The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald encapsulates the Roaring Twenties, a period of social and political change. The economy is thriving, and the American Dream, with its promise of monetary wealth, happiness and upward mobility, is seemingly within reach. Females gain suffrage, and a New Woman emerges, the flapper, who can be seen challenging stereotypical gender roles with her short skirts and bobbed hair. Ostensibly enjoying increased freedom, she dances the night away at speakeasies, a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, defying Prohibition. This essay aims to evidence that the American Dream as constructed in the novel is a dream available only to the male gender, as the women remain shackled by a patriarchal society. By looking at The Great Gatsby through a feminist lens and with the help of well-established concepts within feminist critical theory and feminist narratology, this essay analyzes how the female characters are portrayed, along with their language, and their actions. The result reveals that in Gatsby’s world women orbit around the men, maneuvering for their attention, affection, and material wealth. Any transgressions of stereotypical gender roles result in punishment: loss of status, withheld affections, dismissal, or death. Consequently, instead of following their own American Dream, women are limited to pursuing the man who most successfully embodies it. Thus, for the females in The Great Gatsby, the American Dream stays an elusive idea as they remain reliant on the men to manifest it.

Sleep and dreaming are important research topics. Unfortunately, the methods for researching them have several shortcomings. In-laboratory polysomnographic sleep and dream research is a costly, time-consuming and effortful endeavor, often resulting in small subject counts. Moreover, the unfamiliar sleeping environment can lead to distorted measurements as compared to the natural sleep environment at the subject’s home. Conducting sleep and dream experiments in the field by a crowd of subjects could be a solution. However, complex experiment paradigms cannot be investigated this way, because there are no tools available, which enable naive subjects to carry out complex polysomnographic studies on their own. The Traumschreiber system, which is developed and evaluated in this dissertation, offers a solution to this problem. It consists of a high-tech sleep mask and a minicomputer, and enables naive crowd subjects to perform complex polysomnographic sleep and dream experiments at home. On the one hand, it instructs the crowd subject, what to do when. On the other hand, it controls the experiment during the time the subject is asleep, analyzing the data in real-time using state-of-the art machine learning techniques. The rationale behind is to enable a big data approach to sleep and dream research, using the data recorded by a crowd of subjects for large-scale investigations about sleep and dreaming, with low costs for the researcher. After describing the development process of the Traumschreiber system, its usefulness regarding crowd-based automated polysomnographic field studies is evaluated. First, it is validated against a commercial medical poly­somnographic sleep laboratory system, demonstrating its good polysomnographic data recording capabilities – including measurements of EEG, EOG, EMG and ECG –, which enable the researcher to identify typical sleep patterns like slow waves or rapid eye movements as well as sleep stages in the recorded data. Furthermore, two field studies show, that the Traumschreiber system can be used successfully by naive subjects to conduct complex sleep experiments at their homes. This includes acoustic stimulation of the sleeping subject as well as sleep stage dependent activities of the system. The sleep staging algorithm implements a Keras/Tensorflow based neural network approach, which demonstrates the system’s readiness for state-of-the-art machine learning techniques. However, the currently used neural network is kept very simple and can determine the sleep stage not very reliably; it should be further developed and trained on more data of more subjects. The Traumschreiber system will be made available under an open source license, enabling any researcher to use, modify or further develop it. A description, how to produce arbitrarily many entities of the Traumschreiber system, is given in this dissertation and shows that one system can be produced at low costs in a short amount of time. Taken together, the Traumschreiber system is a new tool for sleep and dream research, which enables a crowd-based and machine learning-driven approach to gathering polysomnographic data from complex sleep and dream experiments.

Le parallèle entre Król-Duch de Juliusz Słowacki et Aurélia de Gérard de Nerval est une comparaison narratologique des deux œuvres (en dehors de l’étude d'influences réciproques, comme de l’étude de sources). Le rapprochement des deux auteurs (enrichi par l’apparition, en arrière-fond, de Novalis - toujours dans la perspective d'un parallèle) se construit autour du thème de l’écriture de la révélation onirique. Elle laisse apparaître une rupture fondamentale entre le contenu de la révélation – une existence continue du moi - et la forme discontinue et inachevée sous laquelle elle s’exprime. L’autobiographie onirique qui raconte l’expérience indicible d’une « seconde vie » infinie, entrevue en rêve, apparaît ainsi comme un seuil narratif qui s’interpose entre le fragment et la totalité. Dans les trois parties de l’étude comparée, consacrées respectivement aux modèles de composition, aux modalités de l’inachèvement et aux profils narratifs des deux textes, est posée la question de la limite entre les images mentales d’une extrême subjectivité et leur avatar textuel. Le rapport entre l’invisible et sa représentation y apparaît au travers du rapport entre le rêve du moi infini et le récit de ce rêve, qui se construit comme une perpétuelle réincarnation du « je » en tant que sujet. / « Dream is a second life », Gérard de Nerval writes. « I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread ». He sees dream and real life as asunder though parallel compartments, while Juliusz Słowacki sees them a continuum, without precise boundary where one ends and the other begins. But they do agree on one point: poetry and dream are intimately united.Juliusz Słowacki’s Król-Duch and Nerval’s Aurélia have in common to be oneiric biographies, i.e. written from naked truth as revealed in dreams, where « life is free of space and time ». The outcome is well-nigh as disconnected and incoherent as dream itself. Words cannot represent adequately heavens opened. It is somewhat uncanny that, in both cases, the fragments of the « infeasible book » look like an initiation into sacred mysteries.

In my thesis, I focused on the challenges of the American Dream and its damaging demands. I compared these aspects to The Glass Menagerie, All My Sons, and Death of the Salesman, plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, two playwrights concerned with similar issues in the 1940s and 1950s. Each chapter was introduced by Robert Frost's poem related to its topic. This element was added as a chapters' introduction to express the universality of the depicted issues and to tight the sections together under one pattern. In the theoretical part of the thesis, I concentrated on the 40s and 50s America and its features and the historical development of the American Dream. This section's main influences were works by Rodney P. Carlisle, Richard A. Schwartz, Stephanie Coontz, and Jim Cullen. With their books about America and its historical background, Carlisle, Schwartz, and Coontz provided a base for the factual context of this thesis. Cullen's work on the American Dream was used as the primary source for understanding the reasons behind the Dream and its historical development. The whole thesis was supported by arguments from Lauren Berlant, John W. Thoburn and Thomas L. Sexton, and Piotr Sztompka. Berlant's work on cruel optimism provided a possible explanation of particular behavior that accompanied...

In 2004 Japanese author Ashibe Taku published his novel Murder in the Red Chamber, in which he adapted Cao Xueqin’s eighteenth-century Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber as a compelling murder mystery. In 2008 I would take on the challenge of translating Ashibe’s novel into English. This required me to draw on a wealth of primary and secondary materials. Not only did I have to familiarize myself with the novel’s peculiarities, but also with those of its Chinese source. Over these layers of text I fashioned yet another from my own engagements with Western detective fiction. In order to reconcile these disparate cultural understandings of detection and law, I assumed the role of detective myself in navigating at least two cultural milieus at any given time. Consequently, I found myself empathizing with Ashibe’s characters in an entirely new way. This thesis is a case study that investigates two questions: (1) What does it mean when the translator’s method mimics—in the target text—that of the author of the source text? (2) How have murder mystery paradigms been displaced and/or embedded in my chosen text through this process of cross-cultural rewriting? In exploring these questions I have developed a kinship with Ashibe, for we are both rewriters seeking to flesh out the evidence laid before us into admissible testimony. Whether or not I “solved the case” of this translation matters less than the adding of another layer in another language with the intent of enriching the whole.

Taming is an experiment and a written assignment about the development of ProjectMorpheo, which was my degree project at Stockholm University of the Arts. ProjectMorpheo is a participatory experience designed to explore the fragile connections between the content of our dreams and the physical materials that surround us. To give a chance for contemplation the project uses meditation and an experimental form of a contemporary puppetry technique: material animation. Taming Amorphalia is a fictional documentation of the intrapersonal happenings, the experiments and experiences that influenced me during the development of ProjectMorpheo. The aim is to introduce the intuitive process behind the project through the form of a text based RPG.

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In our lives we will have to make hundreds upon thousands of choices. The effects of these choices will follow us with varying intervals; some effects may be brief while others may literally last a lifetime. In these moments that we are forced to chose, it ultimately comes down to two options, what we should do, and what we want to do. Essentially, it is a choice between the head and the heart. Playwrights depend on these moments of choice, for it is the basis of almost all plays. At some point, the protagonist must make a choice, even if the choice is not to choose. In the early part of the 20th Century, a religious philosopher by the name of Aleister Crowley helped to define these choices, or as he referred to them, Wills. In essence, he stated that everyone has a True Will and a conscious will, and the path that you will ultimately follow is contingent on the choices you make in your life. Following your True Will, the path of the heart will lead you to a sense of Nirvana, while following your conscious will, the path of the head leads to a life unfulfilled. While some called him demonic (he occasionally referred to himself as The Beast With Two Backs) others saw him as a sage someone to esoterically explain the chaotic and industrial world of the early 1900 s. Aleister Crowley seemed to be one of those few men that you either loved, or hated, or hated to love. At the dawn of the 20th Century, he was an English philosopher and religious guru that made a call to arms to the general populous to start living a better life. His theories will be explained fully in Chapter One, but ultimately he wanted everyone to achieve their True Will and leave their conscious wills by the wayside. He felt that this process could be achieved through what he referred to as his theorems on magick. It is unknown exactly how the idea came to him to add the k to the original magic; however speculation reveals he might have taken from the original Greek word magikE. Contrary to the modern definition of magic (the art of producing illusions by sleight of hand), Crowley felt that his magick was significantly more complex. Pulling on philosophies from the Egyptians and the Celts along with basic Buddhist principles, he defined his magick within his twenty-eight theorems . Ultimately, he philosophized that magick was a way to enlighten a person, or, for the purposes of this thesis a character s True Will4 and to avoid following their conscious will. In layman s terms, Crowley saw it as an argument between the head (conscious will) and the heart (True Will). While the main focus of this thesis is on the tension and outcome of the decision of a character to follow their True Will or their conscious will, it is impossible to talk about these two concepts without discussing, at least in part, magick. Crowley saw magick as the practice and process to achieve True Will. This study, therefore, involves both homonyms, magic and magick. By applying this process as defined by Crowley in his self-named theorems to plays and musicals that have been defined as strictly magic, I am looking for not only the exact moment in which the main protagonists in each play define and execute their decision to follow their True or conscious Wills, but also to critically examine their journey to that fatal decision. I describe it as such because I feel that a characters fate may truly depend on the choice that they make. These philosophies are not new to the philosophical world. Other theorists such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and their relation to Crowley s theories will be discussed later; however I felt that because Crowley is the one who his responsible for rejuvenating the word magick from the Greeks in the 20th Century, I should be able to use his theories as a modern lens to examine A Midsummer Nights Dream, Marisol, and Wicked. I plan to take plays that cross both genre and era and consider not only (1) what can be illuminated using this Crowlean lens , but I also to highlight (2) any universal truths, by which I mean any ideological or philosophical ideas that appear in all three plays, that can be found in works as diverse as the ones that I have chosen. While their connection to True Will may be tangential in nature, if there are things in common in these plays that are brought to light using Crowley s lens, then I feel it is worth noting. By examining these two factors I will be able to see if critics have accurately defined these plays. My goal is to add the Crowlean lens to the already existing approaches to critically examining a theatrical piece. This lens, as defined before, is simply taking Crowley s concepts of True Will and conscious will and their link to the progression of magick within a character to illuminate the characters choices leading up to their breaking point in which they must ask themselves Do I chose what I should do, or what I want to do? The three plays I chose were done for specific reasons. The basic criterion was to choose on a basis of (1) chronology, (2) genre, (3) and magical reference5. I took three plays that entertained the religious, philosophical, and fantastical nature of what I felt best applied to Crowley s theories. Keeping in mind that Crowley interpreted his magick as a philosophy, a religion, and a way of life to ultimately achieving True Will, I felt it pertinent to explore these aspects of each play as well. In the musical Wicked, the philosophical nature of the piece asks the question Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? This question can be answered through a variety of subjects. By exploring these issues within the context of its main character, Elphaba, (pronounced EL-fa-ba), and a variety of themes throughout this musical (including behavior, appearance, deception, honesty, courage and labeling) we find that True Will and conscious will in the land of Oz are flowering. Defining our True Will, according to Crowley, takes constant affirmations and diligent calculations of our feelings and utilizing those to aid in making the right choice for that specific moment6. In this fashion, Marisol marries the idea of what the author calls magical realism in a post-apocalyptic New York City with a fervent religiosity all while underscoring the political nature of the 1980s indigent cleanup initiated by then mayor Ed Koch. Through the character of Marisol Perez, we find that not only is the choice between True Will and conscious confusing, but it can be potentially lethal. Within the structure of this play is also where Crowley s spiritual views on True Will and conscious will become highlighted. The Lovers (Helena, Demetrius, Hermia, and Lysander) in Shakespeare s fantastical A Midsummer Night s Dream is the perfect backdrop to explore Crowley s more eccentric philosophies on magick and how these philosophies relate to True and conscious will. In essence, I plan to not only explore the choices that these four individuals make due to acts of both types of magic(k), but their ultimate consequences as well. It also must be noted that during the process of this thesis, the one overarching theme throughout all three plays dealt with Crowley s theory of self-preservation. I feel that this is innately tied into the idea of True Will. By achieving True Will, we are inherently attempting to make the best choices for ourselves. This inherently keeps alive the innate human instinct of survival. At the end of this thesis, I hope to defend that Crowley s concepts of True Will and conscious will, when applied in tandem with Crowley s concepts of magick, can be a valid lens to examine theatrical works, old and new alike.

Corps rêvés est un recueil graphique sur la corporéalisation, un terme que j’utilise pour désigner l’action d’être ou de se sentir être un corps, dans un contexte où les idées de dépassement du corps et de projection vers le futur sont omniprésentes – ce que je nomme les imaginaires posthumains. Le recueil se présente sous la forme de onze livrets autonomes, mais interreliés et qui peuvent être lus dans l’ordre souhaité, dans un désordre orchestré. Le Préambule, cependant, sert de guide pour l’entrée dans la lecture. Cette thèse invite le·a lecteur·ice à un plongeon en plein milieu des corps, des rêves, du posthumain et d’un long processus de recherche-création par l’écriture et le dessin. Mêlant fiction, autofiction, écrits phénoménologiques, théoriques et dessins (dont une grande partie à l’aquarelle), j’explore différents “je”, assumant une posture située, et autant de manières de faire corps, de se corporéaliser. Je convoque des matières, des corps, humains ou non, vivants ou non, des lieux, des mémoires, des éléments – eau, air, feu, terre – qui m’aident à figurer, discuter, imaginer certaines corporéalisations. Je fais appel à une littérature sur le posthumain, des perspectives post-humanistes, phénoménologiques, mais aussi littéraires et graphiques. Je convoque également des théories de la communication médiatique qui m’aident à concevoir les différents livrets comme des milieux, c’est-à-dire des lieux d’émergence de ma thèse. L’idée de milieu parle autant du processus que du contenu. Les rêves sont aussi des milieux ; ce sont eux qui articulent et donnent matière aux intuitions du recueil. Ils sont matérialisés par les fonds de couleur à l’aquarelle sous-tendant tous les textes et dessins. Ces fonds changent de couleur pour rappeler les différents états de mes rêves, comme les impressions colorées laissées sur la peau d’un poulpe en plein rêve. Je vous invite en eaux troubles, en plein brouillard, dans le récit d’une chercheuse-créatrice qui éprouve son corps le plus souvent par la douleur et la fatigue chronique de la fibromyalgie. Ceci n’est pas central, mais constitue plutôt une trame de fond du recueil, tout comme les imaginaires posthumains. Bien que ma posture puisse être qualifiée de queer et phénoménologique, je prends soin de feinter les (mes) éventuelles tentations de la catégoriser. C’est qu’à la manière des furtifs imaginés par Alain Damasio--ces êtres insaisissables par le regard humain, je tente par tous les moyens de rester en perpétuel mouvement, vivante et, surtout, de ne pas me laisser enfermer par mes propres discours. Enfin, ce recueil graphique s’intéresse aussi à ce que son élaboration fait à mon corps. En faisant advenir certains corps, j’ai transformé le mien profondément, et les traces de cette transformation toujours en cours sont présentes à travers les pages colorées de Corps rêvés. / Corps rêvés is a collection of graphic booklets about corporealization, a term that I am using to express the action of being a body, or feeling oneself being a body, in a context where the ideas of going beyond the body and of projection towards the future are omnipresent (what I call posthuman imaginaries). This collection is presented in the form of eleven interrelated yet self-contained booklets, which can be read in the desired order, an orchestrated disorder. The Preamble, however, serves as a guide for the entrance into the reading. This thesis invites the reader to a dive in the middle of bodies, dreams, the posthuman and a long process of research-creation through writing and drawing. Mixing fiction, autofiction, phenomenological and theoretical writings and drawings (a large part of which is done in watercolor), I explore different «I», assuming situated postures as many ways of making a body, of being corporealized. I call upon different materialities, human and non-human, living and non-living, places, memories, elements - water, air, fire, earth - which help me to figure, discuss, imagine certain corporealizations. I call upon a literature on the posthuman, post-humanist and phenomenological perspectives, but also literary and graphic. I also call upon literature on the media that helps me to conceive the different booklets as media, i.e. places of emergence of my thesis. The idea of medium speaks as much about the process as about the content. Dreams are also media; they are the ones which articulate and give substance to the intuitions of the collection. They are materialized by the watercolors grounding all the texts and drawings. These backgrounds change color to recall the different states of my dreams, like the colored impressions left on the skin of an octopus in full dream. I invite you into troubled waters, in the middle of a fog, into the story of a researcher-creator who experiences her body most often through the chronic pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia. This detail is not central, but it constitutes a sort of background to the collection, as the posthuman imaginaries do. Although my posture can be qualified as queer and phenomenological, I take care to feint the (my) possible temptations to categorize it. Like the furtives imagined by Alain Damasio (these beings in perpetual movement, elusive to the human gaze), I try by all means to remain in movement, alive and, above all, not to let myself be locked up by my own discourses. Finally, this graphic collection is also interested in what its elaboration does to my body. By making certain bodies come to life, I have profoundly transformed mine, and the traces of this ongoing transformation are present throughout the colorful pages of Corps rêvés.

Les incorporations des mémoires épisodiques dans les rêves apparaissent en formes fragmentées et suivent un modèle temporel distinct qui suit une courbe sinusoïdale. Ce modèle est caractérisé par les incorporations immédiates, qui apparaissent 1-2 jours après l’événement (effet de résidus diurnes), et les incorporations tardives, qui apparaissent 5-7 jours après l’événement (effet de délai). Ces deux effets sont considérés comme des liens entre les processus de consolidation de la mémoire et la formation du rêve. Cette courbe temporelle a été observée pour une variété de stimuli expérimentaux. Cependant, aucune étude à date n’a démontré que le contenu des rêves réagit aux événements diurnes d’une manière plus générale et non-spécifique. Le but de notre étude était d’examiner si deux événements qualitativement distincts, un séjour nocturne au laboratoire (LAB), considéré comme un événement interpersonnel, et une tâche de réalité virtuelle (RV), considérée comme un événement non-interpersonnel, sont intégrés de façon différente dans le contenu onirique. Selon nos hypothèses, 1) les éléments spécifiques liés au LAB et à RV seraient incorporés dans les rêves avec des patrons tendances temporels différents, et 2) les incorporations spécifiques seraient associées à des changements plus généraux dans le locus de contrôle (LoC) du rêve. Vingt-six participants ont passé une nuit dans le laboratoire, ont été exposé à une tâche de RV, et ont rempli un journal de rêve pendant 10 jours. Les rapports de rêve ont été cotés pour les éléments spécifiques portant sur LAB et sur RV, et pour l'évolution générale de LoC du rêve. Nos deux hypothèses ont été confirmées: 1) les incorporations de LAB et RV sont négativement corrélées et apparaissent dans le rêve selon des modèles temporels différents. Les incorporations du LAB ont suivi une courbe sinusoïdale en forme de U, avec un effet de résidu diurne et un effet de délai. Les incorporations de RV ont suivi un patron différent, et ont eu un maximum d’incorporations au jour 4. 2) les scores du LoC du rêve étaient plus externes pour le jour 1 (max incorporations du LAB) et plus internes pour le jour 4 (max incorporations de RV). Ces modèles d'incorporation distincts peuvent refléter des différences dans la façon dont les deux événements ont été traités par les processus de consolidation de la mémoire. Dans ce cas, une expérience interpersonnelle (LAB) était incorporée plus tôt dans le temps. Les résultats suggèrent que LoC du rêve reflète les processus de mémoire plus généraux, qui affectent le contenu du rêve entier, et qui sont partiellement indépendants des incorporations spécifiques. / Memories for a daytime event reappear in fragmented form in dream content following a distinct, U-shaped, temporal pattern: immediate incorporations appear on days 1-2 after the event (day-residue effect) and delayed incorporation appear on days 5-7 after the event (dream-lag effect). These two effects are thought to reflect memory consolidation processes linked with dreaming. The U-shaped pattern has been observed for a variety of experimental stimuli, however, no studies have investigated whether dream content also reacts to daytime events in a more general or non-specific way. The aim of this study was to examine whether two qualitatively distinct events, an overnight laboratory (LAB) stay, considered as an interpersonal event, and virtual reality maze task (VR), considered as a non-interpersonal event, are incorporated differently into dream content. We expected that 1) specific elements related to the LAB and VR events would be expressed with different temporal patterns, and 2) these specific incorporations would be associated with more general changes in Dream locus of control (LoC). 26 participants spent one night in the laboratory, underwent a VR maze task, and kept a dream diary for 10 days. Dream reports were scored for specific LAB and VR elements and for general changes in Dream LoC. Two main findings confirmed our expectations: 1) LAB and VR incorporations were inversely related and exhibited distinct temporal patterns. LAB incorporations were U-shaped with both day-residue and dream-lag effects. VR vi incorporations followed a different pattern, with a peak on day 4. 2) Dream LoC scores were more external for day 1 (peak of LAB incorporations) and more internal for day 4 (peak of VR incorporations). These different incorporation patterns may reflect differences in how memory consolidation processes dealt with the two events, with the interpersonal experience being incorporated earlier in time. Dream LoC findings may reflect more general memory processes that are partially independent from the specific incorporations and that affect construction of the whole dream narrative.