<p>This dissertation focuses on a variety of African-American musical expressions of the later twentieth century, situating them along a continuum of musical modernism that constitute various modes of survival technology, inextricably connected to the cultures from which they arise. My application of the term <i>survival</i><i>technologies </i>denotes two primary aspects: musical “technologies” in the sense that the term is commonly understood to refer to the construction of musical instruments and recording instruments both old and new, but also “technologies” in the sense of the term employed by Murray and Dinerstein: as modes of knowledge and strategies of resistance. My use of <i>survival technologies</i>as the conceptual underpinning that unifies my research entails bringing these two aspects together, and the two senses of the term converge especially when African-American musicians use musical instruments and tools in new, unexpected ways, as frequently happens throughout the history of African-American music in the twentieth century. I analyze how African-American musicians’ use of electric guitars, amplification, synthesizers, analog sequencers, studio effects, turntables, samplers, drum machines, and digital audio workstations constitute a uniquely African-American mode of musical knowledge and practice that is improvisational, heuristic, non-linear, and constantly aware of the past while simultaneously re-imagining the future. I link this analysis to works by twentieth-century literary authors and theorists in order to examine how African-American musicians’ <i>modus operandi</i>, varied and distinct as they are, are nonetheless consistent not only across divergent musical styles and eras, but also function inseparably from other arts and broader cultural contexts.</p><p>Throughout this project, written words interact with musical recordings. I strive to “hear” written texts (literature and literary criticism) and to “read” sound texts (recordings), highlighting the resonances between “literary texts” and “sound texts.” The Chicago blues style of Muddy Waters interacts with Richard Wright’s literary documentary of life on Chicago’s South Side, <i>12 Million Black Voices,</i>to highlight how old rural black vernacular “folk” expressions could serve as the basis of a new urban African-American modernism. Likewise, the electronic experiments of Herbie Hancock, which innovatively combined European modes of music creation and African diasporic musical concepts, interacts with Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s <i>The Signifying Monkey </i>to highlight how African-American modernism entails Signifyin(g) on European precedents as well as precedents in African-American art. Additionally, the historically informed jazz of Wynton Marsalis interacts with T. S. Eliot’s ideas of tradition in order to highlight how artistic conceptions of the past inform African-American modernist expressions today, such as jazz and sampled electronic music. Finally, Detroit techno music interacts with the musical and cultural criticism of Theodor Adorno to highlight how African-American modernism uses survival technologies to construct visions of the future that resist what Adorno called the “culture industry.”</p>

Este estudio analiza la relación entre la ortografía de la excongresista Supa y las valoraciones expresadas por el diario Correo en torno a lo que se considera “la escritura” para legislar. Metodológicamente, se realizó un análisis ideológico del discurso periodístico. En el trabajo se identificaron dos representaciones acerca de la ortografía y la escritura en general. Considerando el modelo autónomo de la literacidad, se explica que Correo asume que la escritura crea y desarrolla habilidades cognitivas de nivel superior, y que conduce al progreso económico, por lo que cualquier persona no puede ser parlamentaria. Por otro lado, desde los nuevos estudios de la literacidad, se concluye que estas asunciones resultan ser creencias insostenibles, e incluso generadoras de racismo, porque la literacidad trasciende los aspectos técnicos y raciales. / This study analyzes the relationship between the spelling of former congresswoman Supa and the related assessments by the Correo newspaper of what is considered “writing” for legislation. The methodology applied is an ideological analysis of journalistic discourse. The paper identifies two representations of spelling and writing in general. Considering the autonomous model of literacy, it is explained that the newspaper assumes that writing creates and develops higher-level cognitive skills, and that it leads to economic progress, so that not everyone can be a member of Congress. On the other hand, from the new studies of literacy, it is concluded that these assumptions turn out to be unsustainable beliefs and even generate racism, because literacy goes beyond technical and racial aspects. / Revisón por pares

This study aims to examine the potential of reading dramatic scripts in the Swedish EFL classroom, using the play Top Girls by Carol Churchill as an example. In particular, it focuses on how literary theory and different aspects of feminism can be taught through the use of the play. The study is conducted through a textual analysis of the play’s main characters and the Swedish National Syllabus. The results show that there is a great potential in working with dramatic literature in the EFL classrooms. Using drama is effective in the way it covers several aspects of the core content of English in upper secondary school, and may be used to develop language skills, cultural understanding and critical thinking. The play contains complex ideas about different types of feminism, and the two main characters Joyce and Marlene represent two ways of striving for equality between men and women. These ideas are, in other words, represented by and embodied in the two main characters, which could make the ideas easier for students to understand.

<p>An experimental piece blending theory, fiction, and academic writing in order to both create and criticize a work in the tradition of science fiction while seeking to undermine the hegemonic ideals that sometimes lie at the heart of works in that tradition.</p>

An examination of contemporary feminist literary theory reveals that man's traditional association with culture has created a position of privilege from which men are encouraged to write, while women have been denied access to language and, therefore, must escape imprisoning conceptions of femininity before they are able to envision themselves as creators of culture. In Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women (1971), Del Jordan is a young woman and developing artist who struggles against objectification to achieve a sense of her own creative autonomy. Del's quest for authorial power effectively marginalizes her in Jubilee. However, she welcomes the freedom implied by this marginalization and encourages it through acts of social indiscretion and, later, through sexuality. Del's quest for freedom through sexuality ultimately parallels her quest for a language, or narrative voice, which challenges the confines of masculine discourse. As Del matures beyond the illusions generated by fantasy and love, she realizes that her own sense of identity and her creativity are the only true sources of salvation. The creative vision that Del fosters throughout the novel acknowledges and reconciles paradoxes, and, thereby, rejects the binary schemes and imprisoning labels that patriarchy has traditionally used to limit and contain female identity. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

To embody is to give a tangible or concrete form to an abstract concept. The use of the term Embodying Architecture notes a desire for an architectural structure that materially supports individuals concept of the way that they want to operate in the word. It is also notes that architectural space does not currently support this. Those individuals farthest away from the modes of cultural production are the least represented spatially. These occupants are therefore left in the position of being trapped in a space that denies them their desired way of being. Numerous critical theorist have noted the ways that architecture and urban design disenfranchise people, Beatriz Colomina, Sexuality and Space, Adrienne Rich, Politics of Location, Kim Dovey, Framing Places. More important perhaps, are writings by theorist such as Neil Leach and Julia Kristeva that connect space with a human need for articulation. This design project takes as its site Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. The text is precisely about the space of disenfranchisement and the tasks of actualizing yourself when there seems to be no space in which to do so. Figurative and literal space are seen as interchangeable. In response to the novel, a house is designed for the mother and daughter characters that provides a physical space for them to both connect and forge their separate identities.

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This thesis explores representations of fictional consciousness (the fictional mind) in the novel The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Casares Bioy through the lens of cognitive approaches to literature. I first argue that the ways in which we interact with fictional minds is not unlike the way that we interact with real minds. Utilizing a cognitive hermeneutic means laying bare some of the cognitive frames and processes which are embedded into fictional worlds. I then argue that consciousness itself is narratively structured. Conscious experience is gappy and lies atop an enormous, largely unconscious realm of cognitive processing. This thesis seeks to uncover some of these processes as represented in the fictional mind, arguing that representations of fictional consciousness are composed of internal narratives (like mental events, wishes, desires, etc.) mirroring the narrative structure of real consciousness. Finally, I argue that representations of consciousness are embodied and can be read in tandem with the fictional world in which they are situated. The feedback loop between the fictional mind and its fictional environment, both physical and sociocultural, is the starting point for a powerful, interdisciplinary reading methodology. / Thesis / Master of English

The carceral, as Monika Fludernik had first observed in 1999, pervades our world, not only in the form of material sites of incarceration, but also in the metaphors we deploy in everyday conversation and in various text forms, including fictional and non-fictional narrative representations in different media and genres. In Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy (2019), the culmination of twenty years of work on the subject, Fludernik reiterates her 2005 definition of two main types of carceral metaphors: “prison is x” – describing and making sense of the prison and experiences of imprisonment; and “x is prison” – conceiving of other aspects of the social world in terms of incarceration (2019: 46).

Scholars of Jewish literature consistently ask what it means to "write Jewishly". Strangers in a Strange Land posits that eight short works of Jewish fiction by authors in different times and places construct a consistent narrative realm of possibilities. I employ Possible Worlds literary theory to argue for this hypothesis. I argue that the narrative realm of these eight short stories is defined by liminal zones and liminal figures, marked most intensely by an implied porousness in the veil between the natural and the supernatural. My argument is based on a close analysis of major liminal themes: transit and wandering; dreamstates and visions; darkness and night; (un)death; and others. I contextualize these themes in two ways: first, by connecting them to the genres of Fantastic and Paranormal fiction in non-Jewish Western literature; and second, by bringing earlier Jewish tales into the discussion, illustrating that they have been and remain present in Jewish writing, in some cases as distant temporally as the Israelite literature of the Hebrew Bible. This panorama of ambiguous zones and characters unable to find steady footing would contribute to discussions of the nature of Jewish literature and its ability to create a virtual literary Home for a population that has been dispersed across the continents.