Abstract This study begins by examining the interconnections between print and nationalism in John Milton’s prose works in order to demonstrate that Milton’s interest in print—including print-related activities like reading, writing, and publishing—is not simply a byproduct of his vocation. Instead, I argue that Milton consciously registered his reliance on and use of print in writing the nation. Further, I argue that Milton’s writing of the nation is in keeping with a modern definition of nationalism as a unifying cultural construct that wields considerable emotional poignancy despite its lack of ideological specificity. In making this argument, I am adapting a modern definition of nationalism and arguing against scholars who see nationalism as a product of modernity. I organize my dissertation into two sections: the first section, chapters 2 and 3, discusses the confluence of print and nationalism while the second section, chapters 4 and 5, examines Milton’s poems, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, as nation-building texts. As chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate, Milton had an acute awareness of the role of print in the public life of the nation, and he shaped his own identity as an author based on his contribution to England’s print culture. In chapters 4 and 5, I look at the ways Milton’s poems suggest a continuation of his commitment to nation-building although the poems were written during the Restoration: a period of time when Milton would have doubted the critical capabilities of his fellow countrymen. Paradise Lost continues the recuperative work undertaken in prose pieces like Eikonoklastes by helping to educate the reader in political reading. In Samson Agonistes, Milton explores the way that the individual and nation are vulnerable to the same sort of corruption which emphasizes the degree to which inward and outward servitude is linked. Yet, neither poem gives up on “nationalism” as a source of individual liberty and positive form of community. Instead, both poems offer an examination of nationalism that balances the nation’s potential with a consideration of the limits and possible abuses of this potential. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-25 15:22:21.28

Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur barn är delaktiga vid bokläsning, med tillhörande boksamtal. Undersökningen utgick från ett sociokulturellt perspektiv med fokus på att allt lärande är situerat, samt att lärande sker i interaktion tillsammans med andra individer. För att synliggöra barns delaktighet vid bokläsningstillfällena och boksamtalen valde vi att använda videofilmade observationer som metod för att samla in material, detta gjordes även för att inte gå miste om värdefull information. Studien genomfördes på en förskola, där det sällan talas om böcker och dess innehåll, vi ville därför föra samtal kring boken med print referencing som bokläsningsmetod, samt med tillhörande boksamtal för att synliggöra barns delaktighet. Vårt resultat visade att barnen var delaktiga när print referencing användes som metod, däremot visade resultatet även att barnen var delaktiga på olika sätt, exempelvis genom sitt tal- och kroppsspråk, samt samspel och interaktion tillsammans med andra individer.

The first children’s video game called Mixed up Mother Goose was created by Roberta Williams in 1987. This game was created for a desktop. Today, many children’s games exist on a range of digital platforms. While these platforms offer different types of interactions for engagement and learning, many of these interactions are limited to tapping, dragging and clicking. Current studies have shown that physical interaction is important for young children’s development. Traditionally, nursery rhymes have been this source of physical interaction to engage children in the process of learning. This study looks at the physical engagement of children with nursery rhymes in oral, print and digital mediums. Engagement in oral medium consists of learning nursery rhymes through the movement of the body such as action rhymes and finger plays. Engagement in print medium consists of learning nursery rhymes through interactive books that include movable books, puppet books and sound books. Digital medium, including platforms such as touchscreen devices and laptops, continue to evolve from tap and click games to increased physical engagement of children. Although digital medium is a new phenomenon, it is following a similar evolution as print and oral mediums. Digital medium is increasingly engaging children with interactive play. As part of a larger project, this research collects information and provides a matrix that identifies the attributes of physical engagement employed by these three mediums.

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Two case studies examine and elaborate the idea of how the Chinese print media in New Zealand present Chinese cultural identity. The thesis examines the free Chinese newspapers given away in shops, supermarkets and other location where Chinese people gather. Do Chinese people use the media to maintain their cultural identity or to adapt to a new environment? The Chinese community in New Zealand is varied due to the diversity of its origins and the different stages at which its members have arrived. The Chinese in New Zealand show many differences in countries or regions of birth, languages, dialects, religions, values, behaviour and cultural identities. Little work has been done on Chinese print media in New Zealand. Many New Zealanders regard the Chinese community as homogenous. They do not know how many different kinds of Chinese newspapers there are in New Zealand and why Chinese migrants have so many of them. Chinese migrants in New Zealand group themselves after their arrival according to their origin, values, religions, dialects, and behaviours. Such varied groups of Chinese need their own papers to express their ideas, attitudes, values and argument. This study is intended to show how these varied newspapers reflect ideas about cultural identity in diasporic setting. Another important factor is how the Chinese print media react to an issue or social events and how readers respond. Chinese readers pick up the newspapers to read and discuss various controversial stories. People argue about important questions such as “who we are” “what we are doing here” and “what is our identity”. By studying these newspapers, we can gain insights into how the Chinese cultural identity is transformed by the experience of immigration.

This thesis parts from the premise that avant-garde art collectives produce discourses meant to articulate the opposition to the art/life divide as one that interrelates fields such as aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and even economics. By utilizing a comparative framework, it plays on the complementarity and differences between four 1960s groups that formed very specific organizations directed at challenging society, in one way or another related to the Situationist International: The Situationist Times (France), King Mob Echo (UK), Black Mask and its transformations (US), and S.NOB (Mexico). Through the medium of magazines, they intended to reach a mass audience that in the act of reading and looking at their images and texts would be prompted to discern organizations that undermined the world-system. Thus, the Situationist Times attempted to form a (people’s) movement that in an applied creativity that rejected the metanarrative of progress would be able to realize the malleability of history. King Mob followed a conspiratorial logic with the idea of a dis-organized mass suddenly acting in concert against states. Black Mask and its transformations played with the idea of a war for territory, the occupation of a ‘free zone’ by a community in the midst of a dominated world. Finally, S.NOB’s idiosyncratic anarchism came from an opposition to the totalizing discursive practices of the Mexican Revolution, giving primacy to fragmentation and an anti-organizational bent; while it had no direct relationship to any of the above groups, it shows how their techniques and theories develop out of an engagement with Surrealism and past avant-gardes. S.NOB provides not a counterpoint but a contextual revelation of the limits of these collectives, in the Bataillean sense that opens all of them up to a ‘contamination’ with historicity and thought that treats all of them as equal in scope and importance.

Since the 1990s, studies within the inter-disciplinary fields of crime, the media and children have been wide-ranging. In spite of this however, to date, research into the media’s reporting on the missing and murdered child has been a neglected area of study. This thesis redresses this gap by providing the first significant study into the missing and murdered child and the way in which the media interrogates this phenomenon within the mediated public sphere. Reflecting on historical and contemporary debates and ideas about the public sphere, the thesis draws on current literature and considers the way in which mediated narratives about the missing and the murdered child, reinforce particular ideological and cultural assumptions about the politics of childhood, motherhood, community and privacy. The thesis considers the way in which the media’s coverage of the missing and the murdered child has contributed to the ‘emotionalization’ of the public sphere. The study examines established viewpoints about the nature of an emotionalized public sphere and the extent to which it undermines Western values associated with liberal democracy. A qualitative textual analysis of two case studies was conducted into the media’s coverage of two high-profile incidents of child murder and abduction- the Soham murder investigation in 2002 and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, 2007. Samples for analysis were drawn from both print and broadcast media including five UK national tabloid newspapers- Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Sun, Daily Star, Daily Express together with an episode of the BBC’S Crimewatch. Findings from this study reveal that a public sphere shaped by emotion provides a vehicle whereby subaltern counter-publics, the voice of ordinary citizens takes precedence. Moreover, I argue that the distinctiveness of this research is that it highlights the way in which a mediated public sphere informed by emotion appears to promote active citizenship and engagement with matters of public concern, of which the missing and the murdered child are but two examples. Finally, I suggest that it is through participation, and perhaps social and political engagement in response to such incidents, that contributes to the reformulation of a mediated public sphere and thereby sustains the very doctrines that underpin the role of the state and civil society.

Varje år träder ca 50 000 människor ur Svenska kyrkan och avsäger sig därmed rätten att begravas i Svenska kyrkans ceremoniella ordning och lokaler. Man träder ut ur kyrkans ordning, och ut ur kyrkans rum, men man träder inte in i något annat. Mitt kandidatarbete är ett försök att visa på en annan ordning och andra rum. / Every year some 50 000 people exits the Swedish Church and disclaims thus the right to be buried in the Swedish Church ceremonial order and premises. They leave behind the order of the Church, and exits the church room, but they do not enter anything else. My graduate work is an attempt to present an alternative order and alternative rooms.

The interest of this work is found in the potential ways of reconstructing 2hand garments and how form and wear can be explored within that field. The methods applied on 2hand garments investigate traditional usage, shape and how to create new form and silhouettes, while allowing a reconstructed garment to be reversed/transformed back to original state. The aim is that the garments are to keep it’s original value, and thus making its sustainable potential higher. Significantly, the project discusses how our pre-existing visual perception of unwanted 2hand garments can be expanded, when they are reconstructed and recycled (unharmed).