The late nineteenth century British stage was hopelessly confused. It couldn’t decide whether it was London’s principle source of entertainment—mainstream and respectable enoughfor Queen Victoria herself to patronize—or the seedbed of all corruption and deviance in Victorian society. At the center of this split identity was the actress, a figure both well-beloved (in the case of stars like Ellen Terry) and the literal embodiment of everything a Victorian women shouldn’t be—loose, sexualized, and working (in the case of her contemporary, Olga Nethersole). Because of this liminal position, Victorian actresses thus create a fascinatingmicrocosm in which to study the implications of performativity and performance in late nineteenth century society. I argue that stars like Terry and Nethersole, though they did so by opposite means, deliberately performed multiple roles, both on stage and in society, in order to enjoy the autonomy they craved—one unavailable to the majority of Victorian women.The biographies of both actresses reveal compelling paradoxes. Terry, though respectedenough to be compared to the “ideal” Victorian woman (the proverbial “Angel in the House”), was in reality a fallen woman. Olga Nethersole, on the other hand, built her career on playing fallen woman roles, yet lived an upright and unremarkable private life. Despite these differences, however, both women rose to great heights of fame and earned careers, funds, and power overtheir lives and relationships that most women of the century would never dream of. This thesis investigates the anomaly of autonomous Victorian actresses through the lens of performance theory. Drawing upon the concepts of liminality and social performativity, introduced largely by performance studies scholars like Richard Schechner and Marvin Carlson, I work toward a practical connection between performance on the stage and performativity in society that remainslargely unexplored in the field of Victorian theatrical studies. Ultimately, I am shedding light onthe paradoxical, dual function of performance; as demonstrated in the lives of these two actresses, it has the potential to simultaneously reinforce societal norms and to protest against them.

In 1508 Albrecht Dürer, famed German printmaker and Nürnberg citizen, was commission by Jakob Heller of Frankfurt to paint a large altarpiece for a new church. The Heller Altarpiece was the second commission of the printer since his training in Venice, Italy (1504-1507) to paint like an Italian master. In order to prepare for such a commission, Dürer spent over a year creating drawings of black ink and white chalk on blue Venetian paper to serve as inspiration for the large painting. However once the painting was complete, the artist held onto these ink and chalk drawings as part of his personal collection of art. It is from this group of drawings, that the now iconic Betende Hände had its start. Today the image of two praying hands is appropriated for posters, pins, headstones, and even tattoos. The original context as a personal drawing kept by the artist, Albrecht Dürer, is completely divorced from its contemporary use. It is thesis's argument that Betende Hände was not only a very personal drawing for Dürer, but also a moment of self-fashioning, metaphorical experimentation, and abstract self-portraiture. Rather than simply representing prayer, Dürer's Betende Hände captures his desire to become like unto Christ. The composition appears simple, but upon further inspection reveals a unique quality and form borrowed from the Gothic architecture of the German Hallenkirche. The fingers extend vertically like rib vaults from the palms only to touch at the points giving the hands an overall triangular composition. With this drawing, Dürer experimented with his metaphorical self beyond any other point in his career, and becomes like Christ. Only the form of Christ that Dürer choose after which to fashion himself was the architectural form of Christ or the Gothic Church. Therefore this thesis will trace the emergence of Dürer's metaphor of body as architecture via the cultural environment of pre-Reformation Germany and popular religious texts that related the body of the worshipper to the church form. As a result, Betende Hände gives unique insight into the identity of a Catholic Dürer.

This thesis explores the work of Texan painter Alexandre Hogue, and specifically how his 1930s Erosion Series, paintings of wind-ravaged farms during the Dust Bowl, promotes environmental attitudes long before America had a well developed ecological language. It analyzes the Erosion Series in the context of Hogue's personal land ethics and those of his artistic contemporaries, showing that the 1930s series strives to depict the devastation caused by both drought and aggressive farming practices. A comparison of Hogue's work to Regionalist artists like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood reveals that Regionalists' depictions of land during the 1930s created an unrealistic portrayal of American farms with eternal abundance. In contrast, Hogue's series explores man's relationship to land and shows how that relationship is often destructive rather than constructive. In many ways, Hogue's work is much more in line with works by FSA photographers and filmmakers who, similar to Hogue, imaged more realistic depictions of Midwestern farms at the time. Ultimately, this thesis asserts that paintings, and the fine arts in general, are an important step to a more environmentally minded future—a future Alexandre Hogue sought to promote through nine ecologically charged works.

Early in the 1850s, a greater number of Chinese immigrants began to enter the United States, leading to a Sinophobic frenzy that would continue for decades. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, Americans sought to exclude the Chinese literally and figuratively. Americans employed negative imagery to demonstrate the necessity of excluding the Chinese in order to “protect" white America. The negative imagery that became Americans' common view of the “Chinaman," enabled the United States to enact discriminatory laws without compunction. In the face of intense persecution and bitter discrimination, many would simply have given up and returned to their homeland. However, the Chinese were determined not to give in to Americans' desire to exclude them. Though often viewed as a passive and stoic race, in reality the Chinese were proactive and eloquent defenders of their rights, and used two primary means of resistance to resist American exclusion: legal appeals and poetry. In response to their literal exclusion, the Chinese utilized the United States judicial system, litigating cases that either reduced the force of discriminatory laws or abolished them all together. In so doing, they managed to alter U.S. legal history, setting new precedents, and requiring judges to rule regarding the rights of non-citizens and the balance of power between state and federal governments, especially with regard to immigration policy. With regard to their figurative exclusion, the Chinese were similarly vehement in their defense. On the walls of the Angel Island barracks, where many of the Chinese immigrants were incarcerated during the Chinese exclusion acts, Chinese inmates carved and painted poetry emphasizing their sense of self-worth and their anger at the American “barbarians." The immigrants employed imagery that counteracted and even reversed the widely held negative images of the Chinese in American literature and speeches. As such, the poetry became a source of strength, a rallying cry providing the Chinese with the courage and determination to combat American prejudice. Previous studies have largely ignored the Angel Island poetry and none have brought the poetry into the discussion of the Chinese immigrants' legal battles, this thesis seeks to do both.

While little is known concerning the events surrounding the commission of the Isenheim Altarpiece or of the artist known to us as Master Matthias Grünewald, much can be ascertained about the message of the Altarpiece through careful study of the socio-historical-religious context from which the work was commissioned and iconographic analysis of the images portrayed by Master Matthias. This thesis explores iconographic metaphors for birth and sacrifice, metaphors which work to create a theological dialogue about Christian redemption within the nine painted panels and the underlying sculpture that makes up the Isenheim Altarpiece. First, we will address the panels in the middle position of the Isenheim Altarpiece, which reveals events from the life of Mary. Since the Madonna is a prominent figure in the Altarpiece panels, understanding her role in sixteenth century Christian theology as birth mother of the Savior and as an especial example of bringing forth good fruit by virtue of obedience and humility is crucial to understanding the Marian iconography of the panels. In the center of the triptych, immediately following the Annunciation panel in the middle position, we see a celebration of Christ's birth in the Concert of Angels panel. When replaced by the folded wings depicting the Crucifixion, the Concert of Angels panel creates a discussion of rebirth through the sacrifice and death of the Savior which is symbolized by the Resurrection displayed in the final panel of the middle position. Through the use of iconographic devices which reference different panels within the Altarpiece, Grünewald creates a dialogue of redemption and rebirth through Jesus' mortal birth mother, the Virgin Mary. This dialogue extends to images of saints and disciples who find spiritual rebirth through conversation and help to build the kingdom of God on earth through their exemplary lives. Even the faithful followers of Christ numbered in the audience of the Isenheim Altarpiece are given a role in the dialogue of rebirth through conversion by bearing virtue, rather than vice, in the attitude of Mary and the saints.

This thesis will prove how the male domestic servant shows a conservative evolution of class freedom through early American films. As an individual thrust into a liminal sphere, these characters paradoxically become a character type for both keeping class-consciousness as well as breaking up notions of class, albeit in a slow process. In comedy, domestic male servants have always been on duty to help their masters while also becoming sources of mischief as tricksters. In early American films, these characters embody the anxiety of a classless body of men who become scapegoats, trickster-figures, and mask-wearing sages in order to survive—attracting as many functions as possible in order to help society question notions of class. Although butlers and valets have existed for several centuries, the Victorian era molded the butler into a marginal existence, trapping this servant into a liminal, and therefore unlikable, sphere. Comedic writers in the Victorian era played the anxiety up—presenting butlers and valets as pompous and unintelligent scapegoats placed in texts to make their masters look good while becoming invisible themselves. Yet, by the time the stereotype reached America through P. G. Wodehouse, the butler became a trickster figure—ready to use the Victorian code as a way to gain monetary compensation and control of the private domain. Jeeves does in fact receive his desires, but he resorts back to set codes—becoming a character that subverts and maintains class structure simultaneously. Charlie Chaplin's butler in City Lights does the same in film. As the overly serious foil, Chaplin's butler controls the class hierarchy by keeping Chaplin away from his master; yet, the butler does this by copying his master's actions, putting himself on the same level as his master. It is only through Sturges films that butlers become relatively free from subordination and even more multivalent as these films delve into class reality versus desire. These butlers and valets continue to play the part of the Victorian butler, but they also become the pivotal characters that move plots in their intended course—becoming fatherly and less anxiety-ridden—creating a freedom unknown to their predecessors.

This thesis studies the relationship of irony, as defined in Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony to the text and subject of Fear and Trembling. Irony is interpreted in this thesis as negative space, which both binds and separates and which assumes meaning equal to or greater than the positive space that binds it. This definition applies to Kierkegaard's Socrates who lived ironically in the space between actuality and ideality. This thesis considers how Abraham also lived in ironic space and why ironic space is a prerequisite for faith. Unlike Socrates, Abraham did not stop with irony, but used irony to open ironic space in which a knight of faith can be both separated from and reconciled to his actuality. Because in Fear and Trembling the Virgin Mary is compared to Abraham, this thesis examines at length how irony is related to Mary both in terms of her faithfulness and her maternity. Irony can then be seen as a necessary circumstance of maternity. The negative space of the female anatomy becomes ironic because it can take on more meaning than it can have alone, particularly in its ability to create (an)other person. Faith and maternity share irony as a requirement for their modes of living because both require an ironic separation from the masculine sphere. Applying the relationship of irony to faith and the maternal offers a interpretive possibilities for the knight of faith that otherwise go unnoticed.

As the only extant detailed world map of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Anglo-Saxon map, c. 1025, presents a unique opportunity to explore a sense of Anglo-Saxon social identity as evidenced in this graphic worldview. The Anglo-Saxon map has most often been dismissed as an ill-fitting illustration when viewed solely in its manuscript context or an equally poor navigational tool when considered in the context of modern cartography. The purpose of this thesis is to present the argument that the Anglo-Saxon world map is neither simply a bad illustration nor a poorly rendered map intended for travel, but is rather a richly articulated graphic and linguistic representation of a particularly Anglo-Saxon sense of social identity as it is explored in the midst of a belief in a divine creation, secular origin, and inevitable social apocalypse. This reading of the map is supported by a comparative study of these same three foundational themes as they occur in Old English elegiac literature. The goal of this study is to read the Anglo-Saxon world map in the context of the theoretical framework of social identity demonstrated in Old English elegiac literature. In so doing, a concept of Anglo-Saxon social identity, a cultural expectation of the pull of history and the future, will be presented as it is expressed across artistic genres in Anglo-Saxon England. When viewed in the context of this greater elegiac artistic tradition, the Anglo-Saxon map can be seen as a participatory exploration of Anglo-Saxon identity in the context of the themes of creation, origin, and apocalypse. As such, the map can rightly be viewed as an artifact which was created to be, and remains even now, a carrier of the memory of Anglo-Saxon identity for future generations.

In her 1895 novel, Professor Hieronimus, Amalie Skram describes the struggle of Else Kant, a young mother and artist, against a tyrannical and apparently unfeeling doctor who keeps her at a Copenhagen asylum for more than a month against her will. Else feels terrorized by the constant surveillance to which she is subjected. This voyeuristic tendency in psychiatry is not only a reflection of Amalie Skram's own experience at a Copenhagen asylum, but is also indicative of a new psychiatric epistemology that understood visual observation as the key to ascertaining objective truth. Skram's novel is thus read against the backdrop of Jean-Martin Charcot's intensely visual treatment practices at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, with a specific focus on the photographs of hysterical women Charcot commissioned and published. This voyeuristic/exhibitionistic dynamic between doctor and patient is also cast in semiotic terms, showing how arguments made as early as Lessing's Laokoon provide a useful way of understanding the essential differences between verbal and visual art, and for understanding the tensions between doctor and the patient. W.J.T. Mitchell's notion of "ekphrastic fear" proves a useful concept for demonstrating how anxieties about the breaking down of the strict boundaries between visual and verbal art correspond neatly to similar anxieties that the doctor had about the transgressive potential of a patient who takes up language and describes her condition. These tensions between word and image also highlight the particular historical context in which Skram's novel appeared. Professor Hieronimus was published the same year as Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria, which many consider the founding document of Freudian psychoanalysis. Although writing for completely different audiences, both Freud and Skram argue for the value of the patient's verbal utterances at a time when the patient was seen as little more than a visual specimen whose disorders could only be accurately ascertained by the acute vision of a doctor. In his promotion of the "talking cure," Freud diverged sharply with his mentor, Charcot, and this turning point in psychiatric history from a visual to a verbal epistemological model highlights the timeliness and importance of Skram's novel.

In my thesis, I examine Aminata Sow Fall's sixth novel Douceurs du bercail "The Sweetness of Home" through three lenses: race, gender, and nature. I analyze the way Sow Fall approaches each of these three areas in terms of paradox to emphasize her understanding of the complexity of these issues and her reluctance to outline them rigidly. Instead of putting forth hard opinions about how race, gender, or nature should be understood, Sow Fall exhibits a propensity to allow each area to remain complicated. I study why she allows racial, gendered, and environmental paradoxes to circulate around one another in her text rather than attempting to resolve them, concluding that she uses this strategy both as an organizing principle and as an invitation to her readers to question the extant theories surrounding these three issues. Sow Fall's use of language in all three areas signals an underlying fascination with the paradoxes inherent in each. In the chapter on race, I discuss the contrasting narrative styles Sow Fall uses to describe European airport officials versus the protagonist Asta's best friend, a French woman named Anne. Sow Fall's language is significant here because she contrasts two white Europeans, one characterized as systematic and cold, the other warm and open, respectively. I also discuss the way Sow Fall uses an informal and lethargic narrative voice to characterize a black secretary living in Senegal, further highlighting the disconnect between the two racial groups. In the chapter on feminism, I discuss a shift in Asta's language as she becomes more assertive. I also analyze the various aspects of femininity in Douceurs du bercail which have led some scholars to carry out feminist readings of the text, such as Asta's decision to leave her domineering and abusive husband, but recognize the more traditional aspects of the novel, such as Asta's marriage to Babou at Naatangué, as problematic to a purely feminist reading of the text. In the chapter on nature, I study Sow Fall's problematic use of Westernized language to describe the development of the untouched land of Naatangué into a lucrative farm. Throughout the chapters, I interpret Naatangué as the ultimate paradoxical space which is at once wrought with complicated language and conflicting ideals yet acts as a quasi-paradise where Asta and her friends balance the conflicting forces of tradition and modernity. Naatangué also acts as an organizing principle where all three areas of my study intersect.