize this setting's natural level of diversity and tropical allure. Florida's unshakeable connection to the twilight years, flamboyant tourism, and the possibility of a new life through immigration works perfectly in conjunction with the layers of pain and humor stacked throughout the collection. These characters live to inhabit the space between tears and laughter. / by Christina Ginfrida. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. / Content restricted to abstract and citation at the authors request

No description available.