Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-04T21:02:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 11 / Bolsa para curso e programa de Pós Graduação / A presente dissertação investiga a estrutura da linguagem concebida ontologicamente por Hans-Georg Gadamer e suas implicações para o conceito de mundo Welt. Para tanto, é demonstrado como Gadamer restitui a contigencialidade da linguagem a partir de Hegel e Heidegger, mediante a historicidade e, com Platão, garante sua reflexibilidade. A linguagem se estrutura especulativa e dialogicamente. Os elementos mínimos em que ela se apresenta dessa forma são: o fazer da coisa mesma no pensamento e no diálogo, o pensamento em busca da palavra adequada à coisa, o trazer e vir à fala, o implícito e o explícito, a pergunta e a resposta, o falar e o escutar, a palavra e o conceito. As implicações dessa estrutura estão fundadas na ideia de mundo como sentido e linguagem como mundo, tomada de Humboldt. O alcance da presente investigação atinge mundos interativamente complexos e interlinguísticos como a cultura, a imaginação, a política e a educação, e o problema da liberdade. / The present essay investigates the structure of language ontologically conceived by Hans-Georg Gadamer and it implications to the concept of world as Welt. Therefore we demonstrated as he restitute the contingenciality of the language from of Hegel and Heidegger through the historicity, and with Platon pledge its reflexibility. The language it if structure as speculative and dialogue. The least element in witch it show this way are: the doing itself of thing in the think and in the dialogue; the think in search of adequad word at thing; to brink and to came at talk; the implicit and the explicit; the ask an answer; the to talk and the listen; the word and the concept. The implications of this structure are found in idea of world as sense and language as world sense, give to Humboldt. The scope of this investigation reaches worlds interactively complex and interlinguistic, such as culture, imagination, politics and education, and the problem of freedom.

Hick’s pluralist assumption has remained the most knowable model of religious pluralism in the last few decades. Many have, from the perspectives of various major world religions, questioned his notion that the teachings of all religions are derived from the same Absolute Truth and that salvific-end is one, yet little attention has been paid to the traditions that he graded as unauthentic and non-valuable according to his soteriological and ethical criteriology. The purpose of this thesis was to demonstrate the exclusiveness of Hick’s model by describing a tradition called “Chinese Folk Religion” that does not fit into his definition of ‘authentic religion’. As the study suggested, his understanding of the world religious situation is over-generalised and simplified, and his particular criteriology does not treat all traditions fairly or pluralistically. As a response, this thesis proposed a more inclusive theory that also integrates the currently disregarded tradition into the interpretation.

Another major endeavor of this thesis concentrates on self-formulations of these queer sf bodies and textualities. My elaboration concerns their delineation of ontological pursuit, multi-hybrid post/non-humanity, and a highly self-aware appropriation of obscene, ambivalent and amoral performatives to constitute deviant cultural strategies which have by far successfully counter-written dominant politics' desire to assimilate dissident voices and recalcitrant sites. / My thesis provides three different approaches to re-read non-realistic, fantasmatic queer gender formations and trans-masculine sexualities. From these positions and perspectives, I will argue for the emergent force of queer transboyhood and gradual recognition given to several non-normative transgender masculine presences, starting from their connections and disagreements with old-guard lesbian feminist agenda and homo-normative les-bi-gay politics. This multitude built by trans-masculine affects not only greatly disturbs hetero-normativity and homo-normative discourses, such charismatic inscriptions which link into marginal territories also have created a persistent intervention to interfere and even convert/pervert canonized texts and representational modes. In these chapters to extrapolate this queer masculine sf heterogenesis, I focus on analyzing three archetypes of trans-masculine personalities and their highly different subjectivities. My aim for these analyses is to theorize how these marginal genders and bodies counterattack, infect, and thus re-write mega-historical narratives by their cultural momentum and anti-human poetics/politics. By performing these "infections", queer masculine subjectivity twists and transforms a seemingly liberal hegemony devoted to excluding the non-normative in the name of single-minded progress and bi-polar gender dichotomy. / This dissertation proposes to closely study writings on queer masculinity in English science fiction and fantasy, forming a trajectory of queer transboy representations from 1930s to the beginning of 21st century. By this project, I embark to articulate multi-layered historical contexts between speculative literature, sub-cultural sites, transgender politics, and constructions on marginal queer-gendered bodies. Through intertextual dynamics embedded within and among theoretical frameworks such as sf study, paraliterary interaction, penumbra sub-subjective tactics, post-human/trans-species writings, I will conduct articulations to generate forms and genealogies of queer masculinity in sf realm, building their continuum and ruptures, agency and subversive power. / 洪泠泠. / Adviser: Natalia Chan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 296-313). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Hong Lingling.

Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.

Speculative fiction is a genre that is gaining urgency in the contemporary Canadian literary scene as authors and readers become increasingly concerned with what it means to live in a nation implicated in globalization. This genre is useful because with it, authors can extrapolate from the present to explore what some of the long-term effects of globalization might be. This thesis specifically considers the long-term effects of globalization on communities, a theme that speculative fictions return to frequently. The selected speculative fictions engage with current theory on globalization and community in their explorations of how globalization might affect the types of communities that can be enacted. This thesis argues that these texts demonstrate how Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s notion of “cooperative autonomy” can be uniquely cultivated in the conditions of globalization – despite the fact that those conditions are characterized by the fragmentation of traditional forms of community (Empire 392).

This thesis examines firm performance through the dot-com bubble through the lens of executive compensation. Hypotheses based on the theoretical literature of Bolton, Scheinkman and Xiong (2006) as well as Bertrand and Mullainathan (2001) in regards to management compensation in a speculative bubble motivate three regression models with differing market-cap-growth based dependent variables and specific compensation variables. Regression analyses test the models using public compensation and security data from S&P's Execucomp and Compustat databases. Synthesizing regression results show that stock option vesting schedules and executives' status on the board of directors may significantly affect firm performance through the dot-com bubble, but more analysis, using more robust data, is necessary to verify either claim.

‘FIELD WORKS’ explores landscape experiences that were once common to the tall grass prairie region of Manitoba. The route through this project winds in and out of urban surfaces to reveal memories embedded in the land. It documents forgotten and dormant prairie events so that they might be woven back into the fabric of the city. The purpose of this project is to transfer explored and speculative experience into a physical route through the urban prairie landscape. It is an effort to expose the layers clinging to physical memories rooted in the prairie. / May 2007

Speculative fiction is a genre that is gaining urgency in the contemporary Canadian literary scene as authors and readers become increasingly concerned with what it means to live in a nation implicated in globalization. This genre is useful because with it, authors can extrapolate from the present to explore what some of the long-term effects of globalization might be. This thesis specifically considers the long-term effects of globalization on communities, a theme that speculative fictions return to frequently. The selected speculative fictions engage with current theory on globalization and community in their explorations of how globalization might affect the types of communities that can be enacted. This thesis argues that these texts demonstrate how Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s notion of “cooperative autonomy” can be uniquely cultivated in the conditions of globalization – despite the fact that those conditions are characterized by the fragmentation of traditional forms of community (Empire 392).

ABSTRACT Speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) has steadily gained popularity both in culture and as a subject for study in college. While many helpful resources on teaching a particular genre or teaching particular texts within a genre exist, college teachers who have not previously taught science fiction, fantasy, or horror will benefit from a broader pedagogical overview of speculative fiction, and that is what this resource provides. Teachers who have previously taught speculative fiction may also benefit from the selection of alternative texts presented here. This resource includes an argument for the consideration of more speculative fiction in college English classes, whether in composition, literature, or creative writing, as well as overviews of the main theoretical discussions and definitions of each genre. In addition, this work includes a short history of speculative fiction, bibliographies of suggested sample themes for each genre, sample course syllabi and assignment/activity suggestions, and strategies for obtaining and using hard-to-find texts for prospective teachers.

solid objects is a collection of objects and its cultural life, where the roles of the object, artist, collector, museum, writer, publisher and curator are suspended to reemerge in other possible forms. In this work the text becomes an object, the pocket a museum, the collection a persona, the artist its curator, the writer a sign.