No description available.

<p>“Trade in Feelings: Shame in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” traces a genealogy of shame, a difficult feeling which is transformed and reworked in eighteenth-century narratives and which provides a ground for the self-reflective interiority required of commercial subjects. The stakes of this project are twofold. First, while cultural critics (e.g., Ahmed, Probyn, and Sedgwick) have recently theorized shame and suggested its potential for political activism, histories of this feeling have yet to be written. Reading narratives of shame in George Lillo’s <em>London Merchant ( 1731) </em>, Eliza Haywood’s <em>The British Recluse (1722)</em>, multiple editions of Defoe’s <em>Roxana (1724, 1730, 1745[49])</em>, Samuel Richardson’s <em>Clarissa (1747-48)</em>, and Frances Burney’s <em>Evelina (1778)</em>, this chronologically organized study supplies one part of such a history. As such, the analysis builds on and reframes Foucault’s historical narrative of the emergence of the modern disciplined and divided self-consciousness by focusing on the affects that produce and re-produce it, particularly the affect of shame. Second, while Michael McKeon has identified the formative force of questions of virtue and truth on the novel, this thesis suggests that these questions are critically condensed in narratives of shame. The dissertation argues that private shame and the psychological interiority of the eighteenth-century novel are mutually productive. Once a passion which could lead to vice and even murder, by the late eighteenth century shame becomes a feeling which is internalized, and which divides the self. Connected both to the question of truth and the question of virtue, as well as to the status of passion itself, shame informs our sense of emotions as interior, yet remains inextricable from questions of reputation, credit, and civility.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

A collection of creative texts written concurrently with the creation of the artist’s thesis exhibition. A range of written forms coexist - poetry, prose, and dialogue - to open up the narrative and emotional space of the visual work. The text emerges from the point-of-view of different voices, describing experiences and body states that hinge upon the physical and conceptual space of the pond. Amphibiousness offers a gateway to a state of becoming and transformation. Some of the following texts appear in video works by the artist.

This dissertation is an ethnographic study about ecological displacement, affective encounters, the work of care, and human and animal subjectivities involved in rehabilitating endangered orangutans in Sarawak, Malaysia. Using participant-observation, interviews, archival research, and animal behavioral methods during seventeen months of fieldwork, this work exemplifies Donna Haraway's idea of 'zooethnography' by treating animals and humans as situated subjects. Specifically, I examine encounters between semi-wild orangutans, indigenous Sarawakian workers, Sarawakian Chinese and Malay middle-class managers of the semi-governmental corporation running the centers, and transnational professionals from the Global North who pay thousands of US dollars to volunteer their manual labor. I address the question, how do conflicting concepts of freedom and autonomy get produced at wildlife centers in which animals are restrained and managed for the purpose of an eventual freedom that is unobtainable? I argue that orangutan rehabilitation entails the production of affect between bodies, which in turn generates a global, postcolonial economy of human nostalgia. Despite assiduous efforts to train orangutans for a life of autonomy within the confines of forest reserves, I found that rehabilitant orangutans experience a permanently deferred independence. I offer the concept of 'arrested autonomy' as a way of understanding how subjects are forcibly made dependent while simultaneously regarded as potentially independent. This permanently deferred independence resembles the deferred promises and hopes of decolonization that have yet to materialize. / Anthropology

Danse, performance, cinéma, écrits théoriques et poétiques : dans la multiplicité de sa création artistique et intellectuelle, Yvonne Rainer s’impose comme une artiste cardinale dans l’histoire de l’art. Instigatrice du changement de paradigme postmoderne en danse, elle arrache le geste ordinaire à la vie quotidienne pour le placer au cœur de la création chorégraphique, en radicale juxtaposition avec des textes, des images et des objets. À partir des années 1970, elle émerge parmi les figures centrales du cinéma expérimental et indépendant en dialogue avec les théories et les luttes politiques féministes, queer et postcoloniales. Cette thèse explore la place de la subjectivité et de l’émotion dans la danse et le cinéma de Rainer. En effet celle-ci a impulsé un renouvellement radical du matériau affectif dans la pratique artistique en l’envisageant comme un fait, une réalité objective. Dans un contexte où l’ennui agit comme un style affectif dominant au sein de l’avant-garde artistique américaine après 1945, l’artiste propose une expérience matérielle sensible, générant une conscience décuplée du temps et plaçant son public dans cette disposition affective à la fois pesante, froide et ordinaire. Puis, en résonance avec le cinéma des femmes, elle investit l’ennui à la fois comme une dynamique de subjectivation et comme une stratégie de subversion. En naviguant entre les dimensions individuelles et collectives de l’émotion, la thèse explore les enjeux esthétiques, politiques et subjectifs de l’ennui dans l’œuvre de Rainer. / The multiplicity of Yvonne Rainer’s art and intellectual works - in dance, performance, film, theoretic and poetic writings - makes her one of the essential artists in the history of art. As instigator of the post-modern paradigm shift in the dance scene, she pulled out movements from everyday life and put them at the core of her choreographic work, creating a radical juxtaposition to texts, pictures and objects. In the seventies, she became one of the main figures of experimental and independent cinema. Her polyphonic and reflexive cinematographic works entered in a dialogue with feminist, queer and postcolonial theories and struggles. The present thesis explores the notion of subjectivity and emotion in the film and dance of Rainer. Indeed, she has given the impulse for a radical renewal of the use of emotional material, which she considered as a given fact and an objective reality, in the artistic practice. In a context where boredom imposed itself as the dominant emotional style in the American artistic avant-garde after 1945, the artist offered a sensitive material experience. In particular, she created an acute conscience of time and put her audience in a specific emotional disposition, boredom, that can be described as tedious, cold and ordinary altogether. Then, in echo with women’s cinema, she explored boredom both as a process of subjectivation and as a strategy of subversion. Navigating between individual and collective dimensions, this research explores the aesthetic, political and personal stakes around the expression of boredom in Yvonne Rainer’s work.

Writing stories that please a target audience is not an easy task for their authors. The creation of stories by a computer system that are able to entertain and catch the reader s attention is an even more complex task. This work details a computer solution that produces structured narratives to arouse three cognitive feelings on readers: suspense, surprise and curiosity. To achieve this goal, the concepts of the Structural-Affect Theory of Stories were used. This theory states that these emotions might be evoked through the manipulation of the event order of a narrative plot. / Escrever histórias que agradem seu público alvo não é uma tarefa fácil para os autores. Para um sistema computacional produzir histórias que agradam os leitores é uma tarefa mais complicada ainda. Esse trabalho detalha uma solução computacional que produz narrativas estruturadas para despertar três sentimentos cognitivos nos leitores: suspense, surpresa e curiosidade. Para alcançar esse objetivo, foram aplicados os conceitos da Teoria Estrutural-Afetiva de Histórias. Essa teoria afirma que esses sentimentos podem ser evocados através da manipulação na ordem que os eventos de uma narrativa são apresentados para os leitores.

abstract: The secret Facebook group ////sads only/// was formed in October 2015 to provide a safe space for women and trans and nonbinary people to express their emotions, a sort of digital support group. Members can post individually about things happening in their lives, comment on other members’ posts with advice or support, and contribute to discussion threads. Common subject matters include mental health, relationships, sexuality, gender identity, friendships, careers, family, art, education, and body image. The group’s location on Facebook adds to its utility – it can be an alternative site of community-making and communication, away from the often toxic, triggering, or just plain negative posts that clog up social media news feeds and the unsolicited comments that get appended. The group is informed by principles of affect theory, and in particular, sad girl theory, which was developed by the artist Audrey Wollen. She suggests that femme sadness is a site of power and not just vulnerability. In her view, sadness isn’t passive existence, but instead, an act of resistance. Specifically, it uses the body in a way that is crucial to many definitions of activism, incorporating the violence of revolution, protest, and struggle that has historically been gendered as male. This thesis examines the history and future directions of the ///sads only/// group as well as its theoretical underpinnings and the implications of its intervention, considering such perspectives as cultural studies, gender performance, identity formation, digital citizenship, mental health, and feminist activism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Women and Gender Studies 2019

While the uptake of cultural safety initiatives is increasing in professional environments, literature on cultural safety lacks reference to the lived experiences and demands of facilitating Indigenous cultural safety training. Using a qualitative and Indigenous approach, this study examined the various challenges and successes involved in facilitating Indigenous cultural safety and anti-racism training from the perspective of facilitators. The diverse sample comprised of 11 facilitators and included those who identified as Indigenous, non-Indigenous or mixed; those who identified as male or female; and those who have worked in post-secondary, healthcare and/or private sector environments. Findings indicate that facilitators, typically highly skilled and perceptive individuals grounded in their identity and critical race analyses, used affect and affective activities that challenge participants to interrogate the ways that power and privilege influence their everyday interpersonal and professional relationships. Affect theory describes the ways in which our bodies have the potential to be creative and respond in new ways; affect and affective activities in Indigenous cultural safety training increased the likelihood of a bodily emergence among participants, which is a necessary and critical turning point to create new relationships to land, others and self. Furthermore, the findings suggest that cultural safety training represents potentially risky spaces, as facilitators must constantly assess and manage the risks of harm, emotional distress and/or taxation for participants and themselves. Finally, the findings reveal possible supports necessary for facilitators to continue this important work. Overall, the findings demonstrate how affect and emergence is foundational to decolonialization and sustainable social change. / Graduate / 2021-04-22

This thesis aims to analyze the affect of internalized misogyny on female self-expression. Guided by the research question “How is female self-expression affected by internalized misogyny?” a phenomenological framework of affect based on work by Sara Ahmed is applied. Through an action-oriented focus group discussion, four female-identifying individuals share their embodied experiences of internalized misogyny. This research is positioned within a Western context and includes me as an additional involved participant. Results conclude that internalized misogyny may affect female self-expression through five common themes. These include an internalized female beauty standard resulting in self-objectification, a limited range of acceptable female expression resulting in a passive acceptance of gender roles, competition and comparison among women resulting in a devaluation of ourselves and other women, self-doubt and self-censorship resulting in a distrust of ourselves and other women as well as perfectionism and fear of failure resulting in valuing men over women. These results correlate both with the previous studies presented as well as my own previous first-year master thesis. This research adds to the academic conversation by including a reflection on the internalized attitudes towards ourselves beyond those directed towards other women.

I denna uppsats har jag fördjupat mig inom filmmusik och dess påverkan på handlingen och stämningen till det visuella. Frågeställningarna har främst syftat till att förstå vilka musikaliska parametrar som kan användas för att skapa olika känslor hos lyssnaren/tittaren. Jag ville också veta hur andra kompositörer arbetar för att nå de reslutaten. Med hjälp av intervjuer av filmproducenter och via litteratur har jag fått kunskaper i ämnet. Utifrån dem genomförde jag sedan ett experiment där jag till fyra korta filmklipp skrev två varianter av musik till vartdera klippet. Jag hade i förväg bestämt vilken känsla eller stämning de skulle ha och jag jobbade medvetet med det i åtanke. Med dessa exempel visas tydligt skillnaden med de musikaliska parametrarna och vilka effekter de ger. Vidare så går jag in i en diskussionsdel igenom intervjusvaren, litteraturen och artiklar och jämför, kommenterar och sammanfattar. / In this essay, I have delved into film music and its influence on the narrative and mood of the visuals. The questions have mainly aimed to understand which musical parameters can be usedto create different emotions in the listener/viewer. I also wanted t o know how other composers work to achieve those results. With the help of interviews with film music producers and via literature, I have gained knowledge on the subject. Based on them, I then carried out an experiment where I wrote variations of music to four short film clips, two for each clip. I had decided in advance what feeling or mood they would have, and I consciously worked with that in mind. With these examples, the differences with the musical parameters and the effects they produce are clearly shown. Furthermore, in a discussion part, I go through the interview responses, the literature and articles and compare, comment and summarize.