No description available.

This thesis examines the way in which the concept of authenticity is mobilised throughout popular cultural productions as a politically informed way of constructing value and meaning. It posits authenticity as a cultural category, the composition of which shifts according to the discursive and cultural contexts within which it operates, but whose significance lies in its capacity to signify the genuine, the real, and the fundamental. The thesis further proposes that three discourses are predominant in their participation in the construction and significance of authenticity: community, the natural, and creativity. Through a series of three case-study chapters, the thesis tracks this definition through extended analyses of a variety of cultural texts of different genres and media, and in different topic areas. First it examines the discourses of community and creativity in relation to popular music, drawing on texts such as video clips and film, journalistic writing, and fan discussions, in order to demonstrate that fan communities draw on the commonality of experience and the expressed creativity and skill of the performer in order to draw their own boundaries around what they consider to be authentic and inauthentic. Second, it looks at the discourses of the natural and of community in relation to food television and theorises that a fundamental meaning within the discourses of community—tradition—is at the heart of many valorised food cultures, and that this valorisation is played up in most televisual texts concerning food. Finally, the thesis examines the discourses of community and the natural in relation to travel writing, looking closely at the subgenre of the “villa book,” and claiming that the success of the subgenre is largely due to the intersection of the two key discourses. Similarly, the discourses of community and the natural are obvious within the practices of package-tourism, particularly within online discussions of this sort of travel. The thesis argues that in spite of an academic suspicion about authenticity as a valuing and explanatory mechanism, there is widespread use of the themes of authenticity—largely untheorised and undefined—within popular culture, and that the academy ignores these constructions at its peril. This thesis makes this examination, not in defence of authenticity as an essential, objective fact, but as a powerful, and largely unexamined, explanatory construction that is at the heart of what many people in this society consider important.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Lois Potter, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2006. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-132).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Iowa, 2002. / Supervisor: Wendelin A. Guentner. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

This thesis draws upon the literatures of historical geography, book history, and archival theory to investigate the production of travel narratives by the London publisher John Murray during the second half of the nineteenth century. It traces the processes by which in-the-field experiences of explorers and travellers were translated into a textual and physical object: the published book. By interrogating the practicalities and technicalities of geographical publishing, particularly in relation to travellers’ paratexts, the thesis draws attention to the need for geographers to consider the literary commercialisation of geographical knowledge. The John Murray Archive provides an unusual opportunity to examine geographical publishing across 33 years, 138 titles, and 102 authors. Murray’s extensive correspondence and detailed financial records provide source material for the first comparative study of these books. The structure of the thesis follows Murray’s publication process, from accepting or rejecting manuscripts to textual editing, the shaping of paratexts, production of illustrations, and, ultimately, sales, translations, and further editions of later nineteenth-century books of travel. It places remarkable works of travel Murray published in the later nineteenth century — books by authors including David Livingstone, Paul Du Chaillu, Heinrich Schliemann, and Isabella Bird — in the context of the unexceptional. In conclusion, this thesis furthers academic understanding of a nationally important archival resource, demonstrating the value of a longitudinal survey which accounts for economic as well as epistemic influences upon geographical publishing.

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A collection of nonfiction stories about places, traveling, and living in Florida. Themes include the impacts of development and growth on home and identity; stability in a rapidly changing environment; how modes of travel affect experience; and apathy on the part of Floridians. I have attempted to connect Florida's history to experiences in my life, and in the life of a place. I was interested in my connection to the land and living things, and how Floridians in general are or aren't connected to land; how we are or aren't connected to the history of these places.

No description available.