The Cold War can be considered the final grand narrative of modernity because of its deterministic influence on the making of knowledge in twentieth-century America. Likewise, Cold War events and the power of their individual narratives and images (their petits recits) created the needed condition for the advent of the age of spectacle. The Cold War existed in this state of contradiction: the final grand narrative and the first postmodern spectacle. Examples of the literature of the Cold War period, what I have labelled the literature of spectacle, serve to both elucidate the social conditions of the age of spectacle and their relationship to our media society. Spectacular fictions also provide a means of examining the postmodern concept of historiographic fictionalization. Don DeLillo's Libra' presents a Lee Harvey Oswald who manipulates the traces of his life to blur the image that he knows must enter the historical record. The Richard Nixon of Robert Coover's The Public Burning evolves to an intense consciousness of the contradictions of historiography that is realized only after he is brutally molested by Uncle Sam for the entire nation to witness, a rape that both strips Nixon of any remaining masculinity and thrusts him forward into America's Cold War history as the dark shadow of his future presidency looms throughout the novel. In The Book of Daniel, E.L. Doctorow's Daniel Isaacson attempts to counteract historiography (and the narrative of his infamous parents, the Rosenbergesque Paul and Rochelle) by writing his own story, telling his history as he feels it relates to the American experience of the Cold War. Daniel's self-history differs from Oswald's selfnarratization because Oswald's text is intentionally fabricated, while Daniel realizes that his narrative is a fabrication of the nation's history. Likewise, the characterization of Nixon differs from that of Oswald, though both are inspired by their actual historical counterparts. While the Nixon of the 1970s greatly shapes the Nixon of the novel, the historical Lee Harvey Oswald remains an enigma of America's recent past, perpetually residing in the margins of unknowability. From this space of marginalization, DeLillo's Oswald emerges. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Southern California, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-269).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

For the past two decades, scholars have been reassessing the ways in which Western writers and intellectuals have traditionally misrepresented the non-white world for their own ideological purposes. Orientalism, Edward Said's ground-breaking study of the ways in which Europeans projected their own social problems onto the nations of the Near East in an attempt to take their minds off the same phenomena as they occurred closer to home, was largely responsible for this shift in emphasis. Fantasy America: The United States as Seen Through French and Italian Eyes is an exploration of a parallel occurrence that could easily be dubbed "Occidentalism." More specifically, it is a study of the ways in which French and Italian writers and filmmakers have sought to situate the New World within an Old World context. "Among the (More Advanced) Barbarians" (a.k.a. Chapter One) examines the continuities and discontinuities of French travel writing in America from the days of the Jesuits to the heyday of the existentialists. Certain motifs and idees fixes—the uniqueness of American racism; the "magic" of New York—are first identified and then examined. "A Meeting of the Mafias" (Chapter Two) is more cosmopolitan in scope, tracing the ways in which French, American, and Italian crime fiction have historically influenced each other, as well as the relationship of the policier to differing notions of the nation-state. "The Ruins of Rome" (Chapter Three) demonstrates how Italian intellectuals have looked to the United States for new World Solutions to Old World problems. This chapter encompasses two major sub-themes: the positive possibilities for Italy of "Fordismo" (the American industrial model) and American literature (which was believed to promote political, as well as cultural, liberty). "Lurching Towards the Millennium" picks up the threads of the first three chapters and places them in the contemporary context of globalization, a process which threatens to replace the hegemony of the nation state with the omnipresence of corporate power. The cultural model of Quebec is introduced at this point as a New World/Old World paradigm that embodies the chimerical contradictions of a globe on the brink of a new millennium. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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This study presents a detailed and comprehensive overview of the context and domination of the "American Dream House" in the United States of the past one hundred years. Additionally, It investigates the present day status and effects of this dependence. This inquiry uses an alternative method of investigation that involves the use of the popular media and extensive research of the past presentation of the "American Dream House" in it. It also involves research into the effects of promotional campaigns on the public perception of the "American Dream House." The research suggests that there exists a crisis in this country in the form of a severe attachment to the mythological and historical nature of this limited housing form. The investigation further suggests that the characteristics and elements of the "American Dream House" have not substantially changed in the past fifty years. This severe attachment to the characteristics of the past both threatens and confines a search and pursuit for a cure to this country's housing problems of the late 20th and early 2131 century. / Department of Architecture

This thesis contends that Anglo-Saxon studies made a powerful contribution to Thomas Jefferson's development of public concepts of American identity and nationalism in ways that have been elided by scholars preoccupied with Jefferson's classicism. Jefferson's comprehensive survey of Anglo-Saxon grammar, language, law and emigration provided him with a precedent for revolution and helped him develop a model of American nationhood. Jefferson's detailed study of the Anglo-Saxon era set him apart from writers on both sides of the Atlantic in the period 1750-1860, and this thesis will argue that to generalize his interest as 'whig history' or a subscription to a theory of Teutonic superiority is unjustified. Chapter One considers Jefferson's educational background, his exposure to Anglo-Saxon history and the degree to which he might have been encouraged to pursue it. Previous studies of Jefferson's Anglo-Saxonism have presumed that there was a 'Gothic font' from which American Founding Fathers could drink; the detailed study of Anglo-Saxon historiography in this chapter will show otherwise. Chapter Two is concerned with a detailed examination of the collections of books relating to Anglo-Saxon history and language that Jefferson collected throughout his lifetime. If Jefferson was concerned with whig dialogues, or interested in the Saxons as a product of a passion for Tacitus we should find evidence of it here. In fact, the study of Jefferson's library in Chapter Two demonstrates that Jefferson was genuinely an expert Anglo-Saxon scholar and regarded that knowledge base as a political tool. Chapters Three and Four constitute detailed examinations of the nationalist use to which Jefferson put his understanding of early English history. Chapter Three considers the problem of shared heritage with Britain confronting the American statesman in the 1760s and 1770s and his employment of pre-Norman history in resolving this conflict. Chapter Four enlarges upon the study of American national identity, with specific reference to the linguistic debates following on the Revolution. This chapter revolves around a reconsideration of Jefferson's Anglo-Saxon Essay and his attempts to introduce this language into the education of future American statesmen. Jefferson's examination of Anglo-Saxon history, when considered in this light, seems oddly discordant with the simplistic notion of Jefferson as a founder of Teutonic superiority. Chapter Five is interested in Jefferson's impact on historical rhetoric in the nineteenth century. Thomas Jefferson used English history as an aid to separating an American nation from the British Empire and he believed that Americans could look to their Anglo-Saxon ancestors for a precedent that would justify their independence from Britain. He saw in Anglo-Saxon studies a means for appropriating those parts of English history that could underpin a national identity defined by freedom, initiative, and perhaps a racial predilection for democracy, while simultaneously rejecting Britain's authority in his present.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-199). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-06-28T13:16:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Glauber Ormundo Dias Martins.pdf: 415635 bytes, checksum: 63fa1de0d5b56e217bcf19dba75e8158 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-28T13:16:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Glauber Ormundo Dias Martins.pdf: 415635 bytes, checksum: 63fa1de0d5b56e217bcf19dba75e8158 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This work analyzes two films by Woody Allen in the 1980s - Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cairo - using as methodologies sociological theories and literary and cinematographic critiques. With this, reflections od modernity and American history are analyzed / Este trabalho analisa dois filmes do diretor Woody Allen da década de 1980- Zelig e A rosa púrpura do Cairo- Usando como metodologias teorias sociológicas e de críticas literárias e cinematográficas. Com isto, reflexões a respeito da modernidade e da história americana são analisadas

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis will look at the various images of the American Far West presented by the Saturday Evening Post during the 1920s under the editorship of George Horace Lorimer, and will examine his editorial strategy that promoted the Far West as a last land of opportunity while also recognizing and weighing in on the challenges of that region.