The feeling of a narcotic cannot be put to words, just as the sensation one receives from her or his favorite artwork is impossible to record. Equally, both these delicacies of modern existence must be sought out. The user/viewer only gets a tiny taste and must therefore keep coming back for more. Utopia may be an unrealistic construction of culture, but I would posit the idea the both narcotics and art strive to give us just that – however tiny a taste. This paper addresses the intersections of visual art, drugs, anti-hero worship and contemporary representations of Romanticism throughout the American body politic.

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, 'lo-fi,' a term suggesting poor sound quality, the opposite of 'hi-fi,' became a characteristic perceived in certain popular-music recordings and eventually emerged as a category within independent or 'indie' popular music. It is typically taken to express the technical and technological deficiencies associated with amateur or 'DIY' musical production, namely at home using cheap recording equipment. However, this thesis rejects the assumption that lo-fi equates to a mode of production and charts it as a construction and a certain aesthetics within popular music discourse, defined as 'a positive appreciation of what are perceived and/or considered normatively interpreted as imperfections in a recording.' I chart the development and manifestation of lo-fi aesthetics, and the ways it focuses on various 'lo-fi effects' such as noise, distortion ('phonographic imperfections') and performance imperfections, in several decades of newspapers, magazines and websites covering popular music in the English-speaking world. I argue that lo-fi aesthetics is not merely the unmediated, realist authenticity that it is often claimed to be, but one that is also fascinated with the distance from perceived commercial norms of technique and technology (or 'technocracy') that lo-fi effects signify. Lo-fi aesthetics derives from aesthetics of primitivism and realism that extend back long before phonographic imperfections were positively received. I also differentiate between lo-fi aesthetics and aesthetics of noise music, distortion in rock, glitch, punk and cassette culture. An appreciation for recording imperfections and the development of 'lo-fi' as a construction and a category is charted since the 1950s and particularly in the 1980s, 1990s and in the twenty-first century, taking in the reception of artists such as the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Hasil Adkins, the Shaggs, Jandek, Daniel Johnston, Beat Happening, Pavement, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Beck, Will Oldham, Ariel Pink and Willis Earl Beal.

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The intention of this thesis is to provide an alternative counter-narrative to the mainstream histories of punk that center white men. By focusing on the contributions of fem queer and POC punks, I aim to legitimize punk music as a form of resistance against systems of oppression that are oppositional to the commodified forms of mainstream punk. Using Alice Bag, as my central case study as a fem queer punk that is often left out of punk historical narratives, I contextualize her work through feminist, queer, and media studies lenses to bridge the gap between academia and forgotten personal experience.

There is an aversion within the field of Appalachian Studies to addressing the cultural formulations of the Appalachian/hillbilly/mountaineer as an icon of aggressive resistance. The aversion is understandable, as for far too long images of the irrationally and savagely violent mountaineer were integral to the most gross popular culture stereotypes of Appalachia. Media consumers often take pleasure or comfort in these images, which usually occur in a reactionary context with the hillbilly as either a type of nationally necessary savage OR as an unregenerate barbarian against whom a national civilization will triumph and benefit by the struggle. I bookend my study with two artifacts of Appalachian representation, linked in specific subject matter, but separated by twenty years. The 1991 West Virginia Public Television-produced documentary film The Dancing Outlaw quickly became an underground cult classic—an object of both absurdist delight and cultural identification within the punk subculture, particularly among those with both a punk sensibility and personal connections to the Appalachian region (birth, upbringing, residency, ancestry). In 2009, MTV and the resources of its wildly popular Jackass franchise revisited the locale and family featured in this earlier documentary and produced the sophisticated and polished film The Wild, Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. The core purpose of this project, however, is to examine why Appalachia and/or the hillbilly, as constructed within and across these subcultures, possessed such appeal during this historical moment. My hypothesis is that such appeal lies primarily (but not exclusively) in the negative characteristics of the region and its inhabitants that are represented throughout a variety of subcultural texts: documentary film, art house cinema, niche regional literature, and independent zine publishing and early blogging. For both those identifying themselves as Appalachians/hillbillies (or some related variation thereof) and those “playing” as Appalachians/hillbillies, these images become statements of resistance and survival to challenge the national mass culture and the political ideologies supporting it.

Den här uppsatsen undersöker punken och några aspekter av dess visuella identitet. Genom att söka några av dess konsthistoriska rötter finner man att situationism och dadaism ofta nämns som konströrelser med ett uttryck som punken bygger vidare på. Det kan förklaras genom bland annat att Malcom McClaren och Jamie Reid, som låg bakom lanseringen av Sex Pistols, hade en situationistisk bakgrund. Reids arbete med till exempel skivomslag åt Pistols har också lagt grunden för föreställningen om vad punkestetik är. Med analyser av God Save The Queen 1977 och Nowhere Buses 1972 har jag sökt att ge en förklaring till hur de bilderna kan tänkas fungera utifrån en mottagarkontext av frustrerade, arbetslösa ungdomar i slutet av 70-talet. Säkerhetsnålen som en symbol inom punken kan förstås som en kritik av konsumtionssamhället. Den tvetydiga användningen av svastikan på kläder och flygblad är mer svårtolkad, den kan ses utifrån sitt rent provocerande värde eller som att den tillhör en gammal värld och därför är utan betydelse. Från detta har jag följt punkens förgreningar mot en politiskt medveten subkultur där aktivism, anarkistisk teori och D.I.Y.-filosofi är rådande. D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) är en viktig aspekt av punkens utveckling. Punken påverkar även andra konstnärliga uttryck som syns hos till exempel den samhällskritiske konstnären Banksy. Det går också att se ett kulturhistoriskt intresse för den ursprungliga punken, som nu blivit en del av kulturarvet. Utifrån bland annat den ideologiska förförståelsen som framträder i min undersökning har jag analyserar två verk av den svenska konstnären, och punkmusikern, Ella Tillema. På verket Mitt Hjärta Är En Bomb 2009 har jag lagt en feministisk blick och Den Postapokalyptiska Skapelseberättelsen (Partyt är Över) 2011 har analyserats utifrån en mottagarkontext med förståelse för anarkistisk aktivism, djurrättsfrågor och dess symboler. Punken som subkultur kan förstås som en motkultur och punkestetik som en motestetik. En slutsats som min undersökning leder till är att punkestetik kan ses både som förhållningssätt och som stil, D.I.Y.-aspekten är betydelsefull i båda avseenden. Som förhållningssätt handlar det bland annat om att inte vara en passiv konsument, utan vara delaktig och det blir i sin praktik till en slags samhällskritik. Identitet och tillhörighet är en viktig del av för att förstå punkestetik som stil. Stilen skapas dels utifrån bilder som haft stort genomslag inom subkulturen, till exempel Reids. Dels utifrån en teknisk amatörism, i vissa fall skenbar, som markerar D.I.Y.-praktiken där alla har möjlighet att vara delaktiga. Det är dock min mening att stil och förhållningssätt inte kan särskiljas om man vill förstå vad punkestetik är.

These seven stories chronicle the author's apprenticeship as a fiction writer. Four are written in the first-person point of view, two are in a limited third-person, and one is written in third-person objective. The stories vary considerably with respect to character, tone, and setting; however, all may be said to explore the abjection and isolation of growing up in United States.

This thesis introduces the reader to rock music in Durban from 1963 to 1985, tracing the development of rock in Durban from rock'n'roll to hard core punk. Although the thesis is historically orientated, it also endeavours to show the relationship of rock music in Durban to three central themes, viz: the relationship of rock in Durban to the socio-political realities of apartheid in South Africa; the role of women in local rock, and the identity crisis experienced by white, English-speaking South Africans. Each of these themes is explored in a separate chapter, with Chapter Two providing the bulk of historical data on which the remaining chapters are based. Besides the important goal of documenting a forgotten and ignored rock history, one central concern pervades this work. In every chapter, the conclusions reached all point to the identity crisis experienced both by South African rock audiences and the rock musicians themselves. The constant hankering after international (and specifically British) rock music trends both by audiences and fans is symptomatic of a culture in crisis, and it is the search for the reasons for this identity crisis that dominate this work. The global/local debate and its relationship to rock in South Africa has been a useful theoretical tool in the unravelling of the identity crisis mentioned above. Chapter Four focusses on the role of women in the Durban rock scene and documents the difficulties experienced by women who were rock musicians in Durban. This is a small contribution to the increasing field of womens' studies, and I have attempted to relate the role of women in rock in Durban to other studies in this field. / Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.

This thesis examines the influence of life experiences and personally significant texts on the formation of an individual’s personal and professional identity. Through autoethnographic exploration, the author explores the experiences and texts that have constituted his personal curriculum, shaped the way he views the world around him, and informed the role he hopes to embody as an educator. The author argues that by sharing our stories and analyzing the cultural artifacts we have connected with over a lifetime, we become more cognizant about and better equipped to take responsibility for the people we are in the process of becoming. The sharing and exploration of our lived curricular experiences, he suggests, may cause students to invest more heavily in their education and potentially foster more widely representative and meaningful school cultures. / Graduate / 0727 / 0399 / 0401 / travisrichey@hotmail.com

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