Recent queer scholarship challenges the academy’s longstanding urban and adult oriented trajectory, pointing to the way such studies ignore rural and heartland regions of the country as well as the experiences of youth. In this thesis, I craft a limited ethnographic methodological approach together with a textual analysis of The Oprah Winfrey Show to deliver portraits of gay men living in various rural or heartland areas who use their television sets to encounter and identify with LGBTQ people across the nation. The overarching aim of this project is to explore the ways in which religion, rurality, and Oprah coalesce in the process of identity creation to form rural gay men’s conceptual selves and how they are then informed by that identity formation. I will focus my textual analyses through the frames of six of Oprah Winfrey’s “ultimate viewers” to elucidate how they receive and interact with her star text, how they use television sets in the public rooms of their homes to create boundary public spheres, and how they are impacted by the show’s various uses of the coming out paradigm. In so doing, this thesis seeks to contribute to the scholarship of rural queer studies, television studies, and Oprah studies. / text

In my paper, I explore how totalitarian regimes use technology to break the borders between the private and public spheres, through the study of two fictional works. Reflecting how real regimes operate, these fictional totalitarian regimes apply technology to extend the sphere of public authority. Exploring the idea, I am going to compare two totalitarian regimes in different periods of time. The first one is the Republic of Gieald, which is depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale 1985 by Margaret Atwood, and the second one is the society presented in the movie The Island, directed by Michael Bay. By technology in my paper, I mean it in the most comprehensive sense of the term, modern invented technologies and institutions after 18th century in post Industrial Revolution era. In what follows, I am applying the concepts, which are the product of control invention. I will argue that the states penetrate into private sphere by imposing repressive rules for having sex or reproductivity. Moreover, I portray that the states use different forms of media and surveillance in private and public spheres, to enlarge the state.

This is a thesis about anti-paternalism – the liberal doctrine that we may not interfere with a person’s liberty for her own good. Empirical circumstances and moral values may certainly give us reason to avoid benevolent interference. Anti-paternalism as a normative doctrine should, however, be rejected. Essay I concerns the definitions of paternalism and anti-paternalism. It is argued that only a definition of paternalism in terms of compound reason-actions can accommodate its special moral properties. Definitions in terms of actions, common in the literature, cannot. It is argued, furthermore, that in specifying the reason-actions in further detail, the notion of what is self-regarding, as opposed to other-regarding, is irrelevant, contrary to received opinion. Essay II starts out with the definition of paternalism defended in essay I and claims that however this very general definition is specified, anti-paternalism is unreasonable and should be rejected. Anti-paternalism is the position that certain reasons – referring one way or the other to the good of a person, give no valid normative support to certain actions – some kind of interferences with the same person. Since the reasons in question are normally quite legitimate and important reasons for action, a convincing argument for anti-paternalism must explain why they are invalid in cases of interference. A closer look at the reasons and actions in question provides no basis for such an explanation. Essay III considers a concrete case of benevolent interference – the withholding of information concerning uncertain threats to public health in the public’s best interest. Such a policy has been suggested in relation to the European Commission’s proposed new system for the Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH). Information about uncertain threats to health from chemicals would allegedly spread anxiety and depression and thus do more harm than good. The avoidance of negative health effects is accepted as a legitimate and good reason for withholding of information, thus respecting the conclusion of essay II, that anti-paternalism should be rejected. Other reasons, however, tip the balance in favour of making the information available. These reasons include the net effects on knowledge, psychological effects, effects on private decisions and effects on political decisions. / QC 20101115

Cette thèse propose une lecture de quatre pièces de Shakespeare du point de vue de la théorie de la sphère publique qui se concentre spécifiquement sur la façon dont les personnages féminins accèdent à la sphère publique et l'impact de cet accès sur leur vie. Cette question est abordée en étudiant la façon dont les femmes sont représentées dans ces quatre pièces de Shakespeare, Othello, The Winter's Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, et 1 Henry VI. Je soutiens que l'accès des femmes à la sphère publique est presque toujours obtenu par, ou lié à, leur transgression des normes sociales. Ma thèse vise à fournir une meilleure compréhension de la relation problématique des femmes à la sphère publique pendant la Renaissance par le biais d'une enquête sur les modèles et les mécanismes de représentation dans les différentes pièces. Grâce à un examen multidisciplinaire des textes, cette thèse propose une critique des vocabulaires patriarcaux et des modèles de représentation qui tentent de dépeindre les femmes comme appartenant nécessairement à la sphère privée. Il examine un ensemble de transgressions féminines qui sont utilisées comme point de départ et comme justification d'une publicité négative. Chacun des chapitres se concentre sur une forme de transgression qui est considérée comme une menace pour les normes sociales à différents niveaux. Des sujets telles que le désir, la grossesse, la liberté d'expression et l'héroïsme sont tous étudiés ici en relation avec le genre féminin. À travers ses différents cadres théoriques, cette thèse s'engage dans un dialogue critique entre les études littéraires, féministes, post-habermassiennes et de création de publics afin d'élucider de nouvelles façons de penser à ces questions particulières et d'éclairer les mécanismes des mouvements des femmes entre les sphères publiques et privées. / This dissertation provides a reading of four of Shakespeare’s plays from the perspective of public sphere theory that focuses specifically on the way feminine characters gain access to the public sphere and the impact of this access on their lives. This issue is addressed by studying how women are represented within these four Shakespearean plays, Othello, The Winter’s Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, and 1 Henry VI. I argue that women’s access to the public sphere is almost always achieved through, or linked to, their transgression of the social norms. My dissertation seeks to provide a better understanding of the problematic relationship of women to the early modern public sphere through an investigation of the patterns and mechanisms of representation within the different plays. Through a multidisciplinary examination of the texts, this dissertation offers a gendered critique of the patriarchal vocabularies and patterns of representation that try to depict women as necessarily belonging to the private sphere. It examines a set of female transgressions that are used as a starting point and a justification for a negative publicity. Each of the chapters focuses on one form of transgression that is seen as threatening to the social norms on various levels. Issues such as desire, pregnancy, free speech, and heroism are all studied here in relation to the female gender. Through its different theoretical frameworks, this dissertation engages in a critical dialogue between literary, feminist, post-Habermasian, and making publics studies in order to elucidate new ways of thinking about these particular issues and to shed some light on the mechanisms of women’s movements between the public and private spheres.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

In this thesis, I analys suburb- and housing planning and interior decoration carried out primarily in Stockholm between the 1930s and the 1950s. Functionalism, the overall concept of the period, has perhaps been interpreted in terms of ideological concepts, interpreted as "democratic" and as a progressive dividing line between the past and the future. I examine how housing and suburban planning in Sweden in the mid-20th century was affected by how housing and town planning related to that period's clear class boundaries and well-defined gender roles. I analyse both rhetoric and physical planning. Whether the architect had explicit ambitions to achieve spatial differentiation of socio-economic categories, how suburban planners dealt with their historical inheritance and the principles about categorisation and spatial separation. I also analyse how ideas of class, gender and spatial differentiation of family members affected the organisation and design of rooms in the housing planning of the mid-20th century. The general conclusion of the thesis as a whole is that ideas about class, sex and familial hierarchy were reflected in functionalist housing and interior decoration. The planned suburbs in Stockholm involved explicit strategies for differentiating population categories in different suburbs. The planned suburbs, which were regarded as paradigmatic cases for the suburban planning of the period, involved explicit strategies for differentiating population categories in different suburbs, a strategy that was concretised in physical suburban planning. Terraced housing in one area, småstugor in another, blocks of flats in a third, detached houses in a fourth. Sociological arguments justified this type of suburban planning. The emotional affinity between neighbours was considered to be better if the neighbours belong to the same socio economic category. Planned homes, which were regarded as paradigmatic cases for the housing planning of this period, involved explicit strategies for differentiating family members into different rooms, distinguishing between private and public rooms within the sphere of the home, a strategy that was concretised in physical housing planning. I analyse how the magazine's editorial content contributed to producing a middle-class housing ideal. A central aspect of modern housing planning and the debate in around 1930 was the launch of the home as an essentially private sphere. The editorial team behind the magazine Hem i Sverige launched the home as a reaction against the idea of the home as essentially a private sphere, with a clear spatial hierarchy and division between different family members, between private and public spheres. I examined the participation of the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in the 1930 Stockholm exhibition. As an influential commercial actor, the store's management had a strategy of combining consumption with both benefit and enjoyment, dreams, pastimes and goal-oriented purchases. The starting point for Nordiska Kompaniet's interior decoration approach was the organisation and content of the upper middle-class home. The drawing rooms, the dining room, the serving area, the homes with clear dividing lines between private and public sphere. Family structures and familial hierarchy were emphasised on the basis of the upper middle-class family's tradition. / Forskarskolan för estetiska vetenskaper

This thesis is an attempt to constructively interpret and critically evaluate the liberal doctrine that we may not limit a person’s liberty for her own good, and to discuss its implications and alternatives in some concrete areas of public health policy. The thesis starts theoretical and goes ever more practical. The first paper is devoted to positive interpretation of anti-paternalism with special focus on the reason component – personal good. A novel generic definition of paternalism is proposed, intended to capture, in a generous fashion, the object of traditional liberal resistance to paternalism – the invocation of personal good reasons for limiting of or interfering with a person’s liberty. In the second paper, the normative aspect of this resistance is given a somewhat technical interpretation in terms of invalidation of reasons – the blocking of reasons from influencing the moral status of actions according to their strength. It is then argued that normative anti-paternalism so understood is unreasonable, on three grounds: 1) Since the doctrine only applies to sufficiently voluntary action, voluntariness determines validity of reasons, which is unwarranted and leads to wrong answers to moral questions. 2) Since voluntariness comes in degrees, a threshold must be set where personal good reasons are invalidated, leading to peculiar jumps in the justifiability of actions. 3) Anti-paternalism imposes an untenable and unhelpful distinction between the value of respecting choices that are sufficiently voluntary and choices that are not. The third paper adds to this critique the fourth argument that none of the action types typically proposed to specify the action component of paternalism is such that performing an action of that type out of benevolence is essentially morally problematic. The fourth paper ignores the critique in the second and third papers and proposes, in an anti-paternalistic spirit, a series of rules for the justification of option-restricting policies aimed at groups where some members consent to the policy and some do not. Such policies present the liberal with a dilemma where the value of not restricting people’s options without their consent conflicts with the value of allowing people to shape their lives according to their own wishes. The fifth paper applies the understanding of anti-paternalism developed in the earlier papers to product safety regulation, as an example of a public health policy area. The sixth paper explores in more detail a specific public health policy, namely that of mandatory alcohol interlocks in all cars, proposed by the former Swedish government and supported by the Swedish National Road Administration. The policy is evaluated for cost-effectiveness, for possible diffusion of individual responsibility, and for paternalistic treatment of drivers. The seventh paper argues for a liberal policy in the area of dissemination of information about uncertain threats to public health. The argument against paternalism is based on common sense consequentialist considerations, avoiding any appeal to the normative anti-paternalism rejected earlier in the thesis. / QC 20100714

<p>This is a thesis about anti-paternalism – the liberal doctrine that we may not interfere with a person’s liberty for her own good. Empirical circumstances and moral values may certainly give us reason to avoid benevolent interference. Anti-paternalism as a normative doctrine should, however, be rejected.</p><p><em>Essay I</em> concerns the definitions of paternalism and anti-paternalism. It is argued that only a definition of paternalism in terms of compound reason-actions can accommodate its special moral properties. Definitions in terms of actions, common in the literature, cannot. It is argued, furthermore, that in specifying the reason-actions in further detail, the notion of what is self-regarding, as opposed to other-regarding, is irrelevant, contrary to received opinion.</p><p><em>Essay II </em>starts out with the definition of paternalism defended in essay I and claims that however this very general definition is specified, anti-paternalism is unreasonable and should be rejected. Anti-paternalism is the position that certain reasons – referring one way or the other to the good of a person, give no valid normative support to certain actions – some kind of interferences with the same person. Since the reasons in question are normally quite legitimate and important reasons for action, a convincing argument for anti-paternalism must explain why they are invalid in cases of interference. A closer look at the reasons and actions in question provides no basis for such an explanation.</p><p><em>Essay III</em> considers a concrete case of benevolent interference – the withholding of information concerning uncertain threats to public health in the public’s best interest. Such a policy has been suggested in relation to the European Commission’s proposed new system for the<em> R</em>egistration, <em>E</em>valuation, and <em>A</em>uthorisation of <em>Ch</em>emicals (REACH). Information about uncertain threats to health from chemicals would allegedly spread anxiety and depression and thus do more harm than good. The avoidance of negative health effects is accepted as a legitimate and good reason for withholding of information, thus respecting the conclusion of essay II, that anti-paternalism should be rejected. Other reasons, however, tip the balance in favour of making the information available. These reasons include the net effects on knowledge, psychological effects, effects on private decisions and effects on political decisions.</p>

The novel Leonora by Elena Poniatowska is about Leonora Carrington who was born into a wealthy family and challenged family traditions, and those expectations imposed by her social background and her gender. It will be shown that the main character acts according to a self-construction process free of social impositions. Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known phrase “one is not born a woman, one becomes one”, is one of the feminist positions that contributes to this analysis, as well as the literary techniques explained by Gérard Genette, Oscar Tacca, Mieke Bal and the narratology theories of focalization, direct speech, indirect speech and free indirect speech. The aim of this essay is to analyze the literary techniques that present the self-construction of the main character, and their effects on the reader. The hypotheses of this essay are that in order to present the self-construction of the character, the literary techniques create an effect of alternately zooming the reader in to the main character’s experience, and zooming out to a more objective view. In addition, the literary techniques used to present Carrington’s self-construction seek to show her feminist stance and her transgressions in both private and public spheres. Poniatowska’s literary techniques deliver the message that when a woman is released from social and cultural constraints she has the power to modify spheres.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal