This thesis consists of three short stories dealing with loss. "A Solemn Music" depicts Frederick's attempt to maintain his comfortable life apart from Nature, which, in the form of cicadas, is bent on moving him from his complacency. "The Waker" explores Floyd's reactions to the death of a girlfriend. "Appetites" relates the story of Allen's encounter with a beauty pageant queen and his subsequent attempt to begin a relationship with her.

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Writing is critical to two main anthropological goals: to communicate useful knowledge about humanity and society; and to stimulate interest, discussion, and action on issues that are of societal import. To achieve these goals anthropologists must write in accessible styles for diverse audiences. In this paper, we review the work of five popular nonfiction writers to determine the extent to which their approachable writing styles are compatible with anthropological rigor and nuance. While none of these authors meets all of our hopes for anthropological analysis, each does manage to blend some elements of scholarship with a readable style. We therefore highlight some of their stylistic approaches in the hope that these might help anthropologists engage more effectively in public debate.

Writing gives children a chance to practice self-expression and creativity (Dobson, 2015b; Millard, 2005) as they learn needed literacy skills (Calkins, 2003). When children write, they appropriate semiotic materials from popular culture, literature, and the world around them (Dyson, 1997, 2003, 2013). Although the National Commission on Writing (2003) recommended that writing instruction be "placed squarely in the center of the elementary curriculum," attention to writing continues to lag behind other subjects (Coker et al., 2016; Cutler and Graham, 2008; Korth et al., 2016; Simmerman et al., 2012). Vygotsky's sociocultural (1978) and creativity (1971) theories, together with Freire's critical pedagogy theory (1970), form the basis of the theoretical framework used for this research. Various literature on the importance of writing (e.g., Dyson, 1993, 2008), creativity (e.g., Csikszsentmihalyi, 1996), and place (e.g., Gruenewald, 2003) were also influential in its framing. This study sought to illuminate the possibilities that emerge when rural students in the intermediate elementary grades engage in narrative fiction writing. Qualitative content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005) was used to analyze 237 stories written as the culminating project of the semester-length Fiction unit of Promoting PLACE (Azano et al., 2017a), a place-based language arts curriculum for fourth graders attending rural schools. The researcher first typed the stories, making low-level inferences to correct spelling and grammar mistakes so comparisons could be made across stories about macrostructure elements (Koustofas, 2018), or the overall structure, organization, and cohesion of the piece. The data were described and catalogued according to codes that emerged from a deep dive into the stories. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was used to inductively identify thematic understandings across the stories. Specifically, the researcher searched for expressions of identity, connections to place, and mastery of age-appropriate language arts standards. Findings revealed that students can exert agency and express their identities through creative writing and that many students demonstrated mastery of needed language arts skills through the narrative fiction writing task. The study illuminated the value of sharing place-based literature as "mentor texts" for rural students, the importance of providing choice in writing assignments, and the need to foster the writing talent of rural students as a matter of social justice. / Doctor of Philosophy / Writing gives children a chance to practice self-expression and creativity (Dobson, 2015b; Millard, 2005) as they learn needed literacy skills (Calkins, 2003), yet attention to writing lags behind other subjects (Coker et al., 2016; Cutler and Graham, 2008; Korth et al., 2016; Simmerman et al., 2012). Using Vygotsky's sociocultural (1978) and creativity (1971) theories, together with Freire's critical pedagogy theory (1970), as the theoretical framework, this study sought to illuminate the possibilities that emerge when rural students in the intermediate elementary grades engage in narrative fiction writing. Qualitative content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005) was used to analyze 237 stories written as the culminating project of the semester-length Fiction unit of Promoting PLACE (Azano et al., 2017a), a place-based language arts curriculum for fourth graders attending rural schools. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was used to inductively identify thematic understandings across the stories, and findings revealed that students exerted agency and expressed their identities through creative writing while demonstrating mastery of needed language arts skills. The study illuminated the value of sharing place-based literature as "mentor texts" for rural students, the importance of providing choice in writing assignments, and the need to foster the writing talent of rural students as a matter of social justice.

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The aim of my study is to find out more about the pupils’ early attempts at writing fictional texts. More specifically, I examine how different teachers work to teach pupils in the third grade to write narrative texts or fiction. I have chosen to interview teachers who have been working for different periods of time, to get a picture of how their lessons are planned. Furthermore, through classroom observations, I get an idea of what pupils think about writing narrative texts and how they do it.     The results of the study show that there are several methods that teachers use to teach writing in the case of narrative texts. The result also points out that even though society itself is digitalized, work in school has not been affected to the same degree. / Mitt arbete syftar till att ta reda på mer om elevernas tidiga möte med den skönlitterära texten. Jag undersöker i detta arbete hur olika lärare i årskurs 3 arbetar med att lära sina elever att skriva berättande texter, eller berättelser. Då vi befinner oss i ett alltmer digitaliserat samhälle har jag valt att intervjua lärare som varit verksamma olika länge för att få en bild av hur deras synsätt eventuellt påverkats av den ökade användningen av datorer, surfplattor etc. Genom observationer i klassrummet har jag kunnat bilda mig en uppfattning av vad eleverna anser om att skriva berättande texter och på vilket sätt de gör det.      Studiens resultat visar att det finns flera metoder som lärarna använder för att undervisa i skrivning när det gäller berättande texter. Resultatet pekar även på att trots att samhället i sig är digitaliserat så har det inte gått riktigt lika fort fram i skolan.

The aim of this thesis study is to examine questions regarding truth in fiction, the term literarytruth. The study is based on the two works of fiction, Märit by Ing-Marie Eriksson (1965) and Eufori by Elin Cullhed (2021). Märit and Eufori both enable interesting approaches to thequestion of truth in fictional literature from different perspectives. Märit, being the only bookin Sweden to be sentenced for defamation, and Eufori being a fictive story about the historicalperson Sylvia Plath. The research questions will be explored through the theory of the readers'contract and the term faction and be discussed in a wider perspective regarding both readingand writing. We can claim to write truth, we can claim to write untruth. We can seek inspiration for ourcharacters both from within and without. But literary truth is not only found in the text itself. Itis also about paratexts, media presence and the author's own statements about the novel. It is onthis basis that the author's intention is visible, and the reader's contract is established. Literarytruth can thus be found both inside and outside the text.

The dissertation primarily involves an exploration of art-like research possibilities via symbolic constructivism, concerning research into a therapeutic process from the position of a beginning therapist. Symbolic constructivism within the broader framework of artistic inquiry forms the methodological paradigm. Symbolic constructivism is regarded as a social constructionist research method, and entails using art-like formats in creating a symbol representing the issue being researched. Fiction writing is thereby used in creating a story as a co-constructed symbol, exploring what happened during a therapy process involving issues regarding trauma and dissociation that I undertook with a female client. The client acts as co-researcher in co-writing and editing the story's content, style and tone. The study also represents my reality in terms of understanding theoretical constructs from epistemologically diverse paradigms, therapeutic processes, doing research and writing a dissertation as it is punctuated at a specific moment in time. As a subtext the dissertation may also be described as a narrative about becoming - becoming a therapist, being a person, and the interface between these two (amongst other) selves. In the dissertation, I therefore hope to present a process-oriented account of personal therapeutic development as well. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

在《時空邊緣的女人》中，作者藉著揭露一位墨裔美籍女性穿梭時空的故事，來探討弱勢族群在美國資本主義社會中被邊緣化的困境，並批判美國社會中以中產階級白人男性觀點為主流價值標準而形成對「異己」團體及文化的壓迫、歧視與剝削。作者運用科幻小說技巧中的異想（fantasy），連結現在與未來，對比１９７０年代的美國現實社會和西元２１０７年的烏托邦世界，揉合女性主義及後現代主義精神，以檢驗並批判當代美國社會之窳陋，並試圖勾勒一個多元價值並存、兩性尊重平等、自然與科技平衡的願景。 此篇論文共分四章。第一章略述小說文本的概要及其寫作背景，並討論分析此一文本所應用之理論和概念：後現代主義、女性主義、烏托邦文學和科幻小說，及此四者所交織出對於典律(canon)之質疑和批判的策略。第二章討論作者如何運用後現代批判形式之論述策略來表達其女性主義之關懷，形成邊陲與中心的對話。第三章的焦點集中於探討女主角穿梭時空下對比現實世界、未來烏托邦和反烏托邦世界所牽引出──語言、歷史、科學╱科技、生態、性╱別以及主體──一系列課題之批判思考。最後一章則回顧前述的理論如何與文本的內容及形式相結合，以挑戰現實世界及讀者心中牢固偏執的主流意識形態。 / Struggling with the social norms of gender and to be a 'visible' woman writer, Marge Piercy challenges and interrogates the canonical, patriarchal hegemony that dominates the culture. Her work, Woman on the Edge of Time, invites multiple alternatives by imagining beyond what is taken for granted. This thesis aims to explore how the heroine's time-travel undergoes a dialogic process between the past, present and future, which effects a feminist politics to examine the social norms and to anticipate a change toward an egalitarian world. This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter offers an overview of both the text and context of this novel. Since I define this novel as a generic mixture of feminist utopian writing and postmodern science fiction, I first introduce theories of postmodernism, feminism, science fiction, and utopian writing, and their intersections. The exploration of theories here paves the way for the textual analysis in later discussion. In the second chapter, I discuss how the writer manipulates postmodern strategies to express her feminist concerns of destabilizing the canon and enabling a dialogic interaction between the margin and the center. The third chapter focuses on key debates within feminist discourse, which are revealed and symbolized through the heroine's telepathic experiences communicating between the dystopian present and the utopian future. The feminist thinking toward language, history, science/technology, ecology, gender/sexuality, and subjectivity is elaborated in this chapter. Finally, the concluding chapter reviews theories and issues concerning both postmodernist and feminist thinking highlighted through the heroine's time-travel/mind-travel, which is a dialogic process bringing up different voices and perspectives--a voyage of rethinking and reshaping.