This critical analysis examines the progression and trajectory of my studio practices over the final two years of my graduate career. The pinnacle of my development became a meditation on time and its overall encompassing effects. The mundane and the fantastic are all bound by time. Many archetypes have ventured to escape the clutches of time. Found objects are remnants of time, linking past to present, present to future. Scars and blemishes are also vestiges of time, marking us like scratches on a record. The detritus of our lives defines our time, as it defines us. This thesis will elaborate on my exploration of time and its implications. It will describe works and identify the evolution of concepts from one work to the next. By defining what the work is and how it operates, the analysis will explore the larger implications of that work.

Notre travail trouve son origine : d’une part dans la mauvaise réputation du théâtre contemporain auprès du public qui ne le fréquente pas ou plus et qui le juge violent, ennuyeux ou incompréhensible ; d’autre part dans le caractère très circonscrit, sur le plan socio-culturel, du public de ce théâtre. Nous tâchons de faire le lien entre ces deux constats, en utilisant la question du rire comme un révélateur. Notre hypothèse est que la dilution de la perception du rire dans le théâtre contemporain et les efforts ponctuels des spectateurs pour réinjecter du rire dans leur expérience spectatorielle constituent un symptôme de blocage du potentiel subversif de la création théâtrale. Mais, plus profondément encore, il nous semble que cette espèce de dysfonctionnement du rire s’inscrit au cœur d’un problème plus vaste de renouvellement, qui se pose aussi bien pour les formes du spectacle que pour la composition socio-culturelle du public. En effet, le rapport du public et de la scène au rire/à l’humour apparaît lié à certains aspects essentiels du fonctionnement théâtral actuel, notamment : à un refus implicite ou explicite du divertissement, à la systématisation de l’esthétique du choc, à la mise à l’épreuve du spectateur et au traitement des tabous. Il s’agira donc, en interrogeant le déploiement du rire (notamment dysfonctionnel), côté salle et côté scène, d’identifier et d’analyser ce qui relie, en filigrane, les différents obstacles au renouvellement rencontrés par la création théâtrale contemporaine et ce qui contribue réellement à la désaffection du grand public pour un art devenu, au cours du XXème siècle, extrêmement marginal dans la vie quotidienne des individus. / My research was motivated on the one hand by the bad reputation of contemporary theatre among the people who do not or no longer attend it and who think it is violent, boring or hard to understand; on the other hand by the fact that its audience is socio-culturally extremely circumscribed. I try to make a link between those two observations by using the laugh as a revelatory tool. My hypothesis is that the increasing difficulties to perceive laugh in contemporary theatre and the audience’s punctual efforts to reinsert laugh in their theatrical experience are symptoms of a general limitation of the subversive potential in contemporary creation. Most of all, I think that this kind of laugh’s malfunction is a part of a bigger problem affecting the renewal capacity of theatre, in the aesthetic aspects as well as in the socio-cultural audience’s composition. In fact, the relation between the audience or the scene and laugh/or humour seems linked to some essential aspects of the actual theatrical working: the explicit or implicit refusal of entertainment; the systematization of the “shocking effects’ aesthetic”; the audience’s physical or psychological trial; the way taboos are managed. By exploring the way laugh/humour works or malfunctions, from the scene’s and the audience’s perspectives, I want to identify how the different obstacles to theatrical renewal are related and what really contributes to the audience’s disaffection for an art which, along the 20ieth century, has become more and more marginal in people’s day-to-day life.

This Master thesis deals with the topic of the German minority in the village Lenora. As the life in Lenora was very closely connected to the local glassworks, the thesis provides a brief history of glass in the Bohemian Forest and the glassworks in Lenora as well as the historical context in the country dating from the establishment of Czechoslovakia and the analysis of the life in Lenora. The thesis also describes the situation after the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia because many Germans stayed in Lenora even after the expulsion due to their employment in the glassworks. In addition to the history of Germans in Lenora, interviews with several contemporary witnesses were made. After the expulsion, the population in Lenora changed significantly, which was the reason for dedicating one chapter to the topic of remigration. The last chapter informs about the current state of affairs concentrating on the society Heimatkreis Prachatitz administered by Germans who lived in the district of Prachatice.

A presente tese se dedica a examinar alguns aspectos do romance Acenos e afagos, de João Gilberto Noll, publicado em 2008. A obra, que privilegia a ambiguidade e a indeterminação, é narrada em primeira pessoa por um personagem que, ao longo do texto, não sabe se está morto ou vivo. Passando por uma transformação corporal, operada discursivamente, o narrador tampouco pode afirmar se é um homem ou uma mulher. A partir de elementos como o foco narrativo, o discurso do narrador, a construção de personagens e a configuração do tempo no texto em exame, é possível verificar estratégias formais que colaboram para a construção de uma narrativa indeterminada. Analisamos, portanto, tais elementos, articulando-os à não causalidade do enredo, bem como a temas centrais do romance, como a morte e o relacionamento amoroso. Alguns conceitos mostram-se especialmente produtivos para o estudo de Acenos e afagos: a situação-limite, o limiar e o excesso, que se relacionam tanto com os conteúdos trabalhados no enredo do romance, quanto com procedimentos estéticos utilizados pelo autor, visando a preservar a indeterminação na obra. / This thesis aims at examining some aspects of the novel Acenos e afagos, by João Gilberto Noll, published in 2008. The novel, which privileges ambiguity and indeterminacy, is narrated in the first person by a character who, throughout the text, does not know if he is dead or alive. Going through a body transformation, operated discursively, the narrator, originally a man, cannot say whether he has become a woman or not. Analyzing elements such as the narrator\'s position and discourse, character construction, and time setting in the text under review, it is possible to verify formal strategies that collaborate to construct an indeterminate narrative. We therefore interpret such elements, articulating them to the non-causality of the plot, as well as to central themes of the novel, such as death and the love relationship. Some concepts are especially productive for the study of Acenos e afagos: the limit situation, the threshold and the excess, which relate both to the contents worked on in the plot of the novel and to the aesthetic procedures used by the author, in order to preserve the indeterminacy in the story.

Thesis advisor: Christopher Wilson / Thesis advisor: Carlo Rotella / This dissertation explores traditional patterns of immigration narratives and reads them alongside not only their contemporary, divergent counterparts but also historical moments that contribute to the narrative transformations. By way of this examination, literary changes over time become readable, highlighting the speed at which the rhetoric and aims of many immigration narratives became patently anti-America in the twenty-first century, significantly departing from the traditions established in the twentieth century, which, at their core still held pro-America aims. The first chapter, "The Solution is the Problem: Immigrant Narratives of Internment and Detention," considers nonfiction narratives regarding immigration detention within the borders of the United States. I read Monica Sone's Nisei Daughter and Edwidge Danticat's Brother I'm Dying as narratives that explore detention as central immigrant experience, exposing a chronicle of national suffering after attacks on American soil. When paired with Sone's work, Danticat's Brother I'm Dying reveals a shift in traditional narratives, exposing links to criminality and a move away from affiliation. In my second chapter, "The Helpless Helper: Illegality, Borders and Family Reunification," I study Thomas McCarthy's The Visitor, Courtney Hunt's Frozen River, and Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over. In these films, the suffering of immigrant families designated as somehow "illegal" are often displaced onto a white, parental "helper" figure in order to scrutinize their processing and treatment. These three independent films probe the ways in which economic, judicial, and political interests negatively affect family reunification policies. Additionally, The Visitor, Frozen River, and Crossing Over rely on an alternative point of view - that of American citizens rather than immigrants - as a way to further fragment traditional immigrant narrative structures, which instead favored immigrant-as-narrator constructs. In chapter three, "Considering Conditions of Possibility: Canonical Modes with Modern Concerns," I transition back to the immigrant's point of view and turn to traditional "high" literature. The narratives studied in this chapter retell canonical American novels before placing an important twist on the story: the decision to leave America rather than assimilate and aspire to the American Dream. Saher Alam's The Groom to Have Been and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland both make use of the narrative mode of the novel of manners while H.M. Naqvi's Home Boy and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist draw upon the ethnic bildungsroman tradition. By treating immigrant experiences as literary through adaptations of canonical novels rooted in American success and integration, these four authors make the choice of writing their protagonists out of America all the more resonant. The final chapter of this project, "The End Product of Our Deep Moral Exhaustion: Alternative Genres and Immigration Narratives," pulls upon Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America to ground a discussion of the role of alternate history in contemporary immigration narratives. From there, the chapter pushes out to include Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story as an example of speculative fiction. In each novel, a commentary on America's global social position is revealed by means of the degree to which the protagonists and their families do or do not become assimilated Americans, placing these novels in an intermediary position on the continuum of post-9/11 immigration narratives. Via my close readings, I aim to demonstrate the ways in which patterns of departure from traditional narratives became both enhanced and more rapidly altered at the start of the twenty-first century. The comparative work of this dissertation project allows access to a unique vision of twenty-first century America that is only available through the lens of immigration narratives, critiquing the modern nation's strengths, shortcomings, political climate, and social realities all while attending to conscious and significant modifications to traditional immigrant narratives. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

En 1996, après avoir assisté à la dernière représentation de la septième édition du Centre National des Arts du Cirque, le journal parisien Libération prédit une troisième ère du Cirque : « Après les cirques traditionnels, puis les nouveaux cirques, il faut désormais compter avec le cirque contemporain. » Le pronostic devient réalité : la pièce du metteur en scène Joseph Nadj est considérée, en France comme ailleurs, comme le point de départ d’un nouveau genre dont la définition reste des plus vagues jusqu’à aujourd’hui : « Le cirque contemporain, lui, n’a strictement aucune unité formelle, ou disons, sans craindre le paradoxe, que c’est la diversité de ses formes qui l’unifie. » D’une part, cela s’explique par le fait que, dans le cirque contemporain, l’originalité est un moteur central et, d’autre part, que le genre se situe encore dans une phase de développement. Cela est en outre dû à l’absence jusqu’à aujourd’hui, dans la recherche scientifique, d’une analyse détaillée des représentations du cirque contemporain et qu’en plus on ne dispose pas d’un modèle d’analyse cohérente des représentations du genre. Le discours actuel autour du genre s’intéresse moins de savoir comment les spectacles de cirque contemporain engendrent du sens et quels sont les procédés caractéristiques qui les définissent. Au lieu de cela, on s’interroge sur ce qui devrait caractériser les pièces. Notre thèse tient compte de ce desiderata en développant pour la première fois une méthode pour analyser les représentations de cirque contemporain. En outre, elle explique et interprète résolument le genre au moyen d’une méthode solide, c’est-à-dire d’une description contextualisée de l’objet – à savoir la représentation – dans son contexte historique et culturel et fournit ainsi, au sens lessingien du terme, une dramaturgie du cirque contemporain qui, malgré la diversité des représentations, révèle des caractéristiques généralisables, le procédé fondamental, la structure des pièces et l'effet qu'elles produisent. Le développement du modèle de lecture pour les spectacles de cirque contemporain ainsi que l’évolution consécutive et la spécification du modèle s’appuient sur l'analyse textuelle de la poétique de la culture que justifie l’historien de la littérature Moritz Baßler dans son œuvre La fonction d’une poétique de la culture et l’archive sur la base du New Historicism conçu par Stephen Greenblatt. En outre, le travail présent se situe dans le domaine des théories de lecture relevant de la science du théâtre (Fischer-Lichte) et de la danse (Foster et Brandstetter). Le noyau de l‘argumentation se fonde sur l’hypothèse selon laquelle les représentations de cirque sont lisibles en tant que textes culturels. / In 1996, the Paris newspaper Libération predicted a third era of circus after visiting the seventh edition of the Centre National des Arts du Cirque: “After traditional and new circus, we now have to account for contemporary circus.” The prognosis became reality: nowadays, in France as elsewhere, the performance of Joseph Nadj is considered as the starting point of a new genre whose definition however remains vague: “The contemporary circus has no formal unity. It is paradoxically the diversity of its forms that unifies the genre.” On the one hand, this is explained by the fact that originality is a central motor in contemporary circus; on the other hand, the genre is still developing . A further reason for the lack of a clear definition lies in the absence of detailed analyses of contemporary circus performances in circus research, and in the desideratum regarding a coherent model for its interpretation. The current discourse dedicated to the genre is less interested in knowing how contemporary circus performances generate meaning and in outlining the characteristic techniques and processes. Instead, one wonders what should characterize the performances. The present thesis takes into account this desideratum by developing for the first time a method to analyse representations of contemporary circus. In addition, it resolutely explains and interprets the genre by means of a contextualized description of the object - namely representation - in its historical and cultural context. In the Lessingian sense of the term, the thesis therefore provides a dramaturgy of contemporary circus which, despite the diversity of representations, reveals generalizable characteristics of the genre, the fundamental techniques and structures of the performances. and the effects they produce. The development of a reading model for contemporary circus performances as well as the consequent evolution and the specification of the model are grounded in the textual analysis of poetics of culture that the literary scholar Moritz Baßler justifies in his work on the basis of the theory of New Historicism designed by Stephen Greenblatt. In addition, the present work situates itself in the field of reading theories pertaining to theatre (Fischer-Lichte ) and dance studies (Foster and Brandstetter ). The core of the argument is based on the assumption that circus performances are readable as cultural texts.

As transformações advindas com a modernidade e com a pós-modernidade alteraram de forma significativa a relação entre as gerações mais novas e as mais velhas. Nas sociedades tradicionais, havia uma hierarquia entre o saber adulto, pautado no passado e na tradição, e a aceitação deste saber por parte dos mais novos. A contemporaneidade e seus discursos fornecem um cenário bastante diferente, no qual a adolescência é tida como ideal, a velocidade das transformações são espantosas e o novo, o moderno, têm seu lugar de destaque nos valores do homem contemporâneo. Neste sentido, imagens solidificadas pelo tempo e pela tradição se alteram, trazendo reflexos nas relações entre jovens e adultos. O objetivo deste trabalho foi investigar a imagem de adulto que os adolescentes de hoje carregam, a partir da avaliação que os últimos fazem dos adultos de hoje, do sentido que os jovens atribuem a este lugar e do que valorizam em um adulto. Participaram da pesquisa um total de 520 alunos do Ensino Médio de escolas públicas e particulares e o instrumento utilizado consistiu em um questionário com 24 questões, cada qual contendo quatro opções de respostas, e duas questões abertas. Os resultados demonstraram uma tendência dos jovens a avaliarem negativamente os adultos em relação a suas atuações na esfera pública (política, meio ambiente, educação e mídia) e a desconfiarem da capacidade dos adultos quanto àqueles atributos tradicionalmente referidos a este lugar (confiança, sabedoria, modelo a ser seguido, ética) e, no entanto, 63% dos sujeitos acreditaram dever obediência aos adultos de hoje. O dinheiro, o desemprego e a competição no mundo do trabalho mostraram-se como uma das preocupações mais importantes dos adultos de hoje e dos jovens em relação ao futuro. Aparentemente, a imagem do adulto, lugar de saber e de guia dos mais novos não apresenta a consistência que tinha no passado e poucos parecem ser os modelos passíveis de admiração disponíveis aos jovens hoje. O significado de ser adulto e de ocupar este lugar parece tender a um trabalho e a uma construção exclusivamente pessoal e individual. / The transformations took place during modernity and post-modernity changed in a significant way the relationship between the younger and older generations. In traditional societies, there was a hierarchy between the adult knowledge, based on past and tradition, and the acceptance of this knowledge by the younger people. The contemporary and its discourses provide a different scenario indeed, in which the adolescence is taken as an ideal, the speed of transformations is astonishing and the new, the modern has a predominant place in the values of the contemporary man. In that sense, images solidified by time and tradition change, altering relationships between young people and adults. The aim of this work was to investigate the image of adulthood that todays adolescents have, from the evaluation that they make of todays adults, from the sense that young people have of this place and from what they value in an adult. Participated in the research a total of 520 students from public and private high schools and the tool consisted of a questionnaire with 24 questions, each containing four options, and two open questions. The results reveal a tendency from young people to evaluate negatively the adults concerning their performances in the public sphere (political, environment, education and media) and question the adults capacity on those attributes traditionally attributed to that place (confidence, wisdom, model to be followed, ethical) and, nevertheless, 63% of individuals believed to owe obedience to todays adults. Money, unemployment and competition for jobs in the world were revealed as some of the greatest concerns of todays adults and of young people about their future. Apparently, the image of an adult, place of knowledge and guide for the younger ones doesnt show the consistency that it had in the past and few seem to be the possible models of admiration available for today\'s young people. The meaning of being an adult and occupying that place seems to lean toward a work and a construction exclusively personal and individual.

A partir da Teoria dos Cronotopos, concebida por Mikhail Bakhtin, esta tese busca mostrar os modos pelos quais a fusão de tempo/espaço determina o enredo e as posturas das personagens em sua interação com o Outro, na obra Os Senhores, de Gonçalo M. Tavares. Vivendo como indivíduos descentrados, segundo lógicas próprias, as personagens também apresentam problemas identitários e de relacionamento com a alteridade. Além disso, por meio da análise dos elementos composicionais dos discursos e do estudo dos protogêneros pretendemos estabelecer o sentido final da obra, conectando-a à realidade do homem contemporâneo. / From the ideas conveyed by Mikhail Bakhtins Theory of Chronotopes, we seek to demonstrate the ways through which the fusion of time/space determines both the plot and the characters postures in their interactions with the alterity, in the series Os Senhores, written by Gonçalo M. Tavares. The fact of living as off-centered individuals, with their peculiar forms of logic, also causes them to present identity and relationship problems with the Other. Besides, through the analysis of the elements which constitute their discourses, parallel to the study of the prototypes, we intend to establish the ultimate meaning of the contents in the stories, connecting them to the contemporary mans reality.

Nas obras iniciais (A Luta Corporal, 1953 e O Vil Metal, 1960) de Ferreira Gullar, o tema da morte na poesia de Ferreira Gullar conflui para uma reflexão sobre a transitoriedade dos seres e objetos perante a inexorabilidade do tempo. Nos Poemas de Cordel (1962-1967) e Dentro da Noite Veloz (1975), o poeta, com vestígios de sua poesia engajada, dá voz, identidade e nome ao homem comum que vive na sociedade e conseqüentemente à morte deste homem considerado trivial pelo meio em que está inserido, remetendo-nos à maneira como o início do século XX é diagnosticado por Ariès (1977): o período em que a morte se esconde, e que ele denomina como sendo a morte invertida. Desde então a sociedade expulsa a morte dos cidadãos comuns, sobrando apenas reverências aos homens de Estado. Gullar também denuncia a falta de atenção e desvelo da sociedade para com o homem sem status social. Em sua contestação, o poeta imortaliza, nomeia e dá identidade ao cidadão anônimo, que passa a ter voz no poema. Para preservar-se de uma ameaça de aniquilação pessoal, Gullar concebe o Poema Sujo (1975), composto de memória, perda, elaboração do mundo perdido e amor à vida. A partir de então, o tema da morte passa a ser cada vez mais constante na poética de Gullar. Não somente com a ameaça da própria morte, mas com a perda concreta de amigos e familiares, essa passa a ser concebida em sua poesia, com maior intensidade e sensibilidade. Em um crescente, a morte toma forma Na Vertigem do Dia (1980) e Barulhos (1987), adquirindo maior vigor em Muitas Vozes (1999). Em Rainer Maria Rilke e a morte (2004), há um diálogo iminente entre a poética de Gullar e Rilke. Neste, a morte aparece como uma figura alegórica que está em toda a parte, seja no interior, seja no exterior do indivíduo, sempre conspirando para que o momento fatal se realize. Ela é um germe que nasce no coração do homem e que se desenvolverá no decorrer de sua existência, tomando-lhe o corpo. No tom apropriado e na medida correta, Gullar homenageia e dá voz aos conceitos rilkeanos, sem com isso ferir-se enquanto poeta. Sob o prisma conceitual do lírico alemão, concede vida singular e respeitável à suposta circunstância da morte concreta de Rilke. / In Ferreira Gullars first books (A Luta Corporal, 1953 and O Vil Metal, 1960), the issue of death converges in his poetry towards a reflection about the transitoriness of all beings and objects in view of time inexorability. In Poemas de Cordel (popular poems that first emerged in the Northeast region) (1962-1967) and Dentro da Noite Veloz (1975), the poet gives voice, identity and name to the ordinary man living in society, and consequently to this mans death, considered trivial by the environment where he is inserted. It brings the reader to the way which the beginning of the 20th. century is diagnosed by Ariès (1977): the period when death is hidden, that he calls the inverted death. Since then society evicts death images from ordinary citizens, and what is left are reverences to statesmen. Gullar also denounces societys lack of attention and zeal with regards to man with no social status. In his challenge, the poet confers immortal identity to the anonymous citizen, who takes an active voice in the poem. In order to get preserved from the threat of his personal annihilation, Gullar conceives Poema Sujo (Dirty Poem) (1975) consisting of memory, elaboration of the lost world and love for life. From then on, the subject matter of death has increasingly become more constant in Gullars poetics. Not only under the threat of his own death, but after the concrete loss of friends and family members, death started to be conceived more intensely and with more sensitivity in his poetry. Death increasingly takes shape in Na Vertigem do Dia (1980) and Barulhos (1987), and thus achieves more strength in Muitas Vozes (1999). In Rainer Maria Rilke e a morte (2004), an imminent dialogue between Gullars and Rilkes poetics is established. Death appears in this latters works as an allegoric figure which is everywhere, either inside or outside the individual, always conspiring for the fatal time to be accomplished. It is a germ which sprouts in mans heart and will grow throughout his existence, taking over his body. With an appropriate note and the right measure, Gullar pays homage and gives voice to the Rilkean concepts, without erasing his own style as a poet. Under the conceptual prism of the German lyricist, he gives singular and respectable life to Rilkes supposed death circumstance.

O trabalho pretende traçar uma análise crítica da relação entre arquitetura e cidade presente nas intervenções urbanas promovidas no período de 1991 a 2002 pelo poder público em Fortaleza. Tem a intenção de relacionar essa produção ao discurso político de ?modernização? do Ceará pronunciado pelos governantes, à construção de uma imagem urbana favorável à atração de investimentos e ao consumo turístico, e a promoção de espaços espetaculares no contexto de uma pós-modernidade, buscando, ainda, interpretar suas condicionantes históricas, sócio-econômicas, políticas e culturais. O objeto empírico de estudo compreende obras construídas ? reforma da Praça do Ferreira (1991), novo Mercado Central (1994-1998), Parque da Cidade (1999-2002), reforma do calçadão e Ponte dos Ingleses na Praia de Iracema (1994) e Centro Cultural Dragão do Mar (1994-1999) ? e projetos oriundos de concursos ou consórcio de arquitetos ? Projeto Fortaleza Atlântica (1998), Concurso Nacional de Idéias para Embelezamento e Valorização da Área Central (1999) e Centro Multifuncional de Feiras e Eventos (2002). / This work aims to analyze the relationship between architecture and the city of Fortaleza in the urban interventions by local government during 1991 and 2002. It intends to relate those projects to the political discourse by governors on ?modernization? of the state of Ceará, to the construction of an urban image attractive to investments and tourist consumption, and the production of spaces of spectacle in the context of post modernity, yet searching for an explanation of their historical, social, economical, political and cultural conditions. The empirical object of this study consists of works like the renovation of Ferreira Square (1991), the new Central Market (1994-1998), the Park of the City (1999-2002), the renovation of the shore sidewalk and of the boardwalk in Praia de Iracema (1994), and the Dragão do Mar Cultural Center. It also presents projects from architectural and urban design competitions like Fortaleza Atlântica (1998), National Competition of Ideas for Embellishment and Valorization for Downtown Fortaleza and Park of the City (1999) and the project for a Fair and Events Center (2002).