Book Summary: Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies expands the geographical scope of scholarship about southern swamps. Although the physical environments that form its central subjects are scattered throughout the southeastern United States―the Atchafalaya, the Okefenokee, the Mississippi River delta, the Everglades, and the Great Dismal Swamp―this evocative collection challenges fixed notions of place and foregrounds the ways in which ecosystems shape cultures and creations on both local and global scales. Across seventeen scholarly essays, along with a critical introduction and afterword, Swamp Souths introduces new frameworks for thinking about swamps in the South and beyond, with an emphasis on subjects including Indigenous studies, ecocriticism, intersectional feminism, and the tropical sublime. The volume analyzes canonical writers such as William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora Welty, but it also investigates contemporary literary works by Randall Kenan and Karen Russell, the films Beasts of the Southern Wild and My Louisiana Love, and music ranging from swamp rock and zydeco to Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade. Navigating a complex assemblage of places and ecosystems, the contributors argue with passion and critical rigor for considering anew the literary and cultural work that swamps do. This dynamic collection of scholarship proves that swampy approaches to southern spaces possess increased relevance in an era of climate change and political crisis.

This collection of short stories explores the different ways women tolerate violence in exchange for some form of validation. The narratives focus on women and the reverberations of small moments which carry violent mass. While the violence occasionally includes physical elements, the collection is more concerned with the ways women accept emotional and psychological violence—specifically from men. Themes, motifs and symbols from the Clytie-Helios myth are threaded throughout the collection as well as a concern for space and touch, art and the creation of art, silence and voice. All of these elements involve control as the women characters in these stories struggle to resist their own objectification. A critical introduction which explains how form and language amplify story precedes the collection.

In this thesis I consider the unique position that Polish artist Zofia Stryjeńska (1891-1974) occupied during the interwar period. Lauded during her time as the most popular artist in Poland, the acceptance of Stryjeńska's female voice in representing a national vocabulary was unprecedented and deserves closer examination. I assert that Poland's history of oppression created a unique environment where women as archetypal figures often took on masculine roles. These 'transgressive types' were visible in the literature and art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Stryjeńska's art, as well as her behavior, capitalized on these transgressive traditions. Women played an important role as visual and ideological figures within the national mythologies of Poland, and while these mythologies situated women as authorities in protecting, cultivating, and renewing the land, and by extension the nation, few women actually achieved the status of shaping them. Zofia Stryjeńska was an example of one who did. At the age of twenty-one Zofia cut her hair, dressed as her brother, and, as a boy, enrolled in the academy of fine art in Munich. This act found precedence in the years of Polish imagery and it ultimately allowed her to create a space for herself and her art. This thesis pays particular attention to Stryjeńska's part in the 1928 renovation of the Warsaw town square. Like many other artists at this time, she worked in many mediums and employed folk-art motifs and styles in the quest to create a truly "Polish" style. Stryjeńska's art drew on national images of Polish women as the Virgin Mary, the good Polish Mother, and Pagan Goddess. Idealized tropes, such as these, often represented a disconnect between everyday social norms and the greater ideals of a national identity. Zofia Stryjeńska embodied this juxtaposition. Her art drew on national images of Polish women filled with blurred gender boundaries. These images, prominent for centuries, at once empowered Polish women while also being relegated safely to the abstract realm of legend and myth. These female ideals, therefore, served as less of a threat to the rigid gender expectations that were a part of everyday Polish life. Zofia Stryjeńska was an example of a woman who laid claim to the female ideals of Polish culture. She used myth to define her behavior; her studies in Munich, and by doing so launched her life into the realm of myth, creating a sensationalized image more legend than reality.

This paper argues that the EU’s enlargement discourse can be understood as a form of political myth wherein a subject must align itself with an fantasmatic ideal type ofEuropean state. It works through positing a past from which the subject must advance, and a mythical horizon towards which the subject strives. The stage in between these temporal phases is understood as liminality, an ontological limbo of sorts. To illustrate how the political myth works, a discourse analysis is conducted by investigating reports by the UN and EU on the status of Kosovo’s alignment with ‘European standards’ and evaluations of the political situation. By applying the political discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, it was found that the image of the past in Kosovo was filled with symbols of ethnic conflict, clan affiliation andlingering communism, while the mythical horizon of European integration promised a utopian idea of multi-ethnicity, rule of law and freedom of movement. Kosovo in the process of integration is then stuck in a liminal phase between these temporal points, while the EU through a set of categorical measurements constructs not only Kosovo’s identity but also the ideal image of a European state and how to become one.

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В работе рассмотрены анекдоты, публиковавшиеся в официальных периодических изданиях юмористического профиля («Литературная газета», журналы «Перец» и «Крокодил») в период 1964-82 гг. Посредством применения контент-аналитического подхода и интерпретации полученных данных через призму концепции «мифа» сделаны выводы о специфике отражаемого изданиями образа окружающей действительности. Так же выявлены характерные для каждого издания особенности, влияющие на формы её отражения для своей целевой аудитории. / The paper deals with anecdotes, published in the official periodical of humorous profile ("Literary Gazette", magazine "Pepper" and "Crocodile") during the 1964-82 biennium. Through the use of content-analytical approach and interpretation of the data obtained through the prism of the concept of "myth" conclusions about the specific editions reflected the image of reality. As revealed characteristic features of each edition, affecting its forms to reflect their target audience.

This project investigates a specific concept within architecture: the portal. Divided into eight independent chapters, all possible to read as stand-alone parts, the thesis – a hybrid essay consisting of text, images, drawings and models – uses the portal as a springboard, or tool, for approaching existing theories on the invisible forces that shape the world and our built environment.    The chapter Nature approaches the portal and architecture as separator from "nature", the chapter Ritual as a ritual device for transition, the chapter Myth as a mythological archetype, the chapter Liminal as interstitial space and recursion, the chapter Depth as an enhancer of depth, the chapter Speed as a technological machine, and finally, the epilogue concludes that architectural practice in large can be interpreted as the creation of different types of portals.   Architecture, both as a subject and as a practice, has the potential to manifest and mediate between various supplementary relationships, such as interior and exterior, nature and culture, sacred and profane, heaven and earth, past and future, between sign and signified, us and them, between order and chaos, between subject and object, thought and action, private and public, rationality and imagination, flat and three-dimensional, flesh and matter (the list can go on forever).    The portal works both as an analogy for this and as an actual tool; partly by changing the character of adjacent spaces by such basic things as placing a door in a wall or placing a building in a landscape, but partly by finding new ways to bridge between extremities, without necessarily dissolving them completely.

The American Dream Ideology is defined by Sociologist, Jennifer Hochschild as, "All persons in the United States can achieve the American Dream, which is defined as the achievement of success however that is defined to oneself, through hard work and one's own efforts." Filipino Americans have a unique history with the United States and much of Filipino culture has roots within its history of colonization by Spain and the United States. Previous research has shown a high consistent rate of immigration into the United States, and high rates of social mobility among second-generation Asian immigrants compared to first-generation Asian immigrants. A study also has shown that college students predominately mentioned wealth and material goods when discussing the American Dream Ideology. Inquiry on Filipinos and their perceptions of the American Dream have yet to be completed. Using the framework of culture as a "tool kit," this qualitative study investigates if Filipino college students that attend the University of Central Florida buy into the "American Dream Ideology," as defined by Sociologist, Jennifer Hochschild. This was done by analyzing 3 interviews with Filipino college students that attend the University of Central Florida. Based on the data, there are many factors that can attribute to a student's understanding of the American Dream Ideology. This study lays the groundwork for further research on the processes that create one's definition of the American Dream Ideology within Filipino communities.

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