<p> By the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Great Britain led the European contest for imperial dominion and successfully extended its influence throughout Africa, the Americas, South East Asia, and the Pacific. National pride in the world's leading empire, however, was laced with an increasing anxiety regarding the unbridled frontier and the hybridization of Englishness and the socio-ethnic and cultural Other. H. Rider Haggard's <i> She,</i> Bram Stoker's <i>Dracula,</i> and Richard Marsh's <i> The Beetle,</i> three Imperial Gothic novels, personify the monstrosity of hybridity in antagonists who embody multiple races and cultures. Moreover, as representatives of various ancient empires, these characters reveal the fragile nature of imperial power that is anchored in the conception of human and cultural evolution. </p><p> Hybridity works to disrupt the fragile web of power structures that maintain imperial dominance and create a fissure in the construct of Britain's national identity. Yet, the novels ultimately contain the invasion narrative by circulating power back to the English characters through the hybrid, polyglot, and metamorphosing English language by which the enemy is disoriented and re-rendered as Other. Using New Historicist and Postcolonial theories, this work examines the aporia of linguistic hybridity used to overcome the threat of racial and cultural hybridity as it is treated in Haggard, Stoker, and Marsh's novels.</p>

<p> During the past couple of decades, the topic of food and identity has become the subject of increased academic inquiry and scholarly pursuit. However, despite this increased attention, it is still more common to find interpretations of the food that appears in fictional writings than to find critical examinations of creative nonfiction works whose entire thematic focus is food. First-person food writings, like other forms of literature, are not only aesthetically pleasing, they have the power to evoke emotional and psychological responses in their readers. More specifically, ethnic American food memoirs and essays explore important twenty-first century questions concerning identity and the navigation of hybridity. </p><p> This thesis considers some of these questions through an investigation of three specific food-related acts in five separate literary works: Remembering in "Cojimar, 1958," from Eduardo Machado's book, <i>Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home</i>, and "Kimchi Blues," by Grace M. Cho; eating in "Candy and Lebeneh," part of Diana Abu-Jaber's <i>The Language of Baklava</i>, and "Eating the Hyphen" by Lily Wong; and cooking in Shoba Narayan's "A Feast to Decide a Future" and "Honeymoon in America," part of her food memoir, <i>Monsoon Diary</i>.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of French and Italian, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3880. Adviser: Michael L. Berkvam. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 7, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 2942. Adviser: Cary Nelson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201.211) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4704. Adviser: Robert Dale Parker. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-175) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2009. / Adviser: Elizabeth Fifer.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2009. / Adviser: Edward Lotto.

<p> This paper combines concepts from Romantic and Gothic literature with ecocriticism in order to discuss eco-zombies in Mary Shelley&rsquo;s <i> Frankenstein</i> as well as the film, <i>28 Days Later</i> and the texts that follow the film: the graphic novel, <i>28 Days Later: The Aftermath</i> by Steve Niles, and the comic books series, <i> 28 Days Later</i>, by Michael Alan Nelson. Throughout this paper, nature, primarily through the eco-zombie interpretation of it, is read as a character in order to determine how much agency nature has over the human characters within the texts and film being discussed. The use Todorov&rsquo;s narrative theory, in this paper, depicts the plots of these stories, specifically the changes to the lives of these characters and how they are affected by nature in various ways, to depict nature&rsquo;s ever growing assertiveness over the humans that encounter it as well as how those humans attempt to overcome the disruptions that nature places on their sense of self. Both Frankenstein&rsquo;s monster and the infected in <i>28 Days Later</i>, when seen as eco-zombies, and therefore granting agency to nature, exert power of humans through physically affecting them as well as mentally.</p>

<p> Textual genre criticism and close readings of novels and films reveal that, in addition to chronicling catastrophes&rsquo; aftermaths, the post-apocalyptic genre envisions a future world in which traditional apocalyptic ideology is inadequate and unsatisfactory. While the full apocalyptic trajectory traditionally includes an end met by a new beginning, moments of cultural crisis have questioned the efficacy of apocalyptic metanarratives, allowing for a divergent, post-apocalyptic imagination that has been reflected in various fictional forms. </p><p> The post-apocalyptic genre imagines a post-cataclysmic world cobbled together from the remnants of our world and invites complicated participation as readers and viewers engage with a world that resembles our own yet is bereft of our world&rsquo;s meaning-making structures. The cultural history of the genre is traced through early nineteenth-century concerns about plagues and revolutions; <i>fin-de-si&egrave;cle</i> anxieties and the devastation of the First World War; the post-apocalyptic turn in the cultural imagination following the Second World War, the atomic bombs, and the Holocaust; the Cold War and societal tensions of the 1960s and 1970s; late twentieth-century nationalism and relaxation of Cold War tension; and renewed interest in post-apocalypticism following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. </p><p> Textual analysis reveals that the genre is particularly interested in formal experimentation and other postmodernist ideas, carnivalesque transgression, and concerns about survivorship and community. The mobilization of these themes is examined in case studies of the novella &ldquo;A Boy and His Dog,&rdquo; the novels <i>The Quiet Earth</i> and <i>The Road</i>, and the films <i>Idaho Transfer, Night of the Comet</i>, and <i> Mad Max: Fury Road</i>.</p><p>

<p> Este trabajo de tesis doctoral presenta una interpretaci&oacute;n del <i> arte nuevo</i> espa&ntilde;ol. Concretamente se enfoca en el estudio de la dial&eacute;ctica entre la <i>intenci&oacute;n cosmopolita</i> y el <i>sentimiento de pertenencia</i> en el marco cronol&oacute;gico que va desde 1918 (fin de la I Guerra Mundial) hasta 1936 (inicio de la Guerra Civil espa&ntilde;ola). Se advierte que en la articulaci&oacute;n de este di&aacute;logo el paisaje y el entorno local son elegidos para representar el <i>sentimiento de pertenencia.</i> El cosmopolitismo es interpretado culturalmente, y adem&aacute;s se propone la formaci&oacute;n de un <i> tercer espacio</i> transnacional para el encuentro de los intelectuales y artistas.</p><p> Estructuralmente este trabajo est&aacute; organizado en tres cap&iacute;tulos enfocados a literaturas locales diferentes: Castilla, Catalu&ntilde;a y Canarias. El primer cap&iacute;tulo estudia la literatura del <i>arte nuevo</i> que considera Castilla como centro cultural del Iberismo y del Hispanismo. Para ello se toma como fuente principal la revista <i>La Gaceta Literaria </i> (1927-1932) y su director, Ernesto Gim&eacute;nez Caballero. El segundo cap&iacute;tulo se centra en el estudio del <i>art nou</i> catal&aacute;n a partir fundamentalmente de la revista <i>L&rsquo;Amic de les Arts</i> (1926-1929), y los artistas pl&aacute;sticos Salvador Dal&iacute; y Joan Mir&oacute;. Finalmente, el &uacute;ltimo cap&iacute;tulo analiza el <i>arte nuevo</i> canario tomando como textos principales la revista Gaceta de Arte (1932-1936), y las obras <i>Lancelot 28&ordm;. 7&ordm;</i> (1929) de Agust&iacute;n Espinosa y El hombre en funci&oacute;n del paisaje (1930) y <i>L&iacute;quenes</i> (1928), de Pedro Garc&iacute;a Cabrera.</p><p>