The image of 'the Jew' in nineteenth-century Russian literary texts is traditionally viewed as a paradigm of anti-Semitic discourse. Critics have typically accentuated the presence and continuity of negative stereotypes of the Jews. Yet anti-Semitic discourse is not the only approach to the representation of the Jews in Russian literature. This study explores the manifold nature of the portrayal of 'the Jew' in the works of three Russian writers of the highest calibre: Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev. Literature at the time was highly politicized and a writer was expected to examine the issues of the day from an ideological stance. This meant that a writer's fictional representation of 'the Jew' was treated by many as an illustration of Jews' qualities in real life. After the partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century, Russia acquired a large Jewish population. These new Jewish subjects were confined to the Pale of Settlement, which restricted their rights of residence in Russia proper. That in itself meant that the majority of Jews were invisible to Russian society. Writers mainly used Western literary patterns in describing 'the Jew'. Nevertheless, in using traditional mythic stereotypes of the Jews they not only applied the familiar framework of Western authors but also created images based on specifically Russian culture. Moreover, at different periods of the century 'the Jew' was endowed with traits uncharacteristic of previous myths. The writers' constructions of 'the Jew' thus became complex and flexible. In order to investigate the complex constructions of 'the Jew' the following matters are discussed: (1) the depiction of 'the Jew' by these three writers in conjunction with their understanding of their own identity, events occurring during their lifetime, and stereotypical frames of reference for the Jews; (2) the degree of controversy in their representations; (3) their use of the image of 'the Jew' to define the essential qualities of the Russian.

The focus of my research is Soviet documentary filmmaker, Elizaveta Svilova (1900-75), most commonly remembered, if at all, as the wife and collaborator of acclaimed Soviet film pioneer, Dziga Vertov (1896-1954). Having worked with her husband for many years, Svilova continued her career as an independent director-editor after Vertov fell out of favour with the Central Committee. Employed at the Central Studio for Documentary Film, a state-initiated studio, Svilova’s films were vehicles of rhetoric, mobilised to inform, educate and persuade the masses. She draws on visual symbols familiar to audiences and organises them according to the semiotic theories – namely techniques of dialecticism and linkage – attributed to the Soviet montage school of the 1920s. On-screen credits indicate that, during the period 1939 to 1956, Svilova was the director-editor of over 100 documentaries and newsreel episodes, yet this corpus of films has received very little critical attention. As my thesis aims to demonstrate, the reasons for the lack of attention to Svilova’s films are partly due to her husband’s eminent status – the rules whereby we construct film history have resulted in Svilova’s contribution being absorbed into Vertov’s – and this is related to the long-standing tendency within film criticism to marginalise the female artist. My thesis also touches on issues regarding curatorial and archival policies, and provides an opportunity to rethink early film history and the modes through which historiographic and filmographic knowledge are transmitted.

This thesis attempts to account for post-Soviet Russian national identity and nationalism ‘from below’, employing the ‘thick descriptions’ of the nation reproduced by ordinary Russians across social and generational lines. It examines the current equilibrium in mainstream nationalist hegemonic discourse, shedding light on the vitality of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. In doing this, nationalism is viewed as a set of discursive formations that make claims about how or what the nation is or should be. A central aim in this research is to highlight what discursive constructions are shared or contested across a representative sample of the Russian population. In order to offer a meaningful assessment of nationalist discourse, this research employs ethnographic fieldwork driven by a grounded theory approach. With fifteen months of fieldwork in three Russian cities, this permitted room for exploration and siginificant redirection of the research focus. This helped reveal the interconnections between certain common, foundational elements of national identity and the structure of a dominant nationalist discourse. Previous research has often focused on the challenges of Russian nation-building given the complicated heritage bestowed by the Romanov and Soviet empires. This thesis identifies certain historical and cultural factors vital to the shaping of Russian national identity today. It also identifies a current hegemonic nationalist discourse and unpacks how it is relevant to the majority. This dominant discourse is built on certain myths and versions of normality, much of which takes the late Soviet as ‘normal’ and the wild nineties as ‘abnormal’. The thesis also explores how the above is contested. What is argued is that, at the current moment, the challenge of anti-hegemonic nationalist discourses is, for many people, neutralised by the appeal of a particular geopolitical vision. This research outlines how visions of the nation are weaved into commonly shared notions of identity and underlines how the current status quo is held together.

This thesis examines the social history of female urban prostitution in the final years of the Russian empire (1900-1917). During this period, the tsarist authorities legally tolerated prostitution under a system named regulation (reglemantatsiia) or the medical-police supervision of prostitution (vrachebno-politseiskii nadzor za prostitutsiei). The stated aim of regulation was to reduce levels of venereal disease, yet in practice the system functioned rather to control the movement and settlement of prostitutes by making them known to the authorities. This thesis focuses on the different groups that the rules of regulation directly affected, including prostitutes, their clients, their managers, and wider urban communities. It examines specific urban spaces, the state-licensed brothel, and the lives of registered prostitutes and their clients. This approach allows an exploration of how the system operated in practice and how the regulation of prostitution fitted within wider attempts by the imperial state to monitor lower-class people. In doing so, this thesis contributes to the growing literature on sexuality, on the intersections of gender and class, and on the experiences of lower-class people in late imperial Russia. To illuminate the diversity of both state practice and social experience, this thesis draws on a wide range of correspondence from ‘above’ and ‘below’, including letters between central and provincial government institutions and petitions written by lower-class people to those in authority. This research moves away from focusing solely on the capital of St Petersburg to examine how the regulation of prostitution functioned at a local level, drawing on archival material from Arkhangel’sk, Riga, and Tartu. It argues that responses to the regulation system were rooted in the specific social, environmental and economic circumstances of a particular place and strongly influenced by the socio-economic transformations of the final decades of tsarist rule. In light of this, the thesis maps official and unofficial reactions to regulation onto the shifting social and economic landscape of modernising Russia. It explores how early twentieth-century urbanisation, industrialisation and transportation developments posed further challenges to the ambitions of the tsarist authorities to ‘know’ and monitor all the women who sold sex.

The thesis proposes a comparative textual research on Hungarian and Romanian cinema by setting up a model that informs the implicit cinematic reflection on socialism in film. By establishing two aesthetic categories – horizontal and vertical enclosure –, the thesis argues that the spatial structure of the narratives reveals and alludes to the oppressive policy of the Hungarian and Romanian socialist regimes. The first part of the research scrutinises the space in Romanian cinema, and investigates the birth of the vertical enclosure. The analysis focuses on the spatial representation of Bucharest, that is the claustrophobic illustration of the urban landscape and its space depicted by the tools of notorious surveillance on screen. As argued in the thesis, the architectural forms and their film representations build up a spatial constellation identical to Bentham’s Panopticon discussed by Michel Foucault. The second part of the investigation concentrates on Hungarian cinema and the evolution of horizontal enclosure in film. Through textual analysis of the selected films that are set on the Great Hungarian Plain, the thesis discusses the allegorical use of space during and after socialism. Therefore, while concentrating on the circularity of the location and the mise-en-scène of the films – that refer to the isolation and indefiniteness of space – the author argues that the directors recall the parabolic language of the cinematic corpus of the socialist epoch. As concluded by the work, the contemporary art cinema of Romania and Hungary both reference socialism by using space as the main device for the implicit textual reflections. In this way, horizontal and vertical enclosure also emphasise the revival of the forms of the socialist aesthetics.

Orientador: Roberto Romano / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-06T03:15:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bezerra_GustavoCunha_M.pdf: 505666 bytes, checksum: 97af428233b87a5c23a626abad544675 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Analiso na presente dissertação o nexo entre opinião e virtude em Rousseau. São discutidas, principalmente, quatro obras do filósofo: o Discurso sobre os fundamentos e a origem da desigualdade entre os homens, a Carta a d¿Alembert, as Considerações sobre o governo da Polônia e, por fim, o Emílio. É observado a importância da opinião e o caráter ambivalente desta no pensamento rousseauniano. Enquanto no Discurso sobre a desigualdade a alienação na opinião do outro é vista como um elemento corruptor, na Carta a d¿Alembert e nas Considerações sobre o governo da Polônia, a opinião pública torna-se diretriz da conduta do cidadão. Nesta dicotomia, o Emílio apresenta-se como tentativa de educação do homem virtuoso que sabe viver em sociedade sem alienar-se na opinião alheia / Abstract: In this dissertation I present the connection between opinion and virtue in Rousseau. Four works of the author are examined: the Discourse on Inequality, the Letter to D'Alembert, the Considerations on the Government of Poland, and the Emile. It is observed the importance of the opinion and its ambivalence in Rousseau¿s thought. Whereas in the Discourse on Inequality, the alienation in the other¿s opinion is view as corrupter element, in the Letter to D'Alembert and in the Considerations on the Government of Poland, the public opinion became the directive of the citizen¿s conduct. In this dichotomy, Emile presents an attempt of a virtuous man education who knows how to live in society without the alienation in the other¿s opinion / Mestrado / Mestre em Filosofia

Cette thèse d'histoire contemporaine traite de la vie du républicain et chimiste François-Vincent Raspail (1794-1878). Son objectif est de comprendre ce qu'est le républicanisme au XIXe siècle. Pour ce faire, on tente de saisir, à travers le cas de Raspail, l'évolution des idées républicaines, à l'échelle individuelle. En outre, Raspail a la particularité de conjuguer ses théories politiques et scientifiques. Enfin, on analyse et on déconstruit les mythes politiques qui entourent Raspail : le lutteur infatigable, l'homme incorruptible ou encore le médecin des pauvres. / This thesis in contemporary history deals with the life of the republicain and chemist François-Vincent Raspail (1794-1878). Its objective is to understand that is the republicanisme in the XIXth century. To do so, throughout the case of Raspail, we attempt to capture the evolution of the republicain ideas at the individual level . In addition, Raspail has the particularity to combine political and scientific theories. Finally, the political myths surrounding Raspail are analyzed and deconstructed : the tireless fighter, the incorruptible man and the doctor to the poor.

No description available.

The essential theme of this thesis is evaluating impacts of financial crisis on automotive industry in the Czech and Slovak republics. The thesis examines the transfer of financial crisis from the USA to Europe and consequently to the Czech and Slovak republics whereas it identifies the role of different factors during the transfer. The thesis subsequently deal with reaction of the governments on the crisis aimed at automotive industry. Fundamental part is devoted to cash for clunker program where the main aim is to answer the question: To introduce or not to introduce cash for clunkers? With regard to recency of this theme and inaccessibility of professional literature the theme is elaborated in the way of study of domestic and foreign Internet resources and analyses from governmental and non-governmental organizations. The outcome of this thesis is evaluation of the status of automotive industry in the Czech and Slovak republics and evaluation of the governmental help to this branch of industry. Main contribution of this thesis is elaboration of a topical theme and the answer to the question concerning cash for clunkers. In conclusion we can mark the help of the Czech government as insufficient.

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished