Garden of Eden imagery is ubiquitous in contemporary print advertising in North America, especially in advertisements directed at women. Three telling characteristics emerge in characterizations of Eve in these advertising reconstructions. In the first place, Eve is consistently hypersexualized and over-eroticized. Secondly, such Garden of Eden images often conflate the Eve figure with that of the Serpent. Thirdly, the highly eroticized Eve-Serpent figures also commonly suffer further conflation with the Garden of Eden itself. Like Eve, nature becomes eroticized. In the Eve-Serpent-Eden conflation, woman becomes nature, nature becomes woman, and both perform a single narrative plot function, in tandem with the Serpent. The erotic and tempting Eve-Serpent-Eden character is both protagonist and antagonist, seducer and seduced. In this dissertation, I engage in an ecofeminist narratological analysis of the Genesis/Fall myth, as it is retold in contemporary fashion magazine advertisements. My analysis examines how reconstructions of this myth in advertisements construct the reader, the narrator, and the primary characters of the story (Eve, Adam, the Serpent, and Eden). I then further explore the ways in which these characterizations inform our perceptions of woman, nature, and environmentalism. Using a narratological methodology, and through a poststructuralist ecofeminist lens, I examine which plot and character elements have been kept, which have been discarded, and how certain erasures impact the narrative characterizations of the story. In addition to what is being told, I further analyze how and where it is told. How is the basic plot being storied in these reconstructions, and what are the effects of this version on the archetypal characterizations of Eve and the Garden of Eden? What are the cultural and literary contexts of the reconstructed narrative and the characters within it? How do these contexts inform how we read the characters within the story? Finally, I examine the cultural effects of these narrative reconstructions, exploring their influence on our gendered relationships with each other and with the natural world around us.

The Garden Of Eden is a ballet for four instrumental quintets: brass, woodwind, string, and percussion. Each ensemble is associated with one of four dancers: God, Adam, Eve, -and the Serpent, respectively. The duration of this ballet is approximately sixteen minutes and is divided into three parts depicting (1) the creation of the world and Adam; (2) the creation of Eve-and the warning about the tree of knowledge; and (3) the Serpent's temptation of the main characters, as well as their subsequent banishment from the garden by God. One of my reasons for composing this work was to answer an important question: how to control musical motion and emotion. Since ballet incorporates both motion in its choreography and emotion in its program, it provided a perfect medium in which to work.

Garden of Eden imagery is ubiquitous in contemporary print advertising in North America, especially in advertisements directed at women. Three telling characteristics emerge in characterizations of Eve in these advertising reconstructions. In the first place, Eve is consistently hypersexualized and over-eroticized. Secondly, such Garden of Eden images often conflate the Eve figure with that of the Serpent. Thirdly, the highly eroticized Eve-Serpent figures also commonly suffer further conflation with the Garden of Eden itself. Like Eve, nature becomes eroticized. In the Eve-Serpent-Eden conflation, woman becomes nature, nature becomes woman, and both perform a single narrative plot function, in tandem with the Serpent. The erotic and tempting Eve-Serpent-Eden character is both protagonist and antagonist, seducer and seduced. In this dissertation, I engage in an ecofeminist narratological analysis of the Genesis/Fall myth, as it is retold in contemporary fashion magazine advertisements. My analysis examines how reconstructions of this myth in advertisements construct the reader, the narrator, and the primary characters of the story (Eve, Adam, the Serpent, and Eden). I then further explore the ways in which these characterizations inform our perceptions of woman, nature, and environmentalism. Using a narratological methodology, and through a poststructuralist ecofeminist lens, I examine which plot and character elements have been kept, which have been discarded, and how certain erasures impact the narrative characterizations of the story. In addition to what is being told, I further analyze how and where it is told. How is the basic plot being storied in these reconstructions, and what are the effects of this version on the archetypal characterizations of Eve and the Garden of Eden? What are the cultural and literary contexts of the reconstructed narrative and the characters within it? How do these contexts inform how we read the characters within the story? Finally, I examine the cultural effects of these narrative reconstructions, exploring their influence on our gendered relationships with each other and with the natural world around us.

Garden of Eden imagery is ubiquitous in contemporary print advertising in North America, especially in advertisements directed at women. Three telling characteristics emerge in characterizations of Eve in these advertising reconstructions. In the first place, Eve is consistently hypersexualized and over-eroticized. Secondly, such Garden of Eden images often conflate the Eve figure with that of the Serpent. Thirdly, the highly eroticized Eve-Serpent figures also commonly suffer further conflation with the Garden of Eden itself. Like Eve, nature becomes eroticized. In the Eve-Serpent-Eden conflation, woman becomes nature, nature becomes woman, and both perform a single narrative plot function, in tandem with the Serpent. The erotic and tempting Eve-Serpent-Eden character is both protagonist and antagonist, seducer and seduced. In this dissertation, I engage in an ecofeminist narratological analysis of the Genesis/Fall myth, as it is retold in contemporary fashion magazine advertisements. My analysis examines how reconstructions of this myth in advertisements construct the reader, the narrator, and the primary characters of the story (Eve, Adam, the Serpent, and Eden). I then further explore the ways in which these characterizations inform our perceptions of woman, nature, and environmentalism. Using a narratological methodology, and through a poststructuralist ecofeminist lens, I examine which plot and character elements have been kept, which have been discarded, and how certain erasures impact the narrative characterizations of the story. In addition to what is being told, I further analyze how and where it is told. How is the basic plot being storied in these reconstructions, and what are the effects of this version on the archetypal characterizations of Eve and the Garden of Eden? What are the cultural and literary contexts of the reconstructed narrative and the characters within it? How do these contexts inform how we read the characters within the story? Finally, I examine the cultural effects of these narrative reconstructions, exploring their influence on our gendered relationships with each other and with the natural world around us.

The purpose of this study was to critically evaluate the aesthetic decisions and theoretical complexity of three of Ernest Hemingway’s most experimental texts: IN OUR TIME, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, and THE GARDEN OF EDEN, and to show that the usually maligned Hemingway was an author invested in the avant-garde and in analyzing and dissecting rigid societal rules, not championing them. Through critical analysis this study examined how Hemingway makes specific aesthetic decisions in order to more clearly examine the disparity between whites and both women and racial minorities in America. The problems that Hemingway makes clear through his art are meant to have a profound effect upon the reader and encourage re-evaluation of societal rules, their purpose, and their fairness to those who are not white, male, and typically in a position of power. The findings demonstrate that Hemingway’s entire oeuvre is open to re-interpretation on the basis of a progressive view of the author.

<p>This thesis examines the nature and theological function of God’s revelation of knowledge in five texts discovered at Qumran: <em>Instruction</em>, the <em>Treatise on the Two Spirits</em>, the <em>Hodayot</em>, the <em>Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice</em>, and the <em>Songs of the Sage</em>. Chapter 1 is a historical survey of the different ways scholars have understood and classified God’s revelation of knowledge in the Scrolls. Scholars have often interpreted these texts in isolation from one another, and they have disagreed about whether the concept of divine revelation expressed in them is derived from the sapiential, prophetic, or apocalyptic traditions. I propose that all five of these texts should be interpreted together and that they all drew upon a single distinct revelatory tradition.</p> <p>In chapters 2–6, I examine each of the texts mentioned above by asking three questions: What did God reveal? How did he reveal it? What is the theological function of God’s revelation? In asking the last question, I am particularly interested in the role that God’s revelation of knowledge plays in the anthropological and soteriological worldview of the authors. Over the course of chapters 2–6, I argue that all five of these texts represent essentially the same revelatory tradition. In this tradition, God has revealed the mysteries of his cosmic design and the statutes of his covenant with creation to certain righteous people. God’s act of revelation takes place either through a visionary experience or an indwelling spirit that imparts knowledge. This knowledge of God’s cosmic design has the power to rectify the corrupt human condition which, in turn, allows those who have knowledge to enter into paradise where they can commune with the angels. Through God’s revelation of knowledge, the righteous can obtain the glorious state that Adam once possessed in the Garden of Eden.</p> <p>In chapter 7, I conclude the thesis by summarizing the principle features of the revelatory tradition contained in these five texts. I argue that this tradition did not flow directly from any of the standard tradition streams of which scholars typically speak (sapiential, prophetic, or apocalyptic), although, it does contain elements from all of these. Instead, these texts utilize a revelatory tradition that originated from within the Jerusalem temple establishment. This temple tradition equated the inner sanctuary of the temple with the Garden of Eden and the high priest with Adam. Within the holy of holies one could access God’s throne and receive the knowledge of his cosmic design. This tradition was eventually brought out of the temple and into religious communities which came to see themselves as the true paradisiacal temple. These communities believed that God continued to reveal his cosmic design in and through them allowing the community members to become like Adam and join together with the angels in communal worship of God.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In this thesis I examine the ideological mechanisms that work to constitute, construct, and maintain subject identity. Such mechanisms include repetition, performativity, identification, and interpellation. I incorporate structuralist, post-structuralist, and psychoanalytic theories as a means to discuss the ways in which gender, sexuality, and identity are performative masquerades. Furthermore, these ideological mechanisms and heteronormative paradigms have the paradoxical power to produce both incurable melancholia and unrealized possibilities alike. Given this conversation, I turn to theorists such as Louis Althusser, Slavoj ��i��ek, and Judith Butler; these theorists employ different theoretical approaches and consequently their explanations regarding how and why identity is manufactured frequently differ. From this productive point of difference, I apply the theories to a literary analysis of Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden. Paired together, the critical theories and literary works act to complicate and nuance each other, and collectively introduce valuable insights regarding who or what is subject. / Graduation date: 2013

No description available.