acase@tulane.edu / 1 / XOSÉ PEREIRA BOÁN

This thesis explores the position of female film directors working in Hollywood. It is intended to address an area in feminist film theory which has often been overlooked. Although it is incorrect to say there has been no feminist analysis of the "mainstream" woman director, most of the work which has been done concentrates either on finding the feminism or femininity of her films, or studies only a select few directors. This research widens the debate by validating the study of all women directors, and moves away from the search for definitive feminist meaning in the cinematic text. It employs a contextual and multi-theoretical approach to interrogate the multiplicity of meanings embodied by the phrase "woman director". The first chapter interrogates auteur theory because any discussion of female authorship must confront this critical perspective. The female director makes a problematic auteur since that figure is traditionally gendered as masculine. Chapter two is a "state of the industry" examination of the position of the woman director in Hollywood, with a special emphasis on mentoring. Chapter three examines the marketing of Mimi Leder's films The Peacemaker (1997) and Deep Impact (1999). Chapters four, five and six explore the construction of the woman director as "star", presenting in-depth case studies of Jodie Foster and Penny Marshall. Chapters seven and eight look at the reception of Blue Steel (1990) and Strange Days (1995) directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and Clueless (1995) directed by Amy Heckerling. Each chapter is designed to contextualise and historicise the woman director in order to better understand why her gender has prevented her from being seen as a "natural" director: that is, why directing has been viewed as a suitable job for a man but "no job for a lady".

The focus of this thesis is to trace the dialogue between the Greek cinéma d' auteur and Greek literature focusing on film adaptations of Greek literature from 1964 to 2001. It is argued that film adaptations are a sensitive prism through which to examine the auteurs’ cultural politics regarding their work and, through that, understand the economy of the auteurist cultural production itself. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One presents the history of the creation of the Greek cinéma d' auteur and traces its developments in relation to the concepts of national and high art. The principle argument is that Greek literature, endowed with notions of high art and national identity, played a key role in the gradual emergence, formation and consolidation of auteurism as a cinema that enunciates national identity and articulates high art values. The next four chapters examine four film adaptations each made by an acclaimed auteur. The chapters endeavour to investigate the identity politics of each director in relation to the categories of high and national art that defined the Greek cinéma d' auteur. Moreover, the chapters aim to study the politics involved in the validation or renegotiation of auteurism itself. The major contribution of the thesis is the exploration of film adaptations of Greek literature in the Greek cinéma d' auteur which has not been systematically discussed so far. Furthermore, the investigation of the two separate components that make up the subject of the thesis, namely cinema and literature, both from a theoretical perspective and within the framework of film studies, aligns the thesis with recent discussions in Modern Greek Studies and theoretical debates about authorship in films, film adaptations as well as peripheral cinemas.

Following the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's influential book, The Second Sex, (1949), many feminist critics in Europe and North America have discussed the problems facing women artists and critics of working within phallocentric and phallo-symbolic culture and language. Simone de Beauvoir was the first to demonstrate how male-dominated culture has used symbolic language in order to exclude, repress, and objectify women. Language is one of the key mechanisms employed in phallocentric culture to define and construct reality and gender identity according to male experience and desire. Feminist critics writing since the 1950s,. have been examining the ways in which women might find or develop a language through which they can express their own experience of reality, gender identity, sexual desire and pleasure. Many contemporary women writers and film-makers have appropriated the representations of female desire and sexuality that pervade male-dominated western culture, deconstructing and subverting them in order to create innovative and challenging representations of their own. They refer to, and draw upon, the traditional imagery and conventions of classic Hollywood cinema, using such references to serve their own ends and create their own meanings. They have also radically deconstructed and reappropriated stereotypical pornographic images, exploring the possibility of creating a female-oriented, woman-centred, non-misogynous erotica. Women working in the fields of literature and film are attempting to explore and develop alternative representations of female desire and gender identities, experimenting with new vocabularies of representation in order to explore women's perceptions of their multiple identities and their experience of themselves as desiring subjects. They have taken some of the most negative representations of women constructed by phallocentric culture, and reappropriated them in order to create innovative, alternative forms of representation and a radical critique of the social construction of "femininity" and gender identity.

While Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray depicts the quintessential literary portrait endowed with uncanny life and movement, dozens of such magic portraits are featured in Victorian fiction. From the ravishing picture of the title character in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret to the coveted portrait of a Romantic poet in Henry James's The Aspern Papers, imagined portraits in these texts serve as conduits of desire and fear--windows into passions and repressions that reveal not only the images' external effects but their relation to the unconscious of their viewers. My dissertation turns a critical eye on this gallery of ekphrastic pictures--those not actually visible to the reader but rather visualizable through verbal description--to argue that the meditations on representation and desire that these novels and stories perform not only anticipate but augment theories of the image and the gaze developed primarily since the advent of cinema. Though the dissertation benefits from film theory's models of visual exchange, the distinctions between these portraits and images in film open up fertile analytical terrain. Ekphrastic magic portraits provide a unique opportunity to delve into the intersecting realms of word painting and image perception, the optics of desire and subjectivity, to advance critical discourses in visual studies that are framed both historically and theoretically. Using psychoanalytic and narratological methodologies, particularly those relevant to feminist and queer image theory, "The Ekphrastic Fantastic" demonstrates how the fictional visual exchanges on display in magic portrait stories elucidate various power struggles regarding sexuality and narrative structuring. These literary pictures thereby provide new access to the social and artistic commentaries that often subtend Victorian fiction. Each chapter considers three primary texts and the branch of image theory most relevant to their deployment of magic portraits. Laura Mulvey's foundational essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," provides the point of departure in the first chapter, which looks at Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. The second chapter addresses Margaret Oliphant's "The Portrait," Thomas Hardy's "An Imaginative Woman," and James's The Aspern Papers with further feminist insights from Vivian Sobchack and Teresa de Lauretis. The final chapter determines the relationship of principles of visual representation and narrative production of the Aesthetic movement to magic portraits in Walter Pater's "Sebastian van Storck," Vernon Lee's "Oke of Okehurst," and Wilde's Dorian Gray, particularly as they relate to the nascent medium of cinema and the theories that soon as well as later arose to account for the impact of its kinetic mirage. The arc of my argument emphasizes how, as the Victorian period advances, the portraits become increasingly animate and subversive in their challenges to patriarchal gender norms and narrative formulas. In this way, they become the mechanisms by which new models of psycho-sexual relations can be expressed and new social and narrative systems can emerge.

No description available.

The aim of this thesis is to introduce, justify, and apply a better framework for analysing Sherlock Holmes, one of the most adapted characters of all time. The project works to resituate the focus of those involved in studying adaptations of Sherlock Holmes from an examination of the discrete transition of a text from page to screen, to the evolution of the character as it changes across various intertexts and through time. The purpose is to show that it is the character specifically, and not the literary text with its narrative, genric, and aesthetic qualifications, that is being adapted, and that with this in mind, studying adaptations of Sherlock Holmes should involve a study of the various processes, pressures, and mechanisms that shape, change, and define the character throughout its hundreds of screen afterlives. This thesis then analyses many of these processes with the aim of contributing to our understanding of how a character like Holmes is moulded through remediation. It takes into account how the character’s indices shift and accumulate as they are variously performed. It also considers how the mechanisms of selection function to privilege certain incarnations of the character, and how that privileging becomes a part of future readings. Finally, it addresses how reception and perception by audiences influence how the character is read, and thus how it is understood. By considering all of these aspects of the evolutionary process, and by avoiding a chronological or even a linear organization of the texts under scrutiny, this work seeks to offer a more complete answer to the question of how a single source can support a multitude of varied, even contradictory adaptations and remain relevant and interesting through the years.

In the age of digital literacy, teachers need to seek out the best practice in the use of technology so that the digital divide between teachers and learners can be bridged. This study proposed to look at ways to implement motion media (specifically the moving image) technology effectively as a supplementary instructional medium for literature study and to set guidelines for FET (Further Education and Training) English teachers so that learning outcomes could be achieved easily by all learners in the South African English literature class. The aim of this study was to provide guidelines for teachers in order to make optimal language (specific literature) learning possible and enjoyable through the application of motion media technology. In addition to the literature study, qualitative research was done through case studies and by conducting interviews with teachers who teach English Home Language and English as an Additional Language in the FET-phase. The problem addressed in this study is that even though educational technology (especially moving image technology) is easily available to most teachers, they do not implement it in their literature lessons as they are not adequately trained to incorporate it into their lessons. This makes the digital divide between teachers and learners even bigger. The dilemma for many teachers in the twenty-first century is that they have to teach learners print-based literature in an era where everything is technological. The pedagogical potential of moving image media within the English curriculum was explored in this study. The nature and scope of English as a subject area was discussed and various types of literacies were identified. A case was made for moving image education to become central to English literature teaching. Guidelines, strategies and techniques were proposed for teachers who are not technologically trained. Resources for teaching literature with the moving image were also identified. It became evident from the data received from the interviews conducted, that most teachers did not possess the knowledge and skills to use technology effectively in their English literature lessons. They did, however, express the need to receive training so that their literature lessons could be enriched with media other than just print. They wanted to empower themselves so that they in return could empower their learners. This study aimed to be of assistance to the pedagogy of English Home Language and Additional Language literacy teaching so that using the moving image in teaching does not add to teachers' workload, but enriches lessons in such a way that both the teachers and learners can obtain productive outcomes. The research also established that technology can be infused in English literature classes in a way that does not interfere with the content pedagogy, but supports it in a way that actively involves learners and prepares them with the technical and pedagogical skills for creating the new learner-centred classroom. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

In the age of digital literacy, teachers need to seek out the best practice in the use of technology so that the digital divide between teachers and learners can be bridged. This study proposed to look at ways to implement motion media (specifically the moving image) technology effectively as a supplementary instructional medium for literature study and to set guidelines for FET (Further Education and Training) English teachers so that learning outcomes could be achieved easily by all learners in the South African English literature class. The aim of this study was to provide guidelines for teachers in order to make optimal language (specific literature) learning possible and enjoyable through the application of motion media technology. In addition to the literature study, qualitative research was done through case studies and by conducting interviews with teachers who teach English Home Language and English as an Additional Language in the FET-phase. The problem addressed in this study is that even though educational technology (especially moving image technology) is easily available to most teachers, they do not implement it in their literature lessons as they are not adequately trained to incorporate it into their lessons. This makes the digital divide between teachers and learners even bigger. The dilemma for many teachers in the twenty-first century is that they have to teach learners print-based literature in an era where everything is technological. The pedagogical potential of moving image media within the English curriculum was explored in this study. The nature and scope of English as a subject area was discussed and various types of literacies were identified. A case was made for moving image education to become central to English literature teaching. Guidelines, strategies and techniques were proposed for teachers who are not technologically trained. Resources for teaching literature with the moving image were also identified. It became evident from the data received from the interviews conducted, that most teachers did not possess the knowledge and skills to use technology effectively in their English literature lessons. They did, however, express the need to receive training so that their literature lessons could be enriched with media other than just print. They wanted to empower themselves so that they in return could empower their learners. This study aimed to be of assistance to the pedagogy of English Home Language and Additional Language literacy teaching so that using the moving image in teaching does not add to teachers' workload, but enriches lessons in such a way that both the teachers and learners can obtain productive outcomes. The research also established that technology can be infused in English literature classes in a way that does not interfere with the content pedagogy, but supports it in a way that actively involves learners and prepares them with the technical and pedagogical skills for creating the new learner-centred classroom. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

To travel in the footsteps of movies and books is something that attracts more and more tourists and the research in the field has often focused on the motivation of tourists when choosing a destination. This study instead focuses on how the businesses that organize the attractions work. The purpose of this essay is to investigate how some operators in tourism in Stockholm and Ystad work to attract tourists to the Wallander and Millennium walks with a focus on the formation of the tours and digital marketing. The method used is qualitative. Three interviews are conducted with informants from Stadsmuseet, Ystad Studios Visitor Center and Stockholm Business Region. In addition to the interviews digital marketing is analyzed in the form of websites and social media. The results of the study show that there are not that many products linked to Wallander and Millennium, besides the tours, and no new ones are developed since no new books are being published. The digital marketing has reduced during the last few years, especially for Millennium, because of the interest decreasing. But these city tours attract tourists to the destinations since they are travel reasons and they contribute to an increased knowledge and an attractive image of the place. / Att resa i filmers och böckers fotspår är något som lockar allt fler turister och forskning inom området har ofta fokuserat på turisternas motivation vid valet av destination. Denna studie fokuserar istället på hur verksamheterna som arrangerar attraktionerna arbetar. Syftet för denna studie är att undersöka hur några aktörer inom turism i Stockholm och Ystad arbetar med att locka turister till Wallander- och Millenniumvandringarna med fokus på utformning av rundturerna och digital marknadsföring. Metoden som används är kvalitativ. Tre intervjuer genomförs med informanter från Stadsmuseet, Ystad Studios Visitor Center och Stockholm Business Region. Utöver intervjuerna analyseras även digital marknadsföring i form av hemsidor och sociala medier. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att det inte finns så många produkter med koppling till Wallander och Millennium, förutom stadsvandringarna, och det utvecklas inte några nya eftersom det inte publiceras nya böcker. Den digitala marknadsföringen har minskat de senaste åren, speciellt för Millennium, på grund av att intresset har sjunkit. Men dessa stadsvandringar lockar turister till destinationerna eftersom de är reseanledningar och de bidrar till en ökad kännedom och en attraktiv bild av platsen.