No description available.

“Inscribing Community” examines Greek inscriptions from Rome, between the first and fourth centuries CE, in order to understand the spaces and presentation of multicultural communities within the topography of the city. Literary sources, from Martial to Aelius Aristides, cite Rome’s multiculturalism as a defining feature of the city. These literary sources, however, separate Rome’s diverse population from the city’s built environment. For all the presentation of the city as a culturally diverse capital, did its multicultural population contribute to the topography of the city? Understanding the relationship between the city’s multicultural population and landscape comes as a challenge given the difficulties of tracing identity within material culture and the flawed preservation of Rome’s archaeological record. For this dissertation, I turn to Greek inscriptions – as both social historical texts and archaeological objects – in order to examine the organization and spaces of multicultural communities in Rome. Greek inscriptions, despite the cultural popularity of the language, remained a rarity in the landscape of Rome, accounting for less than 5% of the existing epigraphic record of the city. Within the center of Rome, inscribed Greek represented a cultural practice of the eastern half of the empire, where Greek functioned as the administrative language. When the Greek epigraphic record is mapped onto the topography of Rome, three distinct clusters of inscriptions can be seen in the areas of the Sacra Via, the Baths of Trajan, and the southern Transtiberim region. The contents of the inscriptions within these areas not only demonstrate the existence of communities organized by people from the different parts of eastern Mediterranean but also reveal their physical impression on the city. The three sites mark the only known structures and spaces devoted to multicultural communities in the urban topography of Rome. The Greek inscriptions of these three sites, when examined together, reveal the tension between motivation and perception in imperial Rome. Individuals and communities created inscriptions in Greek as an expression of their identities and native cultures. Yet, the display of inscriptions made the texts perceptible objects within the landscape of Rome, which anyone in the city might interpret in their own way. At each of the sites, imperial power mediated this tension, affecting their presentation and articulation of identity. Whether displayed in the center of the city or its periphery, Greek inscriptions in Rome represent eastern cultural identity that can also serve as a message of imperial dominance.

Ce mémoire en recherche-création explore l’hybridation identitaire et le désir d’échapper aux attentes normatives. Dans le récit Ce ne sont que des corps, deux étrangers attendent le train en se racontant, en alternance, les événements qui ont marqué les derniers mois de leur vie. Emmanuel, âgé de vingt-cinq ans, s’éprend de Michelle, une femme de tête quinquagénaire rencontrée dans un bar. Cette femme rêve de réaliser certains fantasmes et Emmanuel accepte de se plier au jeu jusqu’à ce que les choses s’enveniment. Quant à Alex, jeune femme dans la vingtaine, elle quitte son village natal pour étudier à Montréal et succombe au charme de Gabriel, un aspirant musicien pour qui elle est prête à tout abandonner. Chacun des personnages de ce roman brouille les identités sexuées et sexuelles. Pour ce qui est de l’essai, il explore la manière dont Nelly Kaplan manipule le sexe et le gender de ses protagonistes pour postuler une « poétique de l’androgynie » dans certaines nouvelles du recueil Le réservoir des sens. L’essai mobilise les ressources des études consacrées à l’ironie, à la poétique surréaliste, au gender ainsi qu’à l’intertextualité pour mettre en évidence la façon dont l’auteure brouille les identités sexuées et sexuelles. / This M.A. thesis combining research and creative writing explores the concepts of hybrid identity and the desire to escape standard expectations. In the novel Ce ne sont que des corps, two strangers are alternately sharing significant events of the past few months, while waiting for the train. Emmanuel, twenty-five, fall in love for Michelle, a strong-minded woman in her fifties, which he met in a bar. Michelle wants to fulfill some of her fantasies and Emmanuel decides to play along with the game until it turns sour. As for Alex, a young twenty something woman who left her village to study in Montreal, she falls in love with Gabriel, an aspiring musician for whom she is ready to give everything up. Each of the characters in this novel blurs sexual identities and gender. Furthermore, the essay explores the way Nelly Kaplan manipulates the sexuality and gender of her protagonists to suggest an “androgynous poetry” in some of the compendium’s Le reservoir des sens short stories. The essay bring forth knowledge from studies on irony, surrealist poetic, gender as well as intertextuality to underline how the author blurs sexual identity and gender.