Doctor of Philosophy / This arts-informed inquiry is grounded in the lived experiences of five self-proclaimed artists including the researcher, who have turned to careers in teaching at varying stages of their lives. The stories of their transitions and evolving identities as both artists and teachers provide the investigative focus for this study. Although this research is relevant to teachers more generally, it specifically focuses on those who have chosen to teach Visual Arts. Particularly suited to a postmodern, arts-informed inquiry, the diverse forms of knowing that create our everyday experiences are acknowledged. The researcher became the bricoleur who collaged the individual stories of the first year artist-teachers into an integrated work of art. This constructivist approach included the use of visual imagery to transcend linguistic description. Through artworks, photographs, a self-narrative and novelette, the multiple ways these early career Visual Arts teachers came to understand themselves and their journeys are explored. This study has the potential to inform novice teachers of the transitions they may experience as they enter the teaching profession. Possible challenges, including the recognition that idealised beliefs might be traded in for more realistic representations, are discussed along with the notions of teaching as an art and the concept of resilience.

"Edge Effects: Poetry, Place, and Spiritual Practices” focusses on the intersection of the environmental and religious imaginations in the work of five West Coast poets: Robinson Jeffers, Theodore Roethke, Robert Hass, Denise Levertov, and Jan Zwicky. My research examines the selected poems for their reimagination of the sacred perceived through attachments to particular places. For these writers, poetry is a constitutive practice, part of a way of life that includes desire for wise participation in the more-than-human community. Taking into account the poets’ critical reflections and historical-cultural contexts, along with a range of critical and philosophical sources, the poetry is examined as a discursive spiritual exercise. It is seen as conjoined with other focal practices of place, notably meditative walking and attentive looking and listening under the influence of ecospiritual eros. My analysis attends to aesthetics of relinquishment, formal strategies employed to recognize and accept finitude and the non-anthropocentric nature of reality, along with the complementary aesthetics of affirmation, configuration of the goodness of the whole. I identify an orienting feature of West Coast place, particular to each poet, that recurs as a leitmotif for engagement of such aesthetics and related practices. In chapter one, I consider a group of Jeffers’s final poems as part of a project he designated “our De Natura,” attending especially to his affinity for stones and stars. In chapter two, I investigate both Roethke’s and Hass’s configurations of ecospiritual eros in accord with their fascination for flora, while in chapter three, I employ the concepts of “aura” and “resonance” to explicate Levertov’s meditations on the “coming and going” Mount Rainier-Tacoma and Zwicky’s reflective iterations of the sea. / Graduate / 2019-04-04

<p>This paper presents Theopoetics, a theo-philosophical aesthetic movement that arose from the 1960’s Death of God theology, as a hermeneutical framework that accounts for both embodiment and the numinous in poetry. Through an examination of the life and poetic works of the disenfranchised religious poet, Thomas Merton, and a more religiously nebulous poet, Denise Levertov. This paper will present two different perspectives from these poets who encountered the need to qualify the numinous in their poetry and subverted that qualification through a theopoetic process. </p>

<p>Syftena med denna uppsats har varit flera. Dels att genomföra en undersökande genrediskussion av svensk chick-lit i stort där det som uppfattats som den huvudsakliga kritiken av genren omformulerats till frågeställningar. Huvudfrågan har därmed varit att ta reda på om svensk chick-lit är intressant, men också om den har några litterära kvaliteter och om den är en feministisk backlash. I uppsatsen arbetas även en definition av svensk chick-lit fram, samt empiriskt grundad teori ur materialet. Avsikten är att detta arbete ska kunna verka som förebild för andra utredningar av nya och marginaliserade genrer. En undersökning av vilka principer biblioteken, här representerade av Umeåregionens bibliotek, utgår från vid inköp av skönlitteratur i stort och chick-lit i synnerhet har också genomförts.</p> / <p>The aims of this paper have been more than one. One aim is to conduct an investigative genre discussion of Swedish chick lit as a whole, where what is conceived as the main critique of the genre is reformulated into questions. The main questions here are if Swedish chick lit is of interest, if it possesses any literary qualities and if it constitutes a feminist backlash. This paper also draws up a definition of Swedish chick lit and empirically grounded theory from the material. The intent is for this paper to serve as a model for other analyses of new and marginalized genres. A study of the principles adopted by libraries, here represented by libraries in the Umeå district, in fiction purchases as a whole and purchases of chick lit in particular, has also been carried out.</p>

Syftena med denna uppsats har varit flera. Dels att genomföra en undersökande genrediskussion av svensk chick-lit i stort där det som uppfattats som den huvudsakliga kritiken av genren omformulerats till frågeställningar. Huvudfrågan har därmed varit att ta reda på om svensk chick-lit är intressant, men också om den har några litterära kvaliteter och om den är en feministisk backlash. I uppsatsen arbetas även en definition av svensk chick-lit fram, samt empiriskt grundad teori ur materialet. Avsikten är att detta arbete ska kunna verka som förebild för andra utredningar av nya och marginaliserade genrer. En undersökning av vilka principer biblioteken, här representerade av Umeåregionens bibliotek, utgår från vid inköp av skönlitteratur i stort och chick-lit i synnerhet har också genomförts. / The aims of this paper have been more than one. One aim is to conduct an investigative genre discussion of Swedish chick lit as a whole, where what is conceived as the main critique of the genre is reformulated into questions. The main questions here are if Swedish chick lit is of interest, if it possesses any literary qualities and if it constitutes a feminist backlash. This paper also draws up a definition of Swedish chick lit and empirically grounded theory from the material. The intent is for this paper to serve as a model for other analyses of new and marginalized genres. A study of the principles adopted by libraries, here represented by libraries in the Umeå district, in fiction purchases as a whole and purchases of chick lit in particular, has also been carried out.

This study will explore the role of female authors and their female protagonists in contemporary Scottish and Nordic crime fiction. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Lin Anderson and Liza Marklund are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender in the crime fiction genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society, they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, all journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series; Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series; Anna Smith’s books about Rosie Gilmour; and Liza Marklund’s books about Annika Bengzton, I explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives and also draw parallels between their societies. I document the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research, a novel, The Invisible Chains, set in post-Referendum Scotland. The thesis will examine and define the role of the female protagonist, offer a feminist reading of contemporary crime fiction, and investigate how the rise of human trafficking, the problem of domestic abuse in Scotland and society’s changing attitudes and values are reflected in contemporary crime novels, before discussing the narrative structures and techniques employed in the writing of The Invisible Chains. This novel allows us to consider the role of women in a contemporary and progressive society where women hold many senior positions in public life and examine whether they manage successfully to challenge traditional patriarchal hierarchies. The narrative is split between journalist Megan Ross, The Girl, a victim of human trafficking, and Trudy, who is being domestically abused, thus pulling together the themes of the critical genesis in the creative work. By focusing on the protagonist, the victims and raising awareness of human trafficking and domestic abuse, The Invisible Chains, an original creative work, reflects a contemporary society’s changing attitudes, problems and values.

This dissertation examines selected literary works by Anita Rau Badami, Denise Chong, Hiromi Goto, Larissa Lai, and Kerri Sakamoto, exploring how their stories respond both to the absence of representations of Asian Canadian women in literary discourses of the early twentieth century and to homogenizing assumptions in official histories. My formulation of (re)presentation in the title recognizes the multiplicity and constructedness of these denoted identities and experiences and the self-representations of these writers as a response to this elision and misrepresentation. The term repair borrows from philosopher Hilde Lindemann Nelson’s theorizing of “narrative repair,” which involves telling counterstories, but also is used in psychological contexts as a healing mechanism. An elaboration of both models, as applied in this study, is optimally useful in diasporic contexts as resistance to the elision and/or racist and gendered discursive constructions of Asian Canadian women and as restoration of damaged identities. The texts under study—Tamarind Mem, The Concubine’s Children, Chorus of Mushrooms, When Fox Is a Thousand, and The Electrical Field—were all published in the mid-1990s, after the initial forays into the writing of novels by Asian Canadian authors such as Joy Kogawa (1981) and SKY Lee (1990). My choice of these sister narratives recognizes the family as central to identity construction and intergenerational (mis)understanding and emphasizes the importance of this period’s second-generation explosion of writings by Japanese, Chinese, and Indo Canadian women that paved the way for the current plethora of writings by authors from these cultural groups that contribute significantly to Canadian representations of diasporic identity. This study explores the nuances and pluralisms of the representations of Asian Canadian women. The texts under consideration are cultural autobiographies and matrilineal or sexually transgressive narratives that reinvent the cultural memory of Canadian women of Asian ancestry; produce cultural fusions through the transcreation of oral traditions and simulations of the oral, transcoding of ancestral tongues, and discursive strategies of silence; and address connections between self and place in examinations of Canada, the adopted country, as (un)homely territory. Presenting unhyphenated diasporic female subjects who exceed socially scripted boundaries of gender, sexuality, race, and nationality, in terms of both Canada and the writers’ and protagonists’ ancestral Asian nations, these “acts of narrative insubordination” (Nelson 8) exemplify emancipatory politics and recuperative and revisionary projects. Interrogating questions of (re)presentation and repair from positions of liminality and across gendered, racial, linguistic, and geographical divides, this research contributes to current urgent discussions of identity, transculturation, multiculturalism, and globalization in literary and cultural studies.

This dissertation considers the relation between literary documents and public identities, and how U. S. culture is reflected and transfigured by poetry in the United States after 1960. Concerned with epideictic communication in public contexts, this study looks at how private interventions in public spaces can shape attitudes toward cultural phenomena. A secondary concern elucidates the ways literary texts are valued in English departments, bearing critical reflection on rhetorical, literary, and creative pedagogy. Insofar as the epideictic mode prepares individuals for a decision-making process in current democratic situations, this dissertation considers recent examples of strategic public engagements, and provides rhetorical readings of key situations in American social and cultural life since 1960 to illustrate how such methods can bring rhetoric and literature together in contemporary public contexts. The first of these studies inspects the correspondence and poetry of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov during the Vietnam War over the uses of poetry as a public document. Public identity and U. S. social practices are explored in the following chapter with the 1970s and ’80s poetry of Lorenzo Thomas and Edward Dorn, whose poems participate in the articulation of tensions between private and public life. Chapter 4 argues that Charles Olson’s poems and letters appearing in the editorial pages of The Gloucester-Daily Times in the 1960s effectively helped bring civic attention to the transformation of public space in Gloucester, Mass. While he interpreted the changes he perceived in Gloucester through literary and historical theories, he framed them within rhetorically motivated communication strategies to deliver new perceptions of what constituted civic value. Chapter 5 concludes by examining more recent attempts by poets to influence public reflection on crucial events that led to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through digital media, public performance, and civic encounters mediated by fugitive texts. The opening and final chapters introduce my methodology and present the problem of poetry in public contexts, and advocates for reflection within English departments on the rhetorical value of literary texts. / text

This thesis aims to reveal paradigms associated with the operation of Western architectural oligarchies. The research is an examination into "how" dominant architectural institutions and their figureheads are undermined through the subversive collaboration of younger, unrecognised architects. By appropriating theories found in Jacques Derrida's writings in philosophy, the thesis interprets the evolution of post World War II polemical architectural thinking as a series of political friendships. In order to provide evidence, the thesis involves the rewriting of a portion of modern architectural history, 1949-1987. Modern architectural history is rewritten as a series of three friendship partnerships which have been selected because of their subversive reaction to their respective establishments. They are English architects, Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson; South African born architect and planner, Denise Scott Brown and North American architect, Robert Venturi; and Greek architect, Elia Zenghelis and Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas. Crucial to the undermining of their respective enemies is the friends' collaboration on subversive projects. These projects are built, unbuilt and literary. Warring publicly through the writing of seminal texts is a significant step towards undermining the dominance of their ideological opponents. It also appears that through the making of these projects, the unrecognised architects are able to convert themselves to being recognised as new figureheads. This thesis contends that as a consequence of the power within each of the three friendship partnerships, the architects are enabled to collaborate against the dominant ideology of their respective enemies and gain status. It also contends that a cycle of friendship and warring is the political system by which the institution of modern architecture has historically reengineered itself to suit the times.

[ES] Robert Venturi y Denise Scott Brown no sólo fueron transgresores con sus teorías en los años 60, también con sus obras. La Guild House fue una de ellas, "ordinaria" y "extraordinaria" a la vez. Un edificio de transición, ni sólo moderno, ni sólo posmoderno, sino complejo y contradictorio, que fue más allá de las convenciones del Movimiento Moderno, transgrediéndolo y apostando por su superación, sin dirigir la mirada a los grandes maestros, sino al presente y el futuro. Un ejercicio de experimentación en un edificio de viviendas sociales para personas mayores con pocos recursos, que incluye un programa complejo, repleto de simbolismos históricos y ordinarios a favor de la semántica de los elementos convencionales, las distorsiones y los distintos tipos de ornamento, con el que volvieron su mirada hacia el pasado para mirar al futuro, acercándose a la realidad social a través de la aceptación de los gustos populares americanos. Apoyados en la ironía, promovieron una arquitectura aparentemente ordinaria, aunque compleja y culta en esencia, arquetipo de la arquitectura de "lo feo y lo ordinario" frente a lo "heroico y original", manifiesto del "decorated shed", y probablemente, el primer gran edificio "posmodernista". / [CA] Robert Venturi i Denise Scott Brown no només van ser transgressors amb les seves teories en els anys 60, també amb les seves obres. La Guild House va ser una d'elles, "ordinària" i "extraordinària" alhora. Un edifici de transició, ni només modern, ni només postmodern, sinó complex i contradictori, que va anar més enllà de les convencions del Moviment Modern, transgredint-lo i col¿laborant en la seva superació, sense dirigir la mirada als grans mestres, sinò al present i el futur. Un exercici d'experimentació en un edifici d'habitatges socials per a gent gran amb pocs recursos, que inclou un programa complex, ple de simbolismes històrics i ordinaris a favor de la semàntica dels elements convencionals, les distorsions i els diferents tipus d'ornament, amb el qual van tornar la seva mirada cap al passat per mirar al futur, acostant-se a la realitat social a través de l'acceptació dels gustos populars americans. Recolzats en la ironia, van promoure una arquitectura aparentment ordinària, encara que complexa i culta en essència, arquetip de l'arquitectura de "el lleig i l'ordinari" davant el "heroic i original", manifest del "decorated shed", i probablement, el primer gran edifici "postmodernista". / [EN] Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown were not only transgressors with their theories in the 1960s, but also with their works. The Guild House was one of them, "ordinary" and "extraordinary" at the same time. A transitional building, neither only modern nor only postmodern, but complex and contradictory, that went beyond the conventions of the Modern Movement, transgressing it and collaborating in its overcoming, without looking to the great masters, but to the present and the future. An exercise of experimentation in a social housing building for old people with few resources, which includes a complex program, full of historical and ordinary symbolism in favor of the semantics of conventional elements, distortions and different types of ornamentation, with which they turned their gaze to the past to look to the future, approaching social reality through the acceptance of popular American tastes. Supported by irony, they promoted an apparently ordinary architecture, although complex and cultured in essence, an archetype of the architecture of "the ugly and the ordinary" as opposed to the "heroic and original", a manifesto of the "decorated shed", and probably, the first great "post-modernist" building. / Arnau Orenga, PI. (2022). GUILD HOUSE. La idea de transgresión en la arquitectura de Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/181230 / TESIS