The Western historiography of Stalin and Stalinism produced in the period 1925 to the present day is a strikingly varied body of work in which the nature of Stalin, his regime and his role within his regime have been and continue to be the subject of debate. This characteristic is all the more striking when we consider that from the earliest years of the period under study there has been a general understanding of the nature of the Stalinist regime, and of the policies and leader which have come to define it. This thesis analyses the principal influences on research which have led to this body of work acquiring such a varied nature, and which have led to an at times profoundly divided Western, and more specifically Anglo-American, scholarship. It argues that the combined impact of three key formative influences on research in the West over the period of study, and their interaction with each other, reveal recurring themes across the whole historiography, while also accounting for the variety of interpretations in evidence. The first impact identified is the lack of accessibility to sources during the Soviet period, which posed a constant and real obstacle to those in the West writing on Stalin and Stalinism, and the impact of the removal of this obstacle in the post-Soviet era. The second is the influence of wider historiographical trends on this body of work, such as the emergence of social history. Finally the thesis argues that evolving Western attitudes to Stalin and Stalinism over this period have played a key role in constructions of Stalin and his regime, demonstrating an on-going historical process of the othering of Russia by the West. The extent and nature of this othering in turn provide a central line of enquiry of the thesis. Tightly intertwined with all three impacts has been the changing global political context over the period in question which provides the evolving and influential contextual backdrop to this study, and which has given this body of work a deeply political and personal character.

My research demonstrates how Othering practices affect the cultural status of the comics form. Comics frequently rely upon Othering practices such as stereotype when representing minority characters. This tendency contributes to the low cultural status of comics throughout the better part of the last century. In recent years, however, comics artists have cultivated revisioning techniques that challenge the use of Othering practices in comics. These efforts represent an important step in the push toward what is now known as the comics-as-literature movement, which Scott McCloud believes will allow the next generation of comics readers and artists to accept the idea that “comics can yield a body of work worthy of study and meaningfully represent the life, times and world-view of its author” (Reinventing 10). Even as Othering practices in comics create negative perceptions, these same practices, ironically, provide comics artists with the necessary mechanisms to undermine or revise these negative perceptions and to move comics into the literary arena. The primary mechanism that I focus on in this project is the denotation/connotation relationship. In “Rhetoric of the Image,” Roland Barthes -- speaking about advertising images -- suggests that “the denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message, it innocents the semantic artifice of connotation” (“Rhetoric” 45). Building on Barthes’ work, I demonstrate how the comics image uses the denotative component in visual representations of minorities to naturalize symbolic messages (connotations) that project inferiority. This is how comics create and perpetuate Otherness. At the same time, by interrogating the denotation/connotation relationship, contemporary comics artists have been able to undermine this naturalization process and expose the misconceptions that are inherent within representations of the Other in comics. When comics commonly adopt Othering practices, they create what Charles Hatfield refers to as “encrusted connotations” (4), where the reader’s experience of a comics work is deeply affected by the social perceptions that surround comics in general. When the treatment of minorities in comics is based upon outdated stereotypes, for example, readers may assume that comics are a popular art form without literary aspirations, and the readers then treat these comics accordingly. Conversely, when comics artists challenge the encrusted connotations of the form, they undermine these connotations and open the comics readers’ eyes to the possibility that comics can indeed yield a body of work worthy of study. As I demonstrate, this revisioning work of contemporary comics artists is an important component of the comics-as-literature movement. In order to prove this, my work isolates three distinct forms of Othering that comics speak to in a prominent way. By studying the manner in which comics represent women, racial minorities and geeks, I develop the pattern by which Othering practices contribute to the cultural status of comics art. Each chapter isolates touchstone texts with regard to minority representation (Wonder Woman as gender representation, Happy Hooligan and Luke Cage as racial representation, Clark Kent as geek representation, etc.) in order to establish the formation of encrusted connotations that can then be seen across the medium as a whole. I then show how some of the most prominent and critically acclaimed comics literature of the past twenty years (Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Persepolis, etc.) enters into a self-reflexive dialogue with these encrusted connotations in order to move beyond them and to help transition the form toward a higher cultural status.

My research demonstrates how Othering practices affect the cultural status of the comics form. Comics frequently rely upon Othering practices such as stereotype when representing minority characters. This tendency contributes to the low cultural status of comics throughout the better part of the last century. In recent years, however, comics artists have cultivated revisioning techniques that challenge the use of Othering practices in comics. These efforts represent an important step in the push toward what is now known as the comics-as-literature movement, which Scott McCloud believes will allow the next generation of comics readers and artists to accept the idea that “comics can yield a body of work worthy of study and meaningfully represent the life, times and world-view of its author” (Reinventing 10). Even as Othering practices in comics create negative perceptions, these same practices, ironically, provide comics artists with the necessary mechanisms to undermine or revise these negative perceptions and to move comics into the literary arena. The primary mechanism that I focus on in this project is the denotation/connotation relationship. In “Rhetoric of the Image,” Roland Barthes -- speaking about advertising images -- suggests that “the denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message, it innocents the semantic artifice of connotation” (“Rhetoric” 45). Building on Barthes’ work, I demonstrate how the comics image uses the denotative component in visual representations of minorities to naturalize symbolic messages (connotations) that project inferiority. This is how comics create and perpetuate Otherness. At the same time, by interrogating the denotation/connotation relationship, contemporary comics artists have been able to undermine this naturalization process and expose the misconceptions that are inherent within representations of the Other in comics. When comics commonly adopt Othering practices, they create what Charles Hatfield refers to as “encrusted connotations” (4), where the reader’s experience of a comics work is deeply affected by the social perceptions that surround comics in general. When the treatment of minorities in comics is based upon outdated stereotypes, for example, readers may assume that comics are a popular art form without literary aspirations, and the readers then treat these comics accordingly. Conversely, when comics artists challenge the encrusted connotations of the form, they undermine these connotations and open the comics readers’ eyes to the possibility that comics can indeed yield a body of work worthy of study. As I demonstrate, this revisioning work of contemporary comics artists is an important component of the comics-as-literature movement. In order to prove this, my work isolates three distinct forms of Othering that comics speak to in a prominent way. By studying the manner in which comics represent women, racial minorities and geeks, I develop the pattern by which Othering practices contribute to the cultural status of comics art. Each chapter isolates touchstone texts with regard to minority representation (Wonder Woman as gender representation, Happy Hooligan and Luke Cage as racial representation, Clark Kent as geek representation, etc.) in order to establish the formation of encrusted connotations that can then be seen across the medium as a whole. I then show how some of the most prominent and critically acclaimed comics literature of the past twenty years (Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Persepolis, etc.) enters into a self-reflexive dialogue with these encrusted connotations in order to move beyond them and to help transition the form toward a higher cultural status.

The American City is layered in differences. Over time the city has been shaped and reshaped by different cultures and identities in the urban landscape. However, difference is still consistently otherized, and ethnicity becomes excluded by society as this other. In 2010, the Latino population increased from 13 percent in 2000 to 16 percent of the total population, or 51 million people. And yet, Latinos are still particularly otherized in cities like New Orleans, where the demographics have been shifting since Katrina and the Latino population has more than doubled in size. Despite the city’s rich history of Latin American culture, the population’s identity is still ambiguous and mainly invisible to society at large. On a national level, Latinos use the everyday in urban life as an arena of resistance and cultural meaning. Neighborhoods evolve over time based on hybridity, juxtaposition and improvisation; this temporal condition is visible within a 24-hour cycle in Hispanic everyday life, where place is altered across different hours of the day, and along different paths. Utilizing this transitional element of Latino Urbanism and the emphasis on provisional social space existing along lines of difference, the project redefines building typologies to anticipate and support the growing ethnic identity. In New Orleans, the Latino community has specific economic, social and cultural needs, which the city is currently lacking, thus the project seeks to address these absences through the placemaking strategy of layered exchanges and interwoven paths, in which the tectonics of space respond to these paths, and a visual, as well as a physical, exchange occurs between, city and others. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Colleges, universities, and conservatories are known and respected for teaching singers with the potential to become either performers or teachers-in-training through the instruction of bel canto vocal pedagogy. Recently, however, a shift towards the popular musical theater points to a desirable career path for many students. The evolution of musical theater and its rigorous performance demands has caused many teachers to believe this style of singing is deleterious to the voice. Arguments between bel canto and musical theater pedagogues validate the importance of a closer examination of how personal and professional experiences shape an individual to become a teacher of musical theater pedagogy with no formal training. This narrative inquiry sought to determine how three voice teachers’ past experiences influenced their desires, beliefs, and methods of teaching musical theater singing. The discovery of the theme of generic otherness revealed the commonality of marginalization experienced by each participant, based on their musical preferences, by their collegiate voice teachers and colleagues. Implications of this study established the need for current and future voice teachers to examine their own biases toward varied styles of singing that may in turn inhibit their teaching.

This thesis analyses the interaction between missionary medicine and Ndyuka medicine from the perspective of a Baptist missionary nurse operating a clinic in the village of Lantiwei in Suriname. Based on two months of anthropological fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2014, this thesis argues that in her everyday practice of medicine, the Baptist nurse is dependent on the cooperation of a local Ndyuka healer and his family to such an extent that their working together can be regarded as a social form of symbiosis. This thesis furthermore demonstrates that the Baptist nurse has incorporated Ndyuka ideas to her understanding of illness and death, and that even though she continues to abhor and reject the practice of Ndyuka medicine as a form of devil worship, she recognizes its spiritual powers. Taken together, these findings show that an opposition between missionary medicine as a—perhaps unwitting—agent of modernity and local Ndyuka medicine as a ‘traditional’ form of medicine increasingly superseded by ‘modern’ medicine, is fictitious, and that the lack of scholarly attention to the interaction of missionary medicine with local practices of medicine demontrates anthropology’s obsession with the ‘traditional’ ‘Other’.

The science of human origins, known formally as ‘paleoanthropology’, was effectively born in the fierce late nineteenth century debate as to the human status of Neanderthal. Critical social theory on ‘scientism’ has generated a wealth of research on the ways the various human sciences contribute to the structuring and organizing of social relations. This includes Foucault’s well-known genealogical studies of clinical medicine, which have provided sociologists with crucial insight into how classifying and ordering practices actually create ‘Man’ in the way they operate as a field – or “technology” – of power (Foucault 1970). However, as yet there has been very little produced by sociologists interested in the impacts of science on society with regards to paleoanthropology specifically. This is especially surprising considering that Neanderthal, the quintessential ‘missing link’ and the hub of paleoanthropology’s speculative and explanatory universe, clearly occupies a central place in the socio-historical emergence of ‘humanness’ as an ontological category. Moving forward from the basic observation that the original 1856 discovery of fossilized Neanderthal remains in a cave in Germany’s Neander Valley generally coincided with the end of the colonial period, my dissertation seeks to fill a void in sociology via a genealogical study of paleoanthropological science. Drawing largely upon the insight of Foucault but also that of Saïd, I undertake a discourse analysis of the early debates surrounding Neanderthal with an aim toward shedding light upon the ways in which Neanderthal propagated or concealed certain anxieties, particularly as they relate to biological kinships. This is then applied to an exploration of how the debates surrounding Neanderthal were in turn pivotal to the emergence of today’s prevailing paleoanthropological models of human origins. The profound ontological and epistemological tensions embodied by these models, I argue, wholly reflect the inherently ambiguous nature of the missing link as both concept and metaphor. The result is that missing links, because of the discursive field in which they function, are a powerful source of normativity and stratification. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2014-02-04 12:53:52.631

Nurses who work in the intensive care settings (or units, ICU) in Canada encounter a growing number of patients living with obesity (PLWO) in clinical practice. Many authors suggest that the number of PLWO who are admitted to the ICU has increased significantly because obesity is on the rise in Canada. PLWO are thought to be at a higher risk for developing chronic illnesses and life-threatening complications that require an admission to the ICU. They are also more likely to develop postoperative complications that require life-sustaining treatments, invasive hemodynamic monitoring and evaluation, assistive devices, pharmacological interventions, parenteral nutrition, fluid and electrolyte management, and prolonged admission with associated risks of complications. Yet, there is limited research on the experience of nurses providing care to PLWO. The goal of this qualitative study was to examine the experiences of ICU nurses who work with PLWO and how these experiences affect the way they provide care. More specifically, this study was designed to describe and explore the inclusionary and exclusionary practices developed by nurses providing care to PLWO by drawing Canales’ (2000) Othering framework. Lastly, an additional goal of this study was to document the needs of ICU nurses with respect to the care of PLWO and areas of improvement in the ICU. A total of 11 ICU nurses were interviewed for this study. Data analysis followed the principles of Applied Thematic Analysis (ATA) and revealed four themes. The first theme describes how the PLWO become “Other” in the ICU context. The second theme focuses on exclusionary Othering and how it manifests itself in the way PLWO are differentiated, cared for, and viewed in the ICU context. The third theme sheds light on inclusionary Othering in the form of strategies that are used by ICU nurses to engage with PLWO in a way that is inclusive and transformative. Finally, the last theme concentrates on the ICU environment itself and the resources available (or not available) to nurses, with a particular emphasis on the needs of nurses who provide care to PLWO.

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The Lord of the Rings trilogy is greatly diverse in species, races, and ethnicities which is a fact that over the decades has engendered great scholarly discussions about hidden racism in the literary work. Therefore, an analysis of intercultural matters and encounters realized throughout the story is relevant for detecting a possible racist ideology. By applying the postcolonial concept “Othering,” which is an act of differentiation, this essay analyzes racist instances in the story, and the result of or opposition to those, in order to indicate the presence of an anti-Othering ideology in the trilogy. The analysis is conducted through discussion of Othering of other species/races/ethnicities caused by blind trust in one’s own group, Othering inside one’s own group, Othering of other species/races/ethnicities, and discussion about instances of multicultural acceptance. Considering Tolkien’s relationship to nature, this discussion also extends to Othering of nature. Consequently, this essay concludes how The Lord of the Rings trilogy arguably is against Othering since the story generally presents the act as negative to others, oneself, and/or one’s beloved as well as contains instances which simply convey a positive view of multiculturalism. / Sagan om ringen trilogin är väldigt mångfaldig i arter, raser och etniciteter vilket genom årtionden har genererat storskaliga akademiska diskussioner om förekomsten av en dold rasism i det litterära verket. Därmed är en analys av de interkulturella angelägenheter och möten som tar plats under berättelsens gång relevant för att upptäcka en möjlig rasistisk ideologi. Genom att applicera det postkoloniala konceptet ”Othering”, vilket är en differentieringsakt, analyserar denna uppsats rasistiska instanser i berättelsen och resultatet av eller oppositionen till dessa för att indikera förekomsten av en motståndsideologi till ”Othering” i trilogin. Analysen genomförs genom diskussioner om ”Othering” av andra arter/raser/etniciteter orsakade av blind tilltro till ens egen grupp, ”Othering” inom ens egen grupp, ”Othering” av andra arter/raser/etniciteter och diskussion om instanser av multikulturell acceptans. Med tanke på Tolkiens relation till naturen sträcker sig även denna diskussion till ”Othering” av naturen. Denna uppsats drar följaktligen slutsatsen att Sagan om ringen trilogin är emot ”Othering” eftersom berättelsen generellt sett presenterar aktionen som negativ för andra, en själv och ens älskade, såväl som innehåller instanser som helt enkelt förmedlar en positiv syn på multikulturalism.