This is a qualitative study about Art transformation and commodification in the digital age. The study applies a rhetoric analysis with the aim to understand how art sellers, gallery owners and entrepreneurs take part in this transformation process through their websites’ presentation texts ”about us”. The analysis is related to communication theories but it is also inspired by other theories such as Gramsci’s hegemony theory and Bourdieu’s cultural critical theory. The study shows that in an environment of ”Global Communication”, activities that are related to the visual art on the net are strongly influenced by the commodification. Marketers and business managers have a big advantage of this phase of change in Art activities on the net. As senders in a one-way communication process, they use their rhetorical skills in their presentation texts to build identities or to enhance their business, depending on the positions of power they have in the market. They invest in art and artists, in order to expand their businesses and to capture a wider audience of recipients on World Wide Web to get more money and power. The study recommends further research about the Art commodification, preferably from the receiver’s and the artists’ sides to reveal more aspects of the effects of this transformation process in Art and its values.

During the last decades, scholars have discussed the changes of Swedish alcohol culture. Among other things, it has been suggested that parallel with increased consumption levels men’s and women’s drinking is becoming more similar. In connection with this discussion, the purpose of this thesis is to examine Swedish alcohol culture(s) by analysing the meanings that focus groups from different generations ascribe to drinking in relation to different life periods: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. More specifically, it aims to analyse how the interviewees specify and negotiate normative boundaries and self-presentations in relation to norms and discourses of gender and age. An essential part of the analysis is to examine differences within gender and age-groups, as well as the similarities between them. The findings suggest that even though drinking patterns are changing in terms of quantity and choice of beverage, meanings, motives and norms seem to be rather stable – especially in regard to gender. Overall, a distinction is being made between men and women: Femininity is constructed in terms of control, responsibility and caring, and masculinity in terms of fearlessness, breaking of boundaries, and loss of control. Men’s and women’s drinking are also accounted for in different ways. While men’s drinking behaviours are excused with arguments about biology and hormones, women’s (anticipated) responsibility is explained with their connection to motherhood. However; these norms vary in strength and are expressed in different ways, depending on the drinking norms of different life-periods; mainly moderate in childhood and adulthood, and mainly orientated to binge-drinking in adolescence. With regard to positive meanings ascribed to drinking, similarities between age and gender groups are also generally greater than the differences between them. Thus, gendered differences are mainly constructed in relation to behaviours that are perceived as risky or problematic.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 364-370). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 364-370). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Mathematics)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2006. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

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No description available.

In the following thesis I argue that from within a postmodern framework the ‘realist narrative mode’ finds its position as the narratological form of choice for communicating historical and biographical ‘truth’ under question. Furthermore, as the formal distinctions between ‘fictional’ and ‘factual’ writing become less clear, I propose that the writer’s approach to his/her craft must also be redefined. Under such conditions I argue that each individual text defines and legitimises its own particular terms of reference and narrative form. The act of writing within a postmodern framework therefore, is not only a craft, but also a philosophical activity and as such requires the writer to enter the world of theoretical fiction. Sculpting in Ice is the product of one such text entering into this process. This thesis demonstrates in action the process by which the play text for Sculpting in Ice develops its own theory of fiction through the writing of that fiction. The primary focus of the thesis is, therefore, to explore the relationship between writing and theory and to render explicit the particular ‘theory of fiction’ created during the writing of Sculpting in Ice.

Pas de résumé en français / The goal of our studies was to test the effect of segmentation, cueing, and 2D/3D presentations to foster complex animation rocessing. The material was an upright mechanical piano system. We used an eye tracking system which provides information about learners’ attention direction during the animation processing. We analyzed the effect of the format presentations and the eye movements during learning. Based on animation and multimedia research background, four experiments were conducted. In the first experiment the effect of the presentation of simplified external representations on learning from complex animation was investigated. Experiment two and three aimed at studying the cognitive processes involved in learning to complex mechanism system with new cueing techniques with spatial-temporal colored tokens. In the fourth experiment, 2D and 3D presentation of the same animated content were compared. Results of these experiments showed that (1) the use of a dual format presentation is better for developing a dynamic mental model from the animation than a single format, (2) the signaling strategies using cued tokens of dual format can guide efficiently learner’s building of mental model and can enhance learner’s comprehension of complex system, (3) a sequential format presentation followed by an animation format presentation helps the learner to understand the key stages of a dynamic process and to create a high quality mental model, (4) 3D animation presentation is better than 2D animation presentation to direct attention on relevant component of the animation. For depth processing, comprehension with 3D animation presentation is better than 2D animation format. Eye tracking measures provided insights into how people understood and learned complex systems. The analysis of eye tracking also contributed to the understanding of the subject’s perceptual processing during learning. Overall, results provide a significant contribution in the field of learning with complex animation. Recommendations in the ergonomics area for the design of animations are proposed.

Contentieux délicat entre l’Inde et le Pakistan, les deux États issus de la Partition de l’Empire britannique des Indes en 1947, la question du Cachemire est un imbroglio inextricable. Scindé par une ligne de contrôle, le territoire de l’ancien État princier du Jammu-et-Cachemire est le symbole d’une Partition inachevée pour Islamabad tandis qu’il représente l’invalidation pratique de la Théorie des deux Nations pour New Delhi. Depuis 1947, la complexité des réalités religieuses et linguistiques du territoire du Jammu-et-Cachemire tend à s’effacer face au jeu des constructions idéologiques antagonistes des deux États qui le contrôlent. Des convictions opposées se transmettent de génération en génération dans l’opinion publique des deux pays, aboutissant à une opposition jusqu’ici irréconciliable des mémoires indienne et pakistanaise. En outre, les frontières stratégiques du Cachemire, ouvertes sur l’Asie centrale, représentent un impératif absolu en tant que limite septentrionale de ce qui peut être considéré comme les néo-empires indien et pakistanais. L’évolution des représentations des frontières de l’État princier du Jammu-et-Cachemire, depuis la seconde moitié du 19ème siècle jusqu’à sa partition en janvier 1949, constitue un héritage décisif dans le développement des représentations géopolitiques indiennes, pakistanaises mais aussi et surtout dans celles des habitants de la Vallée du Cachemire et des autres sous ensembles himalayens qui composaient l’État princier. / The Kashmir problem is a sensitive bone of contention between India and Pakistan, the two states stemming from the Partition of the British Empire in India in 1947. Split into two parts by a line-of-control, the territory of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir has been for Islamabad a symbol of the unfinished Partition, whereas for New Delhi it represents, for all intents and purposes, the revocation of the Two Nations Theory. Since 1947, the complexity of religious and linguistic realities of the Jammu and Kashmir territory tends to be downplayed in the ideological formulations of the two antagonistic States that control it. This confrontation between India and Pakistan in Kashmir crystallizes opposing convictions which are passed on from one generation to the next in both countries, thereby sanctioning the differences between the Indian and Pakistani national memories. Moreover, Jammu and Kashmir has strategic borders with Central Asia which constitute a hard and fast imperative for both, as the northern border of what could be called the Indian and the Pakistani neo-empires. Since the second half of the 19th century until its partition in January 1949, the evolution of the presentation of the borders of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir constitute a decisive legacy in the way the geopolitical presentations have evolved in India and Pakistan as well as in the Valley of Kashmir and in the others Himalayan entities which had formerly made up the Princely State of Jammu-and-Kashmir.