This dissertation is an in-depth investigation of the manner in which Peruvian Andean identities are represented and constructed in Cusqueñan literature after José María Arguedas’s posthumous publication of El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (1971). In this text, fragmented language reconstructs itself in the form of a new community for the future that can be seen as the symbolic “body” of a possible nation, a “utopia under construction.” Peruvian Andean authors after Arguedas echo his perspective on language through their literary production: they pick up the fragments of the Andean past to recreate and reformulate a new Andean identity through language. Subsequently, they transform their perceived marginality into the “new center” of Peruvian contemporary identity by positing choledad (a term originating in the Colonial era used to negatively denote a person’s Andean or indigenous characteristics) as a defining trait of all Peruvians. / text

This study examines four historical novels written by authors from former or existing British colonies, exploring the works' activist potential, that is, their ability to function as more than just escapist reading. The novels' publication dates range over the last two hundred years, allowing the study to investigate changes in how authors use language and structure as tools to raise issues about how history is recorded. After a discussion of the origins and potential cultural work of historical fiction in general, the four novels are discussed in terms of how their styles and structures work to exclude or include certain audiences.The earliest two novels in this study, Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800) and Raja Rao's Kanthapura (1938), perform and complicate exclusion, reclaiming history by (among other things) taking possession of the language of conquest, English, and using it to push to the periphery the former (or presumptive) rulers of that language and the power associated with its use. Each novel employs a disempowered character who uses a non-standard, hybridized form of English to narrate the story. The editorial apparatus of each novel, which includes prefaces, glossaries, and footnotes, is examined in terms of how it impacts readers' reactions and comprehensionThe two contemporary novels, J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and Caryl Phillips's Cambridge (1992), in addition to displaying the formerly silenced perspectives of Others and then enacting their erasure, employ intertextual referencing as a method of exclusion. Each novel's structure uses narrative reiteration as a method for raising questions about perspective and historical truth. Historical novels have been an important tool in generating a cohesive national consciousness in many nations over the past two hundred years. This study investigates how they can also be used to provide alternatives to that monolithic sense of the past when they depict and enact exclusion. / Department of English

This dissertation examines how Victorians used the word “queer” as associated with senses of “counterfeit” and “eccentricity” in selected Victorian novels. The word was popularly used, by Victorian writers of both genders and in various and diverse circumstances, to mean the unfamiliar, the unconventional, the incomprehensible, and the non-normal. Unlike the contemporary uses of the word, which are oriented toward a relatively particular meaning, the non-normal sexual, Victorian uses of the word had been fluid, unstable, and indeterminate, yet referring to or associating with the non-normal aspects in things and people. Knowing how the Victorians used the word helps us to understand that a concept of marginality can be extended to the extent of tolerating Otherness in marginalized positions and minority identities. Victorian novels including Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Aurora Floyd (1863), Wilkie Collins’s Hide and Seek (1854), and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) demonstrate how the word “queer” is indeterminately used and also represent how queer marginality is appreciated or rejected, and tolerated or discriminated against. As queerness is defined as the status of counterfeitabilty, a counterpart of authenticity, queer subjects are described to provoke a feeling of repulsion and tend to be criminalized or pathologized. On the other hand, as queerness is defined as the status of eccentricity, queer subjects are sympathized and defended in the narrative. Manifestations of eccentricities in queer subjects are occasionally reprimanded, but admired for queer subjects’ uncommon or distinguished individuality. Victorian novels demonstrate that queer marginality can be employed as a self-fashioning identity or social status for any non-normal individual to deal with social pressure of conformity.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed January 24, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 290-304).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 343-353). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR29495

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. School of Criminal Justice, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 7, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-155). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-267).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until December 1, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 210-221)

Thesis (M.S.W.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-83). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Sociology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.