This thesis explores Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 1986-87 comic book series Watchmen according to its network structure, paying particular attention to page layout and the establishment of or deviation from the nine-panel "waffle iron" grid. This reading aims to better understand the comic book form, connecting the work of comics theorist Theirry Groensteen to certain elements of actor-network theory and Ian Bogost's notion of the ontograph--a map of being that emphasizes the interobjectivity of networked nodes. This thesis explores the ontographic nature of the comic book form more generally before tracing the meta-textual ontograph in Watchmen. The thesis then examines the network within the single panel, the multi-panel page layout, and the collaborative network of artist and author. Finally, this thesis explores how Watchmen as an ontograph exploits the affordances of the comic book form in order to construct creative temporalities.

En el año 2006, durante el segundo gobierno del presidente peruano Alan García, la relación bilateral con Chile atravesaba un buen momento en el ámbito político y económico. En este contexto, recayó en el gobierno de Alan García el desafío de presentar la demanda ante la Corte Internacional de Justicia de La Haya (CIJ) para resolver el diferendo marítimo con Chile, que había sido cedida por el gobierno anterior. Mediante el clásico modelo burocrático propuesto por Graham Allison, este trabajo se propone explicar el proceso decisorio que llevó a que el Perú finalmente presentara en enero de 2008 la demanda marítima ante la CIJ. El argumento central del trabajo es que hubo tres factores claves para entender esta decisión: en primer lugar, el liderazgo personalista del presidente Alan García respecto al manejo de la relación bilateral con Chile que entró en conflicto con la visión del canciller respecto a la presentación de la demanda; en segundo lugar, el fracaso de la opción propuesta por el gobierno peruano de definir los límites marítimos por medio de la opción negociada entre los cancilleres de Perú y Chile; y finalmente, el impacto doméstico causado por la creación de una región Arica Parinacota, en una zona que violaba el límite terrestre peruano. / In 2006, during the second administration of Peruvian President Alan García, the bilateral relationship with Chile was going through a good moment in the political and economic spheres. In this context, Alan García's government took on the challenge of presenting the claim before the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ) to settle the maritime dispute with Chile, which had been ceded by the previous government. Using the classic bureaucratic model proposed by Graham Allison, this paper aims to explain the decision-making process that led Peru to finally present the maritime claim before the ICJ in January 2008. The central argument of the paper is that there were three key factors in understanding this decision: first, the personalistic leadership of President Alan García regarding the management of the bilateral relationship with Chile that conflicted with the foreign minister's vision regarding the filing of the claim; second, the failure of the option proposed by the Peruvian government to define the maritime boundaries through the negotiated option between the foreign ministers of Peru and Chile; and finally, the domestic impact caused by the creation of an Arica Parinacota region, in an area that violated the Peruvian land boundary.

Seriemediet inkorporerar lingvistiska och ikoniska tecken för att uttrycka etiska, moraliska, sociala och politiska budskap, vilka kan slätas över av en underhållande och tilltalande form. Detta gör mediet lämpligt för en retorisk analys. Ett omdiskuterat ämne inom seriemediet är dess gestaltning av kvinnor, å ena sidan i form av stereotypa könsroller och underrepresentation av verkligt intressanta kvinnliga karaktärer, å andra sidan sexualiserande porträtteringar, våld och övergrepp. Denna uppsats undersöker hur våld mot kvinnor gestaltas i mötet mellan olika typer av bilder och texter i ett och samma serieförfattarskap. Undersökningen genomförs med hjälp av Roland Barthes ”Rhétorique de l’image” (1964) och teorin om the male gaze som Laura Mulvey diskuterar i artikeln ”Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” (1975). Analysen inspireras av en komparativ metod beskriven av Lennart Hellspong i Metoder för brukstextanalys (2001). Uppsatsen granskar utdrag ur Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke och The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen av Alan Moore, en av vår tids mest ansedda författare inom seriemediet, också känd för att porträttera våld mot kvinnliga karaktärer.  Uppsatsens påvisade en ambivalens i porträtterandet av våld mot kvinnor i utdragen ur Alan Moores graphic novels, samt behovet av att problematisera såväl Alan Moores serier som Laura Mulveys the male gaze, men också möjligheten att använda hennes och Barthes teorier inom retorikdiskursens och seriemediets ramar för att granska hur samspelet mellan bild och text kan uttrycka olika typer av budskap och attityder.

Dans la seconde moitié des années soixante naissent aux États-Unis le rock et la critique rock.Les participants de ces deux sphères s'unissent jusqu'à former une camaraderie, mais de cette rencontre surgit aussi un troisième champ. Ni vraiment musical, ni totalement critique, celui-ci est avant tout « littéraire ». Il nous met au défi de parler de critique rock pour mieux discuter de littérature et non de musique. C'est dans ce paradoxe apparent que Lester Bangs évolue par exemple. Génie tutélaire de ce petit groupe d'auteurs formés au sein des premiers fanzines et magazines rock, il ne décrit pas seulement les mythes rock ; il interroge aussi leur écriture. Plus avant, ce qui se dessine dans ses textes est le portrait du jeune écrivain « débutant » issu de la grande tradition du « journalisme littéraire ». Cela crée des liens entre les conditions d'accès à l'écriture dans la presse et le devenir « écrivain » en littérature. De même, trouve-t-on des annonces et des échos de ces discours dans le « cinéma direct » américain de l'époque, ainsi que dans la critique rock française. Le film Dont Look Back de Donn Alan Pennebaker par exemple montre déjà dès 1965 la nécessité de la création d'une critique non-journalistique sur le rock. Puis, Yves Adrien s'inspire de l'œuvre de Lester Bangs. Et enfin aujourd'hui à plus de quarante ans de distance, toujours Nick Tosches, Peter Guralnick, Greil Marcus et Lenny Kaye reconstruisent en paroles cette première expérience d'écriture et de publication. Aussi, cette thèse étudiera la création inattendue d'un champ littéraire au sein de la critique rock sur un plan mythographique : bien qu'éphémère, celui-ci s'avèrera fécond / In the second half of the sixties, rock music and rock criticism emerge in the United States. The protagonists of the two spheres gather to create a sense of camaraderie, but a third field also arises from that encounter. It is first and foremost a literary one, neither really musical, nor completely criticism-oriented. As a result, it challenges us to discuss rock criticism in order to better understand literature rather than music. Lester Bangs in particular dwells within that apparent paradox. As the figurehead of this little group of authors formed in early rock fanzines and magazines, he not only describes the rock myths but also discusses the way they are written. The portrait of the “aspiring writer” originating from the tradition of “literary journalism” also appears in his texts. This links the conditions of writing in the press to the situation of the fresh writer-to-be in literature. Similarly, auguries and echoes of such discourses can be found during the same period in American “direct cinema” and French rock criticism. For instance Donn Alan Pennebaker already underlines in 1965 the need for a non-journalistic criticism on rock in his documentary Dont Look Back. Later, Yves Adrien follows Lester Bangs works. Finally, forty years on, Nick Tosches, Peter Guralnick, Greil Marcus and Lenny Kaye continue today to reshape verbally this initial experience of writing and publishing. This thesis studies the unexpected birth of a new literary field through mythography. Though short-lived, it was nonetheless fecund

With its focus on the relationship between dreamscape and death, this study examines the possibility of indirectly experiencing – through writing and dreaming – that which cannot be directly experienced, namely death. In considering this possibility, the thesis engages at length with Maurice Blanchot's argument that death, being irrevocably absent and therefore unknowable, is not open to presentation or representation. After explicating certain of this thinker's theories on the ambiguous nature of literary and oneiric representation, and on the forfeiture of subjective agency that occurs in the moments of writing and dreaming, the study turns to an examination of the manner in which such issues are dealt with in selected dreamscapes. With reference to David Malouf's An Imaginary Life, Alan Warner's These Demented Lands, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Richard Linklater's Waking Life, the thesis explores the literary and cinematic representation of human attempts to define, resist, or control death through dreaming and writing about it. Ultimately, the study concludes that such attempts are necessarily inconclusive, and that it is only ever possible to represent death as a (mis)representation.

« Comic book » est un terme anglo-saxon, plus spécifiquement américain, employé pour désigner les fascicules de bande dessinée. Il a trouvé son autonomie en 1938 avec la création de « Superman » qui a amorcé l'hégémonie de la figure du « super-héros » dans la production. Au cours du vingtième siècle, éditeurs et auteurs ont eu recours à des stratégies de conquête et de fidélisation du lectorat dont le procédé de la réécriture est le plus significatif. Le super-héros fut alors soumis à l'interprétation de nombreux créateurs et devint le témoin à multiples facettes de l'Histoire des États-Unis. Il s'est dessiné à partir des années quatre-vingt une tendance réflexive qui prend cette figure comme objet critique et qui a donné naissance à ce qu'on appelle ici le « metacomic ». À partir d'un corpus représentatif, cette thèse est consacrée aux stratégies qui fondent cette réflexivité et aux discours qu'elle véhicule dans les œuvres. Elle se divise en quatre chapitres. Le premier est un descriptif de l'industrie du comic book qui explique ses particularités et l'hégémonie en son sein du genre « superhéroïque ». Le second est dédié aux processus formels qui permettent de justifier la constitution du corpus en définissant la réflexivité des œuvres. Le troisième est voué à une analyse du caractère idéologique de cette métafiction, afin de montrer en quoi la mise en crise du super-héros sert un discours sur l'Histoire et la politique américaines. Le dernier s'intéresse à la manière dont les œuvres consacrent le super-héros comme figure de l'imagination : adoptant une approche fictionnaliste, on y démontre comment transfictionnalité et univers fictionnels sont utilisés pour revisiter / “Comic Book” is the Anglo-Saxon, more specifically American term employed to describe a specific material medium for comics. The epochal moment in the history of the comic book was the 1938 publication of « Superman », which marked the starting point of the hegemony of the figure of the superhero in comic production. Over the course of the twentieth century, authors and publishers have used various strategies for winning over readers and securing their loyalty. Among these, the technique of rewriting is the most significant. Thus, the superhero has been the subject of many reinterpretations, and consequently, has born witness to many facets of the United States’ history. The publications of the 1980s have seen the rise of a reflexive approach in which the superhero becomes an object of critique himself. This new genre is here referred to as Metacomic. Drawing on a representative body of works, the doctoral thesis at hand examines the strategies that constitute this reflexivity, as well as the multiple discourses that it gives rise to. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter gives an account of the comic book industry and explains its particularities, as well as the hegemonic position of the superhero genre in the industry. The second chapter attempts a definition of reflexivity in comic books, which permits to establish a body of works to be examined. The third chapter attempts an analysis of the ideological aspects of this metafiction in order to show how the crisis of the superhero reflects on a certain discourse on American history and politics. The fourth and last chapter examines how the analysed comics establish the superhero as an agent of imag

An ethical understanding of responsibility should entail a richly qualitative comprehension of the links between embodied, unique individuals and their lived realities of behaviour. Criminal responsibility theory broadly adheres to ‘rational choice’ models of the moral self which subsume individuals’ emotionally embodied dimensions under the general direction of their rational will and abstracts their behaviour from corporeal reality. Linking individuals with their behaviour based only on such understandings of ‘rational choice’ and abstract descriptions of behaviour overlooks the phenomenological dimensions of that behaviour and thus its moral significance as a lived experience. To overcome this ethical shortcoming, engagement with the aesthetic as an alternative discourse can help articulate the ‘excessive’ nature of lived reality and its relationship with ‘orthodox’ knowledge; fittingly, the comics form involves interaction of rational, non-rational, linguistic, and non-linguistic dimensions, modelling the limits of conceptual thought in relation to complex reality. Rational choice is predicated upon a split between a contextually embedded self and an abstractly autonomous self. Analysis of the graphic novel Watchmen contends that prioritisation of rational autonomy over sensual experience is symptomatic of a ‘rational surface’ that turns away from the indeterminate ‘chaos’ of complex reality (the unstructured universe), instead maintaining the power of rational and linguistic concepts to order the world. This ‘rational surface’ is maintained by masking that which threatens its stability: the chaos of the infinite difference of living individuals. These epistemological foundations are reconfigured, via Watchmen, enabling engagement beyond the ‘rational surface’ by accepting the generative potential of this living chaos and calling for models of criminal identity that are ‘restless’, acknowledging the unique, shifting nature of individuals, and not tending towards ‘complete’ or stable concepts of the self-as-responsible. As part of the aesthetic methodology of this reconfiguration, a radical extension of legal theory’s analytical canon is developed.

This thesis focuses primarily on homophobia and how it plays a role in the construction of queer identities, specifically in graphic novels and comic books. The primary texts being analyzed are Alan Moore's Lost Girls, Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and Michael Chabon's prose novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Throughout these and many other comics, queer identities reflect homophobic stereotypes rather than resisting them. However, this thesis argues that, despite the homophobic tendencies of these texts, the very nature of comics (their visual aspects, panel structures, and blank gutters) allows for an alternative space for positive queer identities. / by Michael Buso. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This thesis discusses the relationship between classic comic books and BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism.) Will Eisner's The Spirit is used to discuss sexuality and power in comics, with special attention paid to Eisner's "The Kissing Caper." The Eisner chapter explores the relationship between sadomasochism, film noir, gender dynamics and comics. Using Judith Butler, Fredric Wertham and Theodor Reik, the gender politics of The Spirit are discussed. Women's changing roles in the post-World War II American workplace are linked to Eisner's BDSM themes in The Spirit from the character's origin story to the 1950s. In examining Alan Moore's Watchmen, the paper focuses on transactional power dynamics and how BDSM rituals are enacted in modern American comics. American power relationships in politics are used as a comparison and contrast to BDSM dynamics in Watchmen. Samuel R. Delany, William Moulton Marston and Pat Califia are used as theorists within the discussion of power exchanges in Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore's graphic novel. The consensual fantasy element to this power relationship is demonstrated as the underlying dynamic of the act, and not as actual punishment or nonconsensual sadism. / by Michael Furlong. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:58:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao protegida.pdf: 485470 bytes, checksum: 735f19742a5105b8edf06e0232846991 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-06-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The objective of this work is to study the myth of the double as character in the novel The Double, of Jose Saramago, published in 2002. To explain the form of this myth in the Contemporarity we cover the trajectory of the myth since the sprouting of the reason and the conscience of itself in the beginning of the man. As hypothesis, we understand the myth of the double as non-separable part of the nature human being who will follow the evolution of the artistic phenomena, since the first representations in the walls of the caves until the fragmentary art contemporary, being its literary construction impregnated by the historical and social-cultural modifications, transforming the literary language into instrument of critical and metalanguage. To justify the study of the myth to be the primordial form of narration, oral in principle, suffering to a mutation to be registered for the writing, losing the sacred character and acquiring literary contours. It is in this aspect that we observe the transformation of the myth, more specifically, from the work of Edgar Allan Poe, the short story William Wilson, chosen for its importance in the formatting of a double modern, fruit of a society that entries for the Modern Age for the Industrial Revolution and its consequences, such as the growth of the cities and the massification of the population; until the romance The Double, presenting a double in search of an identity that if presents unstable. Analyzing the double while character, we verify the influences of the historical and social-cultural factors in its composition, beyond its relation with the author and the narrator of the literary text, the some voices that if face in the narrative and propitiate to look at intent disclosing the double that if it projects in these relations and it constructs a multifaceted text / O objetivo desse trabalho é estudar o mito do duplo como personagem na obra O homem duplicado, de José Saramago, publicada em 2002. Para entender a forma desse mito na contemporaneidade percorremos sua trajetória desde o surgimento da razão e da consciência de si nos primórdios do homem. Como hipótese, entendemos o mito do duplo como parte inseparável da natureza humana que acompanhará a evolução dos fenômenos artísticos, desde as primeiras representações nas paredes das cavernas até a fragmentária arte contemporânea, sendo sua construção literária impregnada pelas modificações históricas e sócio-culturais, transformando a linguagem literária em instrumento de crítica e de metalinguagem. Justifica-se o estudo do mito por ser essa a forma primordial de narração, a princípio oral, sofrendo uma mutação ao ser registrado pela escrita, perdendo o caráter sagrado e adquirindo contornos literários. É nesse aspecto que observamos a transformação do mito do duplo, mais especificamente a partir da obra de Edgar Allan Poe, o conto William Wilson, escolhido pela sua importância na formatação de um duplo moderno, fruto de uma sociedade que adentra a Era Moderna pela Revolução Industrial e suas conseqüências, tais como o crescimento das cidades e a massificação da população; até o romance O homem duplicado, apresentando um duplo em busca de uma identidade que se apresenta instável. Analisando o duplo enquanto personagem, verificamos as influências dos fatores históricos e sócio-culturais na sua composição, além de sua relação com o autor e o narrador do texto literário, as várias vozes que se enfrentam na narrativa e propiciam um olhar atento revelando o duplo que se projeta nessas relações e constrói um texto multifacetado