Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the literature of the United States has become increasingly concerned with telling tragic stories. While the literature written about the attacks is considerable and operates as the climax in this dissertation, the literature of the ensuing decade has been marked by a return to tragic terror more broadly. A distinct feeling of anxiety and fear continues to animate a strong tragic tradition in the contemporary novel. Through an analysis of motifs, figures, and metaphors derived from classical dramatic sources and the attendant philosophical tradition, this dissertation investigates the complex formal processes through which tragic American lives occur and their political contexts. This dissertation argues that American literary production in the first decade of the twenty-first century requires a critical return to the so-called Myth and Symbol School that inaugurated American Studies and established an American literary tradition with New England Transcendentalists. Emerson’s claim that America must be made great through and by its ability to perceive “the terror of life” resonates in today’s post-9/11 political and economic climate. This study illuminates the ways that the contemporary novelists have seen fit to incorporate classical tropes and narratives into traditional stereotypes of identity and nationhood. Linguistic life, it might be said, directly influences political life. Tragic America is an aggregation of tragic manifestations that finds political extensions and interpretive applications through provisional and figurative relationships. Relationships negotiated through this metaphoric sensibility are, I believe, the only honest means of comparison in our radically heterogeneous culture. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2012-05-31 10:01:52.902

The nurturance of creative capacity and cultural awareness have been identified as important 21st century concerns, given the ways that globalisation has challenged cultural diversity. This thesis explores the share that the art classroom, as a formative place, has in supporting such concerns. It specifically examines artmaking strategies that visual arts teachers may use to help adolescent students to develop and negotiate their senses of self, place and community. Held within this goal is the assumption that both student and teacher perspectives are important to this endeavor. This thesis, accordingly, draws upon empirical work undertaken with lower secondary school level visual art students in Christchurch, New Zealand and teacher-trainees in Kingston, Jamaica to explore this potential in multi-dimensional ways. The research employs a qualitative, arts-based methodology, centred on the transformative capacity of ‘visual knowing’ to render this potential visible. A/r/tography as a particular strand of arts-based methodology, served to also implicate my artist-researcher-teacher roles in the study to facilitate both reflection and reflexivity and to capture the complexity and dynamics of the study. Multiple case studies provided the contexts to furnish these possibilities, and to theorize the intrinsic qualities of each case, as well as the complementary aspects of the inquiry in depth. The conceptual framework that underpins this study draws widely on scholarship relating to contemporary artmaking practices, visual culture, culturally responsive and place-conscious pedagogical practices. The research findings reveal that when the artmaking experience is framed around the personal and cultural experiences of the participants, both students and teachers participate in the enterprise meaningfully as co-constructors of knowledge. In this process, students develop the confidence to bring their unique feelings, experiences and understandings to the artmaking process, and develop a sense of ‘insideness’ that leads to strong senses of self, place and community. This also creates a space where the authentic interpretation of artmaking activities goes beyond the creation of borders around cultural differences, and instead generates multiple entry points for students to engage with information. The findings also indicate that while the nature of artmaking is improvisatory and emergent, structure is an integral element in the facilitation of habits toward perception and meaning making. Accordingly, emphases on structured, open-ended artmaking experiences, framed aesthetically, as well as exposure to both the products and processes of contemporary art serve this endeavor. Artmaking boundaries and enabling structures also help to supplement this process. Though this research is limited in scope (in terms of the community engagement), there exists evidence that collaboration with community resource persons enlarges students’ conceptions of artmaking. It presents the potential to address broad issues of local and global import, which also have relevance for the ways students understand their relationships with the world. For researchers outside of the school and community culture however, this process requires close working relations with school personnel to ensure its effectiveness and to facilitate those school-community bridges. The undertaking is also best realized when participants have their own senses of its value, and, as such, are more inclined to participate. A/r/tography, as an arts-based methodology presents much potential for examining the complexities of the artmaking experience. As a form of active inquiry it helps those who employ its features to be more attuned toward enquiry, their ways of being in the world, the ways the personal may be negotiated in a community of belonging, and the development of practices that address difference. This contributes to evolving and alternative research possibilities that value visual forms of ‘knowing’. Finally, this thesis addresses the paucity of research on visual arts education at the secondary level, especially in the Jamaican context. A significant feature of this research is the evidence of its effectiveness with both lower secondary school students and teachers across geographical contexts. It therefore presents the potential for similar studies to be undertaken internationally. Given that the results are site specific however, it is recommended that the adaptation of the framework of this study for future purposes also respond to the specific realities of those contexts.

Barn är konsumenter, får reklam riktad till sig och syns i reklam. Men om det är rätt och på vilka sätt det bör ske ger upphov till diskussion, såväl i som utanför akademin. Den här studien granskar hur barn görs till en del av konsumtionssamhället genom det lag- och regelverk som omgärdar barn, konsumtion och reklam samt i tre typer av vardagsreklam där barn på olika sätt synliggörs; adresserad direktreklam som skickas hem till tre nyblivna föräldrar under barnets första år, reklam i ett års utgivning av 12 tidningar för barn samt annonser med bilder av barn publicerade i ett års utgivning av fyra tidningar med en vuxen målgrupp. I studien undersöks hur barn framställs och görs som social kategori och som konsumenter i materialen och vad det säger om barns roll och plats i konsumtionssamhället. Med hjälp av kritisk visuell diskursanalys och begreppet barnighet visar analysen med vilken komplexitet och ambivalens barn uppfattas, framställs och bemöts. Lag- och regelverket är komplicerat och ger en dubbeltydig bild av barns rätt till skydd respektive rätt till deltagande. Vardagsreklamens bilder av barn gör dem till objekt att konsumera visuellt samtidigt som normer om den ideala barndomen och den goda betraktaren produceras och reproduceras. Till nyblivna föräldrar framställs diskurser av barn som konsumtionsbehövande på sätt som osynliggör reklamens övertalande budskap. Reklam som riktas till barn själva utgörs av hybridformer där annonser bara är en del, vilket innebär att det som är reglerat som reklam inte är detsamma som det som gör reklam till barn. Utsatthet och skydd, kompetens och rättigheter samt lärande och ålder är tematiker som på olika sätt aktualiseras i samtliga empiriska material. Studien bidrar med förståelse och problematisering av vad barn är och tillåts vara i dagens visuella konsumtionskultur. / Children are consumers and they are marketed to and visible in advertising. But how children, consumption and advertising should be combined cause debate, both in the public sphere and in academia. The dissertation investigates how children are visualized and made as a social category and as consumers in the consumer society by studying the legal framework regarding children, consumption and advertising as well as three types of advertising that people encounter in their everyday lives; advertisements showing children published during one year in four magazines with an adult target group; and addressed direct marketing that was sent to three first-time parents; advertisements in one year's publication of 12 magazines for children. Using critical visual discourse analysis and the concept of childity, the analysis shows the complexity and the ambivalence that characterizes the ways in which children are seen, represented and addressed. The legal framework is complicated and is ambiguous regarding children's right to protection vis-à-vis their right to participate. Advertisements that visualize children produce and reproduce norms concerning the ideal childhood. In order to get parents to consume on behalf of their children, neutral and factual discourses about children's character and needs are articulated. Advertising that is aimed at children consists of hybrids between adverts and editorial material, indicating that it is not only marketing that is regulated by the legal framework that actually markets to children. Vulnerability and protection, competence and rights as well as learning and age are themes that are actualized in different ways in all of the empirical material. The study contributes a new understanding and problematization of what children are, and are allowed to be, in our contemporary visual consumption culture.

Reivindicamos desde estas páginas la necesidad de reubicar el Mirouer des simples ames en su contexto medieval para restaurar sus imágenes en lo que a percepción, retórica y recepción se refiere. En este trabajo tomaremos lo textualmente visible como categoría de análisis histórico y lo justificaremos por su carácter didáctico, situándolo en contextos de difusión que no presuponían un auditorio necesariamente clerical ni letrado. Intentaremos reconstruir los aspectos visibles del Mirouer y exponer la poética de los mismos. En primer lugar, decodificaremos las imágenes a través del análisis filológico del texto para, en segundo lugar, establecer la comparación de la obra poreteana con otros documentos de la época (escritos y plásticos), lo que nos permitirá entender el posicionamiento de la obra ante su tradición expresivo-doctrinal. Propondremos una hermenéutica de lo meramente escrito a través de los mecanismos verbales que crean la visibilidad de la imagen en la obra poreteana. / In this thesis we claim the recontextualization of the Mirouer des simples ames in its medieval context so that its images can be restored as far as perception, rhetoric and reception are concerned. By this work we place the text in contexts where the audience was no necessarily clerical or educated: we justify the textual visibility because of the didactic character of the device, and we take it as a category of historical analysis. We therefore reconstruct the visible aspects of the Mirouer and explain its poetics. In the first place, we decode the images through the philological analysis of the text and, in the second place, we compare the poretean work with other documents from that period (written and, mostly, visual ones). In short, we propose a hermeneutic of the mere written word through the verbal mechanisms that create the visualization of the image in the poretean work.

This thesis examines the development of Asian cultural modernity in the cities of Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai through their fashion magazines. These three cities have positioned themselves as aspirants to global city status, concurrently facilitating their ambitions by relaxing media laws and emphasising cultural production. One outcome is a growth in the production and consumption of fashion magazines. There has been a parallel growth in the consumption of and interest in fashion and self-adornment in these cities, particularly through global brand names. This thesis investigates these cultural transformations by examining the production of fashion texts in the context of their cities. It does this by utilising the concept of fashion journalism (as a product of fashion, journalism and the city) as a means of identifying the contemporary social, cultural and political articulations of these fashion texts. To do so, this research draws together a framework that takes into account different fields (fashion, journalism, modernity, city, Asia) that contribute to the concept of fashion journalism, thereby approaching fashion texts through a multi-disciplinary perspective anchored by establishing the contexts of each city and its specific magazine. The subsequent analyses of Vision (Shanghai), WestEast (Hong Kong) and Harper's Bazaar Singapore reflect and capture an evolution of these cities coming into their own. With particular emphasis on the cultural assertions of global Chinese identities in WestEast, an escape from national discourses through participating in cosmopolitanism in Harper's, and the emphasis on popular visual culture as a form of popular literacy and knowledge formation in Vision. These findings contribute firstly, towards an understanding of the issues occurring in the cultural modernisation of these cities and secondly, of fashion journalism as a promoter of the experiences of cultural modernity in Asia.

Many writers have suggested that our capacity to occupy space meaningfully has been undermined by our contemporary ocular-centric culture, which distances us from reality and corrupts our physical and embodied experience of the world. This study challenges these claims within an architectural context, by examining the fundamentally visual nature of architecture and inhabitation as well as the spatio-visual practices, acts and strategies that we use to occupy space. Drawing on theory and practice-based methods from outside the professional limits of architectural practice, the study implements visual acts of occupation to establish a new and expanded conception of architecture as a performative spatio-visual practice – a conception that engages and connects its practice with the purportedly ocular-centric spatial conditions in which it is made and occupied.

Οι ψηφιακές μορφές τέχνης είναι ένα είδος που περιλαμβάνει έργα τέχνης που δημιουργήθηκαν με τα νέα μέσα τεχνολογίας, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της ψηφιακής τέχνης, των γραφικών απεικονίσεων, της εικονικής τέχνης, της τέχνης του διαδικτύου, των διαδραστικών τεχνολογιών και άλλων μέσων που διαφοροποιούνται διαρκώς. Για το λόγο αυτό, είναι αναγκαίο, η Τέχνη, ως διδακτικό αντικείμενο να συντονιστεί με τις επιταγές της σύγχρονης τέχνης και να προσφέρει στους μαθητές απαραίτητες γνώσεις και δεξιότητες ώστε να δημιουργήσουν σύγχρονα έργα τέχνης. Είναι όμως το ελληνικό εκπαιδευτικό σύστημα και πιο συγκεκριμένα οι εκπαιδευτικοί της Τέχνης για ένα τέτοιο εγχειρημα... Τι φοβούνται και τι προσδοκούν από τους αρμόδιους φορείς... Μπορούν ατομικές πρωτοβουλίες και πιλοτικά προγράμματα να βρουν ευρύτερη εφαρμογή στη διδασκαλία της εικαστικής αγωγής.. / The digital forms of art are a type that includes work of art that was created with the new means of technology, including the digital art, the graphic depictions, the virual art, the art of internet, the interactive technologies and other means that are differentiated permanently. For this reason, it is necessary, that Art, as instructive object to be coordinated with the demands of modern art and offer to the students the necessary knowledge and dexterities in order that they create modern work of art. Is however the Greek educational system and more concretely the teachers of Art ready for such an undertaking. What they are afraid also what are theyexpecting from the responsible institutions... Can individual initiatives and pilot programms find wider application in the teaching of figurative education...

A travers une exploration filmique menée auprès d'une communauté religieuse de Port-au-Prince, l’analyse des images enregistrées avec les personnes filmées et l’expérience pratique de constructions audiovisuelles participatives, la recherche interroge le système de représentation des adeptes et le rapport qu'il entretient avec la notion de croyance. Elle étudie simultanément par ce biais la réception de formes audiovisuelles spécifiques et l’observation différée des enregistrements en tant qu’outil privilégié d'une anthropologie audiovisuelle appliquée à l'étude des systèmes symboliques de représentation et à leur dynamique évolutive. Cette recherche est marquée par trois étapes de réalisations concrètes selon des paradigmes audiovisuels définis : un multimédia interactif, un film d’observation descriptif chronologique, et un film linéaire poursuivant l’objectif d’une mise en scène de l’autoreprésentation des agents suivant les précédentes étapes collaboratives d’observations, d’interprétations et de constructions audiovisuelles participatives qui forment l’enquête. L’image, sous ses multiples acceptions, est envisagée ici en tant qu’objet transactionnel agissant à différentes échelles sociales, depuis ses usages et fabrications à un niveau individuel jusqu’à ceux-ci à un niveau collectif et transnational. Cet aspect est analysé, d’abord, au moyen de la confrontation successive entre imagerie religieuse produite au sein de la confrérie et représentations audiovisuelles produites par la recherche elle-même et retournées aux agents, et ensuite, par confrontation avec l’iconographie religieuse et les représentations anciennes et contemporaines produites par des sources endogènes et exogènes à l’aire culturelle haïtienne. Le texte analyse ainsi la construction de représentations et leurs effets depuis les expériences pratiques menées avec les individus d’une communauté jusqu’à celles qui intègrent certains évènements sociohistoriques, certains clichés et certaines figures mythologiques d’inspirations vodou ayant intégrés la culture occidentale à travers, notamment, des représentations romanesques et hollywoodiennes ayant eu un fort succès et continuant à alimenter l’imaginaire occidental et haïtien aujourd’hui. / The Haitian voodoo presents a profusion of practices and perceptible representations, symbolic ones, as material as corporeal. He influences the arts and the literature of a whole culture, well beyond the circle of his followers. If it is plural from origin, it was also collected and represented in a multiple way by his outer observers. Forged during a tempestuous history and present, its representation system seems to present a character at the same time persistent and permeable, connected to the faith itself. Through the analysis of worship images, a cinematic exploration conducted within a religious community of Port-au-Prince, and finally through a participatory experience of confrontation of the recorded images with the agents and film construction according to three different modalities, the study attempts to question the representation system of the followers and the relationship which it maintains with the faith. The research also tries to examine restitutions forms and specific visual anthropology tools applied to the study of symbolic representation systems and their dynamics.

Gendered bodies and new technologies has one founding premise, namely that embodiment constitutes a non-negotiable prerequisite for human life. Although this may seem like an obvious statement, it is a statement that needs to be affirmed in the virtual age wherein we live. New technologies in most of its forms tend to discredit the embodied aspects of human life and instead concentrate on the disembodied aspects thereof. Among new technologies the following are specifically noted: microelectronics, telecommunication networks, nano-technology, virtual reality, computer-mediated communications and other forms of computer technologies. In short, “new technologies” refer to all things digital. I explore the issue of embodiment from a gendered perspective, seeing that the female body is the embodiment most likely to be discarded, not only in metaphysical systems, but also in developments within new technologies. The main focus of my gendered analysis is on the visual image and more specifically as it manifests in cinema, advertisements, the Internet, interactive artwork and television. The critical perspective that foregrounds my approach is that of the fairly new field of cyberfeminism. The main concern of cyberfeminism being a critical engagement of women’s position in terms of new technologies. In this regard, cyberfeminism does not perpetuate an anti-technology stance, but rather embraces technology by emphasising the embodied nature of our existence. I have identified four body types to explore the interactions between bodies and new technologies. They are: the techno-transcendent body; the techno-enhanced body; the marked body and the cyborg body. The four body types differ in the way in which gendered embodiment is negotiated in its interaction with new technologies and these are highlighted and discussed in the four chapters dealing with these four body types. / English / D.Litt.et Phil.

Thesis deals with possibility of development cooperation, engagement and interpersonal relationships through artistic projects. How can arts education promote children's interest in their neighbourhoods and learn them engagement? This is main a question in this thesis. The theoretical part describes the methods and approaches that are related to the cooperation in art education. The thesis search for contemporary art projects focused on community development and local changes and interpret them. The practical part describes own project, focused to the city of Dačice. The main ideas of the project are based on the official transfer of the city from Moravia to Bohemia. The aim of the project is not only to promote children's interest in their place of neighbourhoods and to lead them to engagement and cooperation, but also to lead them to reflect their identity. Keywords: community, school, visual culture, collaborative art, art education, communication, cooperation, interpretation, interdisciplinarity, project