Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: Susie O'Brien. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-166). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis investigates Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers and Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode in terms, of postcolonial and postmodern theory. These novels are often interpreted as being either one or the other. Critics rarely take into consideration that both of these works have features which can be seen to fit both theories. Both of these authors are valued as some of the more difficult novels to comprehend in terms of Canadian novels making this thesis even more complex and a challenge to write. It made sense to choose to investigate these two works side by side because they have a lot of similarities. Some of these resemblances range from aspects as basic as the time period when the novels were written to the author's methods of using history to make social commentary. It was also important to use two writers from Montreal, each from one of the two solitudes, in order to explore how their novels fit postmodern and postcolonial theories. This theoretical thesis attempts to show how both Leonard Cohen and Hubert Aquin do not use their writing for a nihilistic purpose. Each author uses historical situations to display a hope for new beginnings in the future. Despite all of the literature that exists on both Leonard Cohen and Hubert Aquin, this study tries to show a different interpretation then what has already been done.

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This essay investigates the possibility of a postcolonial canon of literature for upper-secondary schools in multicultural Sweden. It uses an in depth course book analysis as a basis for looking at didactic questions regarding the teaching of postcolonial literature. The main argument is that since no real guidelines exist neither in course plans or course books as to what literature to use in education at the upper-secondary level in the English subject, a postcolonial canon of literature is both an interesting and effective way of fulfilling both the English curriculum, and the overall larger goals of the Swedish schools. Teaching postcolonial literature is introduced as a method of bridging cultural gaps and promoting tolerance in a practical way in the form of multicultural education. This is of growing interest in a multicultural Sweden that faces challenges with immigration, especially since education is one of the best methods of social integration into society. Questions asked by the essay are: 1. Does a canon of literature exist in Sweden for the English subject at upper-secondary level? If not, are there general guidelines to be found on how to select literature in the curriculum? 2. To what extent do English 6 course books include/promote a canon of literature (if at all)? If postcolonial texts are featured, are they relegated to their separate area (i.e. treated as Edward Said’s “the other”) or do the course books include postcolonial novels in said canon? and 3. What arguments can be made for teaching a postcolonial canon of literature overall and in what ways does this argument fit with the GY 2011 course plan for English, and to a larger extent, some specific goals (mentioned in the introduction) of the overall upper-secondary curriculum? The essay finds that while this is certainly not an all encompassing solution to the challenges facing Sweden, the argument of including a postcolonial canon in the teaching of literature for the English subject is a small, but important, and viable way of fulfilling both the criteria of the English subject and the general criteria of the upper-secondary schools.

This dissertation examines how after decolonization the philosophical concept of universality was reimagined in European and Chinese literary and visual culture. My central argument is that, in the wake of the 1955 Bandung Conference and the Afro-Asian solidarity it embodied, writers and intellectuals from both sides of the Iron Curtain proposed alternative notions of universal culture and World Literature. While traditional Eurocentric conceptions of the universal were lodged in an exclusionary logic rooted in colonial violence and racism, after decolonization it became possible to imagine postcolonial claims to universality. I show how the Non-Alignment Movement imagined at Bandung inspired artists and intellectuals from both sides of the bipolar divide to voice new modes of solidarity in their work. I focus on three specific contexts: Italy, the Francophone world, and China. In the Italian context the writers I study include thinkers of a distinctively Gramscian lineage, from Pier Paolo Pasolini to Maria Antonietta Macciocchi. Conversely, the French and Francophone writers that I discuss, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, and Patrice Lumumba, were reconfiguring universality chiefly from a Hegelian perspective. Finally, in the Chinese context, I show how the Chinese contributions to the Bandung-era reinvention of universal culture and the ulterior art practice of the post-Mao 1980s were both rooted in the Marxist tradition. I conclude with a discussion of how postcolonial claims to universality, such as those imagined at Bandung, relate to “globalized” conceptions of the universal. My work contributes to major recent debates in the fields of Comparative Literature and Postcolonial Studies by engaging with the theoretical questions of universality and translatability. Scholars like Emily Apter have recently published critical studies of what has been dubbed the “translatability assumption” at the heart of the burgeoning field of World Literature. My research discusses how an overt emphasis on reading works of literature in translation in the name of ease of access and universal circulation can gloss over the cultural and linguistic diversity of the world’s languages and literatures. My research also relies on Judith Butler’s notion of “competing universalities.” In her text of the same title, Butler draws from Hegel, Gramsci, and others as she sets out to think the conditions of possibility for political hegemony. She arrives at an open-ended conclusion. Since many political constructs claim universality from within their located particularity, Butler argues that the intellectual’s task is to “adjudicate among competing notions of universality.” In line with these recent debates on the question of universality, my dissertation navigates between the different competing universals at stake during and after the Cold War. My dissertation is original in the sense that it is one of the first multilingual and interdisciplinary studies that elucidate how current geopolitical changes on the world stage—from China’s expansionist politics to the rise of formerly Third World nations as global economic players—are embedded in a cultural history. While globalization is commonly seen as a phenomenon that expanded after the historical shifts of 1989, my project shows how the “postcolonial universalities” imagined in the wake of decolonization by Western and non-Western writers and artists constituted the groundwork for this history.

Thesis (M.A.) in Communication--University of Maine, 2004. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-142).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 210-230).

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of English, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.