This thesis will explore the proposal that Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is, as Gaiman describes it in its epilogue, a “story about stories” (The Wake, epilogue). Its particular focus will be on Gaiman’s conception of humans as essentially narrative beings, who use narratives to interact with the world around them, to impose order on information, to provide interpretive paradigms, and as models for their behaviour. Gaiman has not only explored this idea, but used the fantastic mode to create a universe in which these types of ‘interpretive narratives’ directly affect physical reality. Gaiman’s ideas about the way narratives work have been heavily influenced by both postmodern and Jungian legacies. The thesis will propose that the dynamic between postmodern intertextuality and the Jungian idea of the archetypes is a driving force in The Sandman. While Gaiman embraces a playful, bricoleur intertextuality, he also retains a belief that humans can invoke the archetypes to access profound meanings, which transcend the particularities of their expression in any individual instances. Under these influences, Gaiman concieves of a postmodern, Jungian approach to mythology. We will see that Gaiman’s interactions with narrative, postmodernism and Jungianism eventually lead him to formulate an ethic for the contemporary world, and that he encodes it in his own mythology. This ethic both empowers individuals and demands that they take responsibility for their power. It also focuses on how the individual can productively and tolerantly interact with a heteroglossic world. Instead of a fact to be sought out, meaning becomes a process of active creation.

Thesis advisor: Paul Gray / This dissertation analyzes the field of consumption to provide an analysis of Bourdieusian cultural capital. Bourdieu introduced cultural capital to express the summed effect of intergenerational and personal institutional credentials on economic structure (1986). The three articles of this dissertation – Imagining Class, Precariat Production, and New Cultures of Connection – take up the study of cultural capital in a contemporary, American context among Millennial consumers (Bourdieu 1984, 1993). These cases analyze producer and consumer experiences within the capital markets for durable goods, labor, and a barter market for services. The experiences under analysis include the design and purchase of luxury clothing, the selling of labor to temporary employers, and the barter of unlike services for a like medium of exchange. The analyses build upon Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital by tracing its role and evolution through producer and consumer exchanges in the “consumer field” (Bourdieu; 1984, 1986, 1993). The analysis of this dissertation relies on semi-structured interview, ethnographic, and survey data. In total, 96 semi-structured interviews were conducted during the data collection for the three articles. Interview data is supported by economic survey and ethnographic data for research participants. Imagining Class melds postmodern and Veblenian consumer theory through informant narratives of the cynical and strategic production of conspicuous consumption enacted by both producers and consumers of the clothing brand Prep Outfitters (Featherstone 1991; Veblen 1899/1994). Upwardly mobile, young consumers believe that performing an elite lifestyle is a condition upon which financial services career success rests. The shared belief is correlated with income increases and results in an environment of aesthetic and lifestyle conformity on Wall Street. Precariat Production analyzes the motivational aspects and economic benefits of collaborative production work within the online platforms of Airbnb, RelayRides, and Taskrabbit and provides insight into the nature of the new working precariat class (Standing 2009). Analysis shows that three central motivational categories drive participation: money, efficiency / environmental, and workplace flexibility. Possession of economic assets prior to beginning work as a collaborative producer is a key characteristic associated with high earning within the precarious, collaborative marketplace, yet cultural capital is not a significant correlate of high income relative to the labor market. Further, those who enjoy the most economic success within the collaborative marketplace as “high earners” are also most likely to express that a motivation of “efficiency environmental” drives their production. The efficiency/environmental motivational finding lend a broader support for the claim of an evolution of high cultural capital expressions of ecohabitus (Bourdieu 1984; Schor et al. 2014). New Cultures of Connection evaluates the exchanges made on an egalitarian barter market through the medium of a local currency, “time dollars.” The study uses Zelizer’s concept of a circuit of commerce (2005) to show that cultural capital limits potential trades available in the time bank and reveals that those with high cultural capital exit the market. Ecohabitus provides one exception to this finding as high cultural capital participants find nonmonetary value in authenticity, localism, environmentalism, holistic wellness and self-reliance. Yet, this new set of high cultural capital preferences does not pair with their exchanges as they demonstrate enduring inclination towards professionalized, market-like services. Disparities in cultural capital challenge the potential of barter networks like the “time bank” to alter the dependence of identities of market practice and success. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The aim of this dissertation is the study of postmodern aesthetic theory, as it relates to architecture. Because it was not clear at the outset if the postmodern discourse were relevant to architecture in South Africa, examples in this country will he discussed. Dealing, as it does, with the study of aesthetic theory, the discussion of buildings and the criticism of buildings are not the primary' objectives of this study, although the importance of making arguments applicable to actual buildings as examples is acknowledged. Broad principles in the theory of postmodernism are dealt with first, namely the shifts that have occurred on economic and cultural levels in Western societies during the last three decades. The re-evaluation of Western-culture is discussed, as it relates to the criticism of the Enlightenment tradition and positivism by pragmatist philosophy and the Frankfurt School. In chapter four, which deals with 'culture industry*, then observation that cultural goods are becoming consumer commodities, and the diminishing gap between 'high art' and popular culture, are discussed.

The existence of prostitution has been a longtime concern for many societies. It has also been a complicated issue within feminist discourse. Some women choose sex work as a viable economic option while others are forced into prostitution by traffickers and pimps and some are forced into it due to disadvantaged circumstances. The presence of sex work and prostitution is one of the occurrences that accompany a patriarchal capitalist system. Many feminists indeed argue that prostitution is a byproduct of a patriarchal capitalist system. The migration of women for sex work and the trafficking of women into prostitution cannot occur without participation of a dominant more powerful group, and a marginalized less powerful group. Sex work and prostitution are complicated components in an ever increasingly connected world. However, all too often, the belief that a patriarchal capitalist system supports the migration of women for sex work and the trafficking of women into prostitution fails to encompass all the complexities surrounding these occurrences. The existence of sex work and prostitution involves legal, economic, political, and moral implications that deserve broad theorization. In order to more fully understand the legal, economic, political, and moral implications that contribute to the existence of sex work and prostitution, the voices of women that are involved must be illuminated. While this interview does not yet exist, I argue that only through interviews of women in sex work and prostitution can we fully understand the issue. Illuminating the voices of these women will help to reveal how issues surrounding sex workersí agency and victimization of trafficked women are present and absent within feminist discourse. This thesis focuses on the differences between women sex workers with agency and women who are victims of trafficking and pimping. It also discusses the migration of women into the sex industry. The discussion of agency and victimization is applied to modern and postmodern feminist theory. Modern feminist theory is useful to an understanding of how sex work and prostitution are oppressive to the women involved and how conditions of agency and victimization are supported and/or negated. Postmodern feminist theory transforms the focus of the discussion from the identity of sex workers and prostitutes as agents and victims to a discussion of these women as subjects. First person interviews by sex workers reveal their subjectivity and supports the argument that what they do is indeed work, and it is viewed as such by the women themselves. Inclusion of the voices of sex workers and prostitutes also reveals the issues and concerns that they experience as employees in sex work and prostitution.

This study examines what characterizes the experiences of being an Asian graduate student mother in the United States pertaining to their race, gender, class, and culture, in particular, (a) the common identities and experiences of the women; (b) the way they juggle different roles and identities in everyday life; and (c) the marginalization and privilege associated with the women's experiences. The researcher collected data from a range of postmodern methodologies including postmodern interview, personal journal writing, and researcher's notes over a two-year period and chose eight women to participate in the study. Findings indicate that numerically there is a wide range of similar identities underlying the women's experiences pertaining to their race, gender, class, and culture, which are socially, culturally, economically, politically, and linguistically constructed. Some external factors which differentiate the women's experiences include the degrees they sought, research fields, and the phase of their graduate life experience. Based on different contexts some identities appear more plural, some are played more frequently than the others. The most frequently played identities across the study participants are professional identities, professional and mother identities, reversed gender role identities, and good mother identities. Qualitatively, each woman has a unique personal history about their past, present, and future as an Asian, an ESL graduate student, a mother, a wife, and many other hidden and overt roles they play in their everyday lives. / Dissertation Chair: Dr. David I. Hanauer Dissertation Committee Members: Dr. Lingyan Yang and Dr. Gloria Park

Contemporary American novels over the last forty years have developed a unique orientation toward religious and spiritual rhetoric that can best be understood within the multidisciplinary concept of the postsecular. In the morally-tinged discourse of their characters, several esteemed American novelists (John Updike, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and Cormac McCarthy) since 1970 have used sermons or sermon-like artifacts to convey postsecular attitudes and motivations. These postsecular sermons express systems of belief that are hybrid, exploratory, and confessional in nature. Through rhetorical analysis of sermons in four contemporary American novels, this dissertation explores the performance of postsecularity in literature and defines the contribution of those tendancies to the field of literary and rhetorical studies.

“Urban Cartographies: The Spanish Baroque City and the Contemporary Latin American City” examines baroque and postmodern narratives through the representation of urban life. This study argues that the baroque reflects the crisis posed by the encounter with the other in the new continent of America, while the postmodern is related to a crisis of knowledge. Selected narrative texts illustrate the main literary tendencies of these two periods and demonstrate similarities in the responses of literary characters to their urban settings. The sense of crisis is both a central literary theme and a response to the historical conditions of urban life during the two periods. Even though the concept of crisis appears to involve a unique experience, the parallels between the two periods suggest that the postmodern crisis is not unique. The social and cultural responses of literary characters to the sense of crisis are similar in both periods. Postmodern social conditions of urban existence are seen as repetitions of the patterns of the baroque. This observation emphasizes literary traditions; parallels and differences between baroque and postmodern texts attest to the idea that all literature revisits previous literary forms through the dynamics of intertextuality. Another focus is the value of the concept of mapping, as a literary theme and a personal practice. As a means for discovering of urban spaces and of defining the human subject mapping suggests that in times of crisis subjects produce parallel systems to control their circumstances. Lastly, this work discusses an experimental literature generated in response to urban disorder, in which disruption and chaos lead to new narrative forms. Ultimately, picaresque and postmodern narratives both respond to complex urban spaces through forms that innovate and integrate new cultural and literary elements.

“Urban Cartographies: The Spanish Baroque City and the Contemporary Latin American City” examines baroque and postmodern narratives through the representation of urban life. This study argues that the baroque reflects the crisis posed by the encounter with the other in the new continent of America, while the postmodern is related to a crisis of knowledge. Selected narrative texts illustrate the main literary tendencies of these two periods and demonstrate similarities in the responses of literary characters to their urban settings. The sense of crisis is both a central literary theme and a response to the historical conditions of urban life during the two periods. Even though the concept of crisis appears to involve a unique experience, the parallels between the two periods suggest that the postmodern crisis is not unique. The social and cultural responses of literary characters to the sense of crisis are similar in both periods. Postmodern social conditions of urban existence are seen as repetitions of the patterns of the baroque. This observation emphasizes literary traditions; parallels and differences between baroque and postmodern texts attest to the idea that all literature revisits previous literary forms through the dynamics of intertextuality. Another focus is the value of the concept of mapping, as a literary theme and a personal practice. As a means for discovering of urban spaces and of defining the human subject mapping suggests that in times of crisis subjects produce parallel systems to control their circumstances. Lastly, this work discusses an experimental literature generated in response to urban disorder, in which disruption and chaos lead to new narrative forms. Ultimately, picaresque and postmodern narratives both respond to complex urban spaces through forms that innovate and integrate new cultural and literary elements.

Numerous studies have pointed to the historiographic and metafictional aspects of Ian McEwan’s and Graham Swift’s fiction, although few have examined the connections between McEwan and Swift. This study develops from that work by proposing that McEwan’s and Swift’s fictions explore similar themes, beyond those of just history and metafiction. By situating McEwan and Swift as postmodern writers who are strikingly intertextual, in the sense initially coined by Julia Kristeva, this study will show that both authors are deeply concerned with the violence of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and the role that violence has played in the failure of metanarratives, as well as the resulting terror subjects face as they seek replacements for the personal authenticity, legitimacy, and meaning once provided by totalizing metanarratives. This study also illustrates that McEwan and Swift recognize the persistence of the metanarrative of science, as well as the psychic violence inherent in trying to replace metanarratives with received literary traditions. By developing on these ideas, this thesis argues that McEwan and Swift are actively engaged not only in exploring the anxiety subjects face as they realize there is nothing left upon which they can base their personal legitimacy, but also that the authors are suggesting there is no easy replacement for the lost, albeit fictitious, authenticity once situated in metanarratives and received genres. Finally, this paper will demonstrate that while these two contemporary novelists significantly problematize narrative and narrative frameworks, McEwan and Swift ultimately convey only one sure method to cope with the mourning and terror of the postmodern condition: continue writing.

While discourse and rhetoric has always been a part of traditional diplomacy, rhetoric and communication theory has not enjoyed an active voice in the scholarship of foreign relations, and more specifically, public diplomacy. This project argues that a postmodern turn in public diplomacy was formalized in the State Department's 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) and that two specific directives laid out therein--to expand and strengthen relationships between individuals and steer the narrative--can find theoretical ground in communication scholarship. After examining the mid-to-late 20th century shift from specialized modern policy training to a rhetorical public diplomacy that views diplomats as generalists engaging members of varied, local publics, Pearce and Cronen's Coordinated Management of Meaning and the narrative work of Ricoeur, MacIntyre, Fisher, Arnett, and Arneson carve out a place for communication scholarship in the academic study of diplomacy and foreign relations. A case study of the State Department's community diplomacy initiatives in Northern Ireland are examined as a core tactic of what I call "public diplomacy 2.0"--postmodern public diplomacy attentive to rhetoric and communication. This work rests on the premise that philosophy of communication and rhetorical scholarship is central to good public diplomacy praxis in a postmodern world. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Communication and Rhetorical Studies / PhD; / Dissertation;