Thesis--Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. / Bibliography: p. [243]-246.

"Revision of a thesis of the same title submitted in 1915 to the faculty of the Graduate school of Yale university in candidacy for the degree of doctor of philosophy."--Pref. / Cover title Bibliographies: p. 146-152

Proefschrift--Utrecht. / "Stellingen": iii p. laid in. "Bijlage" (lists of German literary works translated into Dutch): p. [146]-161 and [23] p. Bibliographical foot-notes.

Issued also as diss., Cologne. / "Bibliographie": p. 195-202.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1939. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 236-251.

Thesis--University of Washington. / Vita. Bibliography: leaves [326]-343.

No description available.

In my dissertation, I argue that the human body and physical sensations are not only objects or metaphors that appear in cultural artifacts, but also means of political representation. There are cultural artifacts with a corporeal dimension in which human bodily sensations and states, such as sexual arousal, disease, and pain, are represented. The body becomes a dimension integrated in the discursive form of the artwork. The (literary or cinematic) text evokes a texture, a sensitive skin. This corporeal means is politically engaged with the context in which the artwork has been produced: The body becomes a space of political inscription and struggle, and a device to discursively/corporeally fight back. Particularly, I explore a selection of the contemporary cinematic and literary productions in Argentina, Cuba, and Ireland that present political, social, and cultural transformations that took place from the end of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first. In order to explain my ideas, I refer to E. K. Sedgwicks Touching Feeling, and I expand on one of the concepts that she presents: texture. As I describe it in my dissertation, texture is the artworks corporeal dimension that appeals to the internal dimension of the body (i.e., pain, sickness, sexual arousal) through a discursive materiality (a particular artistic language in this case, the cinematographic and the literary) that entails a political postulate. Unlike Sedgwick, I consider texture in this dissertation as a plausible analytical notion, a sort of magnifying glass with which to observe the dynamics of corporeality and artistic discourse in literature and cinema. The writers studied include Irish novelist and journalist Colm Tóibín, the Argentine poet and essayist Néstor Perlongher, and the Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas. In terms of the filmmakers, I analyze some films directed by Santiago Loza, Iván Fund, Fernando Pérez, Peter Sheridan, Marco Berger, Paula Markovitch, Peter Mullan, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Lucrecia Martel, Deborah Warner, and Carlos Quintela.

Using the tools of feminist literary criticism, this dissertation examines the female domestic servant in the writings of Charles Dickens and Sigmund Freud. I have read the female retainer in the Dickensian canon as one of the domestic ideal's most useful signifiers. Although Dickens certainly writes from the assumptions of his own time and posits over-determined gender assignments, his texts, as do those of Sigmund Freud, frequently erupt with what Julia Kristeva has dubbed the messy semiotic (Kristeva 1986, 99). Both Freud and Dickens speak through intriguing circumlocutions, in which the very ideologies seemingly sustained are subverted. The female servant in the works of both Freud and Dickens often signs repressed desire. She is the liminal figure between lower class earthiness and bourgeois decorum. She may assume positions between the maternal and the paternal. She may function as as either chastising adult or naughty child. She is an outsider in the familial cell, yet she is part of the most private and intimate spaces. For the twentieth century reader, who oscillates in code switching and social placement, the female servant of the Victorian novel is a relevant and stimulating hermeneutic configuration.

In this dissertation, I have analyzed the migrant experience of Chinese immigrants in North America through their representation in literature and photography. Each of its three chapters focuses on three major ethnic issues affecting the lives and identity of Chinese immigrants and their offspring in North America: the first concerns the ways in which occupation, home, and family affect the destinies of Chinese immigrants; the second deals with the role of language in the lives of Chinese immigrants and the career of Chinese migrant writers; the third addresses stereotypes about Chinese immigrants and their offspring and the redefinition of their identity. In this interdisciplinary study, literature inspires us to picture verbally Chinese immigrants struggles under the discriminatory laws and prejudices of society, and their search for respect and equal rights. As for the medium of photography, it provides ample visual evidence that reinforces and complements the literary representations of them. I have chosen to study the literary works by Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Qiu Xiaolong, Ha Jin, Fae Myenne Ng, David Henry Hwang, Li-Young Lee, Wayson Choy, and Ying Chen. All of them are pivotal figures and explorers of contemporary Chinese ethnic literature in the United States and Canada. Their work offers a multifaceted history of the Chinese immigrants in North America from the late nineteenth century to the present. Along with the study of Chinese American photographers, Mary Tape, Benjamen Chinn, Corky Lee, and Wing Young Huie, I have added a discussion of the work of two American photographers, Arnold Genthe and George Grantham Bain. The contrasting views that emerge help to illuminate the processes of stereotyping as well as identity construction. The work of the Americans focuses on the immigrants Chineseness, while that of the Chinese Americans seeks to present Chinese immigrant life and the fight for equality from within the Chinese American community. My discussion of the work of these writers and photographers will bring further attention to the difficulties and the challenges facing the Chinese ethnic group in North America.