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<p>This thesis examines fictional representations of Indian women’s responses to trauma in the background of communal violence. It argues that fiction allows for the reimagination of women’s conditions during communal riots, and their responses to trauma as a result of those riots. While ethnographic research seeks answers from traumatized victims, a fictional text can open up spaces for debates about conditions of women and their responses to trauma in the background of communal violence. Through Manju Kapur’s <em>A Married Woman</em> and Anita Rau Badami’s <em>Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?</em>, this project examines women’s negotiations of their religious and national identities within the private and the public and their responses to trauma caused by communal violence.</p> <p>The Introduction draws on texts on gender and diaspora theory as well as scholarly work on the evolution and history of communalism in India. It also looks at the historical backgrounds of two events of communal violence that underpin Kapur’s and Badami’s texts, namely, the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy and the resulting 1992 riots, and Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the resulting 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Chapter 1 examines Indian women’s negotiations of religious identities in <em>A Married Woman</em>. Through the characters of Astha, Pipee and Sita, I argue that Kapur draws parallels between women as Other and religious minorities as Other. Her text shows the ways in which trauma crosses religious borders of Hindu-Muslim, and opens up possibilities for envisioning ways of ethically coexisting with the Other. Chapter 2 investigates communal violence in India and Canada in <em>Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?</em> Focusing on the characters of Bibi-ji, Leela and Nimmo, I argue that communal violence subsumes class, religion and location. Her text highlights how trauma crosses national boundaries and how the three women are torn apart by their losses.</p> <p>In my Conclusion, I suggest for new avenues of research that might contribute to a further understanding of the dynamics of communal violence and trauma, and a future investigation into the negotiation of male religious identities in the background of communal violence.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This dissertation maps the militarization of Canadian culture under the War on Terror. The first section examines the rise of everyday life militarizing cultural practices such as the Yellow Ribbon campaign to Support the Troops, Red Fridays, and the Highway of Heroes. The second section takes up militarizing cultural texts: the most recent wave of Canadian Forces recruiting advertisements, the CBC radio play <em>Afghanada</em>, and Paul Gross’s 2008 film <em>Passchendaele</em>. Across these diverse sites of analysis I argue that it is precisely through the mobilization of the previous national myths of multiculturalism, peacekeeping and tolerance that the contrary cultural politics of the new militarism coheres.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study explores the role of learning and education in American historical fiction written in the 1820s. The United States has been, and still is, commonly considered to be hostile to scholarly learning. In novels and short stories of the 1820s, however, learning and education are recurrent themes, and this dissertation shows that the attitudes to these issues are more ambivalent than hitherto acknowledged. The 1820s was a period characterized by a political struggle, expressed as a battle between intellectuals, represented by the sitting president, John Quincy Adams, a Harvard professor, and anti-intellectuals, headed by the war hero Andrew Jackson. The battle over the place of scholarly learning in the U.S. was played out not only on the political scene but also in historical fiction, where the themes of learning and education become vehicles for exploring national identity. In these texts, whose aim is often to establish an impressive national history, scholarly learning carries negative connotations as it is linked to the former colonizer Britain and also symbolizes social stratification. However, it also stands for civilization and progress, qualities felt to be necessary for the nation to come into its own. The conflicting views and anxieties surrounding the issues of learning and education tend to center on a recurrent character in these texts, the learned person. After providing an overview of how the themes of learning and education are treated in historical narratives from the 1820s, this dissertation focuses on works of three writers: Hobomok (1824) and The Rebels (1825) by Lydia Maria Child, The Prairie (1827) by James Fenimore Cooper, and Hope Leslie (1827) by Catharine Maria Sedgwick.

The years 1870 to 1920 saw an extraordinary efflorescence of English historical writing, dominated by historians who were committed members of the Church of England, many of them in holy orders. At a time when both history and religion were central to cultural life, when history was becoming a modern academic discipline, and when the relationship between Christianity and advanced knowledge was under unprecedented scrutiny, this was a phenomenon of considerable intellectual significance. To understand why this came about, it is necessary to understand the intellectual and institutional conditions in the Church of England at the time. The Oxford Movement and the rise of incarnational theology had drawn Anglicans in ever greater numbers towards the study of the past. At the same time, it was still widely held that the Church of England should be a ‘learned church’: it therefore encouraged scholarship, sacred and secular, amongst its laity and clergy. The result was to produce historians who approached the past with a new set of priorities. The history of the English nation and its constitution was rewritten to show that the church – and especially the medieval church – was the originator and guarantor of modern nationality and liberty. Attitudes to the Reformation shifted from the celebratory to the sceptical, or even the downright hostile. Economic historians even came to see the Reformation as a social revolution – as the origin of modern poverty or capitalism. New and distinctive ideas about progress and divine providence were developed and articulated. Most of all, an examination of Anglican historical scholarship shows the continued vitality of the Church of England and the limitations to the idea that intellectual life was secularised over the course of the nineteenth century. Instead, historiography continued to be shaped by Anglican thought and institutions at this critical stage in its development.

This thesis examines travel to continental Europe as undertaken by several generations of Irish Protestants between 1660 and 1727. Historians draw parallels between the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland and other polities in ancien régime Europe, but these demand an exploration of contemporary encounters. Research on the Irish in Europe concentrates on Catholics without much regard to Protestant experiences, while work on English or British travel overlooks ways in which Irish Protestant voyages differed. This thesis analyses the experiences of Church-of-Ireland families from the gentry, nobility and aristocracy, especially the Southwells, Percevals, Molesworths, Molyneuxs, Boyles and Butlers. Correspondence, notebooks and financial accounts reconstruct their voyages, mainly to France, Italy, the Low Countries and Germany, and their attitudes towards the practice of travel. Journeys to other destinations are incorporated, as are the voyages of neighbours, acquaintances and employees. Purposes varied, but travel was consistently considered an opportunity for 'improvement'. The thesis follows the successive preoccupations of travellers, beginning with demonstrations of 'fitness to travel'. Wealthy young men were judged according to criteria that privileged anglicisation and Protestantism, though linguistic skill was a more socially-comprehensive standard. Advisors emphasised civil conversation and written observation, but warnings to avoid 'countrymen' were ignored. The company of English-speaking travellers and Irish Catholic expatriates created distinctive European experiences. Foreign hosts often saw uncomplicated Englishmen, though some recognised Irish difference. Anglican travellers held qualified membership of a 'Protestant international', drawing on a cross-confessional 'stock of friends'. Travellers received tuition that complicates perceptions of travel as 'informal' education and they memorialised experiences through souvenirs and gifts. Voyages encouraged some into English residence and identifications, though others brought improvements home to Ireland. 'Improvement', as it related to wealthy Church-of-Ireland families, functioned not as a binary between approved England and disdained Ireland but a triangular exchange in which continental Europe featured prominently.

This thesis explores the role of metaphor in the construction of early modern English national identity in the dramatic writing of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The metaphorical associations of character names and their imagined native or foreign stage settings helped model to English audiences and readers not only their own national community, but also ways in which the representation of collective ‘Englishness’ might involve self-estrangement. The main body of the thesis comprises three case studies: Cleopatra, Kent and Christendom. These topographies -- personal, local and regional -- illustrate how metaphorical complexes shifted against both an evolving body of literary texts and under pressure from changing historical contexts, variously defining individual selves against the collective political nation. Each section explores inter-textual connections between theatrical metaphors and contemporary English non-dramatic texts, placing these within a wider European context, and ends by discussing a relevant play by Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear and Cymbeline respectively). The first case study examines ways in which Cleopatra was used as a metaphor to define individual against collective identity. I shall suggest that such Oriental self-alienation might be seen as enabling; Cleopatran identities allow English writers, readers and audiences to imagine aesthetic alternatives to public identities. The second case study looks at the idea of Kent as an emblematic identity that both preserved local peculiarity while providing a metaphor for collective English identity. Writers use Kentish ambiguity to explore discontinuities and uncertainties within the emerging political nation. The third case study examines the idea of Christendom, used as an imaginary geography to bridge the gap between individual and political identities. I suggest that attempts to map Christendom to literal territorial coordinates might be resisted in ways that produced, again, alternative, non-national literary identities.

此論文的目的在於探討八、九O年代台灣所發生的民族認同問題。由於民族認同所代表的是一個政治共同體歸屬的問題，在台灣特殊的歷史與內、外的政治結構之下，此一時期的民主化和全球化的發展，對台灣的民族認同問題帶來什麼樣的影響，這是本論文所關切的主要問題。另一個重要的問題則是，媒介公共領域在這民族認同爭議的過程中扮演什麼樣的角色。這個研究從八九年「亞銀年會」事件和九九年「兩國論」事件中新聞媒體的公共論述，來探討此一時期民族認同形構的變化，並從中了解民主化和全球化過程以什麼樣的方式影響著民族認同的論述，以及媒介公共領域的性質。 研究的結果顯示出，在這兩個事件中，媒介公共領域的國家與民族論述，最大的變化在於官方論述的轉變，媒介公共領域也出現了一些變化。兩個事件的爭議核心，都和官方試圖以新論述賦予政治共同體更明確的定位有關；而媒介的公共論述也顯示出，媒體公共領域是論述民族認同的重要場域，無論是在「亞銀年會」事件或是「兩國論」事件，有些媒體的公共論述形成與官方論述對抗的局面。由官方論述在這兩個事件中的變化，可以看到修憲等民主化對官方論述轉變的影響；民主化的另一個影響，則是媒介公共領域在民族主義立場的分歧化，這點在「亞銀年會」事件尚不明顯。全球化的影響在這兩個事件的比較中較不顯著，少數的論述中可以看到，國家和民族未來的想像與晚近兩岸經貿發展之間的關聯。 這兩個事件的比較顯示出，新聞媒體在其民族主義立場和作為政治共同體的公共領域之間，存在著一種緊張的關係。這顯現於兩類媒體的論述：一種是傾向於內部區分和排除的自我中心式的論述，另一種則是傾向於以他者的觀點來評估政治共同體的作為。這兩種觀點源於台灣特殊的內、外部的結構，但都不利於公民社群的團結。此論文最後以哈伯馬斯(J. Habermas, 1994: 134)的「共同視域」此一觀點，主張媒介公共領域的公眾溝通應根植於公民社群，並且以其歷史經驗對憲政原則的詮釋，做為公共溝通的「固定的參考點」，並在此基礎上尋求公民社群團結。 關鍵字： 民族認同、政治共同體、公共領域、共同視域、公民社群、團結。