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This study is concerned with the understanding as a way to enjoyment of the anti-literal in modern art.1 The work of art is regarded as the locus of various cultural factors--a live product of the vital energies of its age and itself a source as well as a reflection. The analysis of these cultural factors lays no claim to completeness. It seeks merely to indicate in simple language the layman can understand, conditions, forces, and stimuli in the artist's milieu which are potential motivations of his artistic idiom2 and through the examination of those influential factors, to try to discover why the artist chose the anti-literal idoms.

The contact of two different cultures in the colonization process produces a zone of cultural mingling that resembles Victor Turner's concept of "liminality" referring to states or persons that elude classification. This study considers the repercussions of colonization on the lives of women characters in novels about four different "post-colonial" contexts--Native American, Jamaican, Irish and Mexican American. These novels reflect both the unique historical circumstances of each context and common themes that occur due to colonization and transcend the specific cultures such as the mourning of personal and collective loss, liminal states of consciousness and mingling of cultures. The introductory chapter examines the particular historical contexts of each novel and the theories of Abdul JanMohamed and Frantz Fanon on colonization. This study also applies the work of Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, Julia Kristeva, Gloria Anzaldua, Homi Bhaba and others to an examination of the subversive cultural formations that evolve through the boundary dissolution of colonization. Chapter two considers Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks in which the decimation of the Anishinabe people is the context for the three primary characters who have experienced personal and collective loss and respond by resisting or adapting to colonization. Chapter three examines Erna Brodber's Myal and the impact of the manichean colonial ideology on a Jamaican woman who is literally half-black and half-white. Chapter four addresses Julia O'Faolain's No Country for Young Men, a novel about two women, one who lived through the early twentieth century movement for Irish independence and the other who is her great niece, that have both been silenced and sexually controlled by colonialism and Irish Catholicism. The fifth and final chapter examines Lucha Corpi's Delia's Song about a young Chicana activist who has suffered losses on several levels and recovers by writing an autobiographical novel that weaves the personal and political issues of her life. All four novels are concerned with the liminal states of consciousness in these women characters and their efforts to both find love and tell their stories, thus counteracting the colonizer's version of history.

Jenny Holzer's text-based projects have attracted the attention of critics, historians, and curators from Des Moines to Dresden. An understanding of the complex interplay between language, gender, power, and site within Holzer's work demonstrates how a singular interpretive approach is insufficient for discussing the multitude of meanings her projects produce. Perhaps most significantly, a fresh analysis of Holzer's work and critical reactions to it challenges the story of modernism and postmodernism and the relationship between these two terms.

In the short period between 1931 and 1934 a flurry of gay-themed novels was published which were blatantly marketed as novels exploring the "twilight world" of homosexual men. In the subsequent seventy-odd years these titles have received very little attention, being entirely forgotten or sometimes erroneously grouped with postwar gay pulp fiction. Furthermore, almost without exception, the 1930s novels portray a concept of homosexuality which does not quite fit into the postwar view of sexual orientation or gay isolation. Section I explores how titles like A Scarlet Pansy, Strange Brother, and Twilight Men, all show a view of homosexuality that was immersed in gender norms and class differences much more than psychology or the modern concept of sexual orientation. In many cases, masculine or feminine behavior denotes status more than does the actual gender of one's sexual partner. Words like "homosexual" and "heterosexual" had a "highly clinical" sound to most 1930s ears (to quote a character in Better Angel). That is not to say, however, the readership of these novels were unfamiliar with "the love that dare not speak its name". In fact, it seems many novels took for granted their readers' knowledge of urban, working-class "fairy culture" and were seeking either to shock or, conversely, elicit sympathy by depicting non-flamboyant protagonists as well as stock pansies. In contrast to postwar treatments, the novels of the 1930s never depict gay men as existing in confused isolation. Section II explores how the novels oflen treat the gay shadow world as an elite, artistic club-albeit one filled with sinful excesses and potential dangers. Finally, after 1935 the tone of gay-themed novels changed abruptly, as the public's "pansy craze" abated. Older notions of"gender inversion" and ''Nature's intermediates" faded and homosexuality became more associated with psychological affliction with societal implications / History / M.A.

abstract / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

M.A. (Greek) / The main purpose of this study has been to investigate the work of Greek poets in South Africa's Hellenic Diaspora from 1960 up to date, a period of a more voiummous artistic production due to the noticeable increase in the number of new Hellene immigrants and the innovative cultural atmosphere they brought along. Under this perspective, we examined the forces which led individuals to artistic creation with special focus on the relation between national identity and poetic production. Research has initially been based on poem collections, personal interviews as well as on newspaper articles, magazine publications and schedules of events which constitute our primary resources. In due course, lexicons and encyclopaedias were used to clarify terminology and semantics, as well as p!Cvious studies and relevant bibliography in order to prove, substantiate and enrich our present study. Implementation of quantitative and qualitative approaches with the use of questionnaires, interviews and data analysis rendered our project the following form: In the first chapter, Hellas is examined as the poets' country of origin in order to investigate the possible historic and literary influences carried over by the Greek poets to their new home. A history review of the period between the Second World War and 1974 was conducted examining the Hellenic socio-economic conditions predominant during the said period, which are likely to have led individuals into emigrating, as well as the post-war Hellenic literary development…

Jenny Holzer's text-based projects have attracted the attention of critics, historians, and curators from Des Moines to Dresden. An understanding of the complex interplay between language, gender, power, and site within Holzer's work demonstrates how a singular interpretive approach is insufficient for discussing the multitude of meanings her projects produce. Perhaps most significantly, a fresh analysis of Holzer's work and critical reactions to it challenges the story of modernism and postmodernism and the relationship between these two terms.

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