There have been only sporadic attempts to highlight Chinese women’s role and influence in art, even though their contribution has been major. This thesis seeks to understand the significance of women’s participation in modern Chinese art history through the narratives and works of Pan Yuliang, Nie Ou and Yin Xiuzhen, who were professionally active at different political stages of twentieth-century China. Using an interdisciplinary framework, drawing on concepts from theories such as modernism, feminism and postcolonialism, this thesis analyzes a culturally specific field in art history and the interrelationship between various factors that have contributed to it. As artists of a peripheral culture, various factors in the artistic production of Chinese women have been overlooked and often misinterpreted. This thesis argues that the three artists in this study have produced different, individualized responses to the Euro-American model of modernism. To highlight the cultural specificity of China, the introductory chapter will include a short comparative analysis between Chinese modernism and the modernisms of other Asian countries. The adoption of Western art forms by early overseas-trained Chinese artists such as Pan indicates as many intricacies and ambivalences as in the complex relationship of China with Western imperialism. Chapter Two situates the Westernized works of Pan in the context of Chinese modernism, pre-feminism and the semi-colonized state of early twentieth-century China. In relation to the theories of orientalism and provincialism, implications of the ambiguities of Pan’s representations are extended to debates that explore the subjectivity and identity of non-European artists in their quest for modernism. Nie Ou was born into the era when the Chinese Communists had just taken over in 1949. Under the autocratic rule of the Communists, Nie was exiled to the northern countryside during her early adulthood as part of the “re-educating the elite” program. Chapter Three demonstrates how Nie successfully emerged from the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution. During this period of intensified Chinese nationalism, Nie found ways to merge the influences of the restrictive style of Socialist Realism and the poetic Chinese literati painting tradition to create an individualized style of representation. China underwent rapid modernization in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter Four examines the works of contemporary artist Yin Xiuzhen who, with her avant-garde installations, has pushed the boundaries of what constitutes conventional Chinese art. This chapter analyzes Yin’s works in the context of late twentieth-century China, where the nation was no longer a Socialist monolith but a complex amalgam in which old and new, Socialist and capitalist, modern and postmodern co-existed. Yin’s works will be studied in relation to theories of postmodernism, postfeminism and globalism. Chapter Five consolidates the earlier chapters by reflecting on how various conditions throughout the twentieth century have changed and shaped the role of women in Chinese art history. The concluding chapter will consider the influence Chinese women artists may have on the art discourse in China today, and perhaps across other cultures. This chapter will explore the constraints upon them and the potential of their future role, not only in China but also in the broader sense of what it means to be an artist internationally.

<p>The dissertation takes as its starting-point the dichotomies between origin and modernity, periphery and centre. This is particularly the case in Astrid Väring’s novels Frosten (1926) and Vintermyren (1927), in which the author pays tribute to the homestead and the rural community in contrast to the industrial community, whilst her novels also express an ambivalent attitude towards modernity. Astrid Väring bases her works on a Norrland literary tradition, which often stood in opposition to the central power despite being dependent on it. In this respect, a similarity with postcolonialism is evident.</p><p>Access to a wealth of archive material, which has not previously been used in literary scholastic research, has resulted in a natural combination of a biographical method and socio-literary reading. When analysing the novels, the same external circumstances that had signifi cance for the author when the work was drafted, for example economic, social and political conditions, have therefore been taken into account.</p><p>With reference to the novel Katinka (1942), the view of popular literature during the 1940s is dealt with. The pejorative view, prevalent in those days, is compared with a contemporary understanding of it. Today, neither the canon nor popular literature stand out as particularly homogeneous categories. Katinka was written at the start of the Second World War. A comparison is made in the dissertation between Vilhelm Moberg’s Rid i natt! (Ride this Night) (1941) and Katinka in order to ascertain the novels’ attitude towards the offi cial Swedish position of neutrality. In Ride this Night rebellion against the enemy is encouraged, in Katinka a cautious, wait and see attitude is urged.</p><p>I som här inträden… (1944) is a novel with a purpose. In this novel Astrid Väring directs a harsh attack against the mental health care at Swedish mental hospitals. The dissertation contains a genre discussion concerning the various genres related to the novel with a purpose, for example roman à thèse. It can be concluded that theoretical work concerning the novel with a purpose is rare. But, when the issue pursued in the novel is no longer relevant, the novel with a purpose is often destined to be forgotten. Furthermore, Astrid Väring had the bad luck of falling in the shadow of Sara Lidman’s modernistic West-Bothnian accounts of the 1950s, which contributed to the fact that her entire works quickly fell into oblivion. This dissertation is the fi rst scholastic work on Astrid Väring’s works.</p>

Thesis (M.A. (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

With its focus on immigration to the United States and development of American identity, Bharati Mukherjee’s fiction eludes literary categorization. It engages with the various contexts of multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and globalization, yet Mukherjee adamantly positions herself as an American author writing American literature. In this essay, I investigate the intersections between Mukherjee’s focus on the American character, culture, and people and developing theories and critical debates on globalization. Through Mukherjee’s works, we can see American identity in a state of flux, made possible by the immigrant and the relationships established between the transnational individual and America. Mukherjee’s immigrant characters challenge and expose American mythology from the American Dream of individual achievement to the canonical literature of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, rewriting them to show how foundational the immigrant is to American culture. I trace Mukherjee’s redefinition of the American character in and through three successive novels – Wife, Jasmine, and The Holder of the World. In Wife, Mukherjee challenges America’s adoption of multiculturalism because she considers it a means of essentializing ethnicity and both maintaining and enhancing difference. This multiculturalism, as part of America’s assumed principles of acceptance, alienates the protagonist Dimple from her immigrant community and the larger American culture, resulting in her violent attempts to force her Americanization. Jasmine continues to work against multiculturalism by explicitly inserting the immigrant into the American mythos, reshaping the Western literary canon to include the transnational individual and to assert the immigrant foundations of American ideology. Mukherjee expands her focus in Holder of the World as her protagonist Hannah travels to England, India, and the bourgeoning United States, rewriting The Scarlet Letter to suggest that globalizing forces have been present throughout American cultural history, not just at the end of the 20th century when critical debates began to flourish. Through analysis of these novels, I argue that Mukherjee’s reformulation of American character reasserts American ideals by including and developing with the rise of globalization theory.

Dans ce travail on essaye de donner une définition et une historicisation de ce qu’on appelle « littérature italienne de la migration ». Il y a tout de suite une distinction à faire entre les écrivains étrangers qui écrivaient en italien avant le grand flux migratoire des années ’80 et ceux qui sont issus de cette vague, dont la thèse s’occupe dans une manière plus spécifique (années 1989-2007). Les changements sociaux et culturels que les nouveaux immigrés ont apporté, ont transformé l’Italie de pays d’émigration en pays d’immigration. Au niveau littéraire ces écrivains ont d’abord utilisé un langage standard, pour se faire comprendre du public et pour témoigner les difficultés du voyage migratoire et de l’intégration ; les dernières œuvres, pourtant, analysées dans la deuxième partie de la thèse, ont été écrites par des écrivains qui manipulent plus facilement la langue italienne, utilisant un plurilinguisme témoin d’un lien très stricte entre oralité et écriture, et entre langue d’origine et langue d’accueil. Enfin, les oeuvres des écrivains italophones postcoloniaux et de ceux issus de la deuxième génération peuvent rapporter la littérature italienne contemporaine avec des autres situation (France, Allemagne, Angleterre, Etats Unis) qui semblent très similaires. ENGLISH: On this work we want to give a definition about “Italian Migrant Literature”. There is a difference between writers came in Italy before or after the migration’s fluxes on the 80’s. With this social and cultural changes, Italy became immigration country. First, migrant writers used a standard language, to have a big public and to talk about migration. Last works are more interesting because they use a plurilingualism that can show the relationship between oral and write. Finally, Postcolonial Italian writers and Second Generation writers make a connection with the literary situation in the other countries (France, Germany, Britain, United States).

Le roman africain de la nouvelle génération s’élabore au carrefour des langues et des cultures. Dans son orientation théorique et paratextuelle, le discours romanesque de la nouvelle génération se résume en une « modernité universalisante », lieu de l’articulation dialectique entre l’africanité et la mondialisation. Le contexte idéologique de création de cette littérature et le questionnement identitaire nous amènent à considérer l’africanité comme une notion dynamique et la mondialisation littéraire comme une ouverture à la concurrence et à la légitimité littéraire. Le discours péritextuel, ce haut lieu de la lisibilité/visibilité, amorce les stratégies de cette altérité que le romancier développe largement dans l’énonciation textuelle. La reconfiguration de l’énonciation dégage les ressorts d’une écriture nouvelle marquée par une narration éclatée, une spatialité multiple et une innovation thématique. La transgression narrative s’intègre au rang des discours de la déconstruction caractéristique de la postmodernité et se donne à lire comme le reflet de l’être de l’entre-deux qu’est l’écrivain migrant comme d’ailleurs son protagoniste. L’espace dans lequel évolue ce dernier peut être interprété comme une transteritorialité dans laquelle se moule la création littéraire marquée du sceau de l’altérité et traduit la « transidentité » du personnage évoluant dans cet espace. La perspective thématique renforce cette idée de l’altérité mondiale structurant le récit africain contemporain. Elle s’engage dans la voie des mutations et des transgressions caractéristiques de la mise en relation de l’africanité et de la mondialisation comme lieu de l’écriture/lecture du roman contemporain. Le mode d’écriture nous offre un cadre linguistique et stylistique dans lequel se joue l’altérité africanité-mondialisation. Le romancier de la nouvelle génération retravaille la langue française à l’aide des ingrédients des langues et des cultures dans lesquelles il baigne. Cette manipulation linguistico-stylistique est rendue possible par le jeu interlinguistique et le registre humoristico-ironique qui produisent une esthétique du « risible » face aux défis de l’altérité. L’écrivain africain contemporain, décomplexé par ces manipulations linguistique et stylistique, exploite les ressources de l’oralité en vue de concilier la pluralité des formes d’expression et des pratiques langagières de son environnement. Cette stratégie d’écriture produit une esthétique de l’oraliture, celle-là même qui, tout en exaltant les vertus de l’écriture, recourt aux différents procédés offerts par l’oralité, versant de l’africanité du texte contemporain, pour marquer une opposition contre l’écriture et l’Occident qui l’incarne./The African novel by the new generation is made at the meeting point of languages and cultures. In its theoretical and paratextual orientation, the fiction discourse by the new generation can be summed up as a « universality-oriented modernity », a place of dialectic link between africanity and globalization. The ideological context of creation of this literature and the identity questioning bring us to consider africanity as a dynamic notion and the literary globalization as a way to competition and literary legitimacy. The peritextual discourse, which is a high place of readability/visibility, initiates the strategies of this otherness which the novelist develops largely in textual enunciation. Reshaping the enunciation shows the motivation of a new writing characterized by a breaking up narration, a multiple area coverage and a thematic innovation. Narrative transgression is integrated in the rank of discourses of deconstruction characterizing postmodernity. It is to be read as a reflection of the being in the space between, this is the migrant writer as well as his protagonist. The space in which the latter evolves can be interpreted as a transterritoriarity in which is moulded literary creation sealed by otherness and shows « transidentity » of the character evolving in that space. The thematic perspective reinforces this idea of global otherness structuring the African contemporary narration. It moves into mutations and transgressions characterizing the relationship between africanity and globalization as a place of writing/reading of contemporary novel. The writing mode gives us a linguistic and stylistic framework in which takes place the otherness africanity-globalization. The new generation novelist works on the French language he uses by means of ingredients of languages and cultures surrounding him. This linguistic and stylistic manipulation is made possible by an interlinguistic game and the humoristic and ironic register which produce aesthetics of the “funny” in front of otherness challenges. The contemporary African writer, encouraged by these linguistic and stylistic manipulations, exploits the oral ressources in order to reconcile the plurality of forms of expression and of language practices of his environment. This writing strategy produces aesthetics of orality, the one which, in addition to exalting the virtues of writing, has recourse to different procedures of orality, showing thus africanity of contemporary text, to mark an opposition against writing and the Western world which embodies it.

The dissertation takes as its starting-point the dichotomies between origin and modernity, periphery and centre. This is particularly the case in Astrid Väring’s novels Frosten (1926) and Vintermyren (1927), in which the author pays tribute to the homestead and the rural community in contrast to the industrial community, whilst her novels also express an ambivalent attitude towards modernity. Astrid Väring bases her works on a Norrland literary tradition, which often stood in opposition to the central power despite being dependent on it. In this respect, a similarity with postcolonialism is evident. Access to a wealth of archive material, which has not previously been used in literary scholastic research, has resulted in a natural combination of a biographical method and socio-literary reading. When analysing the novels, the same external circumstances that had signifi cance for the author when the work was drafted, for example economic, social and political conditions, have therefore been taken into account. With reference to the novel Katinka (1942), the view of popular literature during the 1940s is dealt with. The pejorative view, prevalent in those days, is compared with a contemporary understanding of it. Today, neither the canon nor popular literature stand out as particularly homogeneous categories. Katinka was written at the start of the Second World War. A comparison is made in the dissertation between Vilhelm Moberg’s Rid i natt! (Ride this Night) (1941) and Katinka in order to ascertain the novels’ attitude towards the offi cial Swedish position of neutrality. In Ride this Night rebellion against the enemy is encouraged, in Katinka a cautious, wait and see attitude is urged. I som här inträden… (1944) is a novel with a purpose. In this novel Astrid Väring directs a harsh attack against the mental health care at Swedish mental hospitals. The dissertation contains a genre discussion concerning the various genres related to the novel with a purpose, for example roman à thèse. It can be concluded that theoretical work concerning the novel with a purpose is rare. But, when the issue pursued in the novel is no longer relevant, the novel with a purpose is often destined to be forgotten. Furthermore, Astrid Väring had the bad luck of falling in the shadow of Sara Lidman’s modernistic West-Bothnian accounts of the 1950s, which contributed to the fact that her entire works quickly fell into oblivion. This dissertation is the fi rst scholastic work on Astrid Väring’s works.

Westerners have for centuries been present in Africa with different motives. The most recent phenomenon is young volunteers that, instead of being tourists in a normal sense, go to the continent to work within organizations as for example teachers. This study, where the empirical material is based on qualitative interviews done with twelve European volunteers during a minor field study in Ghana, aims to examine what apprehension the volunteers have of their role and function. To create an understanding for the purpose, questions on the meaning of the concept of volunteering, motives and outcomes of the volunteering experience as well as the view of westerners and Ghanaians have been asked. In the light of postcolonialism and volunteer tourism, the study shows a number of factors that explains motives and the understanding of the concept, with a focus on the learning and growth of the volunteer. The outcome circles around knowledge on development issues and aid work as well as being able to have an impact on Ghanaians and development in Ghana. The volunteers also show revulsion from other westerners (that want to “help” and have a “colonial” behavior) and Ghanaians, but at the same time they prefer to spend time with westerners. The volunteers’ apprehension of their role and function is found to be bipartite; expressed is that they are in Ghana to experience and to learn, but understood is also that they see it as their task to spread their view of life, help the locals and contribute to development. A possible explanation to this contradiction might be that the volunteers, grown up in a time where they have been taught “how they should think” about “Us” and “Them”, distance themselves from everything that disaffirm their belief. However, at the same time they are deeply influenced by the western society’s way of focusing on differences between people, differences with signatures such as “developed” and “underdeveloped”. It creates a complexity of knowing something but not being able to live by it. / Med en historisk tillbakablick ser man att västerlänningar länge och med olika motiv har varit närvarande i Afrika. De senaste i raden är unga volontärer som, istället för att vara turist i vanlig bemärkelse, åker till kontinenten för att arbeta inom organisationer som till exempel lärare. Denna studie, vars empiriska material bygger på en fältstudie i Ghana där kvalitativa intervjuer gjorts med tolv europeiska volontärer, syftar till att undersöka vilken förståelse volontärerna har av sin roll och funktion. För att skapa en idé kring syftet har frågor kring volontärkonceptets betydelse, motiv och effekter av volontärupplevelsen samt synen på västerlänningar och ghaneser ställts. I ljuset av postkolonialism och volontär turism visar studien på ett antal faktorer som förklarar motiv och volontärkonceptets betydelse, med fokus kring vikten av volontärens läroprocess och mognad. Effekterna handlar om kunskap kring utvecklingsfrågor och biståndsarbete samt en upplevelse av att kunna påverka ghaneser och utvecklingen i Ghana. De visar också på avståndstagande från både västerlänningar (som vill ”hjälpa” och har ”kolonialt” beteende) och ghaneser, samtidigt som de helst umgås med de förra. Volontärernas förståelse av sin roll och funktion upplevs tvådelad; uttryckt förstås den som någon som är i Ghana för att uppleva och lära sig, men det utläses också att de ser som sin uppgift att sprida sin livssyn, hjälpa lokalbefolkningen och medverka till utveckling. En möjlig förklaring till denna motsägelsefullhet kan vara att volontärerna, uppväxta i en tid där de lärt sig ”hur de ska tänka” om ”Vi” och ”Dem”, tar avstånd från allt som motsäger den synen men samtidigt är de också djupt påverkade av det västerländska samhällets fokus på skillnader mellan folk, skillnader med förtecken så som ”utvecklade” och ”underutvecklade”. Det skapar en komplexitet av att vara medveten om något men inte kunna leva efter det.

Light skin color sits within a space of privilege. While this has global significance and relevance, it is particularly true in Jamaica, a former British colony. The majority of the population is of African descent, yet there is an elevation of Eurocentric values and a denigration of Afrocentric values in many facets of life, specifically in the promotion of light skin as an indicator of beauty and social status. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychological and socio-cultural factors that influence the practice of skin bleaching in the postcolonial society of Jamaica. Additionally, the study outlined the nation's efforts to combat the skin-bleaching phenomenon. The naturalistic paradigm of inquiry was used to frame the study and to collect and analyze data. The sample consisted of fifteen participants—twelve participants (six males and six females) with a history of skin bleaching; a retailer of skin lightening products; a local dermatologist who has written and published in local newspapers on the practice; and a representative from the Ministry of Health who was integrally involved in the national educational efforts to ban the practice. Data came from three sources: in-depth interviews with respondents; observation of participant's skin-bleaching practices; and a review of local cultural artifacts from popular culture and the media. Data from the audio recorded and transcribed interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Some of the findings reveal that there are multiple and inconsistent definitions of bleaching; skin bleaching enjoys mixed reviews—much attributed to economic and social class distinctions; bleachers demonstrate and boast of their expertise in managing the bleaching process suggesting, that because of this expertise, they are immune to any negative side-effects of the practice; the bleaching practice was found to be intermittent, time consuming and laborious, costly and addictive; there are several motivations for the skin-bleaching practice, and these are primarily connected to issues of fashion, beauty, popularity, self-image and acceptability; there is a certain level of defiance towards the government‘s efforts to ban bleaching yet an expressed sense of responsibility among bleachers. The overall findings show that there is a bias in Jamaica for light skin over dark skin and these values are taught in non-formal and informal ways from very early in life. The practice of skin bleaching is of social and public health concern, and this study has implications for national policy, practice and theory.

In the present thesis, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, the novel by the Jamaican writer Erna Brodber, is analyzed in the context of post-colonial identity trauma. Analyzing the complex organizational and narrative structure of the novel, the essay author studies how the novel’s rhythmicity and the broken narrative portray the protagonist’s identity fragmentation. Drawing on the work’s connection to the ring game played in the Caribbean and applying the symbolism of the Caribbean folk rhythms, the essay author discusses the subversive intent of Brodber’s novel and her method of rewriting the past as a way of recovering one's identity.