This thesis examines the early works of the Scottish novelist, playwright, would-be screenwriter, commentator and political agitator, James Barke, to argue that he was a more significant figure on the Scottish literary scene than his place in the canon would suggest. The purpose in so doing is to suggest that his writing was symptomatic of a modernisation in Scottish society and letters during the 1930s. In prosecuting this endeavour, the research considers four aspects of the author's early output: the political dimension; his aesthetic sensibilities; the impact and representation of the city; and finally the part played by the experience and influence of the cinema. Equally, it is argued that these novels are emblematic of both the author's own migration from country to city and the longer-term transformation of Scotland's demography from largely rural-dwelling to largely urban-dwelling. The theoretical method engages with a Marxist critique and anchors Barke's early novels to his constantly evolving political commitment which tracks, but does not entirely subscribe to, the development of a broad range of Leftist ideologies of the era. The jump-off point and principal underpinning of the research is an appreciation of James Barke's Major Operation (1936) as a Scottish novel of significance for its literary innovation, approach to, and rendering of, Scottish urban modernity. In the thoroughgoing 2002 analysis of the field in Scottish Literature edited by Douglas Gifford, Major Operation is identified as one of the Scottish novels 'extending its perspective of ironic social realism to the city' and a novel that 'had no time for non-political and non-economic considerations.' This thesis contends that this is to diminish the scope of Major Operation's engagement with innovative forms and considerations of the dichotomies that comprise the modern city. I argue that, inspired by the stylistic achievements of James Joyce, in many respects Ulysses and Major Operation are contiguous, each author concerned with a ‘peripheral’ city in an Empire, each coloured by its national tradition, residual parochial features, idiolect and political situation. In a bold literary form, Barke's novel celebrates and critiques Glasgow in a manner unsurpassed in Scottish letters, his approach to modern urban Scotland in his early novels being a uniquely informed and cosmopolitan one.

My dissertation project explores the ways in which the banana exposes Americans’ interconnected imaginings of exotic food, gender, and race. Since the late nineteenth century, The United Fruit Company’s continuous supply of bananas to US retail markets has veiled the fruit’s production history, and the company’s marketing strategies and campaigns have turned the banana into an American staple food. By the time Josephine Baker and Carmen Miranda were using the banana as part of their stage and screen costumes between the 1920s and the 1940s, this imported fruit had come to represent foreignness, tropicality, and exoticism. Building upon foodways studies and affect studies, which trace how foodstuffs travel and embody memory and affect, I show how romantic imaginings of bananas have drawn attention away from the exploitative nature of a fruit trade that benefits from and reinforces the imbalanced power relationship between the US and Central America. In this project, I analyze the meaning interwoven into three forms of cultural production: banana cookbooks published by the United Fruit Company for middle-class American housewives; McKay’s dissent poetry; and the costumes and exotic transnational stage performances of Baker, Miranda, and also the United Fruit mascot, Miss Chiquita. / 2021-01-11

Susan Friedman's recent theory of planetary modernisms, from her book Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time, holds that modernism as a distinguishable period, and modernity, as the characteristics of said period, can take place at any point in time and in any place that is experiencing rupture and upheaval. Planetary modernisms studies de-colonizes and de-centralizes traditional modernism and opens it up to logical and important new horizons. It encompasses not only literary output, but all forms of cultural production, including theatre and film. I use this theory to identify and compare two unique moments of modernism which until now have been neglected by modernism studies. Friedman suggests that the side-by-side comparison or "collage" of two disparate instances of modernism throughout history elucidates each respective moment and creates additional meaning.I examine on one hand the "gold digger" showgirl musical film subgenre of the early 1930s, a product of the intense social upheaval of the Great Depression, in which aspiring actresses desperate for jobs are forced to come to illicit agreements with the rich male producers of the shows. I juxtapose this with the #MeToo movement of the 2010s, wherein women speak out en masse against men who have exploited their influence over them to sexually harass them. Both center around women uniting in physical and/or online spaces to work against the abuse committed against them within the entertainment industry. In each case, men have wealth and power on one hand, while on the other hand women in need of jobs have little or no power. This power imbalance creates an environment in which predatory sexual behavior thrives. Furthermore, both time periods, past and present, are marked by rapid social and economic change, which serves both to exacerbate these power imbalances as well as accelerate the need for women to defend themselves despite possible retribution. The pressures of each period vary as do the potential outlets for women to voice their concerns and seek relief. I highlight the effects of women's solidarity in resistance to harassment and abuse and note how far society has yet to go when women today pushing for fairness and change continue to face intense opposition which at times belittles, disregards, and fights back against them.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:17:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcela Aguiar Borela.pdf: 4310755 bytes, checksum: 6a6273f2ff5caaa60aa268d97f86d00c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-11-16 / The effort of this text is to identify elements of fundamental analysis to a story of modern art in Goiás, directing the management of historical problems from the notions of identity and border produced by this experience. It shows the configuration of the historical phenomenon defined here as modern experience in the visual arts in Goiás , which temporal cut occurs from the Cultural Baptism of the city of Goiânia in 1942, when the first cultural manifestations start in the modern city . These modern manifestations finished in 1962, when there was a diversity of artists working in the city, beyond the operation of two schools of Fine Arts. The cut is intended to allow the understanding of the aspects of the visual modernist produced in Goiânia from an ionosphere. To this end, it is investigated issues relating to cultural identity before and after the construction of Goiânia. The primary goal is the boundary of the conditions of possibilities and of the major events that constitute the source of the modern experience of the arts in Goiás, understood here from Benjamin‟s perspective. / O esforço deste texto é no sentido de identificar elementos de análise fundamentais para uma história da arte moderna em Goiás, direcionando o tratamento de problemas históricos a partir das noções de identidade e fronteira, produzidas por esta experiência. Apresenta-se a configuração do fenômeno histórico delimitado aqui como experiência moderna nas artes plásticas em Goiás , cujo recorte temporal se dá a partir do Batismo Cultural da cidade de Goiânia em 1942, quando se iniciam as primeiras manifestações culturais na cidade moderna , que se encerram em 1962, quando se verifica uma diversidade de artistas atuando na cidade, além do funcionamento de duas Escolas de Belas Artes. O recorte pretende possibilitar a compreensão de aspectos da visualidade modernista produzida em Goiânia a partir de uma iconosfera. Para tanto, investigam-se questões relativas a uma identidade cultural antes e depois da construção de Goiânia. O objetivo fundamental é a delimitação das condições de possibilidade e dos principais acontecimentos que compõem a origem da experiência moderna nas artes plásticas em Goiás, conceito aqui compreendido a partir de perspectiva benjaminiana.

Le présent mémoire se veut être une étude critique portant sur un thème qui n’a pas été traité à ce jour : l’œuvre sculptural d’Irma Stern (1894-1966), artiste d’ascendance juive-allemande née en Afrique du Sud. Il s’agit de dégager des perspectives nouvelles sur l’art, la carrière et l’importance historique d’une personnalité qui est d’ordinaire acclamée pour sa contribution à l’essor de la peinture sud-africaine moderne. Notre visée est double. Nous proposons d’abord le premier catalogue exhaustif des sculptures d’Irma Stern : sont présentées environ trente à cinquante œuvres qui furent réalisées entre 1922 et 1955 dans divers média et dont le trait commun est de représenter des femmes africaines. Nous proposons en second lieu une analyse interprétative du corpus, dans son intégralité. Il s’agit de corréler l’œuvre sculptural d’Irma Stern aux méandres de sa vie et de son travail de peintre déterminée à représenter des sujets africains. Notre but est de parvenir à une compréhension fine des désirs, des préoccupations et des angoisses qui animèrent l’artiste dans sa confrontation, longue de trente années, avec des thèmes africains ainsi que des dynamiques de pouvoir qui se dégagent de son œuvre. En portant tour à tour notre attention aux sculptures en argile (1922), en ciment (1936-45) et enfin, en pierre à savon et en verdite (1936-45), et en empruntant aux cadres conceptuels fournis par les théories postcoloniale, phénoménologique et sculpturale, nous mettons en évidence les évolutions qu’a connues le rapport de l’artiste à son sujet et ce qu’elles nous disent sur la relation, mouvante, qu’elle entretenait avec ses modèles. Les analyses que nous proposons sont susceptibles d’ouvrir de nouvelles pistes et de modifier le regard porté à Irma Stern et à sa place dans l’histoire de l’art sud-africain. / This thesis proposes an unprecedented critical study of the sculptural production of the South African-born, German-Jewish artist Irma Stern (1894-1966). It seeks to open new perspectives on the art, the career, and the historical significance of a figure who is commonly celebrated for her pioneering contribution to the development of modern South African painting. This thesis’ contribution is twofold. Firstly, it offers the first comprehensive catalogue of Stern’s sculptural œuvre, bringing into focus a corpus of roughly thirty to fifty works, produced between the years 1922 and 1955 in a variety of different media, which display a consistent focus on the African female subject. Secondly, it analyzes and interprets Stern’s complete sculptural oeuvre. Mapping the narrative of Stern’s sculptural production onto the plot of her life and work as a painter of African subjects, it seeks to offer a richer understanding of the desires, anxieties, and concerns that underpinned Stern’s thirty-year-long engagement with African subject matter as well as an account of the racial power dynamics that are at play in her oeuvre. Through dedicated studies of Stern’s production in clay (1922), cement (1936-1945), and wonderstone and verdite (1936-1945), guided by concepts drawn from postcolonial, phenomenological, and sculptural theory, it tracks the changes in Stern’s sculptural approach to her subject matter and analyzes them in terms of Stern’s changing relationship with her African models. These analyses ultimately offer new directions for approaching Stern and framing her position in the history of South African art.

Le présent mémoire se veut être une étude critique portant sur un thème qui n’a pas été traité à ce jour : l’œuvre sculptural d’Irma Stern (1894-1966), artiste d’ascendance juive-allemande née en Afrique du Sud. Il s’agit de dégager des perspectives nouvelles sur l’art, la carrière et l’importance historique d’une personnalité qui est d’ordinaire acclamée pour sa contribution à l’essor de la peinture sud-africaine moderne. Notre visée est double. Nous proposons d’abord le premier catalogue exhaustif des sculptures d’Irma Stern : sont présentées environ trente à cinquante œuvres qui furent réalisées entre 1922 et 1955 dans divers média et dont le trait commun est de représenter des femmes africaines. Nous proposons en second lieu une analyse interprétative du corpus, dans son intégralité. Il s’agit de corréler l’œuvre sculptural d’Irma Stern aux méandres de sa vie et de son travail de peintre déterminée à représenter des sujets africains. Notre but est de parvenir à une compréhension fine des désirs, des préoccupations et des angoisses qui animèrent l’artiste dans sa confrontation, longue de trente années, avec des thèmes africains ainsi que des dynamiques de pouvoir qui se dégagent de son œuvre. En portant tour à tour notre attention aux sculptures en argile (1922), en ciment (1936-45) et enfin, en pierre à savon et en verdite (1936-45), et en empruntant aux cadres conceptuels fournis par les théories postcoloniale, phénoménologique et sculpturale, nous mettons en évidence les évolutions qu’a connues le rapport de l’artiste à son sujet et ce qu’elles nous disent sur la relation, mouvante, qu’elle entretenait avec ses modèles. Les analyses que nous proposons sont susceptibles d’ouvrir de nouvelles pistes et de modifier le regard porté à Irma Stern et à sa place dans l’histoire de l’art sud-africain. / This thesis proposes an unprecedented critical study of the sculptural production of the South African-born, German-Jewish artist Irma Stern (1894-1966). It seeks to open new perspectives on the art, the career, and the historical significance of a figure who is commonly celebrated for her pioneering contribution to the development of modern South African painting. This thesis’ contribution is twofold. Firstly, it offers the first comprehensive catalogue of Stern’s sculptural œuvre, bringing into focus a corpus of roughly thirty to fifty works, produced between the years 1922 and 1955 in a variety of different media, which display a consistent focus on the African female subject. Secondly, it analyzes and interprets Stern’s complete sculptural oeuvre. Mapping the narrative of Stern’s sculptural production onto the plot of her life and work as a painter of African subjects, it seeks to offer a richer understanding of the desires, anxieties, and concerns that underpinned Stern’s thirty-year-long engagement with African subject matter as well as an account of the racial power dynamics that are at play in her oeuvre. Through dedicated studies of Stern’s production in clay (1922), cement (1936-1945), and wonderstone and verdite (1936-1945), guided by concepts drawn from postcolonial, phenomenological, and sculptural theory, it tracks the changes in Stern’s sculptural approach to her subject matter and analyzes them in terms of Stern’s changing relationship with her African models. These analyses ultimately offer new directions for approaching Stern and framing her position in the history of South African art.