Texte remanié de: Thesis Ph. D.--University of Connecticut. / Bibliogr. p. 229-242.

Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2009.

This purpose of this document is to examine risk as a thematic element in the practice of comedy as performed by women. Risk is evident in various ways: individual female comedic performance, the labeling of someone as "female comedic performer" and in being an individual female who strives to undertake comedy as a means of personal performance. Through an analysis of comedians Tina Fey, Kathy Griffin, Sarah Silverman and myself, this thesis recognizes an appreciation of that risk, argues for the importance of context in thinking about comedy, and ultimately calls for the further inclusion of women in the historical canon of comedic performance.

I argue that literary texts after 1980 use the fluid relationship between the physical world and the world of writing in order to present alternate versions of the body’s relationship to the mind. Examining works by Toni Morrison, William Gibson, Kathy Acker, Sarah Kane, and Shelley Jackson, I demonstrate the ways in which these texts reinterpret the relationship between mind and body by offering bodily metaphors for their character’s interior emotional lives; they compare this inner life to a pregnant mother, a sexual couple, and more. I emphasize the political implications of the kinds of bodies employed in these metaphors, setting this against the background of late twentieth century feminism. I read my primary texts alongside the work of Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigary, and others, in order to chart the parallel projects of literature and theory in articulating the relationship between the body—especially, the female body—and our understandings of subjectivity and representation. Starting with the 1980s, when the second wave feminist movement suffered conservative backlash, and continuing through the development of the third wave, I examine literary theorizations of feminist concerns during a period of transition in the feminist movement itself.

In this paper I'm trying to trace, analyze and emphasize Kathy Acker’s Great Expectations and Alison Knowles’s The Big Book in regard to the books in/finite im/possibilities. I analyze them through historical changes in the books format and structure, especially ones proposed by Mallarmé, Duchamp and Fluxus. To analyze the texts more closely attention is directed to how Acker and Knowles challenge the conventional narrative, in regard to the body and language/voice and sound. I give specific emphasizes to thoughts posted by écriture féminine, while also adding Mara Lee’s temporalities in regard to body resistance and time. A final thing I do in this paper is through close reading look at contemporary material discourses. I try to examine especially two examples that open up for in/finite im/possibilities in Acker’s and Knowles’s use and references to holes and animals.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [351]-383).

Dagens studier inom krigsvetenskap har ofta utgångspunkt i den offentliga, politiska och inom Försvarsmakten interna debatten, speciellt ifråga om Sveriges säkerhetspolitik och våra relationer till andra nationer och internationella organisationer. Begreppsapparaten om militära insatser mildras ofta med tillägg som freds- eller utbildningsinsats men oavsett vilken internationell organisation som föranleder den militära insatsen så är undersökningar om stridsrelaterade händelser ofta relaterade till vilken påverkan som de har på beslutsfattning och chefens ledarskap. Det finns i dagsläget en avsaknad av kvalitativa studier på lägre nivå inom Försvarsmakten avseende hur soldater och officerare påverkas känslomässigt före, under och efter stridsrelaterade händelser.  Studien utgår från djupintervjuer med soldater och officerare med grounded theory som metod. Den fokuserar på hur svenska soldater och officerare påverkas av stridsrelaterade händelser och hur denna erfarenhet i sin tur påverkar militära organisationer. Syftet med denna studie är att utforska och förstå det militära våldets innersta beståndsdelar.    Resultatet visar att olika rädslor påverkar organisationen positivt eller negativt samt förstärks genom alla ledningsnivåer. Stridserfarna soldater och officerare har en större förmåga att reglera sin rädsla och deras rädsla är större inför en strid än under och efter striden. Studien kompletterar och förstärker tidigare israelisk forskning och visar att även svenska stridserfarna soldater och officerares största rädsla före, under och efter strid är att svika sina kamrater (letting others down).

The following collection represents the critical and creative work produced during my doctoral program in English. The dissertation consists of Part I, a critical preface, and Part II, a collection of seven short stories and two nonfiction essays. Part I, which contains the critical preface entitled "What to Say and How to Say It," examines the role of voice in discussions of contemporary literature. The critical preface presents a definition of voice and identifies examples of voice-driven writing in contemporary literature, particularly from the work of Mary Robison, Dorothy Allison, and Kathy Acker. In addition, the critical preface also discusses how the use of flavor, tone, and content contribute to voice, both in work of famous authors and in my own writing. In Part II of my dissertation, I present the creative portion of my work. Part II contains seven works of short fiction, titled "Among Waitresses," "The Lion Tamer," "Restoration Services," "Hospitality," "Blood Relation," "Managerial Timber," and "Velma A Cappella." Each work develops a voice-driven narrative through the use of flavor, tone, and content. Also, two nonfiction essays, titled "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" and "Tracks," close out the collection. "Fentanyl and Happy Meals" describes the impact of methamphetamine addiction on family relationships, while "Tracks" focuses on the degradation of the natural world by human waste and other forms of pollution. In total, this collection demonstrates my approach to both scholarly and creative writing, and I am grateful for the University of North Texas for the opportunity to develop academically and achieve my goals.

Toni Morrison and Kathy Acker write their novels within the subversive feminist literary movement described by Helene Cixous in “Laugh of the Medusa”. Through Morrison’s Paradise and Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School they create a platform for women silenced by their bodily trauma to express and eventually liberate themselves from their traumatic pasts. These female writers are calling attention to the pandemic of misogyny-related violence and allowing assault survivors to speak through their pain.

Studies of women’s experimental narrative in the twentieth century have often been fixed to political interests in the recovery of women’s artistic practices for inclusion in the canons of literary modernism and formal postmodernism. Concurrent trends in philosophy and critical theory, however, propose the interrogation of the limits of subjectivity itself, suggesting that the most provocative assertions about human experience eschew the very categorical delimitations, like gender, on which such recovery projects depend. This dissertation traces the literary investments of women, particularly queer women, whose experiments in life-writing reconfigure the boundaries of human subjects without relinquishing claims to the material or political conditions that shape their lives. “Rough Text” examines writing that queers or complicates autobiography by featuring self-referential protagonists whose lives illustrate the explosive consequences of both gender and genre manipulation. Writing themselves by unfastening themselves textually, temporally, and spatially, these authors do a liberating violence to their own coherence that shakes, and then rethinks, the grounds of their ontologies in ways that offer alternatives to the “psychological squalor” Fredric Jameson describes as the postmodern condition.