No description available.

Looking at Displaced People (predominantly Jewish) after the Second World War, the dissertation begins by problematising and broadening the term ‘displacement’, from its UNRRA definition (primarily geopolitical) to embrace profound existential concerns. It then explores potential trends in the ways in which DPs reacted to new challenges posed by the ‘initiatory crisis’ of liberation. Considering factors such as age, role, rupture, emigration, the changing role of global perceptions of the ‘Holocaust survivor’ and the formal constraints and idiomatic influences at work in ordering and recording memory for consumption by projected audiences, it argues for the validity of memoirs and testimonies as a primary source-base, revelatory of patterns in behaviour and belief systems that an analysis based on outward behaviour alone might overlook. Through close attention to the life stories of survivors, situated amid contextualising detail, it will be seen that the DP population emerging from the Holocaust constitutes a unique and historically fascinating group in terms of representing a collective and sustained form of grappling with the nature of experience, memory, community, and value. The study develops and suggests extrapolation of a new vocabulary of terms dealing with processes of narrativisation which may be of wider applicability.

No description available.

No description available.

The Dutch do not consider themselves to be a warlike nation. Traditionally isolated from mainstream European affairs, in 1914 they had no major allegiances that bound them to any one side of the conflict. Geographically and economically caught between two of the major belligerents, Great Britain and Germany, the Netherlands was constantly vulnerable to attack from either side. In adopting a position of neutrality at the beginning of the war, the Dutch took a huge gamble. The mobilization of the Dutch army offered some deterrent to a possible invader but although significant in relation to the size of the Dutch population the Dutch army was far too small to offer a realistic long-term deterrent. It therefore fell to the Dutch diplomats to pursue a course that would underscore and protect the Dutch neutral position. Whilst the Dutch government was forced to compromise and adapt their neutral stance in some areas, as a result of pressure from the belligerents and most notably in matters relating to trade and shipping, it had complete control over issues relating to internment. The internment of approximately 50,000 foreign troops in the Netherlands, some for almost the entire four years of the war, provided a convenient showcase for the Dutch to demonstrate their adherence to international law and their impartiality towards the all of the belligerents. It also allowed the Dutch to demonstrate their talents as international peacemakers and negotiators by providing a means for Great Britain and Germany to meet and agree treaties, even though at the same time they were still fighting a very bloody war.

The period stretching from around 1880 to 1914 was one of great creative effervescence in France, marked by new trends in art and literature and the opening up of new fields of knowledge. A time of increasing political polarisation, it was also in this epoch that scholars, writers and artists began to get involved in the political life of the nation on an unprecedented scale and when the term ‘intellectual’ first came into common usage. Remembered today as the founder of the French school of sociology it is from this period that Émile Durkheim’s scientific breakthrough dates. Drawing on a set of conceptual tools elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu, this project delves into the early period of French sociology and seeks to explain how Durkheim managed to distinguish himself among his contemporaries as the legitimate representative of the new discipline in France. Through looking at his ties to the major institutions of the French intellectual field it traces Durkheim’s progress from a situation of relative marginality in the 1880s to a dominant intellectual position by the eve of the First World War. The suggestion is that through enquiring into the sources of Durkheim’s legitimacy we can also gain an original perspective on the debated topic of his politics and conception of his own role as a public intellectual during the French Third Republic.

No description available.

This thesis reports the measurement and applications of molecular axis alignment induced by strong non-resonant linearly polarised laser fields. The spatial alignment of gas phase molecules overcomes the loss of information that results from averaging angle-dependent quantities over all the possible orientations of an isotropic sample. Therefore, laser-induced molecular alignment techniques are an essential component in new experiments aimed at measuring the structure of molecules with attosecond time resolution. In the first part of this thesis an experiment to measure molecular axis alignment is described. This experiment is based on the velocity map imaging technique in conjunction with time-resolved femtosecond laser Coulomb explosion of the molecular sample by an intense circularly polarised laser beam. A circularly polarised beam is needed to ensure a uniform detection efficiency for each possible orientation of the molecular axis in the polarisation plane. However, such a polarisation produces ion distributions that are not cylindrically symmetric, preventing the use of the standard Abel inversion technique to retrieve the three-dimensional ion distributions from the detected two-dimensional images. A new inversion algorithm is presented that allows the retrieval of molecular axis distributions from angular distributions of ions without cylindrical symmetry. The second part of the thesis focuses on the application of laser-induced molecular alignment to retrieve molecular structure and dynamics from high-order harmonic generation (HHG) experiments. HHG with a mid-infrared laser source (1300 nm) from aligned molecular samples of CO2, N2, C2H2, and N2O are presented. The use of a laser source with a wavelength longer than that used in previous experiments (800 nm) has increased the amount of information obtainable from such experiments. These experiments have provided insight into the hole dynamics of CO2 following ionisation, and reveal for the first time structural features in the HHG spectra of molecules with low ionisation potentials such as C2H2.

No description available.

No description available.