Ce travail de thèse concerne le suivi d'une caméra infrarouge sensible dans la gamme 1-5 p.m (COMIC), depuis la caractérisation en laboratoire de la mosaïque de détecteurs, jusqu'à son utilisation dans le cadre d'observations astronomiques, sur le système d'Optique Adaptative ADONIS au télescope de 3.60 m de l'Observatoire Européen Austral (ESO), au Chili. Ce manuscrit comporte trois parties qui suivent l'enchainement chronologique "naturel" de l'étude, dans des lieux de travail différents. La première partie concerne la mosaïque de détecteurs COMIC (IRCCD 128X128 HgCdTe), en commençant par sa caractérisation en laboratoire, pour finir par sa mise en opération sous télescope, au sein de la caméra COMIC. Elle s'est d'abord déroulée au sein du Laboratoire Infrarouge (LETI/DOPT/CEA-Grenoble), puis à l'ESO, au Chili. La deuxième partie traite des spécificités de l'observation infrarouge avec un instrument d'Optique Adaptative. Cette partie est le résultat de l'expérience acquise au cours d'un long séjour à l'ESO. Elle unit le point de vue technique de la première partie à celui de l'astronome utilisateur. Enfin, une illustration du potentiel de l'instrument (COMIC+ADONIS) est donnée en troisième partie dans le cadre d'un programme astronomique bien défini: l'étude de la matière circumstellaire dans des systèmes binaires pré-Séquence Principale. Cette dernière étude a été menée à l'Observatoire de Grenoble.

This dissertation engages in a longitudinal study of the method of grassroots comics (Packalen & Sharma, 2007) amongst the Khwe people in the community of Platfontein, which is situated outside of Kimberley, South Africa. The study is largely informed by contemporary shifts in development theory, particularly that of participatory communication, which values individuals who live in the community as active participants in the research process. The use of grassroots comics (Packalen & Sharma, 2007) is largely based on theoretical concepts surfacing in current literature regarding the field development communication, which is somewhat critical of older, more dominant theories of development. Instead of applying a predetermined, uniform model of communication to multiple different settings in which varying development issues exist, this study is driven by the active involvement of community stakeholders throughout every stage of the research process. This includes the identification of community issues, the utilization of grassroots comics in the context of adapting and communicating about those issues on a community-wide scale, and the overall analysis of the process once research has been carried out. This particular study focuses on general health issues and how these might affect the Khwe community from a development perspective. However, what is of central importance is how the comics created by certain stakeholders in the community might serve as a means of promoting participatory communication amongst the local population, for the sake of alleviating certain health issues prevalent in the community itself. The practical nature of grassroots comics as a forum for health communication is what is of particular interest in this study. Purposive sampling techniques are employed in order to identify key participants and informants in the research process, to present a case-specific analysis of grassroots comics in use, and for purposes of limiting this study. Data collection methods applied to the research setting and research findings are conducted using various qualitative research techniques including participant observation, interviews, discussions and a participatory grassroots comics workshop. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

This book is about the participatory aesthetics of the fantastic. In it, the author argues that the definition of the fantastic presented by Tzvetan Todorov in 1970 can be used, provided it is first adapted to a media-ecological framework, to theorize the role of aesthetic participation in the creation of secondary worlds. Working within a hermeneutical tradition, Todorov understands reader participation as interpretation, in which the creative ambiguities of the literary object are primarily epistemological. However, it is here argued that the aesthetic object of the fantastic is also characterized by material ambiguity. The purpose of this dissertation is then to present a conceptual framework with which to theorize the relation between the material and the epistemological ambiguity of the fantastic. It is argued that such a framework can be found in an ecological understanding of aesthetic participation. This, in turn, entails understanding human subjectivity as a process always already embodied in a material environment. To this extent, the proposed theoretical framework questions the clear and oppositional distinction between form and matter, as well as that between mind and body, nature and culture, and human and non-human, on which a modern and humanist notion of subjectivity is based. And in this sense, the basic ecological assumptions of this dissertation are posthumanist, or non-humanist. From this position, it is argued that an ecological understanding of participation offers a means to reformulate the function of a number of concepts central to studying the aesthetics of the fantastic, most notably the concepts of media, genre and text. As the fantastic focuses on the creation of other worlds, it is an aesthetics of coming into being, of ontogenesis. Accordingly, it will be argued that the participatory aesthetics of the fantastic operationalizes the ontogenesis of media, genres and texts. By mapping the ontogenesis of three distinct media ecologies – the media ecology of fantasy and J. R. R. Tolkien’s secondary world Middle-earth; the media ecology of the American comic book superhero Miracleman; and the media ecology of William Blake – this book argues that the ecological imagination generates world. Per Israelson has been a doctoral candidate in the Research School of Studies in Cultural History at the department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. Ecologies of the Imagination is his dissertation.

This essay is an analysis of Brian Wood's Viking epic Northlanders, published by Vertigo/DC between the years of 2007-2012. The aim is to identify how Old Norse faith and Christianity are portrayed. This is done by using the theory of representation as developed by Stuart Hall and putting them into the historical context of a postmodern, secular western world of thought. The research shows a wide variety of religiosity in both Norse and Christian characters. Some common trends have been identified though, and these are a general appreciation of physical strength within the Norse religion and a general tendency in Norse religion to explain natural phenomena and to have fatalistic leanings while Christianity rather seeks to offer comfort in times of need. The results also show that one of the greater roles Christianity plays in Northlanders is contributing to, or sometimes forcing a societal change, while the practitioners of the Norse faith tend to lean toward stability. There is also a tendency to present the northerners as outcasts, while the Christian counterparts are part of an establishment.

At just under thirty years the serious academic study of American comic books is relatively young. Over the course of three decades most historians familiar with the medium have recognized that American comics, since becoming a mass-cultural product in 1939, have matured beyond their humble beginnings as a monthly publication for children. However, historians are not yet in agreement as to when the medium became mature. This thesis proposes that the medium’s maturity was cemented between 1985 and 2000, a much later point in time than existing texts postulate. The project involves the analysis of how an American mass medium, in this case the comic book, matured in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The goal is to show the interconnected relationships and factors that facilitated the maturation of the American sequential art, specifically a focus on a group of British writers working at DC Comics and Vertigo, an alternative imprint under the financial control of DC. The project consulted the major works of British comic scriptwriters, Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, and Garth Ennis. These works include Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Shade: the Changing Man, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Animal Man, Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Preacher and several other important works. Following a chronological organization, the work tracks major changes taking place in the American comic book industry in the commercial, corporate, and creative sectors to show the processes through which the medium matured in this time period. This is accomplished by combining textual analysis of the comics with industry specific records and a focus on major cultural shifts in US society and culture

The thesis A Portrait of a Journalist throughout the Comic Book Production deals with comics as a medium with a potential to create certain ideas about society. The aim of this thesis is to define typology of fictional journalists in comic books and to answer the question whether these comic images form stereotypes about journalistic profession. The thesis is divided into three parts: theoretical, historical and analytical. In the first part the author deals with the theoretical definition of terms used in the field of comics and media studies, which is closely related to the concept of the thesis (comics, journalist, stereotypes, interpretation). The second chapter summarizes the historical development of a comic's production on each continent. Special attention is devoted to a distinctive formation of the comic series in the Czech environment. Based on the previous research the author analyzes the comic book characters of journalists in the main part of the thesis. These are divided into categories according to the nature of the characters, gender differences and genres. The outcome of the performed analysis is a summary of the findings and the resulting conclusions. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

- Hyperbole, Imagination and Tradition in Luigi Pulci's Morgante The epic Morgante, compiled at the end of the 15th century by the poet Luigi Pulci, stands at the turn of two historical eras. It is a meeting point of the Middle Ages and Renaissance with their literary influences and ideas. Also, it reflects the change in the development stages of the genre: from the period when the heroic narrative was declaimed by minstrels (joglars) on squares, this subject matter was gradually introduced into royal courts, where it was influenced by a more elevated culture. The main elements of this epic include the adoption of several literary traditions, the comic in many of its forms, and religion, all of which is underlined with the special imagination of the author together with allusions to his own life situation. Luigi Pulci adopted not only the tradition of the heroic matter full of typical medieval patterns (topoi) very popular in Italy at that time, but also the comic-realistic literary tradition of Tuscany, which provides his narrative with a different tone in many ways, and thus incorporates Morgante in a literary field different from the one which its predecessors were part of. Orlando is the most significant of these; it is a text that was used by Pulci as a direct inspiration for his work and most...

Captain America and Iron Man are both iconic American heroes, representing different American values. Captain America was created during the Golden Age of comics and represents a longing for the past, while Iron Man was created at the height of the Cold War and looks forward to a new America. This paper will first establish the historical and cultural relationship between comic books and propaganda, beginning with the first appearance of Superman. It will pay special attention to the similarities and differences of Captain America and Iron Man, focusing on their representation of American values over time, and discuss how that aspect of the characters affects their ongoing titles today.

Thesis (M. Tech.) - Dept. of Visual Arts and Design, Faculty of Human Sciences - Vaal University of Technology / The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between visual and verbal codes of visual rhetoric in a sequential art setting. The literature investigation component of the study covered: (1) the notion of visual literacy; (2) the principles of visual rhetoric, and (3) trends in sequential art. The empirical component of the study involved the production of sequential art test material with an accompanying questionnaire in order to measure the comprehension of visual rhetoric in a sample of 197 undergraduate students at the Vaal University of Technology. The working hypotheses that guided the study were, firstly, that the comprehension of the visual code of the visual rhetoric used in a sequential art setting differs between (a) study participants that received visual training prior to the data collection and (b) study participants that received no visual training prior to the data collection, and secondly, that the comprehension of the visual code of the visual rhetoric used in a sequential art setting differs between (a) study participants that received test material in their home language and (b) study participants that did not receive the test material in their home language. Following a one-way ANOVA analysis of the questionnaire data, the first hypothesis indicated a significant statistical difference (p=O.OO) and was not rejected. The second hypothesis indicated no significant statistical difference (p=0.138) and was rejected. Based on the result obtained, possibilities for further research were motivated. / Vaal University of Technology

Text in English / The study unravels moral perversion in selected post-independence detective Shona novels. Moral perversion is a multi-faceted concept and the study focuses on corruption, sexual harassment, abuse of office, stealing, poaching and illegal manufacturing of intoxicating products as the key definers of moral perversion. Afrocentricity merged with Kawaida philosophy are the lenses used to pass critical judgements on the extent the selected literary practitioners portrayed literature rooted in the African ontological existence on moral perversion. Fictional works used as primary sources are Sajeni Chimedza (1984), Mutikitivha Dumbuzenene (1991), Munzwa mundove (1999) and Dandemutande, (1998). All the novels are set in the post-independence era in Zimbabwe when moral perversion is rife. The study is qualitative in nature and data was gathered using questionnaires and interviews from literary critics, publishers and novelists. Particular attention is paid on the causes of moral perversion, images of people in leadership positions and the implications of character assassination of leaders in relation to the development of purposeful literature. The study contends that moral insanity is an acknowledged problem in the post-independence era and novelists are portraying leaders as the chief culprits manning factionalism and unorthodox ways of acquiring resources at the expense of the majority of citizenry. Guided and informed by Afrocentricity, the study argues that novelists are raising pertinent issues although their views are myopic, simplistic and self-defeating because they are failing to see that the leaders are also victims who are victimizing other victims. Blaming the leadership on moral perversion ignoring the impact of colonialism, and neo-colonialism in shaping African personality creates more harm than good as this exonerates the imperialistic system of exploitation which impinges on African culture and personality. Therefore, the study argues that novelists erroneously blame individuals for the sins of a system. There is need to interrogate both external and internal factors to establish sustainable home-grown problem solving solutions to improve human condition and the development of functional literature in Africa. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)