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This dissertation means to examine Faulkner¡¦s Depression-Era fiction as a post-traumatic syndrome pervasive in the Southern psyche. I read Faulkner from a cultural triangulation of race, class, and gender in Yoknapatawpha. These triangular coordinates often close in on somewhere on the far horizon, in their relations with the Civil War and its aftermath. That is the way history insinuates herself into Faulkner¡¦s art. Opening with a chapter on The Sound and the Fury, I contend that the novel sets an eschatological scene for my investigation of its relation with the bulk of Faulkner¡¦s writing throughout the ¡¦30s. The Compsons¡¦ apocalyptic ¡§now,¡¨ 1929, is thoroughly checked for its temporal entanglement with the Confederate memories. How Faulkner¡¦s Great Depression contemporaneity laments over the Lost Cause gives us a topological context where the Confederate vestiges pop out at every corner. In Chapter two, I will slash vertically into white ideology for another visage of the white South¡¦s trauma¡Xa class-aware orchestration of monologues in the apocalyptical ¡§now.¡¨ Who lies dying is a self-consuming question among the Bundrens. This is where Faulkner comes closest to the socio-economic issue in the 30s. In the analysis of As I Lay Dying, I will engage with Diaspora theories of cultural displacement, along with a Marxist elucidation of ¡§structure of feeling¡¨ to fully denote the submerged living standards of the poor whites in the Depression Era. As for the third chapter, I will engage with the places in which the white Southern subjectivity itches¡Xrace and racism, and the dominant Yankee influence embodied by the Carpetbagger offspring Joanna Burden¡¦s unsuccessful taming of an ¡§interpellated¡¨ mulatto, Joe Christmas. The Diasporic depths in Faulkner¡¦s oeuvre carries on with all the cultural and identitarian others coming into the South to challenge the white supremacist in Light in August. Joe Christmas¡¦s wandering is not so much a victimization of racism, as he is a chameleon in identity relations inserted in a fanatical, politicized South¡Xa praxis around which different identities cite their own traumas. Moving from a vicarious way to retell the stories in a time of loss and upheaval, the fourth chapter touches the per se of the South¡¦s historical trauma, the defeat in the Civil War and its aftermath. I investigate two variants in the South¡¦s collective reproduction of this traumatic origin: Absalom, Absalom! with its gothic chronotope that runs parallel with the progressive modernity, i.e., the milieu of Quentin¡¦s apocalypse now; The Unvanquished with a deconstructive lens to look at the southern cavalier fatherhood, namely, Bayard Sartoris¡¦ rejection to avenge his father in its ¡§An Odor of Verbena.¡¨ The former rejects Anderson¡¦s ¡§homogeneous empty time¡¨ and the latter bids farewells to the Cavalier past by an overdose of romanticism and then an abrupt reversal at the apogee of the romantic vision. Concentrating on a self-therapeutic outlook on Faulkner and his South, I trace a symbolic economy of ¡§working through¡¨ in which Faulkner rehearses the Southern history by multiple overexposures of its trauma. It is also a project to tie Faulkner¡¦s own identity formation to a process of victimization in relation to these memories: his southern diasporic self in the 30s against the capitalistic centers of an intellectual New York and a commercial Hollywood. Faulkner embeds a humiliation in either vision. He is an epitome of the South¡¦s memories of loss and its concomitant pain.

Human excrement is seldom considered to be an integral part of the human condition. Despite the relative silence regarding it, however, excrement has played a significant role in American history. Today the U.S. has more than two million miles of sewer pipes underneath it. Every year Americans flush more than a trillion gallons of water and fertilizer down the toilet, and farmers spend billions of dollars to buy artificial fertilizer. Furthermore, excrement is bound up in many complicated power relationships regarding race, gender, and ethnicity. This dissertation examines the period in American history, from the Civil War through the Progressive Era, when excrement transformed from commodity to waste. More specifically, it examines the cultural and social factors that led to its formulation as waste and the roles it played in the histories of American health, architecture, and imperialism. The first chapter assesses the vast changes to the country’s infrastructure and social fabric beginning in the late nineteenth century. On the subterranean level, much of America’s immense network of sewers was constructed during this era—making it one of the largest public works projects in U.S. history. Above ground, the United States Sanitary Commission, founded at the onset of the Civil War, commenced a widespread creation of sanitary commissions in municipalities, regions, and even internationally, that regulated defecation habits. Chapter Two assesses the social and architectural change that occurred as the toilet moved from the outhouse to inside the house—specifically, how awkwardly newly built homes accommodated this novel room and how the toilet’s move inside actually hastened its removal. The third chapter shifts focus to the way Americans considered their excrement in relation to their body in a time when efficiency a great virtue. Americans feared ailments related to “autointoxication” (constipation) and went to absurd lengths to rid their bodies of excrement. The fourth chapter analyzes the way excrement was racialized and the role it had in the various projects of American imperialism. The colonial subjects and potential American citizens—from Native Americans to Cubans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans—were regularly scrutinized, punished, and re-educated regarding their defecation habits. / text

This project examines representations of Antarctica in the theatre and analyses these in terms of space and place in order to chart the development of awareness of the continent. As examples of cultural production, plays and their treatment of imagined Antarctic space can provide insights into how attitudes towards the continent have developed and been expressed by revealing the dominant narratives at various points in time. A close reading of nine plays from 1930 – 2011 focuses on the use of mimetic and diegetic space within the theatre, examining the language used, stories told and attitudes present. Such analysis reveals the factors determining the choice of an Antarctic setting, be they ecological, political or metaphorical, whilst shedding light on how attitudes towards place, space and representation have changed within the theatre context. These plays can be grouped under four thematic headings, namely “In Scott’s Footsteps,” “Retelling,” “Reimagining,” and “Returning.” While Antarctica remains a backdrop in earlier plays, where Heroic Era narratives are foregrounded, more recent productions have seen the continent come to the fore, where it is treated as part of a global web of connections. These plays illustrate a progression in how Antarctica has been represented upon the stage, a progression that parallels how we have thought about Antarctica in general.

Es gibt kaum etwas, worauf unsere Zivilisation stolzer ist als auf die Eindämmung von Säuglingssterblichkeit, Infektionen und Seuchen. Die modernen medizinischen Bemühungen scheinen für das Leben des einzelnen ein Segen zu sein. Beziehen wir größere Zeiträume ein, so müssen wir feststellen, daß auf die Dauer als einziges Resultat dieser Bemühungen das übrigbleibt, was wir zur Zeit als den größten Schock dieses Jahrhunderts erleben: das explosionsartige Anwachsen der Menschheit. Mit den damit zusammenhängenden Problemen beschäftigen sich mehr oder weniger alle Kapitel dieses Buches. (aus dem Text)

Boundaries between air masses, called frontal zones, have been associated with vegetation boundaries (Bryson, 1966; Hare and Ritchie, 1972). Using gridded climate reanalysis data, we analyze the air masses and frontal zones of North America. The position of the July Arctic front varies significantly through the period 1948-2007, with a mean position similar to that found by Bryson (1966). The variability of the front position can be associated with changes in the general circulation; when the AO and SOI are positive (negative), the position of the July Arctic front is further north (south). There is also more variability in the July Arctic front position in Eastern versus Western Canada. When the July Arctic front is north (south) of the mean position, the boreal forest and tundra vegetation is more (less) productive. There is some evidence that climate warming is only starting to shift the July Arctic front to the north. / This study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Polar Climate Stability Network (PCSN) project funded by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS).

Esta investigación tiene el propósito de comprobar mediante el concepto de la alegoría si la novela La soledad era esto del autor Juan José Millás posee otro nivel interpretativo, el del tiempo histórico-político de España en la década de los ochenta. El motivo del análisis es hallar otra posible interpretación de la novela, es decir, exhibir un sentido del texto distinto al sentido aparente. El análisis lo llevamos a cabo por medio de la hermenéutica con apoyo de un marco teórico sobre la alegoría anteriormente establecido. Consideramos los siguientes elementos: la política, la protagonista, la acción y la imagen. La tesina concluye que cada uno de los componentes tiene fuertes rasgos alegóricos y que todos, por separado y en conjunto, reflejan la época a la que nos referimos. Por lo tanto la proposición queda afirmada y la conclusión de esta investigación es que la novela tiene una dimensión alegórica.

My research investigates the premise that fear, anxiety and uncertainty in reason, impact on the essence of the desire to believe in structures, our categorisation of ideology, myself, my approach to artwork and creativity in this contemporary era. / This thesis is divided into three different chapters based on the motif “Rational Irregularity”. The first chapter is about the “idea” of antinomy in reason in philosophy and psychoanalysis drawing on Kant, Lacan and neuroscience (nerve science). The second chapter considers the position of art and the artist through Derrida and Danto’s discourses. It further explores the mechanism of art and creativity in the contemporary era using my own interpretation of Lacan’s method of psychoanalysis. The third chapter considers my artworks which are based on the psychological symptom of Sleep Paralysis and the fasting experience through the form of video installation. / The reason I focused on the discourses of contemporary philosophy is that I feel the knowledge of theories in any time affects the mechanism of human civilisation in that era. That in turn influences people, the subject and the phenomena of art. This discourse is fluid and the possibility of further discourse emerges from this understanding. Philosophy influenced my way of perceiving phenomena in the world. The understanding of these ideas and the expressions of my artworks became more complex because of those theories and related readings, I entered a problematic realm through this new knowledge. This paper seeks to extrapolate the chaos of these complex thoughts and ideas so I can better understand the mechanism of my art.

This research addresses the establishment of the 'Jiang Zemin Era' whereby Jiang Zemin, and the Chinese Communist Party, have attempted to relegitimise the Party and have attempted to make the Party meaningful to the Chinese populace. What is fundamental to this research is how Jiang Zemin, as the ‘core leader’ of the third generational leadership, incorporated the political thought of neo-conservatism (xin baoshouzhuyi) into the framework of Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought (MLM) ideology in order to re-legitimise the CCP. The timeframe within the research is from Jiang’s appointment as the General Secretary of the CCP in 1989 until 1995. It is important that this was a time period whereby Jiang had to consolidate, and therefore legitimise, his ‘core leadership’, and provide a theoretical platform in order to bring forth his own ‘era’. The research is predominantly a historiographical narrative, utilising both primary and secondary sources, that examines the mechanisms Jiang utilised in order to create a strong government, with himself as the ‘core’, which pursued increased levels of marketisation. Indeed, after being appointed General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 1989, Jiang Zemin had to achieve two goals in order to sustain and legitimate his position as ‘the core of the third generational leadership’. First, he had to secure his position as ‘the core’ through the creation of secured networks and alliances as well as legitimise of his ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ positions in the CCP hierarchy. In order to achieve this, Jiang had to first create a sustainable power base in order to retain, and therefore legitimise, his formalized positions as General Secretary of the CCP, Chairman of the Chinese Military Commission and the Presidency. In addition, he needed to be able to create alliances with both allies and protégés as well as differing power factions, be they conservative/elder or reformist, and with other leading figures like Li Peng and Zhu Rongji. Second, in order to further reinforce and legitimize his position as ‘the core’, Jiang had to develop his own ‘theoretical framework’ for governing the country – much as Mao and Deng had done previously. Therefore, the research also examines Jiang’s usage of the neoconservatism as a means of not only legitimising the CCP’s ideological framework but also as a means of providing his own ‘guiding thought’, thus enabling him to establish his own ‘era’. Indeed, after establishing himself as the ‘core’ through the aforementioned processes, Jiang had to develop such a theoretical framework that complimented Deng’s economic reforms, especially as he was designated by Deng, yet one that retained a smattering of Mao Zedong’s ‘Thoughts’ that could be applied pragmatically during the 1990s. It can be seen that Jiang Zemin successfully incorporated the political thought of ‘neo-conservatism’ within his platform in order to achieve these ends – including the establishment of a ‘Jiang Zemin Era’. This political thought, a successor to the political theory of ‘neo-authoritarianism’, already had several adherents within the higher echelons of the CCP. Indeed, it would be Jiang’s 1995 speech, entitled ‘Stressing Politics’, that would signify the incorporation of neo-conservatism within Jiang’s platform of (self) legitimation that would initiate the successful implementation of a ‘Jiang Zemin Era’.

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-78). Also available via the World Wide Web.