The central project of this dissertation concerns itself with the port city, a recurrent setting of the modernist novel. It also seeks to investigate what lies behind the fact that the setting of the port city often coexists with the telling of stories about a malleable or exchangeable self or personal identity. Beginning with an understanding of modernity as a destructive whirlwind, I proceed to trace the various literary modernists who have used the port city as a space that might let one gain some shelter--or even benefit--from that storm. This dissertation begins with the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer before moving through Pound's translation of that poem and Melville's Moby-Dicky. It looks also at Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet as key examples of the modernist port city novel. These texts occupy a broad swath of chronology and their settings cover a wide area geography. When combined with the diverse national backgrounds of these authors, this range of time, place, and cultures intends to demonstrate both the pervasive nature of the crisis modernity provokes in our sense of identity and the persistent appeal of the port city as a space in which to grapple with this crisis.

Bostadsområdet Brittgården i Tibro byggdes i etapper under 1960-talet. Såväl stadsplanen som byggnaderna utformades av arkitekten Ralph Erskine (1914-2005). Jag diskuterar i denna uppsats Brittgårdens gestaltning ur såväl ett arkitekturhistoriskt perspektiv som i territoriella termer. Jag gör också en territoriell studie av bostadsområdet som det ser ut och brukas idag. Den territoriella diskussionen och analysen utgår från den begreppsapparat som Mattias Kärrholms utvecklat i sin avhandling Arkitekturens Territorialitet. Ralph Erskine brukar beskrivas som en socialt engagerad arkitekt vars arkitektur präglas av anpassning till klimatet. Denna bild bekräftas av min analys. Erskines tankar kring utformningen av Brittgården skulle kunna beskrivas i termer av hållbar utveckling, vilket idag brukar innefatta ekologisk, ekonomisk och social hållbarhet. Brittgården har i flera sammanhang presenterats som ett alternativ till det samtida storskaliga bostadsbyggandet vars utformning styrdes av trafikplanering och rationella byggmetoder. Jag menar dock att Erskine i Brittgården ger uttryck för flera samtida arkitekturströmningar och tendenser inom bostadsbyggandet. Erskines utformning av Brittgården kan ses som en vidareutveckling och anpassning av grannskapsenheten efter samtidens tankar om trafikplanering, stadsmässighet, rationella byggnadsmetoder, ett avskalat modernistiskt formspråk och bostadsområden som stora skulpturer i landskapet. I territoriella termer skulle Erskines gestaltning kunna beskrivas som ett försök att skapa platser med hög territoriell komplexitet. Erskines ambition att ge Brittgården en egen identitet, som dessutom var gemensam för boende i olika bostadsformer, skulle i territoriella termer kunna beskrivas som att gestaltningen utformats för att kunna ge upphov till gemensamma territoriella associationer. Kärrholm presenterar den territoriella komplexiteten som ett mått för hur offentlig en plats är, vilket stämmer bra när det gäller Brittgården som helhet. När det gäller delar av området visar mina studier dock att det är viktigt att brukarna har makt över de territoriella produktionerna för att platser ska brukas flitigt. Detta kan också uttryckas som att det finns utrymme för territoriell taktik. Vid större förändringar i området menar jag att det är viktigt att se till att den territoriella komplexiteten i området som helhet inte minskar, utan helst ökar. I de fall miljöer inom området ska förändras tror jag också att det kan vara bra att tänka på den territoriella komplexiteten, men framförallt är det viktigt att ge de boende större makt över den territoriella produktionen genom att lämna utrymme för territoriell taktik. Ett sätt att underlätta territoriell taktik är att undvika starka kroppsliga aktanter. / The housing area Brittgården in Tibro was built during the 1960s. The town plan as well as the architectual design of the buildings were designed by the architect Ralph Erskine (1914-2005). This paper is discussing the design in an art historical perspective, as well as in a territorial perspective. The territorial discussion and analysis is based on the concepts that Mattias Kärrhom developed in his dissertation Arkitekturens Territorialitet. Ralph Erskine is known as an architect with a social commitment, whose architecture is characterised by the adaptation to climate conditions. This is confirmed by my analysis. Erskine's ideas regarding the design of Brittgården could be described in terms of sustainable development, which includes ecological, economical and social sustainability. Brittgården has been presented as an alternative to the contemporary large-scale house building scheme, where the design was ruled by traffic planning and rational construction methods. I however argue that Erskine with Brittgården gave expression to several contemporary trends in house building. The design of Brittgården can be seen as a development of the concept of neighbourhood units using contemporary ideas about traffic planning, urbanity, rational construction methods, modernistic style and housing areas as large sculptures in the landscape. In territorial terms the design of Brittgården could be described as an attempt to create places with high territorial complexity. Erskine's ambition was to give Brittgården a common identity for all habitants regardless of their type of housing. This could in territorial terms be described as a design aimed to fuel common territorial associations. Kärrholm argues that the publicness of a place could be described with territorial complexity. This is true when it comes to the housing area Brittgården as a whole. My studies however indicate that it is more important that the users has power over the territorial production in order to make different parts of the housing area well used. This could also be described as having potential for territorial tactics. If major changes are considered in the housing area, I argue that it is important that the territorial complexity in the area as a whole is not decreased, but rather increased. In case of changes in smaller parts of the area it is also important to have the territorial complexity in mind, but above all it is important to give the habitants power over the territorial production, by making sure that there is potential for territorial tactics. One way to facilitate territorial tactics is to avoid actants with strong body stabilization.

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This study explores the fruitful interchanges between modernist literary technique, the culture of modernity, and children's literature. While some recent scholarship has examined works that modernist authors like Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Cummings produced for child readers, modernist children's literature remains a largely neglected field. Examining texts by A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner), Gertrude Stein (The World is Round), and J.M. Barrie (Peter and Wendy) through the lens of literary modernism, this project explicates how these authors adapt modernist techniques, ideologies, and preoccupations in their writing for children. Focusing on themes of alienation, disillusionment, memory, imagination, gender construction, child development, and the disruption of Arcadian myths, I argue that these texts adopt modernist techniques to explore, uphold, or challenge modernity's construction of the child. Embracing modernist indeterminacy and ambiguity, these texts directly engage with constructions of childhood as a mode of modernist experimentation. Recontextualizing these children's works in the context of literary modernism reveals how the two genres are symbiotically related, thereby broadening our understanding of literary culture and discourses of childhood in the early twentieth century. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / English / PhD; / Dissertation;

This thesis examines several lesser-known British modernist magazines published between 1900-45 within the context of networks, communities, and dialogues. The magazines it examines are T. P.'s Weekly (1902-16), The Acorn (1905-6), The Tramp (1910-11), Rhythm (1911-13), The Blue Review (1913), Signature (1915), To-day Incorporating T. P.'s Weekly (1916-7), To-day (1917-23), The Athenaeum (1919-21), The Apple (1920-22), The Adelphi (1923-55), Close-Up (1927-33), Seed (1933) and Life and Letters To-Day (1935-45). Primarily, the thesis aims to 'test out' different types of methodologies that critics have used to interpret literary texts (and sometimes non-literary texts) as possible routes or avenues into periodical study. My approach is cross-disciplinary and adapts many different approaches, some of which have been previously applied to periodicals, but most of which have not. The commonality between these methodologies is the fact that they all participate, to some degree, in a sense of network(s), a concept that, this thesis contends, offers a lens through which we can develop, extend, and refine the study of little magazines. The Introduction provides a more detailed outline of these methodologies and a survey of literature relating to the study of little magazines. Chapter 1 explores magazines through the high/low culture dichotomy that continues to dominate our conception of the modernist field and considers how the dichotomy's implied idea of networks of difference impacts upon how we study, consider, and categorise little magazines. Chapter 2 uses quantitative methods to probe the possibility that a periodical can 'shift' between networks and applies a diachronic methodology which considers periodicals as operating within 'longitudinal' networks. Chapter 3 utilises an editor-based methodology to show how this figure is key in generating a periodical's sense of network. Chapter 4 explores the little magazine as a nexus point for different groups of writers and artists and examines the ways in which networks exist on and between the pages of magazines. Chapter 5 reverses the second chapter's focus by using a synchronic methodology to explore how three late modernist magazines participate in a 'lateral network'. The Conclusion evaluates the efficacy and feasibility of the various approaches tested in each chapter and proposes some new methodologies through which we might continue to study and discuss periodicals.

“A Hip-Hop Joint: Thinking Architecturally About Blackness” beings by recognizing that hip-hop visual culture’s rapid global expansion over the last four decades complicates its lasting connection to blackness. Instead of arguing that blackness is the content of contemporary hip-hop, this project considers blackness as the aesthetic that coheres the diffuse genre. Thus, blackness serves a distinctly architectural function in hip-hop visual culture—it is the architectonic logic of the genre. Therefore, this project illustrates the value of alternative definitions of blackness; specifically, this dissertation approaches blackness as a distinct set of spatial relations that can be observed in the many places and spaces hip-hop is produced and consumed. “A Hip-Hop Joint” argues blackness and hip-hop exist in a recursive loop: blackness generates the spatial organization of hip-hop and hip-hop is so racially charged that it produces blackness. As a result, hip-hop images can serve as the site for unexpected encounters with blackness—specifically, visualizing blackness in spaces that are not occupied by actual black bodies. Because visual culture organizes space through the positioning of the black body, this dissertation argues hip-hop images that defy the presumed appearance and visibility of blackness are not only capable of reconfiguring image relations, but also the aesthetics of anti-blackness. This project relies on black studies, visual culture studies, and architectural theory. The visual objects analyzed include: music videos directed by Hype Williams, Beyoncé’s “Formation,” WorldStarHipHop.com, William Pope.L’s “Claim,” the trailer for Apollo Brown’s Thirty Eight album, and “Until the Quiet Comes” directed by Kahlil Joseph.

This thesis explores the development of Virginia Woolf’s late cultural criticism. While contemporary scholars commonly observe that Woolf shifted her intellectual focus from modernist fiction to cultural criticism in the 1930s, there has been little sustained examination of why and how Woolf’s late cultural criticism evolved during 1930-1941. This thesis aims to contribute just such an investigation to field. My approach here fuses a feminist-historicist approach with the methodology of genetic criticism (critique génétique), a French school of textual studies that traces the evolution of literary works through their compositional histories. Reading across published and unpublished texts in Woolf’s oeuvre, my genetic, feminist-historicist analysis of Woolf emphasises that her late cultural criticism developed from her early feminist politics and dissident aesthetic stance as well as in response to the tempestuous historical circumstances of 1930-1941. As a prelude to my investigation of Woolf’s late output, Chapter 1 traces the genesis of Woolf’s cultural criticism in her early biographical writings. Chapter 2 then scrutinises Woolf’s late turn to cultural criticism through six essays she produced for Good Housekeeping in 1931. Chapter 3 surveys the evolution of Woolf’s critique of patriarchy in Three Guineas (1938) through the voluminous pre-publication documents that link this innovative feminist-pacifist pamphlet to The Years (1937). Finally, Chapter 4 outlines how Woolf’s last novel, Between the Acts (1941), fuses fiction with cultural criticism to debate art’s social role in times of national crisis. The close relationship between formal and political radicalism in Woolf’s late cultural criticism, I conclude, undermines the integrity of viewing Woolf’s oeuvre in two distinct phases –the modernist 1920s and the socially-engaged 1930s – and suggests the danger of using such labels in wider narratives of interwar literature. Woolf’s late cultural criticism, this thesis argues, developed from rather than rejected her earlier experimentalism.

In James Joyce criticism, and by implication Irish and modernist studies, the word paralysis has a very insular meaning. The word famously appears in the opening page of Dubliners, in “The Sisters,” which predated the collection’s 1914 publication by ten years, and in a letter to his publisher Grant Richards. The commonplace conception of the word is that it is a metaphor that emanates from the literal fact of the Reverend James Flynn’s physical condition the narrator recalls at the beginning of “The Sisters.” As a metaphor, paralysis has signified two immaterial, or spiritual, states: one individual or psychological and the other collective or social. The assumption is that as a collective and individual signifier, paralysis is the thing from which Ireland needs to be freed. Rather than relying on this received tradition of interpretation and assumptions about the term, I consider that paralysis is a two-sided term. I argue that paralysis is a problem and a solution and that sometimes what appears to be an escape from paralysis merely reinforces its negative manifestation. Paralysis cannot be avoided. Rather, it is something that should be engaged and used to redefine individual and social states.

This thesis studies three of the most significant themes in the poetry of the Cuban Modernist, Julian del Casal. The poet's morbid fascination with death is characterized by an inability to adapt to his life environment, boredom, a strong self-destructive drive, and the concept of death as the ultimate joy and refuge. He reflects the Modernist aesthetic code in his cult of plastic and lyric beauty. An escapist, he sought refuge in an ideal world of perfection and elegance. This unobtainable goal resulted in deep melancholia and despair. The theme of love reflects a complete absence of passion and eroticism. The poet's categorical rejection of woman as a sensual object is accompanied by subtle insinuations concerning his own physical impotence and inability to love.

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