In a literature that is so often depicted as that of the "minority" the image of the resistant female figure both in the work of African-American and Guadeloupean female writers, seemed appropriate for a comparative study. / This dissertation relies heavily on Reader-Response theories. The first chapter insists on how because of the narrative techniques we are led to read the female characters as victims. In three of the novels the narrator is also the heroine, which sets an element of intimacy between the protagonist and the (mainly female) reader. Intimacy is derived also from the insistence on the character's childhood. A third element of intimacy is the theme of suffering. / In the second chapter, resistance in the character is studied through her interaction with others and the world. Attention is given to four areas: the use of linguistics signs, the use of tools, the use of laws, and the use of esthetic canons. In the movement from victimization to resistance, the most visible changes are in regard to speech and savoir-faire. Both are related to the concept of creation. / The conclusion insists on the characteristics of woman's resistance and its originality. Compared to the male characters in the different novels we assert how are the heroines resist heroism, alienation and suicide, all choices that black people at any given period were and are still given to receive as the only alternatives. The female characters are not about war, but survival. They are not about solving, but resolving problems. And above all they never posit themselves against the world, as their male counterpart, but seek comfort and strength in the community of women. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1345. / Major Professor: Antoine Spacagna. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

<p>What are the meanings of "here" and "there" in a digital age? This dissertation explores how blogs reveal new meanings of being "here" in a political space, how blogs reveal new meanings of being (or not being) "here" in a textually-mediated universe, and how blogs reveal new ways of being seen to be "here" when most internet users are just looking and log on and off without saying a word. Beginning with a reflection on the possibilities of democracy in a world where the interface is drawn to the forefront, I argue that the internet presents a new (and imperfect) way for citizens to operate the machinery of government. Next, I consider the consequences of this interface being available to people regardless of their geographic locations or national origins. I argue that citizenship in a digital moment is more closely bound to participation than it is to blood or territory and construct a notion of virtual transnational citizenship.</p><p> Such a notion of transnational citizenship does not signal the end of place and the irrelevance of presence and absence. Instead, it reveals that these concepts must be rethought and refigured. Bloggers flicker between absence and presence: in the blogosphere, every post may be a blogger's last, but there may just be another one waiting for us if we'll click reload. With this ambiguity in mind, I outline a digital ethics of reading that is attentive to both of these possibilities. Finally, I turn to the vast majority of blog users: the "lurkers" who read silently but do not write. I untangle reading, writing, and inscription in order to produce an understanding of how reading works in the blogosphere and argue that the lurker is not so much the reader who does not write as the reader who has not yet written.</p><p> By tracing the meanings of "here" and "there" through the blogosphere, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of what it means to be -politically and metaphysically -in the age of the internet.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation analyzes the period of late modernism (roughly 1930-1965) by attending to an understudied subgenre: fictions that depict the experiences of the dead in the afterworld. The project originated from my observation that a number of late modernist authors resorted to this type of writing, leading to the question of what made them do so. Such a project addresses the periodization and definition of late modernism, a period that has received relatively little critical attention until recent years. It also contributes indirectly to the study of European culture before and after the Second World War, identifying clusters of concerns around common experiences of belief and time during the period. </p><p>To approach this question, I adopt a situational approach. In this type of reading, I attempt to reconstruct the situations (both literary and extra-literary) of specific authors using historical and biographical material, then interpret the literary work as a response to that situation. Such a methodology allows me to ask what similarities between situations led to these convergent responses of afterlife writing. My primary objects are afterlife novels and plays by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Wyndham Lewis, Flann O'Brien, and Samuel Beckett.</p><p>I find that the subgenre provided late modernists with the literary tools to figure and contest changes in experiences of belief and time in mid-20th century Europe. The situation of modernism is marked by <italic>the loss of belief in the world</italic>, a failure in the faith in action to transform the world, and <italic>the serialization of time</italic>, the treatment of time as static repetition and change as something that can only occur at the individual rather than the systemic level. While earlier modernists challenged these trends with the production of idiosyncratic private mythologies, late modernists encountered them as brute facts, leading to a shift in aesthetic sensibilities and strategies. Belief was split between private opinion and external submission to authority, and change reappeared under the figure of catastrophe.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 377-380). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Authors̓ inaugural dissertation, Heidelberg. / "Literatur-Verzeichnis": p. [103]-110.

The author's inaugural dissertation, Munich. / "Das historische drama zur zeit Hebbels--repräsentiert durch die namen: Büchner, Grabbe, Mosen, Griepenkerl, Grillparzer, Hebbel, Hugo--bildet den gegenstand der folgenden vergleichenden untersuchungen."--Vorwort. "Literatur": p. [114]-115.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1931. / Bibliography: p. 107-121.

Thesis--Zürich. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-135).

Inaugural-diss.--Universität Rostock. / "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 128-135.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 1940. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-156).