Thesis (Honors)--University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.

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In this project, I focus on the function of the "amtal" or test of definition or destruction, in Frank Herbert's Dune. It is my argument that these tests "to destruction" determine not only the limits or defects of the person being tested, but also - and more crucially - the very limits and defects of the definition of humanity in three specific cultural spheres within the novel: the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen, and the Faufreluches. The definitions of "amtal" as well as "humanity," like all definitions, are somewhat fluid, changing depending on usage, cultural context, and the political and social needs of the society which uses them. Accordingly, Dune remains an instructive text for thinking through contemporary and controversial notions about the limits of humanism and, consequently, of animalism and posthumanism. / by Adella Irizarry. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2005. / "May, 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-113). Online version available on the World Wide Web. Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2005]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm.

"Shakespeare on the Verge: Rhetoric, Tragedy, and the Paradox of Place" describes the ideological geographies of Renaissance England and reads the ways "place" was rhetorically constructed in two of Shakespeare's late tragedies. By ideological geographies I mean the way in which Renaissance men and women understood spatially the constitution of their world--their spatialized "habits of thought." These habits were then undergoing a change from seeing the world as a vertical hierarchy of interrelated and dependent places to seeing it as a horizontal array of discrete places related to one another in a linear manner. Working from the theories of Agamben, Burke, Foucault, and Ong, I argue that Shakespeare constructs a paradox of place in which hierarchically elevated places subsume inferior ones and thereby double them. The paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is the king's mobile court, known at the time as the "Verge," which subsumed the places, the actual palaces and castles, of the king's subjects as it progressed across the kingdom. This phenomenon is paradoxical because, although the king's superior place subsumed those below it, it was always dependent on those inferior places, both logically (there can be no king without his subjects) and materially (as the king traveled, his household relied on the provisions supplied by subjects along the way). This paradox leads Shakespeare to double certain dramatic characters and their environments. It also leads him to set up oppositions between places constructed through violent means and places constructed through the "violence" of rhetoric. In my chapter on King Lear (1605), I argue that Edmund should be read as Lear's double, a doubling made manifest especially in the characters' stage movements as they effectively change places with one another. In Coriolanus (1608), I argue that its hero rejects his double, the Plebeian class of Rome, but that he eventually attempts to reconcile with them in large measure by changing his use of rhetoric. In my reading of these plays, as in my description of Renaissance ideological geographies, I aim to revise the way people look at place on the Shakespearean stage and at the complex interplay in them between physical violence and rhetorical action. / text

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This research investigates the phenomenon of pilgrimage, seeking to better understand the dimensions of space and power of place as it pertains to the individual pilgrim's relationship to a foreign environment while emphasizing the humanistic, experiential and physical aspects embedded within the process of pilgrimage. An examination of the concept of pilgrimage through the experience of an architect, pilgrimage as a vehicle for finding self, exploration of the phenomenology of place, and investigation of the fundamentals or anthropology of experience, will also be included.For an architect this unique and relatively untouched area of research has great importance. Architects are constantly searching for an understanding of the relationship between environments and people. The profession, as a whole, is trained to be especially sensitive to aesthetic and cultural aspects of the built environment. Furthermore, the study of pilgrimage, to date, lacks scholarly research conducted by architects, whose unique perception of three-dimensional space and knowledge of the language necessary to build unique places could potentially add insight into many aspects of the pilgrimage phenomenon. These aspects emphasize the role environment plays in pilgrimage and the spatial behavior of pilgrim's relationship to environment. / Department of Architecture

This study addresses the question of the nature of indigenous people's connection to the land, and the implications of this for articulating these connections in legal arenas where questions of Aboriginal title and land claims are at issue. The idea of 'place' is developed, based in a phenomenology of dwelling which takes profound attachments to home places as shaping and being shaped by ontological orientation and social organization. In this theory of the 'senses of place', the author emphasizes the relationships between meaning and power experienced and embodied in place, and the social systems of property and territory that forms indigenous land tenure systems. To explore this theoretical notion of senses of place, the study develops a detailed ethnography of a Coast Salish Aboriginal community on southeast Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Through this ethnography of dwelling, the ways in which places become richly imbued with meanings and how they shape social organization and generate social action are examined. Narratives with Coast Salish community members, set in a broad context of discussing land claims, provide context for understanding senses of place imbued with ancestors, myth, spirit, power, language, history, property, territory and boundaries. The author concludes in arguing that by attending to a theorized understanding of highly local senses of place, nuanced conceptions of indigenous relationships to land which appreciate indigenous relations to land in their own terms can be articulated.

Thesis (M. A.) (Hons.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2002. / A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillmemt of the degree of Master of Arts, UWS Nepean, School of Contemporary Arts : Dance, July 2002. Bibliography : leaves 81-84.