Creative: Jongsarat is a full-length fictional novel set in Brunei. It follows the lives of two cousins as they struggle with the same decision over the course of one summer. Rijal, the black sheep of the family, must try to come to terms with his fears and his troubled past when he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. Hana, the family's golden girl and hope for the future, fights to keep her own sins a secret as she faces losing her boyfriend to his growing love for God. Set against the backdrop of a country in which reputation and religion are inextricably intertwined, and in which traditional values are struggling to stay alive, Rijal and Hana must find a way to understand the future that they are fighting for. Jongsarat is fundamentally an exploration of the challenges traditional social and religious structures are facing as they struggle to shape modern-day Brunei. It is a study of how, when traditional culture is uninformed by the heart of religion, it leads to disenfranchisement and the hollowness of ritual. It is a story about the ways in which everyday families have to cope with the hopes and expectations each generation places on the next in an ever-changing world. Critical: By exploring the reasons why study of the religious trope has been so neglected in Chinese American literary study, this thesis seeks to understand the critical paradigms which have dominated and shaped Chinese American literary discourses. This thesis will do this by looking seriously at the history of the formation of Chinese American literature and critical study, and the ways in which it has been influenced by American social and political movements such as the feminist and civil rights movements. Having established the state of Chinese American literature and literary discourse, the thesis will then go on to examine the ways in which these external influences have caused grave misreadings which have severely limited the scope and understanding of critical discourse. This thesis will then correct these misreadings by using Amy Tan's works as a case study for performing a critical reading of the religious trope in order to open critical discourse up to new and alternative readings that will ensure the continuation of fresh, relevant and vibrant dialogue within Chinese American critical study.

A la lecture des récits de Bernanos, Gide, Kane, Achebe inscrits dans notre corpus, il ressort que l’imagerie religieuse offre un tableau composite. En effet, s’appuyant sur un ensemble de représentations, la religion varie selon les époques et les sociétés. Bien que considérant le divin comme entité influente, elle intègre des croyances et théogonies locales. Par ailleurs, la divinité ne conditionne pas toujours l’appartenance religieuse car « pas plus qu’il n’y a de religion sans société, il n’y a pas de société sans religion: une société athée serait sans doute une société sans dieu(x), mais il ne s’ensuit pas qu’elle serait sans religion ni croyance ». Il est notable que dans ces textes, l’évocation de la religion, par-delà les marques de ferveur qu’elle est susceptible de traduire, pose un problème existentiel. Plus qu’un rapport entre le divin et l’humain, c’est l’avènement d’une conscience évolutive chez l’homme dans un univers où les liens qui ont toujours forgé l’unité collective tendent à se délier. Autrement dit, la religion se veut le reflet d’un faisceau de valeurs sur la base desquelles s’inspirent les conduites humaines. Et c’est œuvrant à l’encontre d’une telle prescription que le malaise s’est instauré chez la plupart des personnages des romans. Au demeurant, de l’approche de la religion résulte le constat à la fois séduisant et décevant qu’offre l’image d’un univers pris dans le tumulte des exigences sociétales. Au regard des fictions, il s’avère que la nature du sacré émeut et se meut à travers les peuples mais, aussi, s’estompe plus qu’elle ne s’affirme, se dévoie plus qu’elle ne s’enracine. Bien qu’adossé au point de repère de la foi, l’homme est de plus en plus gagné par le vertige. Et ce malaise s’universalise car « une religion est un phénomène qui se vit collectivement ». Autrement dit, les textes dévoilent la dérive de l’être aux prises avec le mal. Mais plus qu’une lutte contre autrui, c’est plutôt l’expression d’un combat acharné contre soi afin de renaître à la première splendeur. Il est clair que l’univers des récits est peuplé d’individus dont la voix porte l’écho du divin. Une perpétuelle cohabitation entre le bien et le vice, ainsi s’établit la condition humaine telle qu’elle est présentée dans les romans. Car, que peut bien révéler le journal d’un curé, arborant la flèche de Dieu et faisant face aux démons, si ce n’est la symphonie d’une aventure ambiguë voire périlleuse. / In reading the stories of Bernanos, Gide, Achebe incorporated in our corpus, it emerges that religious imagery offers a composite picture. Based upon a set of representations, religion indeed varies according to the times and society. Though viewing the divine as an influential entity, religion implies beliefs and local theogonies. In fact, divinity doesn’t influence religious belonging for no much more than there is not religion without society, there isn’t society without religion: an atheist society undoubtedly would be a godless society but it wouldn’t mean a society devoid of religion or belief. It is worth noting that in these texts the mere mention of religion poses an existential problem beyond any fervor it is likely to stand for. More than a relationship between the divine and the human, it’s about the advent of man’s evolving conscience in a universe where bonds which have always created the collective unity tend to untie. In other words, religion is meant to be a set of values by which human behaviors are inspired. It is in fighting against such a prescription that some discomfort came to be among most characters in some novels. As a result, the observation both stunning and unsatisfactory provided by the image of a universe caught up in the turmoil of societal demands stems from the approach of religion. In view of fictions, it turns out that the nature of the sacred stirs and moves throughout all peoples but also fades away more than it shows off, leads astray more than it takes root. Though leaned to the landmark of faith, the human being is more and more subjugated by vertigo. This uneasiness becomes universal because religion is a collectively-lived phenomenon. In other words, the texts unveil human being’s drift in his struggling against evil. But more than a fight against the others, it’s rather a bitter struggle against oneself in order to be reborn to the first splendor. It is obvious that the universe of stories is peopled by individuals whose voices bear the echo of the divine. A perpetual cohabitation between good and evil, this is how the human condition is established and so depicted in the novels. For what may reveal the diary of a priest bearing the arrow of god and striving against demons except that it is the symphony of an ambiguous adventure, if not a perilous one.

In the "metaphysical vacuum" of The Possessed Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky is symbolic of a non-productive stewardship--a father who did not father, a teacher who did not teach, and elder who did not will wisdom and tradition to the dependent younger generation. It is puzzling how little critical notice has been taken of Stepan, and it is a lonely position to find in him the key to the teeming, chaotic world of the novel, but this is the thesis which will be pursued.

Nous voudrions développer l'idée selon laquelle Marguerite Duras est un peintre du langage. En nous focalisant sur le rapport entre l'écriture et la peinture, nous nous efforcerons de repérer et d'analyser les tableaux évoqués ou inventés et les images façonnées dans les œuvres afin d'éclairer l'intertextualité complexe qui entre au sein des divers réseaux de représentation et partant de toute représentation. Sans prétendre à l'exhaustivité, nous pouvons essayer de donner un aperçu de cette présence de la peinture à l'arrière-plan de la réflexion durassienne. Comment la peinture fait-elle texte ? Et quel est l'enjeu ? Il s'agira aussi d'étudier le rôle et la signification de la peinture dans l'œuvre romanesque afin de comparer le statut de la peinture dans l'œuvre avec celui de la peinture. Une partie de cette étude traitera la peinture comme phénomène sociologique, intellectuelle et historique (les questions esthétiques). De plus, la recherche sera axée sur les liens entre le cinéma et la peinture, l'étude sera développée sur les points suivants : les émissions, et les critiques sur l'auteur afin de tracer un cadre d'ensemble des éléments en rapport avec le sujet. Nous aborderons notamment la présentation du débat théorique et méthodologique sur les rapports entre le cinéma et la peinture. L'œuvre tissera des liens étroits entre l'art visuel et le langage. Une partie analysera les rapports entre le cinéma et la peinture sur un corpus significatif de films à partir de ses débuts jusqu'à son dernier film datant de 1979. Notre étude sera une recherche et une analyse des occurrences de la peinture et leurs significations dans le discours filmique durassien. Le discours sur la peinture se confrontant à plusieurs problèmes. / We would like to develop the idea according to which Marguerite Duras is a painter of the language. By focusing us on the relationship between the writing and painting, we will endeavour to locate and analyze the evoked or invented tables and the images worked in works. In order to clarify the complex intertextuality which enters within the various networks of representation and on the basis of any representation. Without claiming with exhaustiveness, one can try to give an outline of this presence of painting to the background of the reflexion durassienne. How painting made it text ? And which is the stake ? It will also be a question of studying the role and the significance of painting in the novel in order to compare the statute of painting in work with that of painting. Part of this study will treat painting like sociological, intellectual and historical phenomenon (the esthetics question). Moreover, research will be centered on the bonds between the cinema and painting the study will be developed on the following points : emissions, and criticisms on the author in order to trace an overall framework of the elements in connection with the subject. We will approach in particular the presentation of the theoretical and methodological debate on the relationship between the cinema and painting. Work will weave close links between visual art and the language. A part will analyze the relationship between the cinema and painting on a significant film corpus, starting from its beginning to its last film going back to 1979. Our study will be a research and an analysis of the occurrences of painting and their significances in the filmic speech durassien. The speech on painting being confronted with several problems.

The rapid increase of multi-drug resistant bacteria and associated deaths has stimulated research into the development of novel therapeutic options. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) display a high therapeutic potential in solving this problem. Research focuses on new ways to enhance the antibacterial activity of AMPs and this includes the amidation of the C-terminus. Once the structure of an AMP is altered it is altered it is necessary to revaluate the properties of this AMP compared to the unaltered peptide. In this study, a peptide fragment Os(3-12), based on a defensin from the tick Ornithodoros savignyi, was amidated at the C-terminus. The effect of C-terminal amidation on the structural, antibacterial, cytotoxic and antioxidant activities of Os(3-12)NH2 was investigated and compared to Os(3-12) as well as the parent peptide Os. Mode of action related to membrane permeabilization was evaluated. The effect of serum and on the antibacterial activity of Os(3-12)NH2 was also determined. Circular dichroism experiments indicated Os(3-12) and Os(3-12)NH2 to be unstructured in sodium dodecyl sulphate micelles and 50% trifluoroethanol, unlike Os which was predominantly α-helical. Although still less potent than Os, the determined minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) for each peptide indicated that amidation increases the bactericidal activity of Os(3-12) by 16-fold against Escherichia coli and by 8-fold against both Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Bacillus subtilis. In comparison amidation enhanced the activity of the peptide towards Staphylococus aureus by only 2-fold. The kinetics of bactericidal activity revealed that Os(3-12)NH2 killed E. coli within 10 minutes and B subtilis within 60 minutes. SYTOX green was applied to evaluate the effects of the peptides on the membrane integrity of the bacterial cells. LL-37, a peptide known to disrupt microbial membranes, induced membrane permeabilization of both E. coli and S. aureus membranes. Both Os and Os(3-12)NH2 were found to also cause membrane permeabilization of these bacteria, albeit not to the same extent as LL-37, thus suggesting possible internal targets subsequent to membrane permeabilization. In the presence of 30% human serum and a physiological salt mixture comprising of 145 mM NaCl, 2.5 mM CaCl2 and 1 mM MgCl2 the bactericidal activity of Os(3-12)NH2 was lost. The amidated peptide was found to be non-toxic towards human erythrocytes and Caco-2 cells. Os(3-12)NH2 showed strong antioxidant activity and was found to be 15-fold more active than glutathione (GSH), a known antioxidant. In conclusion Os(3-12)NH2 has been identified as a multifunctional AMP that is nontoxic to mammalian cells. However the therapeutic potential of Os(3-12)NH2 may be restricted to topical applications due to the peptide’s inactivity under physiological conditions. Although Os(3-12)NH2 causes membrane permeabilization, indications are that there are additional intracellular targets that need to be identified. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Biochemistry / Unrestricted

Boletín que incluye información científica sobre el COVID-19, incluye artículos científicos y artículos preprint actualizados al 27 de Mayo de 2020.

How do we understand our encounter with ambivalent or visceral aesthetic feelings—textual environments, moods, and atmospheres—if they do not solely belong to the representation of individual or collective emotions? This dissertation proposes a concept of “the feeling of form” to approach these aesthetic feelings as formal dynamics, such as restless orientations and rhythmic intensities. How can literary forms have feelings, and where—or is it necessary—to locate the textual body and the subject of these feelings? The goal of my dissertation is not to show what specific neurological procedures are involved in the emotive-cognitive entanglement between the text and the reader, but to understand “form” as a verb—forming, shaping, mediating, transmitting—whose dynamics and actions manifest the narrative form’s visceral aesthetic feelings, and to examine how such feelings bear significant cultural and political currency. Reading formal dynamics as aesthetic feelings also invites us to adjust our usual gaze at “form” away from categories coined by various formalisms, such as “genre,” “structure,” “focalization,” or “style.” In doing so, we are able to reimagine these categories as part of the dynamics of formal reorientations, rhythms, and syntactic intensities, and to open ourselves up to the impersonal agency and criticality of literary forms. Based on these convictions, my dissertation argues that reading for the feeling of form allows us to experience how literary forms transmit and regenerate volatile experiences of history in ways that complicate, supplement, or subvert the explicit representation of historical events and temporality in a literary text. In this dissertation, I focus on the relationship between the feeling of form and the experience of various histories in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End (1924–1928), Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair (1932–1934), Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet (1957–60), and Kazuo Ishiguro’s single-volume novel The Unconsoled (1995). Chapter One traces how nauseous form in Parade’s End allows us to experience wartime and postwar anxiety through Christopher Tietjens’s self-revolting and incoherent consciousness. Chapter Two examines how the deterioration of rhythm in A Scot’s Quair transmits a historical experience of gradual suffocation intricately linked with Scotland’s political and ecological disasters. In a brief Coda, I conclude my project by looking at how The Alexandria Quartet and The Unconsoled manifest weakened and depleted feelings of form, and how these feelings prompt us to rethink the relationship of the feeling of form to European heteronormative ideology and the ethics of community formation. The Unconsoled (1995), in particular, serves as a twofold limit case of the feeling of form: first, as a limit case of the futile feeling of form, and second, as a limit case of the distinction between the novel form and the novel series form. This twofold limit case speaks to its own historical experience of futility at the end of history, and responds to the aesthetic and ideological legacies of early twentieth-century experimental novel series. / Graduate / 2021-05-12

Le XIXe siècle a vu s’épanouir de nombreux discours autour du crime sanglant : alors que la médecine cherchait sur et dans les corps les symptômes d’un mal intériorisé, la littérature accueillit avec une admiration teintée d’effroi les figures de la violence, dans une rencontre des peurs archaïques, des traumatismes de l’Histoire (Révolution et Empire) et des nouvelles méthodes épistémologiques. Les étiologies scientifiques comme les romans forgèrent alors des types criminels, le mal se parant d’attributs et de caractéristiques qui placèrent le corps criminel au confluent de la singularité et du partage. Compris comme signe de reconnaissance, la violence se dota alors d’une signalétique propre fonctionnant à la fois comme principe d’exclusion et d’inclusion.Contemporain de telles représentations, Balzac compose une œuvre peuplée de meurtriers et d’assassins en tout genre attestant a minima l’enregistrement des préoccupations du temps. Cette thèse se propose ainsi d’étudier les personnages homicides du romancier à la lumière des théories et des fictions du crime de manière à en évaluer l’influence sur la poétique balzacienne. En effet, la comparaison des romans de l’auteur avec les corpus criminologiques et fictionnels de la première moitié du XIXe siècle vise à déterminer dans quelle mesure et suivant quelles modalités le corps homicide balzacien met en scène une culpabilité oscillant entre marginalisation et fédération. / The 19th century saw the flourishing of discourses on bloody crime : as doctors examining bodies inside out were looking for the symptoms of internalized evil, literature contemplated the violent characters with a fear-tinted admiration resulting from the convergence of ancient fears, historical traumas from the French Revolution and the Empire, and epistemological methods. Scientific etiology and novels gave birth to criminal types, and Evil took on attributes and features which defined the criminal body as both one of singularity and share. Violence became recognizable, thus developing characteristics of its own according to the principles of inclusion and exclusion. Balzac saw the developing of these representations, and his work is therefore teeming with criminals and assassins of all sorts who bear witness to the novelist’s acquaintance with the concerns of his time. In the light of the theories and fiction on crime, this thesis offers a study of the novelist's assassins in order to gauge their influence on Balzacian literature. Indeed, a comparison between a scientific and fictional syllabus of the first half of the 19th century shall help one determine how and to what extent the Balzacian criminal embodies a culpability wavering between marginality and association.

In nineteenth-century Britain, the average person's mind was an anthology containing snatches of poetry, Latin verb conjugations, Bible verses, folk songs, miscellaneous facts, and the catechism. Because secular and religious education emphasized learning by rote, students' minds were stocked with information and quotations that originated in other texts, which is reflected in characters who repeat those bits and pieces in the period's literature. My dissertation investigates concepts of personal and national identity in Victorian literature and culture, particularly through the understudied phenomenon of rote memory. George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver, for example, quotes Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ to console herself in the face of tragedy, and Lewis Carroll's Alice attempts to recite didactic schoolroom poems in her efforts to distinguish herself from her less intelligent friends. These moments of memorization--although at first appearing merely to reflect what texts were consumed and recited in nineteenth-century England--in reality suggest much more. I argue that memorization remained centrally connected to nineteenth-century conceptions of identity: people are what they remember, even if those memories do not relate to their own lives, but instead to the information stocked in their minds. My readings of Mary Shelley's Matilda and George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss demonstrate rote learning's potential to erode a young woman's personal and religious identity. Instead of committing an act of powerful "poaching," as Michel de Certeau proposes, a memorizer often submits to the text's "strange invasion," as George Poulet suggests. My chapters centered on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and R.M. Ballantyne's Jarwin and Cuffy, however, locate possibilities for gaining critical thinking skills and forming cross-cultural relationships through a person's response to quoted texts. By examining the significance of memorization in nineteenth-century novels, we gain new understandings of the Victorian period, ranging from the minutiae of everyday routines to the complexity of entire belief systems. A seemingly straightforward moment, such as a character reciting a line or two of poetry, can lead to interdisciplinary insights about forms of reading, functions of memory, ideas about gender, beliefs about religion, and methods of imperialism. As my dissertation demonstrates, nineteenth-century mental anthologies give twenty-first-century readers a veritable index to the cultural past.

All My Mothers came to me as the story of a child trying to grasp the cruelty of the world through understanding her murdered mother and, later, her extended family of mothers. When I decided to add chapters from the mother’s point of view, I realized that she had the same struggle and so I wanted to parallel their journeys—the journey of a mother and daughter, or two daughters, really—in order to show the way that this family passes on its pain. All this takes place in what J. R. R. Tolkien called a secondary world, a term that we still use to describe fantasy that takes place in a world other than this one. The depth of worldbuilding that comes with this speculative genre places power in the writer’s hands to imagine radically feminist worlds or examine power, structures, and beliefs. I also knew I wanted to create societies and characters that are queer. Science fiction and fantasy are uniquely positioned to explore different relationship structures and ways of loving as depicted in feminist classics like Ursula K. LeGuin’s <i>The Left Hand of Darkness</i> or Octavia Butler’s <i>Dawn</i>. In my novel, all three immortal peoples are ace, agender or genderfluid, and reproduce asexually. While race is not constructed the same way in this world, most of the immortals have shades of dark skin because I think it is powerful to imagine BIPOC as ageless beings with the agency to shape their futures. Given the story’s themes of creation, destruction, and environmental apocalypse, I think it’s important to see queer femmes saving their worlds, healing their families, and building alliances.