Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on April 28, 2010). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

This work deals with the relation of emotions to contemporary experimental animation. It engages in the emotional experience of a viewer to non-narrative film storytelling and its means of expression. At the same time, it examines what the creative processes and attitudes of filmmakers towards emotions in experimental animation are. Analysis of the questionnaires also reveals whether the creator counts on the viewer's specific interpretation of the film.

My paper examines the ethics of representing Mormons in serious American fiction, viewed through two primary texts, Bayard Taylor's nineteenth-century dramatic poem The Prophet and Maureen Whipple's epic novel The Giant Joshua. I also briefly examine Walter Kirn's short stories “Planetarium” and “Whole Other Bodies.” Using Werner Sollors' and Matthew Frye Jacobson's writings on ethnicity as foundational, I argue in that Mormonism constitutes an ethnicity, which designation accentuates the ethical demands of those who represent the group. I also use W.J.T. Mitchell's theories of representation as the basis of my arguments of the ethics of representing ethnicity. As ethical theorists, Emmanuel Levinas and Edward Said inform the theoretical framework of my project, and I place their theories both in opposition to and harmony with each other in terms of what it means to be truly “Other” and the responsibility of those who view, represent, project, or accept otherness as essential to being. I also borrow from Wayne C. Booth, particularly in his practical application of ethics theory. I employ Terryl Givens, Michael Austin, Bruce Jorgensen, and Gideon Burton to help bring the theory into the field of Mormon studies. In applying all these theorists to Taylor and Whipple I examine Taylor's exoticizing, “Othering” Mormons, creating an “Oriental” version of the rise of Mormonism, parallel to some of his Middle Eastern travel writing. Taylor also makes the remarkable ethical step of being the first non-Mormon to “take Mormons seriously” in literary fiction. I demonstrate how his use of classical literary forms and themes moves the ethical treatment of Mormons forward in an unprecedented way. Maureen Whipple relies on some of the sensational, romantic tropes in common use, but overall she also moves forward ethical representation of Mormons in serious literature, being the best-received of “Mormondom's Lost Generation” of literary writers. In conclusion I argue that these texts, along with the more problematic Kirn stories, help create a positive ethical climate for Mormon representation.

This dissertation uses a feminist cultural materialist approach that draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Luce Irigaray to examine the neglected genre of postwar-Cold War American teen girl romance novels, which I call female junior novels. Written between 1942 and the late 1960s by authors such as Betty Cavanna, Maureen Daly, Anne Emery, Rosamond du Jardin, and Mary Stolz, these texts create a kind of hieroglyphic world, where possession of the right dress or the proper seat in the malt shop determines a girls place within an entrenched adolescent social hierarchy. Thus in the first chapter, I argue that girls adherence to consumer-based social codes ultimately constructs a semi-autonomous female society, still under the umbrella of patriarchy, but based on female desire and possessing its own logic. This adolescent female society parallels the network of women who produced (authors, illustrators, editors) and distributed (librarians, critics) these texts to teenaged girls. Invisible because of its all-female composition, middlebrow status, and feminine control, yet self-governing for the same reasons, the network established a semi-autonomous space into which left-leaning authors could safely (if subtly) critique American social and foreign policies during the Cold War. Chapter Two examines the first generation of the network, including Anne Carroll Moore, Bertha Mahony, Louise Seaman, and May Massee, who helped to create the childrens publishing industry in America, while Chapter Three investigates the second generation, including Mabel Williams, Margaret Scoggin, and Ursula Nordstrom, who entrenched childrens and adolescent literature in publishing houses and library services. In Chapter Four I explore the shifting concept of what constitutes quality within these texts, with an emphasis on the role of authors, illustrators, and critics in defining such value. Chapter Five investigates the use of female junior novels within the classroom, paying particular attention to the role of bibliotherapy, in which these texts were used to help teenagers solve their developmental tasks, as suggested by psychologist Robert J. Havighurst. A brief conclusion discusses the fall of the female junior novels and their network, while a coda addresses the republication of these texts today through the nostalgia press.

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