This dissertation analyzes selected pieces of work related to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) produced during the twenty-first-century as cultural artifacts to be considered in their historical and socio-political context. Specifically, my dissertation focuses on the relationship between the way the conflict is depicted and the message it conveys. Parting from the premise that there has been an overproduction of lieu de mémoire that has transformed the Spanish war into a cultural trend, the civil war-esque, I study a number of humor works. Precisely, these humorous works deconstruct such trend by considering its most common characteristics: the use of metafiction and nostalgia. The Introduction presents the socio-political situation of contemporary Spain, the civil war-esque trend, and different categories of humor. In the first chapter I focus on the TV-series Plaza de España (2011). By combining the theoretical framework of the sitcom and the Critical Analysis of Discourse, I demonstrate that the program reinforces the official message in regard to the Spanish recent past. In the second chapter I examine the novel La comedia salvaje (2009) by José Ovejero. This parody, understood by the lens of Bakhtin, invites the readers to be skeptical about what they know and what they have been told about the war. In the third chapter I study the film The Last Circus I (2010) by Álex de la Iglesia. Departing from an esperpento, the film leaves this genre behind and transforms itself into a satire which demythifies the traditional research method, such as visiting archives or interviewing witnesses, and opts for imagination to reproduce a traumatic past. Finally, the goal of this dissertation is to help envisage that a wider, and at the same time critical representation, of the Spanish Civil War its possible, and in turn could lead on to a potential change in the Spanish current cultural production as well as its social and political situation.

Millennials, or Generation Y, represent one of today’s most prominent age cohorts: with their increasingly stronger purchasing power and importance in the global economic landscape, it is no wonder that marketers are striving to find new ways to appeal to the taste of this peculiar generation of consumers. Among the various modern research fields in business, one in particular is offering incredibly interesting insights to both scholars and professional marketers: the concept of nostalgia proneness in consumer behavior. While several studies examine the dynamics of this phenomenon, none of them so far examined the impact of nostalgia proneness in shopping behavior, especially examining the dynamics on a sample of Generation Y consumers. This study was conducted in order to explore the dynamics of nostalgia proneness, linking the constructs to both desire for uniqueness and shopping behavior, using the framework provided by the Consumer Styles Inventory (Sproles & Sproles, 1990). After a theoretical review on the matter, several hypotheses and a conceptual model were developed to serve as the core framework of the quantitative analysis. The data, obtained from a convenience sample of 222 respondents, were subsequently examined using several statistical techniques (ANOVA, correlation and factor analysis), with the intent to test the hypotheses and shed light on the research questions. The outcome was then presented and interpreted using both the theoretical background and other complementary relevant literature. The results showed a positive relationship between nostalgia proneness and desire for uniqueness, with both variables being further connected to several shopping traits of the Generation Y consumer. The cluster and factor analysis eventually showed patterns that could be interpreted using the theory of hedonic and utilitarian shopping motivations.

Depuis sa fondation en 1794 par Catherine II, Odessa, cité portuaire de la mer Noire, ne laisse personne indifférent. Conçue pour devenir une utopie urbaine au sein d’une Russie très contraignante, la ville nouvelle – libre de servage, tolérante et entreprenante – attire des populations venues des quatre coins de l’Europe. Les premiers migrants sont en majorité des déshérités, des infortunés et des Juifs persécutés de l’Empire en quête d’un refuge. La société juive naissante éprise de liberté saisit sa chance en s’impliquant activement dans la réalisation de ce chantier ambitieux. Dès les années 1860, premiers frémissements d’un « bonheur juif », des banquiers, des négociants, des intellectuels, des artistes, des bandits et des « Juifs ordinaires » écrivent pareillement le « modernisme » et les légendes colorées d’Odessa la Juive. Le XXe siècle pris entre guerres et révolutions, sonne le glas de l’âge d’or des Juifs d’Odessa avec le retour des pogromes et des massacres de masse. Bon nombre d’entre eux repartent sur les routes de l’exil à la recherche de ports d’attache : onze villes nord-américaines portent le nom d’Odessa. Les Odessites vouent à leur ancienne terre d’adoption un véritable culte, sous des formes plurielles, œuvres littéraires, musicales, picturales et cinématographiques. A la lumière de l’Histoire et de la micro-histoire, l’enjeu de cette recherche sur la communauté juive odessite est d’identifier l’« espace de vérité » de la ville d’Odessa entre mythe et réalité. / Since its creation by Catherine the IInd in 1794, Odessa, a harbour on the Black Sea, leaves no one indifferent. Designed to become an urban utopia within a very compelling Russia, the new town – tolerant, enterprising, and from its origins free from serfdom – has attracted populations from across Europe. The first migrants were mainly poor, hapless people and persecuted Jews from the Empire in search of a refuge. The emerging Jewish society, freedom-loving, seized the opportunity to build an ideal city, culminating in the birth of a “Jewish happiness”. From 1860 onwards, great bankers, merchants, intellectuals, artists, gangsters and labourers all contributed to the “modernism” and the colourful history of the Jewish Odessa. Caught between wars and revolutions, the 20th Century sounded the knell of the golden age for Odessa Jews, with the return of pogroms and mass slaughters. A number of Jews went back to the roads of exile, looking for a new home: eleven North American towns have taken the name of Odessa. “Odessity” worship Odessa-mama: music works, paintings and movies aim at celebrating the glory of the homeland. Considering both the historical and micro-historical legacy, the challenge of this research on the Jewish community from Odessa aims to identify and establish a “truth space” between the real and the imaginary city.

This doctoral thesis studies a cycle of British film and television fictions produced in the years 2005-2011 and set retrospectively in the 1980s. In its identification and in-depth textual and contextual analysis of what it terms the ‘Eighties Cycle’, it offers a significant contribution to British film and television scholarship. It examines eighties-set productions as members of a sub-genre of British recent-past period dramas begging unique consideration outside of comparisons to British ‘heritage’ dramas, to contemporary social dramas or to actual history. It shows that incentives for depicting the eighties are wide-ranging; consequently, it situates productions within their cultural and industrial contexts, exploring how these dictate which eighties codes are cited and how they are textually used. The Introduction delineates the Eighties Cycle, establishes the project’s academic and historical basis and outlines its approach. Chapter 1 situates the work within the academic fields that inform it, briefly surveying histories and socio-cultural studies before examining and assessing existing scholarship on Eighties Cycle productions alongside critical literature on 1980s, 90s and contemporary British film and television; nostalgia and retro; modern media, history and memory; British and American period screen fiction; and transmedia storytelling. Chapter 2 considers how a selection of productions employing ‘the eighties’ as a visual and audio style invoke and assign meaning to commonly recognised aesthetic codes according to their targeted audiences and/or intended messages. Chapter 3 investigates semi-autobiographical dramas that bear the mark of remembering, from the vantage point of the present, a time of fast expansions and shifts in the global media landscape. Chapter 4 explores how historical fictions locate historical knowledge in the decade’s refraction through modern media and reconstruct, deconstruct or ironise these mediations to meet particular cultural or industrial demands. Chapter 5 identifies two spin-offs that exploit shifts toward transmedia production and distribution by using eighties iconography as the set pieces for an immersive fantasy world, considering how and why their source texts are adapted and what this implies for past representation. Finally, the Conclusion reviews the project’s findings and briefly considers possible factors for the cycle’s deceleration and transformation after 2011. Ultimately, this project sees the Eighties Cycle as a by-product of shifts in Britain toward advanced globalisation and new mediation that have facilitated access to domestic and international mediated recent pasts. These productions operate within a distinct recent-past period screen fiction mode, engaging audiences equipped with comprehensive notions of the eighties as circulated in media. Meaning is produced in how these notions are structured; sometimes they are lauded, sometimes parodied, sometimes criticised or ironised, and sometimes they are simply cited for the sheer pleasure of recall.

Depuis sa fondation en 1794 par Catherine II, Odessa, cité portuaire de la mer Noire, ne laisse personne indifférent. Conçue pour devenir une utopie urbaine au sein d’une Russie très contraignante, la ville nouvelle – libre de servage, tolérante et entreprenante – attire des populations venues des quatre coins de l’Europe. Les premiers migrants sont en majorité des déshérités, des infortunés et des Juifs persécutés de l’Empire en quête d’un refuge. La société juive naissante éprise de liberté saisit sa chance en s’impliquant activement dans la réalisation de ce chantier ambitieux. Dès les années 1860, premiers frémissements d’un « bonheur juif », des banquiers, des négociants, des intellectuels, des artistes, des bandits et des « Juifs ordinaires » écrivent pareillement le « modernisme » et les légendes colorées d’Odessa la Juive. Le XXe siècle pris entre guerres et révolutions, sonne le glas de l’âge d’or des Juifs d’Odessa avec le retour des pogromes et des massacres de masse. Bon nombre d’entre eux repartent sur les routes de l’exil à la recherche de ports d’attache : onze villes nord-américaines portent le nom d’Odessa. Les Odessites vouent à leur ancienne terre d’adoption un véritable culte, sous des formes plurielles, œuvres littéraires, musicales, picturales et cinématographiques. A la lumière de l’Histoire et de la micro-histoire, l’enjeu de cette recherche sur la communauté juive odessite est d’identifier l’« espace de vérité » de la ville d’Odessa entre mythe et réalité. / Since its creation by Catherine the IInd in 1794, Odessa, a harbour on the Black Sea, leaves no one indifferent. Designed to become an urban utopia within a very compelling Russia, the new town – tolerant, enterprising, and from its origins free from serfdom – has attracted populations from across Europe. The first migrants were mainly poor, hapless people and persecuted Jews from the Empire in search of a refuge. The emerging Jewish society, freedom-loving, seized the opportunity to build an ideal city, culminating in the birth of a “Jewish happiness”. From 1860 onwards, great bankers, merchants, intellectuals, artists, gangsters and labourers all contributed to the “modernism” and the colourful history of the Jewish Odessa. Caught between wars and revolutions, the 20th Century sounded the knell of the golden age for Odessa Jews, with the return of pogroms and mass slaughters. A number of Jews went back to the roads of exile, looking for a new home: eleven North American towns have taken the name of Odessa. “Odessity” worship Odessa-mama: music works, paintings and movies aim at celebrating the glory of the homeland. Considering both the historical and micro-historical legacy, the challenge of this research on the Jewish community from Odessa aims to identify and establish a “truth space” between the real and the imaginary city.

Depuis sa fondation en 1794 par Catherine II, Odessa, cité portuaire de la mer Noire, ne laisse personne indifférent. Conçue pour devenir une utopie urbaine au sein d’une Russie très contraignante, la ville nouvelle – libre de servage, tolérante et entreprenante – attire des populations venues des quatre coins de l’Europe. Les premiers migrants sont en majorité des déshérités, des infortunés et des Juifs persécutés de l’Empire en quête d’un refuge. La société juive naissante éprise de liberté saisit sa chance en s’impliquant activement dans la réalisation de ce chantier ambitieux. Dès les années 1860, premiers frémissements d’un « bonheur juif », des banquiers, des négociants, des intellectuels, des artistes, des bandits et des « Juifs ordinaires » écrivent pareillement le « modernisme » et les légendes colorées d’Odessa la Juive. Le XXe siècle pris entre guerres et révolutions, sonne le glas de l’âge d’or des Juifs d’Odessa avec le retour des pogromes et des massacres de masse. Bon nombre d’entre eux repartent sur les routes de l’exil à la recherche de ports d’attache : onze villes nord-américaines portent le nom d’Odessa. Les Odessites vouent à leur ancienne terre d’adoption un véritable culte, sous des formes plurielles, œuvres littéraires, musicales, picturales et cinématographiques. A la lumière de l’Histoire et de la micro-histoire, l’enjeu de cette recherche sur la communauté juive odessite est d’identifier l’« espace de vérité » de la ville d’Odessa entre mythe et réalité. / Since its creation by Catherine the IInd in 1794, Odessa, a harbour on the Black Sea, leaves no one indifferent. Designed to become an urban utopia within a very compelling Russia, the new town – tolerant, enterprising, and from its origins free from serfdom – has attracted populations from across Europe. The first migrants were mainly poor, hapless people and persecuted Jews from the Empire in search of a refuge. The emerging Jewish society, freedom-loving, seized the opportunity to build an ideal city, culminating in the birth of a “Jewish happiness”. From 1860 onwards, great bankers, merchants, intellectuals, artists, gangsters and labourers all contributed to the “modernism” and the colourful history of the Jewish Odessa. Caught between wars and revolutions, the 20th Century sounded the knell of the golden age for Odessa Jews, with the return of pogroms and mass slaughters. A number of Jews went back to the roads of exile, looking for a new home: eleven North American towns have taken the name of Odessa. “Odessity” worship Odessa-mama: music works, paintings and movies aim at celebrating the glory of the homeland. Considering both the historical and micro-historical legacy, the challenge of this research on the Jewish community from Odessa aims to identify and establish a “truth space” between the real and the imaginary city.

<p>This thesis examines John Berryman’s poetry of loss together with four different theoretical perspectives. It is the purpose of the study to involve Berryman’s poetry and critical theory in a dialogue which attempts to break down the hierarchy that positions theory as the subject and literature or poetry as the object of study. Instead, by focusing on the otherness of each discourse, that is, what could be called the unconscious of Berryman’s poetry of loss and the language of theory, poetry and theory can be seen to presuppose and mutually imply each other. Those of Berryman’s poems mainly analyzed in the thesis, and which could be called his poetry of loss are “The Ball Poem,” Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, and The Dream Songs. The four theoretical perspectives consist of Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the word and concept departure, David S. Reynolds’s notion of the subversive in the American Renaissance, Nicolas Abraham’s psychoanalytical concept anasemia, and Maurice Blanchot’s theory of death and poetry in his book The Space of Literature. The theoretical base of the thesis is developed primarily from Shoshana Felman’s “To open the question,” an editorial introduction to a special issue of Yale French Studies entitled Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading: Otherwise and Timothy Clark’s study Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot.</p>

This dissertation examines landscape as a concept for analysis and interpretation in film studies by considering the New Hollywood cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Contextualized within the contested notion of nationhood at the time as well as the concern among filmmakers to probe the properties, practices and traditions of American cinema, this was also a period when landscape underwent widespread redefinition as a field of artistic and academic practice. From the outset an aesthetic and pictorial concept, landscape is understood as consisting of a number of interacting ideas and systems of representation which are addressed in terms of intermedial relations. Not something to be encountered or discovered and fixed on canvas or film, landscape involves an ongoing process of construction, appropriation and transformation. Departing from a discussion of the historical role landscape has played in cultural practices of self-representation and self-definition, this study is concerned with how it can be turned against itself and used as a point of departure for adversary and antagonistic views of national myths and media. The organization is roughly chronological, based around a series of reconsiderations of key films, mainly focusing on road movies and genre-revisionist work of the period. Rather than a repository of stable identities and values, each chapter shows how landscape can be advanced in a process of reflecting on attempts to impose meaning, order and linearity. Taken together, Out of Site argues that an engagement with the surfaces and depths of landscape enables new perspectives on the interrelations between the highbrow and the popular, aesthetics and ideology. Bringing attention to how story patterns and audience expectations are displaced, landscape is examined for the questions it raises regarding representational and narrative strategies, the formation of identity and memory, and our own habits of reading.

This thesis examines John Berryman’s poetry of loss together with four different theoretical perspectives. It is the purpose of the study to involve Berryman’s poetry and critical theory in a dialogue which attempts to break down the hierarchy that positions theory as the subject and literature or poetry as the object of study. Instead, by focusing on the otherness of each discourse, that is, what could be called the unconscious of Berryman’s poetry of loss and the language of theory, poetry and theory can be seen to presuppose and mutually imply each other. Those of Berryman’s poems mainly analyzed in the thesis, and which could be called his poetry of loss are “The Ball Poem,” Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, and The Dream Songs. The four theoretical perspectives consist of Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the word and concept departure, David S. Reynolds’s notion of the subversive in the American Renaissance, Nicolas Abraham’s psychoanalytical concept anasemia, and Maurice Blanchot’s theory of death and poetry in his book The Space of Literature. The theoretical base of the thesis is developed primarily from Shoshana Felman’s “To open the question,” an editorial introduction to a special issue of Yale French Studies entitled Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading: Otherwise and Timothy Clark’s study Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot.

This paper observes Hong Kong nostalgia cinema. After the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed, a tendency of anxiety loomed among the society of Hong Kong. People started to feel nostalgic toward their past and concerned their uncertain future. From the late 80s to mid 90s, nostalgia films were produced as a trend, reflecting Hong Kong's identity crisis of its ambiguous entity and fear of reuniting with its Communist motherland. Based on Hong Kong's historical and cultural backgrounds, my thesis examines the nature of nostalgia through Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1988) and the impact of nostalgia by contrasting John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986) and Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild (1990).