<p>This thesis analyzes the impact of the Dark Age of comics on Grant Morrison’s comic book series The Invisibles, specifically arguing that the traditional superhero figure enacts a certain narrative violence on the characters and text itself, both through direct violence and in the limiting of potential narratives. The first chapter establishes The Invisibles’ contemporary comic tropes, establishing Dark Age superheroes as an exceptionalist figures who use extreme violence to separate themselves from a perceived corrupt society. As such, this thesis moves from a psychoanalytic approach to heroism towards a schizoanalytic approach found in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, demonstrating how similar cycles of pathologization found in their critique of psychoanalysis also apply to The Invisibles’ attempt to innoculate itself against its own sensationalized violence. In doing so, the series eventually purges itself of the hero’s underlying ideological violences and attempts to actualize a Morrison’s own notions of utopia through the medium of comics, valuing multiplicities and the production of narratives to inform the experience of reality over a limitation of narratives based on violent conflict.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

In her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens Alice Walker addresses black American women's lack of opportunities to write their experiences for later generations. Walker points out that because black women historically were not allowed to write and often were unable to share their creative thoughts or experiences, black women's literary history has been less available. Walker suggests that women of color look back to their mothers and the oral traditions of their ancestors to recreate that lost history and thus create a more complete historical account that has been absent from white canonical representations of African American history. This undergraduate thesis examines three contemporary African American women's novels and demonstrates that they employ maternal genealogical experiences to reclaim and retell Afro-American women's history. Toni Morrison's Beloved, Octavia Butler's Kindred, and Gayl Jones' Corregidora are postmodern, postcolonial slave narratives ( often called "neo-slave narratives") that trace a broad historical memory of slavery through maternal genealogy. While scholars have addressed the presence of the mother in these texts, they have overlooked the importance of the matrilineal tradition of inherited memory as a tool to revisit and reclaim history.

At just under thirty years the serious academic study of American comic books is relatively young. Over the course of three decades most historians familiar with the medium have recognized that American comics, since becoming a mass-cultural product in 1939, have matured beyond their humble beginnings as a monthly publication for children. However, historians are not yet in agreement as to when the medium became mature. This thesis proposes that the medium’s maturity was cemented between 1985 and 2000, a much later point in time than existing texts postulate. The project involves the analysis of how an American mass medium, in this case the comic book, matured in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The goal is to show the interconnected relationships and factors that facilitated the maturation of the American sequential art, specifically a focus on a group of British writers working at DC Comics and Vertigo, an alternative imprint under the financial control of DC. The project consulted the major works of British comic scriptwriters, Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, and Garth Ennis. These works include Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Shade: the Changing Man, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Animal Man, Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Preacher and several other important works. Following a chronological organization, the work tracks major changes taking place in the American comic book industry in the commercial, corporate, and creative sectors to show the processes through which the medium matured in this time period. This is accomplished by combining textual analysis of the comics with industry specific records and a focus on major cultural shifts in US society and culture

Color (sub)Conscious explores the African American female's experience with colorism. Divided into three distinct sections. The first section is a literary analysis of such works as Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Alice Walker's "If the Present Looks Like the Past, What Does the Future Look Like?" an essay from her collection In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. The second section is a research project based on data gathered from 12 African American females willing to share their own experiences and insights on colorism. The final section is a creative non-fiction piece of the author's own personal pain growing up and living with the lasting effects of colorism.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-08-18T14:20:56Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Aparecida Araujo dos Santos.pdf: 1801299 bytes, checksum: 9590f5d787eb2285aa33ed2267c90e42 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-18T14:20:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Aparecida Araujo dos Santos.pdf: 1801299 bytes, checksum: 9590f5d787eb2285aa33ed2267c90e42 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Appraisal is a system to map the resources used to evaluate the social experience, carried out through several lexical-grammatical structures. The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the role of Appraisal on the narrative of suffering of a black Korean War veteran in two chapters of Home by Toni Morrison (2012), a Nobel Prize Laureate in 1993. If peace means the absence of war, this is a state the protagonist of Home - Frank - is unable to experience because he is followed by post-traumatic stress disorder, caused by the war and racial conflicts memories from childhood, during the 1950s segregation, caused by Jim Crow laws and McCarthyism. The narrative discourse analysis from the viewpoint of writer/reader relations reveals some mechanisms by which the narrative "works" on readers, enabling them to "feel with" a certain character and ethically judge his behavior. The survey runs through this literary universe in the light of discourse analysis, which, being trodden by scholars and researchers from socioideological and historical issues, was generally done obscurely, without the understanding support of their linguistic materiality. This study is based on the theoretical and methodological model of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), focusing on the Appraisal, an extension of Interpersonal metafunction of this theory. By the process of metarelation, redundant qualifiers and amplifiers or restrictive components, that is functionally a single assessment, are spread through the sentence or even long parts of a text. The research should answer the following questions: (a) What role does the Appraisal play in Frank‟s character composition? (b) What is the function of metarelation in this process? The novel analysis shows that the resources of Appraisal, running through the text by the metarelation process, contributes to the axiological creation of narration. The research shows some implications for the analysis of the evaluation in the text considering the contextual constraints to the development of relations between writer and reader / A Avaliatividade (Appraisal) é um sistema que mapeia os recursos usados para avaliar a experiência social, realizados por meio de várias estruturas léxico-gramaticais. O objetivo desta dissertação de mestrado é o exame do papel da Avaliatividade no relato do sofrimento de um rapaz afro-americano e ex-combatente de guerra da Coreia, em dois capítulos do romance Home, de Toni Morrison (2012), ganhadora do prêmio Nobel em 1993. Se a paz significa ausência de guerra, esse é um estado que o protagonista de Home – Frank – é incapaz de experienciar, já que sofre de transtorno de estresse pós-traumático causado pela guerra. Além disso, sofre com as recordações dos conflitos raciais sofridos na infância, no cenário de segregação dos anos 1950, causados pela lei Jim Crow e perseguições anticomunistas: o macartismo. A análise do discurso narrativo, do ponto de vista da relação escritor/leitor, revela alguns mecanismos pelos quais a narrativa “trabalha” sobre os leitores – capacitando-os a “sentir com” um determinado personagem e a julgar eticamente seu comportamento. A pesquisa percorre esse universo literário à luz da análise do discurso crítica, que – embora já tenha sido trilhado por estudiosos e pesquisadores para discutir questões sócioideológicas e históricas – tem sido realizada, muitas vezes, de forma obscura, sem o apoio da compreensão da sua materialidade linguística. O presente estudo tem o apoio teórico-metodológico da Linguística sistêmico-funcional (LSF), com enfoque no sistema da Avaliatividade (Appraisal), uma ampliação da metafunção Interpessoal dessa teoria. Pelo processo da metarrelação, os componentes redundantes, qualificadores e amplificadores ou restritivos, daquilo que é funcionalmente uma única avaliação, espalham-se através da oração ou, mesmo, de longos trechos de um texto. A pesquisa deve responder às seguintes perguntas: (a) Que papel exerce a Avaliatividade na composição do personagem Frank? (b) Qual é a função da metarrelação nesse processo? A análise do romance mostra que os recursos da Avaliatividade, que percorrem o texto pelo processo da metarrelação, contribuem para a criação axiológica da narração. A pesquisa mostra algumas implicações para a análise da avaliação no texto, se considerarmos os condicionamentos contextuais para o desenvolvimento das relações entre escritor e leitor

In this paper, Kait Spong examines alternative practices of mothering that are strategic nature, heavily analyzing Patricia Hill Collins’ concepts of “othermothering” and “preservative love” as applied to Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved and Harriet Jacob’s 1861 slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Using literary analysis as a vehicle, Spong then applies these West African notions of motherhood to a modern context by evaluating contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter where black mothers have played a prominent role in making public statements against systemic issues such as police brutality, heightened surveillance, and the prison industrial complex.

The protagonists in the fiction of Paule Marshall, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison illuminate American cultural perceptions of black women and illustrate how the creators of these characters hope to change those perceptions. I studied Paule Marshall's Daughters, Alice Walker's Meridian and The Color Purple, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye to learn what the writers of these novels have to say about the women they hope black girls can grow up to be and to learn what potential for self-development they see for black women. For example, in order to become whole people, what do black girls and black women need from their parents and their community? What do black women need from their intimate relationships? "Part One: Political, Historical and Religious Identity " surveys politics, religion and history for views of black women. Politically, they appear disenfranchised; historically they were property. In reference to religion, I found that a white male religion does not serve black women well. Walker sees god within her female protagonist Celie, and Marshall has a belief in a Caribbean/African diaspora that provides a sense of spiritual and cultural continuity. "Part Two: Childhood Identity" explores childhood and the community's role. Childhood appears as a critical time for self-development. The adults in the community contribute to the child's self-awareness. Mistreatment of girls causes them harm throughout their lives. How well the community safeguards its children is a measure of how highly these children are valued. These authors want to see girls more highly regarded. Toward this end, they expose the abuse that takes place in the community. Morrison shows not only the abuse, but also the love. By showing concerned parents as well as neglectful ones, Morrison offers a fuller portrait of the community she knows. The Color Purple also tells a story of sexual abuse of a girl, but this abuse is overcome by the inner strength of the victim combined with the loving support of Shug Avery and the supportive community context of the juke where Celie is accepted. The portrayal of childhood in Daughters involves a Caribbean island culture where the roles of the women that the child Ursa observes offer few role models. "Part Three: Adult Relational Identity" looks at the dilemma in communication between the sexes and across the generations from mother to daughter. Step-fathers and husbands are abusive characters in Walker's writing, while Morrison shows a loving father and an incestuous father in The Bluest Eye. "Part Four: Language Identity" discusses Black English, orality and dialect, looking at the role of language as an aspect of self-definition. James Baldwin's view of language is presented: rejecting a child's language is rejecting the child himself. Baldwin's view supports the attitude toward language as self-defining that appears in the writing of Marshall, Morrison, and Walker. These authors show pride in Black English, and they demonstrate their ability with edited English through their own writing. / Graduation date: 1994

Uppsatsen är en komparativ och narratologisk karaktärs- och motivstudie av de svarta karaktärerna Manne i Pija Lindenbaums småbarnsbilderbok Jag älskar Manne (2012) och Lilla Hjärtat i Stina Wirséns småbarnsbokserie om Brokigagänget som består av sex böcker utgivna mellan 2010-2012. Den kronologiska ordningen på Brokigaböckerna är Hej! och Oj! (2010), Aj! och Bang! (2011) och Gul! och Sov! (2012). Uppsatsen syfte är att undersöka hur de svarta karaktärerna Manne och Lilla Hjärtat framställs och porträtteras i böckerna för att sedan analysera hur och om det kan ha påverkat böckernas skilda mottaganden under 2012. Under året 2012 nominerades Jag älskar Manne till Augustpriset för Årets svenska barn- och ungdomsbok, medan Brokigaböckerna efter en het debatt under hösten 2012 på författarens egen begäran drogs tillbaka från den svenska bokmarknaden Uppsatsens fokus ligger på olika aspekter och element i böckerna som har tagits upp och påverkat debatten kring Lilla Hjärtat och undersökningen är därefter indelad i fyra avdelningar: Den svarta karaktärens utseende, Mångfaldsaspekten, Genusaspekten och Den svarta karaktären som ett berättartekniskt verktyg. Varje avdelning avslutas med en kort och jämförande sammanfattning och hela uppsatsen avslutas med en slutdiskussion. Uppsatsens undersökning bygger på både text och bild i böckerna med grund i svensk- och engelskspråkig teoretisk litteratur, där bland annat Toni Morrisons och Richard Dyers teorier om hudfärg och ras i litterära och visuella framställningar är centrala. Uppsatsens undersökning visar att den svarta karaktären kan ha haft avgörande betydelse för böckernas mottaganden under 2012, då framför allt hur den svarta karaktärens utseende har tecknats i bild kan bidra till skilda uppfattningar om den svarta karaktären är en bild av en svart stereotyp eller en illustration av ett svart barn, vilket i sin tur kan ha påverkat det skilda mottagandet av böckerna. Undersökningen visar även att böckernas skilda djur- och människosammanhang där den svarta karaktären framställs kan ha påverkat och bidragit till böckernas skilda mottaganden. Uppsatsen studerar också hur hudfärg och ras kan fungera som ett berättartekniskt verktyg för vad författaren vill förmedla eller framställa i sitt verk, vilket framkommer tydligast i en närstudie av Jag älskar Manne. Uppsatsens bisyfte är även att undersöka hur några svenska barnböcker utgivna på 2010-talet framställer och arbetar med sina svarta karaktärer.

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