Thesis advisor: Marilynn Johnson / Notorious for bursting into flames, twentieth century Chelsea was a “city under fire.” Cast into the crossfire of industrialization and demographic flux, Chelsea suffered as people, industry, and financial assistance migrated in and out of the small city. Chelsea’s unique spectrum of urban problems, however, only explains the trials and tribulations leading up to the Great Fires of 1908 and 1973 and not the events created by them. In Chelsea, escalating urban crisis occurred simultaneously with rapidly growing immigrant populations. In the years before the fire of 1908, Jewish immigration pushed Chelsea to the brink of demographic succession; likewise, in the handful of years before the fire of 1973, Latino migrations forced Chelsea to recognize the changing dynamic of a once-homogeneous city. As isolated events, the Great Fire of 1908 and the Great Fire of 1973 were urban disasters, but as decisive moments in the local history of Jewish and Latino immigrants, the fires were nodal points in the interplay between urban-industrial life, urban crisis and immigration. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: History Honors Program. / Discipline: History.

As a transition period from the Middle Age to modern times, Renaissance is renowned for its cultural magnitude and richness. Different from the Middle Age, Renaissance, as its name indicates, proceeds into cultural, social and economical rebirth and prosperity. Literary works in the time also achieve a high tide not only in quality but also in quantity. Among the sparkling Renaissance works, one of the distinguished achievements is English Drama. Christopher Marlowe, probably one of the most popular playwrights in his contemporary time, no doubt, stands a peculiar and distinguishing position in the early Renaissance English theater. In his short lifetime, he produced seven plays on various dramatic themes. Whether in the adaptation of mythological stories, like Dido, Queen of Carthage, or historical events such as, Edward II, Marlovian theatrical world always contains blooming vitality and grandeur language that may easily catch the viewer¡¦s eyes. Marlowe¡¦s plays usually center on the process of the fulfillment of a person¡¦s desire and an individual¡¦s pursue for personal achievement. It is not a task to observe certain patterns manipulated in Marlowe¡¦s plays. For instance, in Dr. Faustus, Faustus exchanges his soul with Mephistopheles for omnipotent knowledge which for Faustus represents mighty power and strength. In Jew of Malta, Barabas, the Jew, by all means chases infinite riches and defends his wealth owing to that his self-esteem relies on the amount of gold. Tamburlaine, who is called the Scourge and Wrath of God, endlessly conquers country after country to establish his own empire as well as to prove his masculinity. These characters are driven by the innermost desire to prove their values that are mostly built on earthly success. Their accomplishment in turn nourishes their ambitions to pursue more success that brings them power. In the project, I attempt to detect the forming of selfhood in Christopher Marlowe¡¦s two plays, Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta. I would also like to dissect the interweaving relations between the heroes¡¦ inner impetus and their repeated speeches as well as actions of claiming their existence and how their subjectivities are displayed in the space between the inner constructive power and their outer repeated actions for pursue of success.

In the biographical sketch of Christopher Marlowe which prefaces his 1818 edition of The Jew of Malta, Oxberry wrote: "Of his (Marlowe's) family we know absolutely nothing; their very names are forgotten...Ali the genius or Marlowe...has not had the power to save the records of his life from oblivion." [...]

Thesis (M.A.) B.Y.U. Dept. of English. / Bibliography.

Thesis (M.A.) B.Y.U. Dept. of English. / Electronic thesis. Bibliography. Also available in print ed.

The goal of this dissertation is to explore the construction of the Catholic, the Moor, and the Jew in Shakespeare's early plays as instances of queering—as stagings of religious others as sexually deviant and a threat to normative, English, Protestant reproduction. As numerous critics have remarked, the alien is a conspicuous figure in Elizabethan drama. A number of explanations for this have been offered, the vast majority of which have sought to tie this phenomenon to emerging categories of race and empire (see, for example, Emily Bartels' work on the "alien" in Elizabethan drama, and the work done by both Kim F. Hall and Virginia Mason Vaughan on the role blackness plays on the early modern stage). I want to explore the religious dimension of otherness. In Protestant religious discourse, the error of other religions was characterized as a perversion of desire that had serious implications for physical and ideological reproduction. As Francis Dolan has noted, Catholics were seen as embracing a disordered vision of sexuality in which women are dominant. This fear of political and social inversion is typically associated with the "whore of Babylon" in late 16th and early 17th century rhetoric. As Nabil Matar observes, the Moor was seen to be lascivious, embracing a polymorphous, perverse desire that pollutes culture through sodomy while at the same time threatening miscegenation. Finally, as James Shapiro has noted, the Jew was seen as desiring money above all in a way that entailed a kind of "monstrous" and asexual reproduction through usury. In sum, the discourses of religious otherness were principally concerned with sexual deviance as a threat to reproduction. Shakespeare's construction of characters like Joan La Pucelle, Aaron the Moor, and Shylock is rooted in this protestant understanding of religious otherness as queer. That understanding was increasingly important in a late Elizabethan England that was, as Daniel Swift suggests, rooted in protestant ideology and simultaneously worried about the stability of that identity, given an aging monarch and growing military threats from Catholic and Islamic nations. Our understanding of Shakespeare's religious figures is enhanced by taking into account the queer character of their religious otherness at a time of acute reproductive anxiety.

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O objetivo desta tese de doutorado é verificar a presença judaica em textos diversos de Jorge Amado (1912-2001), sobretudo em romances, abrangendo suas duas fases, em articulação com sua leitura de mundo. Quanto ao método, a verificação se dá por meio de rastros/indícios do judeu na obra amadiana, considerando que a presença judaica em seus textos aparece mais como referência ou assunto do que personagem. O pensamento analógico é a tônica da tese. As reflexões têm como gatilho o rastro do judeu no texto, nas quais se articulam parte e todo, em mútua influência. Em relação aos resultados, a presença judaica nos trabalhos de Jorge Amado está ligada a um modo bastante monolítico de ver o judeu. Em geral, figuras judaicas são associadas à militância comunista, assim como se relacionam a um plano mítico/profético sobre o qual a cosmovisão amadiana também se assenta. A forma da obra de Jorge Amado, calcada em diálogo com expressões populares, guarda ecos da cultura judaico-cristã, com ênfase no pensamento escatológico e soteriológico. A conclusão é a de que o judeu no texto amadiano tem função metonímica, algo que se relaciona tanto com sua posição ideológica quanto com sua cosmovisão. Portanto, há um feixe de significados na presença judaica em Amado: de contestação à revelação. / The aim of this thesis is verify the Jewish presence in various texts produced by Jorge Amado (1912-2001), focusing in his novels, also covering the two moments of his career. This will be approached through his worldview. As for the method, the analysis is based on trails/signs of the Jew in Amados works as the Jewish presence in his texts comes up more as reference or subject than representation. The analog approach is applied in this thesis. Trails/signs of the Jew in the texts function as the triggers for the analysis, in which all the elements, being central or peripheral, are in mutual influence. As for the results, the Jewish presence in Amados works is related to a monolithic view of the Jew. In general, Jewish traces/characters are linked to Communist militancy, as well as they are related to a mythical/prophetical level on which Jorge Amados worldview also is based. Authors style pays tribute to popular expressions, reverberating Jewish-Christian culture, with emphasis on the eschatological and soteriological thinking. As for the conclusion, the Jew in Amado works function as a metonymy, something that is related to both his ideological position and his worldview. Therefore there are a number of meanings in the Jewish presence in Amado: from subversion to revelation.

The means by which Othello and Barabas experience their racial othering is not directly by racist intentions. In experiencing their otherness through alternative motives, they then deny the power that their excluders initially desire.

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