Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2010. / Title from title screen (site viewed July 8, 2010). PDF text: v, 81 p. : ill., music ; 555 K. UMI publication number: AAT 3398350. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

It has been suggested that gender is a societal construct and as such its features can shift depending on the beliefs of society (Connell 77). If this is the case, then hegemonic masculinity, as defined by Raewyn Connell, should also shift its features based on societal changes. In this project I examine Seth Rogen’s representation of beta male masculinity in his performances in the television show Freaks and Geeks (1999), and the movies Knocked Up (2007) and This Is the End (2013). These texts were chosen because Rogen, an actor who I argue embodies the contemporary beta male in U.S. film and television, is a significant character in each. I use textual analysis of the films and television show to track how masculinity is portrayed and how one text paved the way for the others through the actor’s rising star status. I also briefly examine Jason Segel in Freaks and Geeks and Jay Baruchel in This Is the End. I explore how critics and fans receive Rogen, as well as the societal context surrounding Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, and This Is the End. I use discourse analysis to understand how these texts fit in to the cultural climate in which they were released. This project aims to identify the type of masculinities these texts endorse and whether they accept or challenge the most idealized societal norms of masculinity at the time of production. How do the masculinities depicted in these texts differ from dominant hegemonic masculinity as reinforced in prior decades of film? How can masculinities that historically fall outside of the dominant hegemonic standard now be framed as another type of hegemonic masculinity? Not only will this project look at how these masculinities function within the texts themselves, but I will also place them in context with the social and cultural landscape of the time in which the texts were released. / text

Thesis (M.M.)--Baylor University, 2006.

Finding and extracting meaning from the world I encounter every day is the primary motivation behind my creativity. Filtering perception and separating the important bits of information by selection or elimination is the crux of this investigation. This process is one of finding rationale in futility and applying meaning to meaningless encounters. The significance of life is not fixed and it is our responsibility to make it up to best suit the desire to have purpose. Depending on the way something is looked at determines the meaning behind it. Anything can have content if it is seen and translated a certain way. Aligning this inquiry to the course of painting is how I examine the pieces of information that have potential importance. Painting allows me to slow down, scrutinize, and evaluate the way I perceive reality. Every image seems unrelated but is actually connected by an undercurrent of doubt at every level of creation.

Né à Calcutta en 1952, Vikram Seth occupe une place éminemment originale sur la scène littéraire postcoloniale. Manifestement animée par une force centrifuge, l’œuvre de Vikram Seth semble se renouveler perpétuellement : du récit de voyage au recueil de poésie, entre vers et prose, Seth revendique le droit à la métamorphose et épouse tour à tour une myriade de genres. Cette constellation générique manifeste l’aversion profonde de l’auteur pour l’uniformité et son rejet du cloisonnement. L’œuvre de Seth ne peut en effet être fixée ni génériquement, ni contextuellement : les ancrages successifs de l’auteur dans des décors poétiques radicalement différents laissent en effet transparaître la pluralité irréductible de ses amarres culturelles. Riche d’une multiplicité d’enracinements, cette œuvre polymorphe défie toute catégorisation. L’hétérogénéité de cette production littéraire masque cependant une pratique organisée du pastiche. Celle-ci s’impose comme une véritable dynamique de création : les œuvres de Seth puisent en effet leur "matière première" dans les textes canoniques de la littérature européenne, affichant une volonté souvent jugée démodée de retour à la tradition. Pourquoi Vikram Seth a-t-il aussi ostensiblement recours au pastiche, pratique traditionnellement dépréciée en Occident ? Si certains critiques dénoncent le caractère en apparence apolitique de cette écriture, le pastiche ne saurait se réduire ici à une reprise mécanique ou nostalgique de textes toujours déjà écrits, mais acquiert au contraire une dimension critique à travers la notion de "mimicry". Toute l’œuvre de Vikram met en relief le caractère radicalement énonciatif de la textualité, soulignant avec force l’historicité du langage. / Born in Calcutta in 1952, Vikram Seth occupies a highly original place on the postcolonial literary scene, owing to the dazzling variety of his work. Indeed, his career has been one of restless reinvention: skipping from economist to poet, to travel writer, to novelist-in-verse, to librettist, to translator and to children’s writer, Vikram Seth even tried his hand at biography in Two Lives (2005). His writing displays a deep-seated abhorrence of uniformity: every new book by Seth creates a fresh departure in genre and theme, and moves seamlessly from one geographical and cultural location to another, revealing a distinct cosmopolitan sensibility that makes Seth’s affiliations and cultural moorings all but impossible to fathom. Seth’s protean opus thus proves miraculously immune to any definitive categorization. In fact, however, the generic heterogeneity of Seth’s work masks a hidden unity, which lies in a deliberate use of pastiche: Vikram Seth treats Western canonical texts as raw material, in an ostensibly unfashionable attempt to go back to earlier models of literary tradition. Why does Seth strive to preserve the European literary legacy so ostentatiously through the use of pastiche, a practice that is traditionally belittled in the West? Although current critiques of Vikram Seth’s writing berate him for evading the politics of his own cultural, historical and political location, I will argue that pastiche acquires a critical dimension in Seth’s work through the notion of "mimicry". Vikram Seth’s work sheds light on the radically enunciative quality of textuality, throwing into sharp relief the historicity of language.

No description available.

Many languages, both ancient and modern, make use of devices similar to determinatives in Egyptian by which the meaning of a word can be made more specific. But determinatives are especially rich in their capacity for expression, particularly regarding words for abstract concepts through their extensive use of visually-based metaphor. Egyptological research is only now beginning to explore the many levels at which the system functioned. My thesis centres around the metaphorical usages of three signs - the Seth animal, the panther, and the crocodile. The introduction lays out my aimes, methods, and textual sources. The first chapter sets my analysis against the backdrop of current research, beginning with a discussion of how determinatives have been treated in the past, comparing that with a survey of how modern linguistics has approached comparable systems in other languages, and finally laying out my own approach to the three signs under study. In the following three case study chapters, I first survey the evidence for how each animal was perceived in the 'real' world, before moving into a detailed analysis of their significance in the script, which is based on a contextually-grounded, diachronic study of the distribution patterns of each of the signs in five genres of text from the Old to the New Kingdom. In a final chapter, I compare my conclusions about the three determinatives, discussing their commonalities and singularities, and relaitng the results of the individual case studies to the workings of the system as a whole. My aim is not only to achieve a better understanding of the particular shades of meaning these three animal signs impart to each of the words they determine, thereby leading to a better understanding of these words, but also to examine the wider conceptual metaphors the three determinatives represent.

Thesis (S.T.D.)--Catholic University of America, 1933. / Bibliography: p. 140-146.

Thesis (S.T.D.)--Catholic University of America, 1933. / Bibliography: p. 140-146.

Thesis advisor: John Baldovin / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.