<p>This thesis examines how America's cultural and historical memory forgets or problematically remembers Vietnam and the Vietnamese people(s) through the most prominent Vietnamese American texts, Le Ly Hayslip's <em>When Heaven and Earth Changed Places</em> and <em>Child of War, Woman of Peace,</em> and Oliver Stone's filmic adaptation of Hayslip's memoirs, <em>Heaven and Earth</em>. In the U.S., thirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, there is a vast archive of history books, memoirs, films and other cultural products about the War, yet the Vietnamese people(s) are conspicuously absent in these discourses. In the American context of historical amnesia, Vietnam (the country) is forgotten and the Vietnamese people(s) are denied subjectivity, their numerous losses remaining disavowed and un-moumed.</p> <p>I argue that Hayslip's books represent acts of mouming. She achieves this mouming by engaging with her losses and those of the Vietnamese people(s) in a productive way, using them as means to attain voice / Subjectivity and to counter the American forgetting of Vietnamese causalities and losses. I explore a form of melancholic remembrance tied to the traditional Vietnamese practice of ancestor worship at work in Hayslip's memoirs, one that allows Hayslip to offer alternative, minority stories of the War. However, the mainstream reception of Hayslip's books, especially the embrace of her message of healing and reconciliation, appropriates and co-opts her voice/ story to support U.S. national objectives. I analyze stone's film as an ultimate example of Hayslip's appropriation by the American dominant. The thesis considers the complexities in and around Hayslip's texts in order to better understand America's amnesiac memory in relation to Vietnam and the Vietnamese people(s).</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>In this thesis I examine representations of hospitality in four works by Thomas Heywood: <em>1 and 2 Edward IV</em> (1599), <em>A Woman Killed with Kindness</em> (1603), <em>The</em><br /><em>English Traveller</em> (1633), and <em>The Late Lancashire Witches</em> (1634). In the early modern period the practice of hospitality was integral to social relations, facilitating the consolidation of social ties, status and influence. Concurrent with these four plays, the period from approximately 1580 to 1630 contained an increasing interest and anxiety about the practice of hospitality and its apparent decline. Through an examination of the representations of hospitality in these plays, in relation to contemporary concerns surrounding early modern hospitality, I show that these plays exhibit a variety of anxieties and concerns about the practice of hospitality. In particular, I argue that the plays exhibit anxieties about masculine identity and the social responsibilities of householders; that the hospitable relation between host and guest, though intended to be socially edifying, may provide an avenue for social disruption and subversion due to the specific functions and expectations surrounding hospitality; and about female participation in hospitality, which often results in the exclusion of women from the benefits of the conventional system of hospitable exchange.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The occasion for this study was an awareness of a need for an isolated examination of the shrew figure in medieval drama. Owing to the limits of time and space regulating this research, its scope has been limited to English religious drama, and specifically to cycle and other biblical drama.</p> <p>This study examines the relationship of the dramatic shrew to the shrew in other literature of the period, the relationship between the shrew and the Virgin Mary, and the nature and purpose of comic characterization in essentially didactic drama. Chapter One is a discussion of the ecclesiastical and literary influences on the development of a shrew type in the Middle Ages, Chapter Two is an investigation of how Mary is presented in the drama, and Chapter Three is a systematic examination of the shrew in the drama. This study attempts to show that the characterizations of Mary and the shrews combine to form an integrated didactic commentary on ideal feminine behaviour and on modes of salvation peculiar to women.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>John Fowles' Daniel Martin can best be viewed in the context of his previous novels, The Collector, The French Lieutenant's Woman and The Magus, as well as his non-fictional work, The Aristos. Fowles is particularly conscious of himself as author and his novels invite the reader to participate in them as co-creator. Therefore, the way in which Fowles develops this self-awareness in his novels and the purpose behind his use of metafiction are central to any discussion of Fowles' works.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This study essentially offers an alternative method for the comparative study of literature and visual art in general, and of Conrad's fiction and the artistic movement known as Impressionism in particular. Rather than dealing with literal resemblances between visual tableaux and prose passages (a practice of limited usefulness), the comparative critic should deal in analogy; he or she should deal with the various ways in which artists working in widely varying media strive to express the same essential visions. <br /> The works of Joseph Conrad, when thus studied from the point of view of Impressionist theory—the theory of man's basic inability to ascertain anything beyond the ephemeral and the apparent—reveal a curious transition from a sparkling vision of man striving to discover the mysteries within himself, to what G. K. Chesterton called the essence of Impressionism: "that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe." In fact, the subtle gradations range from the technical virtuosity of the early Almayer's Folly to the final, deterministic fragments of Suspense. The pivotal point of Conrad's gradually darkening vision is to t be found in the masterpieces of his middle years—Nostromo and The Secret Agent—wherein the nerfect balance between Impressionist philosophy and artistic expression is tinged with an ever-deepening cynicism.<br /><br /> One of the main and basic contributions of this thesis, however, is simply the argument that Conrad was not only an Impressionist author but an Impressionist philosopher. His far-ranging curiosity, his immediate grasp of abstract notions and his associations with figures such as Bertrand Russell all speak powerfully of a mind always searching, as is Marlow in Lord Jim, for "some exorcism against the ghost of doubt."</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p><em>The Century Project</em>, both art exhibit and book, consists of unconventional nude portraits of over one hundred girls and women from the moment of birth to old age. Accompanying each photograph is the subject's written statement detailing instances of abuse, violence, grief, or reflecting moments of humour and joy. In the following pages I endeavor to understand the affect of such an exhibit by engaging the multiple and sometimes contradictory aesthetics exhibited by each photograph. Having both posed and volunteered for <em>The Century Project</em>, I mix personal engagement with critical theory, as difficult as it sometimes is to distinguish where one form of engagement ends and the other begins. I understand the bodily expression of both subject and viewer as an active, generative force: potentially both creative and uncooperative in response to authority and discipline. Engaging theories of embodiment, photography and psychoanalysis, I situate <em>The Century Project</em> in its various contexts: a corrective to iconic feminine beauty, a model for relational identity, and an expression of unconscious ideologies.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This thesis investigates the first and second diasporic generations' approaches to "home" as represented in Dionne Brand's <em>What We All Long For</em> and Madeleine Thien's <em>Certainty</em>. Brand and Thien offer nuanced and counter-intuitive conceptualizations of "home" that emerge in the house, city, and world at large. The authors demonstrate how one's achievement of "home" does not only entail a negotiation of these spaces, but also of familial relations. This thesis argues that the first generation's "diaspora consciousness" is a trait that the second generation inherits and transforms. This second generation exhibits more of a "transnational consciousness," a term that this thesis offers to describe the nomadic lifestyle of the second-generation characters.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>It is suggested that Shakespeare reveals in his work a continuing interest in the variety of human responses to societies whose members no longer adhere to traditional social and moral values. It is maintained that in certain plays the emphasis lies more on these responses and their implications than on the unique personalities of the characters themselves. In such plays the primary interest of the poet is seen to be in a triadic division of attitudes towards and responses to the same social conditions. The characters exhibiting these attitudes are here referred to as idealists, realists and cynics. It is argued that idealists are presented as being admirable in some respects but inadequate as leaders of their respective societies and often ultimately dangerous both to themselves and to their fellow citizens. It is further argued that cynics are portrayed as fulfilling no positive function in their societies and are even destructive insofar as they foster their own negative attitudes in others. The point is made that the realists can be seen to serve both their own interests and the interests of their societies and may therefore be best fitted for leadership under the prevailing social conditions. It is acknowledged that Shakespeare's realists are on occasion to be found in situations where no moderate; realistic solutions are possible. These general hypotheses are first briefly examined in relation to King John, The First Part of King Henry IV, King, Henry V and Coriolanus. They are then examined more thoroughly in Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida in which, it is maintained, the triadic division of attitudes involving idealism, realism and cynicism may be most clearly perceived.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This thesis critically evaluates the impact of Viagra's marketing campaigns on social constructions and expectations of masculinity and masculine identities in Western society. Specifically, this project examines the implications of Pfizer's presentation of heteronormative patriarchal figures of male authority in Viagra commercials and print advertisements. In my analysis, I draw on gender theorists Judith Butler and Susan Bordo to clarify how codes of gender are established and policed within Western society. I also draw on the work of disability theorists Rosemarie Garland-Thompson and Thomas Gerschick in order to challenge the categorization of 'normal' bodies and identities. In this thesis, I argue that by distancing sexual functioning from the construction of individual identity, it becomes possible to challenge the social expectations and limitations placed on enactments of gendered sexual identity.<br /><br />In Chapter One, I lay the groundwork for my discussion of erectile dysfunction by examining the body as a site of identity formation and considering theories of gender construction. By critically evaluating the existence and implications of social constructions of 'normal' bodies, it is possible to challenge the ideals of physicality that are so prevalent in Western society. I also consider the way that these ideals are mobilized in advertising in order to transform the 'desirable' body into a profitable body. In Chapter Two, I engage in a careful analysis of the Viagra commercials put out by Pfizer from 1998 to 2005, tracing the evolution of ' desirable' male bodies and identities. I argue that Pfizer's use of increasingly youthful spokesmen is indicative of an attempt to play upon men's anxiety concerning 'normal' sexual performances. My discussion then moves to a consideration of how men with physical disabilities create sexual identities in a society that values normative modes of embodiments and often dismisses alternative sexualities. From here, I argue that by viewing erectile dysfunction as a disability rather than a medical condition, it may be possible to create new definitions of male identity that are not contingent on normative sexual performances, thereby challenging socially validated constructions of 'normal ' gendered sexual identity.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This study is a sustained exploration of Ann Radcliffe's engagement with art and aesthetics in her most lengthy novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho. While critics often address how Radcliffe draws upon the eighteenth-century aesthetic categories of the sublime and the picturesque, such considerations often cast her efforts as simply transcriptions of the pictorial works of landscape painters, or translations of theoretical concepts into narrative form. Instead, I argue that Radcliffe structures her narrative around her heroine's aesthetic encounters, and thus negotiates with the very conception and classifications of aesthetics of the past, present and imagined futures, in order to work through concerns of gender and class on the fundamental level of cognition, representation, and modes of reality. Chapter One ("The Limits of an Aesthetic Education") traces the thematization of the bequest of education and challenges the notion of St. Aubert as a benevolent patriarch. Instead, his teachings of reason and sympathy expose the internal contradiction between sentiment and scientific rationalism through which Radcliffe exposes the limits and relevance of such an education to her female subject in her confrontations with the aesthetic categories of the sublime and picturesque. Chapter Two ("The Aporias and Aesthetic Excess of St. Aubert's Philosophical Legacy") focuses on the death sequence of St. Aubert where Radcliffe foregrounds how his lack of a philosophy for mourning disables his daughter, and the consequences of the inherent melancholic disavowal which underlies St. Aubert's many philosophies become most tangible through aesthetic figures. Chapter Three ("Authorial Agency, Gendered Voice, and the Limits of Language") traces the metatextual instances where figures of reading convey Radcliffe's interrogation of the limitations of her own medium and how imagination is a necessary interpretative dimension of cognition, but one that is vulnerable to fear created by tyranny and isolation. Chapter Four ("Italian Aesthetics and Culture") explores Radcliffe's allegiance to a pastoral, and decidedly anti-Baroque aesthetic where she censures the preference for simulacra and increasingly critiques how so-called renaissances of culture often revive the stylistic surfaces and luxuries of the past where Venice becomes a figure of false hospitality and culture. Chapter Five ("Domestic Discord and Anodyne Endings") reconsiders the notion that Radcliffe defers to a so-called normalizing ending thus subduing the potential critiques of the text. Chapter Six ("Emily's Psychic Development and Search for Feminine Legacies") concludes with a psychoanalytic-based interpretation of the heroine's growth and demonstrates how her struggle with aesthetics throughout constitutes a search for sublimated female presences and suggests the possibility for Subjectivity through artistic reparation.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)